craostulpa

[craostulpa]

uh I'm not plural, at least probably not lmao {judging by how one of the users I frequently interact with "makes" users who interact with them plural I don't even know at this point /silly} but uh I'm real lonely in this hollow head of mine lol,, I've heard of tulpamancy and considered it, but I don't think my situation is too good for a tulpa, my parents wouldn't be happy with it, I'm hardly a teenager yet, and I just wonder if I'll regret it.

I just. I'm lonely in my head and like it'd probably help my mental state/help me not overthink. but like. AGHH tulpamancy makes me nervous for my safety?? not exactly safety but my parents won't be happy. or at least it'll be awkward or just. they'll say they're supportive but really aren't?? I may be just like. thinking of the worst but,, jeez it'd be better if I just. was plural naturally. it wouldn't be by my own hands and my parents probably wouldn't be like "you're reckless!" or smth. god I'm so lonely

So. This message has been sat in my inbox for a few weeks (months?) now and I haven't touched it because I've been busy with my degree. But more importantly, it's taken me some time to figure out how to approach this one.

I haven't been around in the plural community proper for a good few years now and am feeling a lot better off for it, frankly, and your silly comment reminds me why. There's a lot of "interesting" people out there, moreso nowadays it seems, and it can be hard to know who to trust for people just getting into things, which is why I occasionally revisit this blog and check my messages.

I hope that you do see this message, I was tempted to throw this inquiry aside on a skim but you seem like you have a sensible head on your shoulders, understanding that you may regret your choices in the future. Firstly I want to say that I'm genuinely proud of you for second-guessing yourself given your situation as a young person with their life ahead of them. I probably wouldn't have in your position.

You've already made the important step in finding an answer which is "is my situation going to be good for a tulpa?" One of the reasons that I drifted out of the community, especially the mentorship program on Reddit, is a mass influx of new folk who refused to consider their tulpa as close to an equal rather than a thing that is there for the host's entertainment. If you think that you will be unable to take on the responsibility of taking care of a fellow person, then I advise against it.

This being said, your other points strike me as odd. There's no reason why your parents should find out to my knowledge, I managed to keep my system secret for a very long time until I willingly revealed them (perhaps not my smartest decision, but such is life). Even after I did, and I have found this with friends too, is that people will quickly forget they exist if you don't parade them around. People will see what they want to see. I also want to say that while "loneliness" was, at least in the past, seen as an undesirable and selfish reason for creating a tulpa, it is also the reason I created Destiny 12 years ago. And ultimately there are levels of selfishness. I think that this is one of the better ones, if you can provide a fulfilling life for them.

I think that most of all you need to take a few breaths, sit back, and think about what you want and what you can provide in return. You are clearly very anxious, and I don't believe that you should be from my experience. You're also very lonely, and I am hoping that the manic energy in the last few sentences is from the anxiety and not desperation. If it is hitting that point then you need to think about how your actions and mental state may impact somebody else that has to live in your brain with you. A final note. You say that you're "hardly a teenager", and that's okay, I'm not going to belittle you for thinking of such big decisions at an early age. But I will say that I had a large internal world between the ages of 13 and 17, and actions there later gave rise to another member of my system. Actions that I am not proud of, hormonal teenagers are not good decision makers, especially when these things are inside of their own brains. Granted, at the time I didn't *know* that the being that I was interacting with was sentient (technically I still don't scientifically, but you get my point), but I wouldn't give that version of me access to a tulpa. You need to conduct yourself with a certain level of maturity that is hard for some *adults* to achieve. I can't give you a hard answer on whether you should or not, but it's important to keep all of these things in mind. And don't place people who are "plural naturally" on a pedestal. We're all just folk who have struggles of our own, natural or not. Sharing a brain comes with a lot of problems too, and you need to spend some time considering them before making the leap. (Also I'm sorry if I come back and respond to this again or edit it, my brain is absolute mush currently and I'm meant to be finishing an essay on magic and religion in Renaissance literature, send help.)

[craostulpa]

Updated Destiny ref by a close friend for lazy mornings.

[craostulpa]

The plural community is full of so many nice and awesome people; it's just that the hateful voices are the loudest sometimes. We can be loud too, but the quiet ones are also here, and there're so many more of us than they realize. We're still a community and we still share solidarity

[craostulpa]

Glad you’re back, your posts are always a fascinating and helpful read.

Guess Who's Back

That's right. It's us, the Dragonheart System. We're fucking back.

[Rylazide] Hi, everyone, I hope everyone is okay and is having a good day!

Anyway, to cut a long story short, our blog got terminated without warning:

Just... out of the blue, no warning, no reason given. As you can imagine, I was kinda freaked out, but I calmed down and contacted support.

We were stuck, waiting for Tumblr to do something for multiple days, and as you can imagine, it wasn't fun, not knowing whether or not 4+ years of our system's history, informative posts, and more were just... gone for good! Well, they're not.

And from some people who were looking out for us (you know who you are, thank you for being thoughtful towards us) basically let us know that sh!t kind of hit the fan in the Plurality space on Tumblr because of it. This is because the timing of our account termination was just... too suspicious. Literally soon before our blog got fucked, I reblogged a reblog from Sophie about that one system who said some pretty sh!tty things about us in an attempt to counter this post, and all my addition to the post was was just asking Sophie if she could provide evidence for her claims. Because what she was saying about that system would explain a lot of their behavior in the "tulpa = appropriation" discourse and would basically out them as a fake endogenic-supporter, but then... our account was nuked after that reblog was made.

Look, I'm going to be straight with every system here:

Tumblr Trust and Safety never stated WHY our account got terminated. Not when our account was initially terminated, nor when it was reinstated. In posts on both our Youtube and Plural.Cafe accounts, I said it could've been possible that we were mass-reported by sysmeds. I said this because that's exactly what happened to @sophieinwonderland over a year ago, and given the timing, it's not a crazy assumption to make because of the circumstances and history preceding it.

It just seemed a little odd for our account out of the 4+ years we've had it to be nuked during the height of what can metaphorically be described as a war in the #tulpa tags. Especially after we criticized the 'counter' to our original post, or the post by that one syscourse blog we have blocked to name-drop us could've absolutely stirred a bunch of sysmeds to witch-hunt us. It's happened before, it absolutely can happen again.

But, I can't say for sure because Tumblr decided to be frustratingly vague. However, I think a good way to know for sure is to see if these sysmed fucks try that sh!t again, then we'll know for sure. Because again, when Sophie's account was brought back the first time, sysmeds got it taken down a second time. It was so bad that Sophie had to personally ask Tumblr Trust and Safety to whitelist her account from mass-flagging. If we get terminated a second time, we're going to do the same thing Sophie did.

Also, please, please do NOT go after the system who originally criticized my post. After Sophie called them out for potentially being the reason our account got terminated and for spreading disinformation, they were apparently so stressed that they got hospitalized because they have trauma over having disinformation spread about them (you'd think they wouldn't do that if they personally know how harmful it is, but sadly, the abused are more likely than the average person to continue the cycle of abuse and become abusers themselves. It's really sad.).

Does it excuse them saying blatantly false things, spreading harmful disinformation about several users, and potentially (cannot confirm) encouraging sysmeds to mass-report our blog by name-dropping us and saying things that would absolutely encourage sysmeds to mass-report and silence us? Nope. There's no excuse. I don't care how traumatized they are, being traumatized is NO excuse to turn around and do the same to others. Plain and simple.

But still, it sucks that this happened to them, and I hope they're okay. Like, sure, I fucking hate sysmeds, anti-endos, whatever the fuck, I hate the harm they've done to not only us, but so many other people, and how they actively tear the community apart when we need to stick together and look out for each other. However, I don't wish any harm on sysmeds, only that they eventually let go of that bitterness and learn that what they did was wrong and stop doing it. We don't need to stoop to their level; they're just a loud minority that doesn't have any actual footing to stand on besides pure emotion and bigotry.

Anyway, I'm rambling and am going to shut up now. I'm sorry our account getting fucked caused such a stir in the community. Let's just hope it doesn't happen again.

7-31-2023

[craostulpa]

Well it’s nice to see that since I took a vacation from the Tumblr plural community many years ago, they’re still having a normal one. The more things change the more they stay the same I guess.

[craostulpa]

Pinned Post For Newcomers

Hey guys, I go by Craos and I’m the host of this merry band of miscreants. I first created a tulpa in 2013 (asterisk, it’s complicated) and have over time, despite constantly saying “Okay no more”, collected more idiots to cram in here like Pokemon. Sometimes not of my choice but that’s how it goes sometimes. If anybody has any questions, no matter how stupid, you are welcome to ask. Please do, actually. It is better to ask and feel foolish briefly than not know and be proven foolish. Plus your question will help others who were too scared to ask.

My first and most active tulpa is Destiny, she is my best friend and guardian angel. Then comes Faith, Isaac, Axelia, Rikki, Isla, Fen and finally, a recent addition, Kathi. I may not have planned all of them but I love them all very much.

[craostulpa]

Day 3751: Yes I Used A Calculator

Hey Guys. (I almost forgot that, whoops.)

So you might have noticed that it’s been... a while! Two years? Four? Good lord where does the time go? I don’t have an excuse. I dipped out. System’s still all here, chilling out, same as ever. Hope I didn’t worry anybody. I started studying Literature at uni and developed a severe food intolerance to capsaicin, so I am *officially* the whitest man on Earth now. Put your shades on.

Destiny celebrated her 10th birthday in April, which was very emotional. I guess when you start this journey you don’t actually think about making it this far. It’s more of an experiment than a long-term commitment, even if you say that you understand, you don’t grasp it. The reality of that amount of time and my best friend is still chugging along, different but the same. How a decade changes us all. I’m fucking proud of her, she’s been through a lot more than I have.

I’m not sure what else I can say aside from that I’m gonna continue chugging along. We all are. Here’s to another 10 years. Oh also I turn 28 on Friday and that’s weird. I was 17 when I started. Thanks guys. And thanks for sticking with me through this journey. A lot of people were lost along the way.

[craostulpa]

Destiny: I’ve been trying to keep out of the community discourse and find my own isolated niche with friends for a while but as an unfortunate cofounder of Plural Nest I feel the need to unleash my emotions once again. I’m no longer present in Plural Nest but have passed on an extensive essay to a friend to give to the moderation team in the hopes that they see reason. Everything you say is correct and every time I hear something come from that server nowadays it reminds me of the reason I left it. The moderation team does not care about those in the community or their actions as a whole. They care about being seen as the good guys and protecting their own asses. I was one of the last founders standing on that team due to everyone else leaving when the stupid infighting and bickering among newer members became too much. Even then I was suddenly ousted from the team with no warning (or vote) because I essentially was “too negative” (Read As: I told them that their ideas were dumb too often and my proposed solutions were too radical (Usually banning the offending party)). After it became clear that I was suddenly ousted with no vote a number of team members became annoyed and brought it up. They then said that despite the outrage they didn’t feel the need to vote again because it would cause conflict. Like, hey, if they wanted to get rid of me then that’s fine, I’m a big girl and can handle it, but it became clear to me then that they either do not want to handle things properly or are so scared of causing conflict that they are self-sabotaging the entire community for their own insecurities. And *that* is what upsets me. I don’t mean this as a hit piece, please don’t harass anybody, but holy shit I am so tired of pretending like it’s fine that something I helped build from scratch has been commandeered by people who constantly make dumb fucking decisions and make me ashamed to attach my name to it. All of the co-founders that are still around mock that server with me. Anyway that’s my vent I guess. Just remember that anywhere you join is not a representation of how the whole community is. There are many servers that are different from each other and I’m very happy to have found my own place with friends and can be comfortable with who I am.

"Tulpa" and Cultural Appropriation

I cannot believe I feel so compelled to do this again, but after witnessing an announcement by Plural Nest that they're switching to parogenic terminology because they've been convinced by sysmeds that tulpa = appropriation while literally "sourcing" things from minors, singlets, non-Tibetans, and yes, of course, sysmeds is just so goddamn frustrating that I'm going to write this post. I will be referring to this Google Doc Plural Nest themselves linked in their announcement that contains a motley of blogs and accounts by various people:

Strap the fuck in because we're going to be here for a while.

Tulpa = Appropriation Is and Always Was a Bad-Faith Argument

I am prefacing this post with this idea because I want you to keep this in mind as you're reading. Something that has always bothered me about this "discourse" is that the people who go on and on and on about how they're protecting minorities and stopping actual harmful, real appropriation by attacking the Tulpamancy community never:

Go after actual harmful depictions of tulpa that actively profit off of sensationalizing the paranormal version of the word and deliberately linking it to Tibetan Buddhism (Supernatural, Mandela Catalogue, Slenderman, etc).

Uplift the voices of actual Tibetan Buddhists, even ones who disagree with them (which there ARE Tibetan Buddhists who are 100% okay with tulpa as a term, not just the Tibetan Buddhist AMA).

Explain how us using tulpa to describe our systemmates is actively harming Tibetan Buddhists. They just say it's harmful without providing any real examples of harm besides the word annoying them.

The intention of these people never was to protect vulnerable minorities, it was to deliberately blacklist a word a community has used for over a decade and a word that is literally being used in academic studies. If we as a community dropped tulpa, cold-turkey, 100%, we would lose access to so much of our history and access to scientific studies that the community NEEDS to be more accepted by the general public.

If these people actually cared and took the time to look into the Tulpamancy community, they would clearly see that the community very much stresses that tulpa is NOT the same as the paranormal term that IS sensationalized, and that all it means is a type of systemmate that was intentionally/unintentionally created through repeated interaction. And yet, that's not the case.

Oh, also, I found out that the Tibetan Buddhist Tulpamancer who did the AMA also has a Tumblr blog, and they even reblogged this post. And they even left this in the comments:

No one should feel ashamed of using the term “tulpa”. Buddhism, and practices related to it, are meant to be shared. That’s the whole point of the practice. And this greater community, is unique and distinct from Tibetan and related origin, it isn’t “appropriation” and even if it was, no one owns the term, and as I see it; use it as you wish!

So yeah, even further context!

Anyway, with that in mind...

Origins of Tulpa

One thing many people get wrong in the Google Doc is that tulpa directly is a Tibetan word. I have stated this in multiple places from my video on the history of Tulpamancy to my original essay back in 2020 on this very topic, but tulpa was derived from tulku and sprul-pa, which tulku specifically means the reincarnations of the Dalai or Tashi Lama, and sprul-pa means a type of "magically-produced illusion or creation." Alexandra David-Neel, a French explorer during the 1920's-1930's derived tulpa from these two words, and even in her own book, she admits they are not the same:

“These may be considered as veritable tulkus and, in fact, the demarcation between tulpas and tulkus is far from being clearly drawn. The existence of both is grounded on the same theories,” (David-Neel pg 313-314).

David-Neel, Alexandra. Magic and the Mystery of Tibet, Internet Archive, Translated by Claude Kendall, 1971 Dover Edition.

So, for all the people who keep saying that tulpa is a specific word in Tibetan Buddhism is incorrect, tulpa (paranormal) is BASED off of Tibetan language, but is not directly a part of the language, and the meaning was also changed. However, there is a further distinction I need to make:

Paranormal Versus Modern Tulpas

There is a very, VERY important distinction I need to make that a LOT of people who scream, "TULPA IS RACIST!" get wrong. Modern tulpas, the type created by the Tulpamancy community go by this definition (or any similar variation):

A sentient/sapient, typically intentionally created being that is conscious and autonomous, and can only be seen, heard, or felt by the host/system that can also think independently from the host/system. Essentially a separate person sharing a body with the person who created them.

Source: My own Tulpamancy guide.

When the term created by Alexandra David-Neel that is still used in horror media goes by (paraphrasing some bits):

A type of phantom created by a person's concentrated thoughts that when developed enough, it frees itself of its creator's to go onto be a "half-conscious, dangerously mischievous puppet" or just severely injure or even kill their creator.

This definition is cobbled together from David-Neel's own book since she doesn't directly give a definition for paranormal tulpa that I can just fully quote here that's concise enough. Another important observation I made is that David-Neel right afterwards also mentions her ability to see thought-forms, you know... the type derived from English Theosophy, the concept that's way more accurate to modern tulpas than "phantoms," that existed before David-Neel wrote her book? Funny, huh?

Why does this distinction matter?

It's pretty simple. The actual harmful word that horror media profits off of and sensationalizes for clout is the definition David-Neel derived. The word that people attack the Tulpamancy community for literally just means a type of systemmate and has no inherent paranormal or spiritual meaning. The former deliberately shows off the word's Buddhist roots for the sake of personal gain while the modern word is stressed as something on its own, its own concept and practice that is not related to Buddhism. Modern Tulpamancy is completely secular, you can be completely atheist (like me) and create a tulpa just fine. Anyone can. Not a single culture can claim something literally anybody can do by mistake.

Just that the word has a distant link in etymology to it and isn't actually a Tibetan Buddhist concept. By the logic of people who think tulpa is a racist term, any term derived from another language in English would be racist... which would account for 99% of the English language, and honestly kind of demonstrates that they low-key don't even know what racism means at that point.

So, please tell me why the latter is in the crosshairs of people who are supposedly protecting a minority? Why is it that I myself have had to call out things like the Mandela Catalogue for using the paranormal variant of tulpa and twisting it into an edgy story about body-snatchers as some kind of cryptid SCP creature, but I haven't seen anyone else do it? Why isn't there an outrage by these people on notoriously appropriative shows like Supernatural? Hmm.

(Also, important that another blog reblogged that post and mentioned that they've spoken to actual Tibetans on Facebook and how none of them think tulpa is harmful specifically because it's so far-removed from Tibetan Buddhism. Like, they're cool with it as long as the community doesn't try and link it to Tibetan Buddhism, which is literally what the community does and has been doing for YEARS. Love how sysmeds conveniently ignore that. Same with this AMA by another practicing Tibetan Buddhist on Reddit, which is REAL funny that Plural Nest doesn't link this AMA, but links another post by a person who converted to Tibetan Buddhism who agreed with their viewpoint, even if that post was extremely flawed).

People Who Tout This Claim

One thing that is extremely frustrating to see is all these POC systems go on and on and on about how white people shouldn't speak about POC issues, but then turn around and speak over other POC. In one of my original posts on this topic, I specifically made the comparison of a Chinese person trying to dictate what can and cannot happen in Japanese culture. Both are Asian, both are people of color, but they are not the same, and to imply that is racist. POC systems saying that they can dictate that a word based off of Tibetan language is racist as hell, even when they're not Tibetan, just because they're both Asian implies that POC culture is all the same that any person of color can dictate what happens in the other culture is disgusting. Full stop. It's generalizing a HUGELY varied amount of peoples and cultures, and just generalizes them as all the same, and quite frankly, that's insulting.

And even if we go by their logic that any Asian POC can dictate whether or not tulpa is racist also conversely means that any Asian POC can also dictate that tulpa isn't racist. I can literally just go to my best friend who's Asian and Buddhist and ask him if tulpa is racist as a term, he'd just laugh, and say this whole discourse is stupid. In fact, let me go do that:

(He sent me a GIF of SomeOrdinaryGamer laughing, LMAO.)

Anyway, this is what he said:

i am an asian, i believe that the word “Tulpa” is not racist nor cultural appropriation.

(FYI, he's also a Tulpamancer and has been for almost as long as I have.)

I can go on r/Tulpas or #RedditTulpas right now, make a poll for Asian POC systems, and ask them whether or not tulpa as a term is racist, and get hundreds of votes that no, it isn't. It means systems like The Cabin System who are also SE Asian who've openly stated that tulpa as a term isn't racist also have as much stake in the argument as the opposite side does.

Do you see how it devolves into a pissing contest between sides? What does this achieve? All it does is segregate the community and draw unnecessary lines, which is exactly what sysmeds want because it's ways easier to harass and kill smaller communities that way or turn them against each other until they eat each other alive. And they won't just stop with tulpa terminology, they're just using tulpa because they found a convenient scapegoat to attack it. Sysmeds literally find ANY excuse to demonize or take away a word from the endogenic community, it's no different here.

To further prove this point, sysmeds literally tried to say "system hopping" is a term appropriated from RAMCOA survivors, which was completely false. They are not afraid to pull the appropriation card on any word they can, tulpa isn't the only instance of it.

Just by looking in the #tulpa tag, you can see people who are equating people who use tulpa as racist, and want to split the community between "racists and non-racists."

Another key fact is that most people who have this view also have a comical lack of understanding of what Tulpamancy even is. For example, the system that coined willogenic specifically because they think tulpa is racist defined willogenic systemmates as:

“Willogenic system - A system that was purposefully created or “willed” into existence. There’s no connection to t/lpam/ncy at all.”

(Notice how the definition also excludes unintentional tulpas, which is roughly a third of the community? Fun!)

Yes, the actual definition is censored like that. So, the definition states that a systemmate can be ""willed" into existence," and is supposed to be a direct replacement for tulpa. No. No. Stop. You don't just "will" a tulpa into existence. If that was true, we wouldn't still get people on r/Tulpas making posts on how they've tried and tried for months or even years to create a tulpa and still failed.

Not just that, but it severely misrepresents the tulpa creation process as this super simple thing to "will into existence" when tulpa creation varies a LOT from person to person and is far more than just willing a fully formed tulpa into existence. I've mentioned this before, but I seriously do not like the broader Plurality Community attempting to force the Tulpamancy Community to adhere to their terminology that they created, and slapping, "Use our terms or you're a racist piece of sh!t!" on top of that has a REALLY bad connotation.

And remember when I made that distinction between the actually harmful paranormal tulpa definition and the community's definition? Yeah, like I said, most people who have this opinion also are conflating what we do to the paranormal definition.

All the Tulpamancy Community does is create a space where people can partake in tulpa creation and development. That's it. The majority of the community views it as 100% psychological, there's no paranormal ghost nonsense happening, and people are just trying to live their lives with their tulpas. It's not any more complicated than that, and labeling people who use a term like tulpa as racist is seriously scummy.

How "Tulpa = Appropriation" is Harmful

Ironically, this "discourse" has caused more harm to the Tulpamancy community than anything else. Like how I said that all the POC systems who said "tulpa" as a word has "harmed" them don't provide any examples of harm? Well, I can provide examples of how this whole thing has actually caused damage to people in the Tulpamancy Community.

Let's start with me. On multiple occasions, I have had multiple anons harass my inbox, calling me racist, calling me slurs, and even sexually harassing me in the comments of one of my posts specifically because of this issue. In fact, several sysmeds tried raiding our Discord server alongside harassing us on Tumblr because of what Amanitasys's post started, and this has also happened to @cambriancrew, @sophieinwonderland, and more because we happen to be blogs that intersect both communities.

The Widening Divide

Secondly, the widening divide between the Tulpamancy and Plurality communities.

The relationship between the Tulpamancy and broader Plurality community was already tenuous, and for most of the Tulpamancy community's history, it has stayed isolated from other Plurality circles. It was only within the past few years that the communities started to intermingle, but this drama can ruin that.

Because as someone who HAS been in the community for over half a decade, I can tell you that the majority of the Tulpamancy community thinks this drama is stupid and aren't going to change terminology for multiple reasons. Now, do NOT take this as the community going, "Tulpa is a completely unproblematic word!" when the community has debated the term's usage for YEARS. Nobody is saying the word is perfect, but it's what the community has used for over a decade now and every attempt to change the word has failed. And honestly, as someone who's reviewed the vast majority of Tulpamancy guides in existence, I likely know better than anyone else that if tulpa was blacklisted like some people want, the community would lose so much history and resources, it's not even funny.

Unlike the broader community, the Tulpamancy community has a focus on the creation and sharing of Tulpamancy guides and resources, and the vast majority of these resources directly have "tulpa" or "Tulpamancy" in the name, let alone the sheer volume of times the aforementioned words are used in these guides. If we completely dropped the word, the ability of new people to look up and find these guides becomes FAR more difficult. "Tulpa" is a unique and consistent word and makes it easy to look into the community, which in turn helps people discover resources that can help them on their tulpa creation journey.

And for the bottomfeeders who'll inevitably go, "Well, just change the resources!" I need you to go outside and touch some grass, please.

1.) There are literally hundreds of guides, not even including website domains like Tulpa.info, Tulpa.io. Tulpa.net, and many more. There are literally academic studies that use tulpa, and if the community (not just the Tulpamancy community) wants any hope of being accepted by the general public, we NEED those studies to back our existence (as frustrating as it is). Don't forget all the articles, podcasts, and videos we couldn't even change if we want to! Again, over a decade of history.

2.) The VAST majority of the people who wrote these guides are no longer in the community and it is disrespectful to the authors to take and change their work without their permission (if ANY of you tried taking my guide and replaced every tulpa-related term with something else, I'd be PISSED).

3.) Literally every alternative to tulpa has some critical flaw in one way or another (I made a post about this here) and literally nobody can agree on a single term. The amount of fragmenting this would cause would make the aforementioned issue of discoverability EVEN WORSE.

4.) The rate at which resources are created has slowed dramatically since the community's early days. People are just complacent with what they have now, and I don't think labeling tulpa as a racist term is suddenly going to get more people to write more guides, just to change a few words around.

I feel this issue can get to a point where the Plurality community literally starts banning the usage of tulpa-related terminology completely, thus excommunicating the Tulpamancy community from most plural spaces. Places like Plural Nest where the staff OPENLY say that tulpa is appropriative sets this precedent, and even though Plural Nest (at least right now) is still allowing people to use tulpa terminology, other places might pick up on what Plural Nest did, but worse. That ends up excluding people like us from plural spaces and just undoes all the work that's happened to connect the two communities.

Like, systems like us, Dragonheart already have to avoid sysmed servers, but now, even with "inclusive" servers, we might be run out because the owners/staff think tulpa is a racist term. So now we have an extra layer of anxiety when trying to join new communities. That's fun.

It's literally creating what endogenic systems already deal with in the plural community, but now even parts of the endogenic community are bullying another subset of their own community. It's terrible.

So, in the Tulpamancy community's perspective, we either: A.) Give up our most used word and people lose access to so much history and resources, and create a huge divide in our already fragmented community.

Or:

B.) Stick to our guns, but be excommunicated and villainized by the broader Plurality community.

There's no winning here. Regardless of what the Tulpamancy community does, it's going to cause a lot of damage. Sysmeds win regardless with their goal being to divide and fuck up our community, and it deeply upsets me.

What Tulpamancy Really Is

So, what are people trying to attack so hard and blacklist from plural spaces? What are people fighting so hard against to conform to their standards, or be labeled as racist? What Tulpamancy is, for a lot of people, is a means to living a better life. I cannot tell you how many stories I have read of tulpas stopping their hosts from taking their own lives, how creating a tulpa has hugely improved the mental health of others, or how tulpas encourage their hosts to socialize and take care of the body, or how just making a tulpa connects you to a community with the mutual interest in self-improvement and self-love, and so, so much more. Tulpamancy improves people's lives, and Tulpamancy techniques are not exclusive to us.

Any system, or even singlets can learn from the Tulpamancy community to improve their own lives. And yes, that means Tulpamancy helps a lot of people of color as well, as well as a lot of other vulnerable minorities! Whether it's learning vocality to better communicate with alters or using switching techniques to control switching, or even learning how to make a mindscape or improve visualization skills. I don't understand how this community can be labeled as a bunch of racists (even though there are scumbags like Kopase that sadly exist (why don't you guys RIGHTFULLY sh!t on people like him?)) when literally the entire point of the community is self-betterment.

And like what @dharmayokeyodasampa, the Tibetan Buddhist Tulpamancer stated before, "Buddhism, and practices related to it, are meant to be shared. That’s the whole point of the practice," and the same can be said for Tulpamancy. Tulpamancy can be for everyone if it means making their lives better. It's meant to be a positive thing that can truly be life-changing, and seeing people trying to label that practice with one of hatred and harm is just... horrible.

The Tulpamancy community doesn't have some secret agenda to silence people of color or mock any kind of religion or practice. We're just a bunch of lonely people wanting companionship and are tired of being alone.

Conclusion

"Tulpa" as a term, at best, is murky. Nobody is arguing that David-Neel was a saint. She wasn't, and she's dead and buried. Tulpa isn't her word anymore. People in the Tulpamancy community are just fed up with outsiders trying to dictate how their community should be run. We know the term has issues, we know its history is not all sunshine and rainbows. We do not need outsiders barging in and stating the obvious and acting like they know more than we do about our own community and history.

And look, I know some people who believe tulpa is appropriative have good intentions and just want to be non-offensive, but people take advantage of that. Sysmeds took advantage of people wanting to do right and weaponized people into being their mouthpieces under the guise of, "We just want to be racially-sensitive." But instead of actually protecting minorities, all it did was harm another minority while ignoring groups who are taking advantage of the word, and using it for clout and profit. That is exactly why I started this LONG essay with why this whole thing is a bad-faith argument.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: this is the Plurality-equivalent of "queer is a slur." Drama deliberately caused by bad actors who spread rumors of a word being bad, leading it to be picked up by well-intentioned people, and being turned into the pawns of those bad actors without realizing it.

I'm so pissed I had to make this post, but after seeing what Plural Nest did, and then learning that they KNEW some of their sources were by sysmeds who have ACTIVELY professed their hatred of tulpas and decided to use them anyway to a community of over a thousand users just led me to being fed up. It gave this indication that if large plural spaces like that are echoing a statement meant to divide us, things aren't looking good, and I'm not going to sit here and watch a community I've been in for over half a decade get wrongfully demonized.

If Plural Nest staff just said they're changing terminology because they just don't like tulpa or or the fact that it's conflated with horror media, I would've been fine with it. That's a perfectly understandable reason not to like the term. We're not forcing you to use the term! Use whatever term you want! It was the motivation behind it that I take issue with and the precedent it sets. I don't know where this community is heading, but I hope things go all right.

7-22-2023

[craostulpa]

The crew. Like I'm a ship or something. Although I guess it works with Lighthouse System. Lighthouse Crew. It's funny. I'm funny, I swear.

What do you call your system members?

[craostulpa]

Destiny update, one depression spell later. Hers or mine? Yes. Hope everyone is doing well nowadays. Anyway can you believe this bitch is 8? Wild.

[craostulpa]

Do you have any tips for possession?

Imagine your body like a suit that your tulpa can slip into, that’s what helped for us. I would get Destiny to explain her side of things, but unfortunately a lot of the tulpa’s side of things defies the English language as it’s only really abstract concepts, as I understand it. But the most important thing by far is to be patient. For some people possession can feel completely alien, for some it can feel very close to just regularly moving a body part and can be confusing. For some people it can be done very quickly, for others it can take literal years. As with the rest of tulpamancy this is *your* journey to take, and you shouldn’t hold your expectations up to other people’s experiences. Approach your experiments on possession with skepticism, but also don’t dismiss everything immediately because it’s not “alien enough”, as many people have done in the past. It’s easy to forget that when dealing with tulpas believing something that isn’t true is far less harmful than not believing when it very well could be. If you believe and it isn’t true, with the nature of tulpas being based on belief, you will (usually) eventually develop to a point where things *are* true and you *are* doing real possession or whatever skill that you’re working on at the time. I hope that wasn’t worded too confusingly, if you have any further questions then don’t hesitate to ask. For us at the start, possession felt like I was still in control sort of, but my movements were a lot lighter than normal. This was a trick that my brain was playing on me, as Destiny is still very much a part of me and our brain isn’t really wired to understand more than one person inside it. These skills will get better over time.

[craostulpa]

So nice to see you posting again! Have a good day, my dude

Aww thanks! You too!!

[craostulpa]

Just to clarify, I wasn’t suggesting that tulpamancers now consciously see themselves as having a mental illness, more that those who gain a system via means that aren’t a conscious decision tend to have different “rules” to a tulpa system, and this can be easily mixed up and accidentally applied to tulpa systems if you are new to the topic as a whole. Also I didn’t mean to play down anything, I apologise if it came across that way, I simply picked out traumagenic systems as a random example. You also seem to be making a lot of negative assumptions about what I’m saying here, I have very few qualms about those with schizophrenia making tulpas as long as it is not harmful or could become harmful to themselves or their tulpas, although some may. I also have had tulpamancy friends with schizophrenia in the past and they were very good hosts. I simply meant those without the ability to give a tulpa the attention they need, for whatever reason that may be, or those that would create one for the wrong purposes i.e sex, coping with mental illness, etc. And you’re entirely correct, people should care, there are large differences between practices. But unfortunately the sudden influx of all sorts of different characters that may not be normally tolerated in the old tulpa-centric spaces has had the effect of making people somewhat numb to the issue. And finally, unfortunately yes, that’s been my experience too. I have pointed out issue after issue that could be an easy fix on the large Discord servers, and the subreddit, and was repeatedly met with indifference and at some points even hostility. That was another large deciding factor for me “leaving” the community.

2012 was a Different Time in the Tulpamancy Community...

Okay, for the next section of my guide, and, well, the previous sections as well, I’ve been doing as much research as I can to have a broad perspective, and essentially to be as informative as I can. To do this, I’ve regretfully been reading through Tulpa.info, typing in key words relating to what I’m studying and looking for posts that are relevant. And because I like seeing how the community progressed, I start from the oldest results to the most recent. r/Tulpas just… doesn’t have a good search function or many posts that would be helpful. 

What I’ve noticed is that the 2012 community and 2020 community are entirely different entities, and this is coming from someone who definitely was not a Tulpamancer back in 2012. Like, apart from the bigotry and flagrant use of the f and r-slurs, it feels like an entirely different community. I know veteran Tulpamancers from back then have described this, but actually seeing it is another thing entirely.

For example: there was a lot of questions whenever someone did something out there. When switching was becoming a thing in late 2012, people asked a lot of things. Things like, “Can you connect with your subconscious better?” or, “How real does the mindscape feel?” and it just… has such a different vibe from 2020. People did dumb sh!t like, “The Dream Challenge,” to see how long a tulpa can interact with their host in a dream before they become lucid and vice versa… why doesn’t the community nowadays do stuff like this?

Tulpamancers did crazy sh!t like intentionally depriving themselves of sleep to see if that affects imposition at all, or trying this like polyphasic sleeping to lucid dream with their tulpas…  Really, people tried anything and quite frankly, I kinda miss that. New things were being discovered every day, but people nowadays have grown complacent. Of course, I’m not endorsing indirect forms of self-harm like that, oh no, but I miss when people were more daring. 

More guides were being made, people actually converted their experiences and findings into guides. I’m serious, in 2012, Tulpa.info had a total of 68 guides submitted while 2020? Only 3. Like, damn.

So be fair, though, Tulpa.info has thankfully died down since its fall from grace, so that’s one reason, but still, there are a lot less guides being updated and even made in 2020.

I just wanted to express my thoughts on this after reading… so fucking many 2012 posts, just trying to glean what information I can out of them that can still be applied today. Sigh… I still have so many pages to scroll through. Oh boy.

10-6-2020

[craostulpa]

Day 2732: We May Have Survived 2020, Not Quite Intact

Hey guys. Happy Spooktober! Long time, huh? Been a bit of a rough year for everybody. So, after 3 funerals, one dog being put down, one break-up in the system, one job loss, and some health issues (not that, luckily), the year is actually starting to even out and look bright for me. Somewhat. Still looking for a new job. But man, I think that the worst part of this is that I have nothing to actually report on this blog. We’ve done some minor work in the headspace. Hung out a bunch. If anything, I have a bit of a downer to report (shocking, I know, in 2020? Unthinkable). Destiny and I have been having issues staying seperate. We find ourselves merged more often than not, and the advice that we’ve been getting has been helping somewhat but not nearly enough. I don’t believe that we will *fully* merge any time soon, but it’s still a concern. We can still unmerge at will when we notice, the problem is that it’s becoming harder to notice. If anybody has any advice, I’d love to hear it. On the bright side we recently reconnected with some very old friends from the community. Been thinking about reaching out to others but... you know how it goes. Quarantine brain has hit hard, you plan on doing something and then blink and it’s 2 weeks later. Also, casual reminder, I know that I haven’t posted in a long time but my ask box is always open for tulpa-related asks or... anything, really. I’m always happy to help or whatever you’d like. Anyway, thanks guys. Hopefully it won’t be another year until the next update.

[craostulpa]

Another large factor could be that a lot of the old members just left the community shortly after the shitty moderator choices, and didn’t see the switch to mixed communities. I may have stayed in the community as a spectator, but I gave some serious thought to leaving entirely once my ask box for mentorship became newbies arguing with the advice that I gave them because a moderator elsewhere had told them that there were easier (and far stupider and more dangerous) methods. There was also a large increase in newbies making tulpas solely for sexual reasons, and other unpleasantness that I don’t particularly want to describe here.

2012 was a Different Time in the Tulpamancy Community...

Okay, for the next section of my guide, and, well, the previous sections as well, I’ve been doing as much research as I can to have a broad perspective, and essentially to be as informative as I can. To do this, I’ve regretfully been reading through Tulpa.info, typing in key words relating to what I’m studying and looking for posts that are relevant. And because I like seeing how the community progressed, I start from the oldest results to the most recent. r/Tulpas just… doesn’t have a good search function or many posts that would be helpful. 

What I’ve noticed is that the 2012 community and 2020 community are entirely different entities, and this is coming from someone who definitely was not a Tulpamancer back in 2012. Like, apart from the bigotry and flagrant use of the f and r-slurs, it feels like an entirely different community. I know veteran Tulpamancers from back then have described this, but actually seeing it is another thing entirely.

For example: there was a lot of questions whenever someone did something out there. When switching was becoming a thing in late 2012, people asked a lot of things. Things like, “Can you connect with your subconscious better?” or, “How real does the mindscape feel?” and it just… has such a different vibe from 2020. People did dumb sh!t like, “The Dream Challenge,” to see how long a tulpa can interact with their host in a dream before they become lucid and vice versa… why doesn’t the community nowadays do stuff like this?

Tulpamancers did crazy sh!t like intentionally depriving themselves of sleep to see if that affects imposition at all, or trying this like polyphasic sleeping to lucid dream with their tulpas…  Really, people tried anything and quite frankly, I kinda miss that. New things were being discovered every day, but people nowadays have grown complacent. Of course, I’m not endorsing indirect forms of self-harm like that, oh no, but I miss when people were more daring. 

More guides were being made, people actually converted their experiences and findings into guides. I’m serious, in 2012, Tulpa.info had a total of 68 guides submitted while 2020? Only 3. Like, damn.

So be fair, though, Tulpa.info has thankfully died down since its fall from grace, so that’s one reason, but still, there are a lot less guides being updated and even made in 2020.

I just wanted to express my thoughts on this after reading… so fucking many 2012 posts, just trying to glean what information I can out of them that can still be applied today. Sigh… I still have so many pages to scroll through. Oh boy.

10-6-2020

[craostulpa]

A few friends and I were recently reminiscing about the old days and this seperation is painfully clear to anyone who grew up in the old environment. Things were more rough around the edges and not ideal in a few areas, but most people *tried.* In my experience, what happened to change that was a lot of people being appointed as staff who obviously just didn’t care as much about the topic, and so started to leave it to other people, and so tulpamancers started straying to other similar communities. An unfortunate reality, and unpopular opinion for some reason, is that this community *needed* tulpa-only spaces to survive. There are now very very few left. I am by no means calling the dialogue between the tulpa community with other similar communities a *bad* thing, but the fact is that in many cases it means that the tulpa community has been forced into a box with other things that it simply does not fit into. The result of this has been a new generation of tulpamancers that think that a tulpa that they have created plays by the rules of what is, in a lot of other cases, a mental illness. They believe that there is nothing else to discover because it has already been discovered by people not in the tulpa circle. As a result, there has also been less of a drive to keep the tulpamancy process to those who can be trusted. Back in 2012/2013 if somebody new came to the community who was clearly not fit to create a tulpa, then they would be refused help immediately, by most parts of the community, out of morality. A tulpa is, after all, a person and shouldn’t suffer or be subjected to anything incredibly unhealthy, it’s like having a child in a way. This viewpoint started dying as soon as there were a lot of poorly-made moderation positions. The new moderaters were less harsh on the, for lack of a better term, “necessary gatekeeping”, and this viewpoint died altogether once the community started mixing with others. After all, if any random person can develop a traumagenic system under the right circumstances, then why should the tulpa community care if any random person can make a tulpa? Again, I have to stress, this is *not* to say that the tulpa community should be isolationist, I do very much enjoy that the internet can come together and share similar experiences and help each other and make new friends, it’s wonderful. What I am saying is that these mixed communities are now favoured instead of the old scientific methods for tulpamancers, which explains why there is such a massive decline. What I would like to see in the future is a revival of the exploration and experimentation for tulpamancy, and obviously tulpamancers can be the only ones capable of doing this. Unfortunately, I believe that we have already passed the point of no-return, and the community as we knew it is dead and gone. The last person who tried to force a large-scale tulpa research project, to my knowledge, was Jade. We no longer talk about Jade, and from what I’ve heard, the quicker that they are forgotten, the better. tl;dr: The tulpamancy community has changed due to a lot of shitty moderation decisions and circumstances, mostly laziness. This has been exacerbated by the lack of tulpa-only communities in recent days which discourages tulpa-centric thinking and research.

2012 was a Different Time in the Tulpamancy Community...

Okay, for the next section of my guide, and, well, the previous sections as well, I’ve been doing as much research as I can to have a broad perspective, and essentially to be as informative as I can. To do this, I’ve regretfully been reading through Tulpa.info, typing in key words relating to what I’m studying and looking for posts that are relevant. And because I like seeing how the community progressed, I start from the oldest results to the most recent. r/Tulpas just… doesn’t have a good search function or many posts that would be helpful. 

What I’ve noticed is that the 2012 community and 2020 community are entirely different entities, and this is coming from someone who definitely was not a Tulpamancer back in 2012. Like, apart from the bigotry and flagrant use of the f and r-slurs, it feels like an entirely different community. I know veteran Tulpamancers from back then have described this, but actually seeing it is another thing entirely.

For example: there was a lot of questions whenever someone did something out there. When switching was becoming a thing in late 2012, people asked a lot of things. Things like, “Can you connect with your subconscious better?” or, “How real does the mindscape feel?” and it just… has such a different vibe from 2020. People did dumb sh!t like, “The Dream Challenge,” to see how long a tulpa can interact with their host in a dream before they become lucid and vice versa… why doesn’t the community nowadays do stuff like this?

Tulpamancers did crazy sh!t like intentionally depriving themselves of sleep to see if that affects imposition at all, or trying this like polyphasic sleeping to lucid dream with their tulpas…  Really, people tried anything and quite frankly, I kinda miss that. New things were being discovered every day, but people nowadays have grown complacent. Of course, I’m not endorsing indirect forms of self-harm like that, oh no, but I miss when people were more daring. 

More guides were being made, people actually converted their experiences and findings into guides. I’m serious, in 2012, Tulpa.info had a total of 68 guides submitted while 2020? Only 3. Like, damn.

So be fair, though, Tulpa.info has thankfully died down since its fall from grace, so that’s one reason, but still, there are a lot less guides being updated and even made in 2020.

I just wanted to express my thoughts on this after reading… so fucking many 2012 posts, just trying to glean what information I can out of them that can still be applied today. Sigh… I still have so many pages to scroll through. Oh boy.

10-6-2020

[craostulpa]

Still alive, it’s just been *a fucking year*. Will try to post more after this week’s funeral, sorry for the quietness again guys.