#tulpa discourse

[discourse-by-candlelight]

Regardless of your stance on recent discourse, please don't post anti tulpa things in the pro tulpa tag. If it would get you backlash for doing it to an endogenic, it should apply here too, regardless of the current terminology debate, which we wish to remind you all that even if successful will take time to change.

Thank you for your consideration

[antiarasaka]

I think we need to make it clear at this point that there is no "tulpacourse conversation." This is a group of racists crying POC wolf over and over again while ignoring the people they actively harm with their precious term.

[system-of-a-feather]

Man, Buddhist ramble here but like, I actually like read the passed around post of the Tibetan Buddhist talking about Tulpamancy and how its just NOT Buddhist and as a Zen Buddhist, one of my largest issues and frustrations with the concept of "modern tulpamancy" being called tulpamancy and being Buddhist was VERY directly and specifically put in the same words as I would when explaining Buddhist philosophy and I'm just like.... ah so this is in fact Just a Buddhist thing.

"The biggest, most dangerous form of evil in Buddhist thought is "ego" or self-grasping. If ANY mental phenomena increases your self-cherishing attitudes (self importance, grandiosity, jealousness, craving, hatred, self-loathing, self-absorption etc) it's evil. IF a mental phenomena causes greater flexibility, less attachment, more tranquil emotions, less mental chatter/discursive thinking, increased generosity and compassion toward others, higher mental clarity etc.--that's good. When working with the infinite power of your own mind, it's important to think of it like a garden. What plants are you tending to most? Are they medicinal? Are they ornamental? Are they poisonous? Are they weeds?"

as well as

Now, leave it to Victorians to take Tulku concept and turn it into a completely individualistic way of making another Ego inside your Ego--as if having one wasn't enough of a burden.

I would also like to say for those reading this, do not use white, western, and christian interpretations of terms like "evil" and "good" - evil and good in Buddhist philosophy doesn't inherently mean Evil like it does in Christian heavy spaces. It means a thing that brings dukkha or suffering / unhappiness.

A large core of zen is removing the "I" from life.

And no, again, western perspectives, this doesn't me "sacrificial selflessness" necessarily either, it doesn't mean anything more than 'removing the I' and if that confuses you or doesn't make sense, that is because - at least in Zen practice - it is an extremely esoterical concept that sets the frame work for a literal life time of practice to explore and deeply understand. There is no way I could ever imagine to explain what "removing the I from life" means in a textpost that not only does it justice as someone who is relatively young in my practice to explain it to someone who doesn't know the practice at all, in one post. It's not something you can explain, it is just something you either need to engage with to understand or simply just respect. If you have preconceptions of what it is, you are probably incorrect.

So the very act of creating more egos and concepts of "I" with details and divided lives and interests and tastes and aesthetics and relationships is just... so fundamentally not Buddhist. I used to say not Zen Buddhist because that is all I can talk about, but apparently not Just Zen Buddhist.

Its honestly - as an ex-Satanist/Luciferian (depends which part you ask) myself - like trying to make the case that Satanism is a genuine innocent respectable break off branch of Christianity that is not at all meant to be mocking, twisting, or disrespecting Christians. Satanism is taking everything Christians tend to condemn about the human soul and spirit and flipping it on its head to have its own philosophy and ideology. It is inherently a fuck you to Christians (which I support love yall)

"Modern Tulpamancy" is taking what is one of the largest causes of dukkha (probably the closest thing to 'sin' if you HAD to draw comparisons) in Buddhism and just... EMPHASIZING it, making it the center of your lifestyle and/or practice should you choose to use that term, and then trying to say.... its not??? disrespecting??? it??? that it isn't a mockery???

It's just a headache.

[circulars-reasoning]

I’m really happy you’ve been able to call yourself pro-endo now. If you don’t mind answering this, I was wondering: there’s folks out there that argue you can’t be pro-endo if you don’t support Tulpamancy. What are your thoughts on that? I’m on the fence about Tulpamancy.

First, I’m happy I can too. It’s been a long time coming, haha!

Second; that’s a pretty nuanced topic! For the record, I’m anti-Tulpa as a term, but not the concept of focusing to create alters/parts/headmates/what have you. I think the term is not a good one for people to be using unless it directly reflects the original concept that was bastardized from Tibetan Buddhism (which, having looked over that practice briefly, I don’t feel fits the ‘plurality’ label the same way other forms of systems do).

I believe one can be pro-endo without being pro-appropriation. Pro-endo means that you believe in endogenic plurality, and has an added definition in my eyes of supporting the community (however that may look like). For me, it supports the community far more to change the language being used to be more conscious of past flaws in language. For instance, people moved away from ‘healthy multiplicity’ as they realized the potential ableism and negative connotations of the label. I see no reason why, in likely a long couple years, Tulpamancy can’t change as well. There’s plenty of people trying to shift that language now, many of whom are endogenic — it would be ridiculous to suggest that those endogenic systems, who often fight for their right to exist, somehow cannot be pro-endo at all due to that singular belief.

I hope that makes sense!! If you’re on the fence about supporting Tulpamancy, I would suggest researching the Tibetan Buddhist practice (I would suggest the use of search terms like sprul pa, tulku, and nirmankaya, and research into the eightfold path and enlightenment — this is a white person’s post commenting on the practice, and I am NEVER going to do it justice. If I’ve said something incorrect here, please let me know, those who know better than I).

Side-note: I feel it really is not my place to speak to tulpamancy. The times I do are when it relates to myself (such as, if I am "valid" as a pro-endo if I do not support tulpamancy as a term). I may have created alters, but from what I've been told by others, the process of creating Debra was nothing like the process of creating a Tulpa. As such, I can't give advice on how to do it.

[cambriancrew]

It wasn't locked, it was removed, and that was done with consensus of the mods and members of the community who are sick and tired of having to defend a term that was freely shared with the Western world, by Tibetans.

we tried uploading our doc compiling voices of asian/tibetan buddhists regarding tulpamancy language to the r/tulpas subreddit…

and surprise surprise, none other than cambriancrew, who is apparently a mod for that sub, locked our post almost immediately and assured us that tulpa terminology is not racist and that anyone who claims otherwise is just trying to destroy the tulpa community.

it’s disheartening, to say the least. even though our post was kind and respectful, without breaking a single rule of the sub, cambrian locked it almost immediately (literally like 3 minutes after we posted it).

so what are we to do when it comes to educating others and discussing racism within the tulpa community outside tumblr? it’s so sad to see that moderators are willing to lock and shut down any attempts people make at bringing these serious issues to light on reddit.

here is the doc in question, by the way…

[circular-bircular]

Had a really interesting conversation in a server today that I wanted to share. It was about the concept of the original -- this idea of the OG person, the "singlet" who existed. Given that this is a server dedicated to tulpamancy*, makes sense -- they start with a base and create from that base.

However, I firmly believe this is not how it works in DID. The parts in systems are not coming from one original part -- it's that all of the parts, together, form the person (regardless of if you are all people or not).

We do not have an "original." Or, as we knew it when we first came to system spaces, a "core." We don't have this... ideal of a Singlet Person who we fractured off of. That doesn't exist. Our "original" is Rice, Sierra, and Wade -- the first three parts we became aware of, and the three who worked alone for the better part of a year when we first became aware of each other in High School. (And before that, cause like, we have evidence dating back to 5th grade of Wade and Sierra existing. Yikes.)

There was a time we viewed Rice as the core, as the Ideal that we were supposed to be. We viewed recovery from DID as being Her, that we would fuse into her and she would get our traits that she was "missing." It actually really influenced our system structure heavily back in college, and that lasted until we were finally out of our abusive situation and finally got to work on stabilization.

I think we really put it well in that discussion on discord. "Rice wasn't the ideal of who we should've been; all of us together is who we should've been. Now, we have all of us together, and whether that means functional or fused doesn't matter -- just so long as we're together."

[sophieinwonderland]

there are terms besides tulpa that describe the same thing. why not use one of those such as thoughtform?

Thoughtform doesn't describe the same thing. At least in a modern context.

Thoughtform is closely associated with spiritual and pagan practices. That are some tulpamancers who view tulpa creation as metaphyical, they're a small minority in the tulpamancy community. While looking up how to make a tulpa will give you guides using psychological methods, looking for information about thoughtforms gives you information like this:

To be fair, some of the methods are actually similar to tulpamancy if you can ignore it calling a thoughtform a spirit and making it to repair wards, but then there are other oddities here like... making it able to die of old age???

The people presenting thoughtform as a valid alternative are mostly ones who are neither involved with the tulpa community, NOR the communities who create thoughtforms.

While I believe different communities can learn from each other, (like exploring how that "vessel binding" thing can be adapted to psychological practices,) I think mashing a pre-existing mostly-psychological community with a pre-existing mostly-spiritual community is just going to be harmful to both.

This also means if academic research into the practice continued, it would shift to becoming slanted further towards spiritual practices. This is a problem for the psychological endogenic community overall since one of the (bad) arguments against exceptions in the DSM and ICD is that those only apply to spiritual practices. (Which is a lie.) Studies into tulpamancy, a mostly psychological practice, can put the final nail in the coffin of that wrong interpretation. And may, in fact, result in the DSM-6 and ICD-12 using overtly psychological examples in addition to mediumship and spiritual practices.

Besides that, it's also not even realistic for the term to change. Because of the way Reddit works, r/tulpas literally couldn't possibly change its name. Tulpa.info might be able to, but I believe doing so would instantly break every link to tulpamancy guides there since it would need a new domain. And the tulpamancy discord servers... just won't. They're too isolated and cut off from the wider communities and conversations.

There is no universe where the change outsiders are expecting to happen would be plausible with the infrastructure these communities are built on.

You can scream at a mountain to move if you want, and you might even cause an avalanche and think for a moment that it's possible. But try as you might, that mountain isn't actually going to budge. 🤷‍♀️

Some seem to believe that convincing tulpamancers on Tumblr will be effective. But what they don't understand is that we're mostly just snow here. Less connected to the whole mountain. Even the few who buy into their rhetoric aren't going to make a difference overall.

[philocetera]

The tulpa discourse is truly just flashbacks to my childhood of being rejected and being forced to hide my beliefs and culture, only for the same Westerners to turn around and steal it - bastardise it - for their own "aesthetics" etc.

[antiarasaka]

How to fix "tulpa" discourse:

[secretsideblogshhhh]

I love accounts that are like "plural culture is" or "cluste b culture is" "npd culture is" etc etc, but I can so rarely find accounts like that that aren't pro-endo, pro-tulpa, things like these.

If anyone has any blogs that have similar premises or anything like that it would be awesome if you could recommend them to us.

[black-reaper-arc]

⚠️OOC | Introduction Post⚠️

This account is a new account for @the-black-reaperarc

We wanted a new start on a fresh account and that'd require deleting most things on it and that's a hassle, so welcome to @black-reaper-arc!

Collective Account: @the-kenference

Pinned Post, Updated When Necessary!

Read under the cut; all information is under the cut because this is long and sey don't want to clog tags!

{Updated: Mar 16th, 2025.}

{Updated by [🔐⛓️⚔️] -📿♦️ not The Kenference}

Simply Plural: Plural_Creature (added by -📿♦️)

About CC -

CC is used to refer to Content Creator/Blog Ppl.

CC often talks in 3rd person!

CC refers to self as Speaker, Creature, CC, Jasper, People/Person, Creator, or Writer. (sometimes others, see above)

We use neopronouns beyond just 3rd person. (lower)

Re are Genderfluid/Xenogender and Queer, pronouns change almost constantly; look at tags

Is German and Russian. (Please correct if; spelling things wrong or inaccurately reps. something.)

Si is alterhuman.

Snip speaks English, German, Russian (learning), and non-human languages. (Niltothese/Kathilka and more.)

Trill goes by the names Ripper and Reaper

Ripper is okay with asks about it's therianthropy, otherkin/otherkith, headcanons, kemonomimi, fursona, original species and characters, etc!

Re use contradictory labels and are a physical alterhuman. Si literally do not care. Do not try to start discourse with us, it will be treated with entire seriousness if not tone-indicated. /srs

We do not give a fuck about picking sides in "are Tulpas/Endos valid", "is self diagnosis valid", "are contradictory labels valid", "are physical alterhumans valid" and stupid shit like that! They literally are not harming anybody/-ies so shut the fuck up, not your brain or body not your choice >:(

We are not diagnosed with any form of Complex (?) Dissociative Disorder/CDD/Plurality, but that's not to say we're not plural. We use plural pronouns because it feels right, not because si want to "take away from cdd/did/osdd people" but because it again feels right. Awaiting Diagnostics.

Pronouns! -

feel free to ask (in asks) for full sets!

3rd Person; he/him, she/her, they/them.

Plural/-selves, aux they/them/theirselves + he/him/his/himself.

It/Its, Growl/Growls, Purr/Purrs, Trill/Trilling, Bark/Barks, Hiss/Hissing, Meow/Mrow, Mew/Mews, Snip/Snap, Roar/Roars, Fae/Faer, any animal/monster neopronouns

2nd Person; you/your.

Plural/-selves, aux prns /ques. you/your?

Thou/Thee, Thy/Thou,

1st Person; I/me.

Plural/-selves, no aux prns.

We/Our, Si/Sey, Re/Rem,

#Hashtags!!

#~felid chirps~ -> small and domestic cat related things (small cats = serval, domestic, cheetah, etc.)

#~felid chuffs~ -> large/big cat related things (big cats = jaguar, tiger, snow leopard, etc.)

#~canid barks~ -> all canine/canidae related things (fox, wolf, maned wolf, coyote, etc.)

#~dragon growls~ -> all dragon related things (wyvern, eastern, lung/long/noodle, leviathan, etc.)

#~dinosaur trills~ -> all dinosaur related things (Indoraptor, oc, extinct, etc.)

#~ripper makes noise~ -> ambiguous, undetermined, etc.

#~reaper reblogs~ or #~ripper reblogs~ -> any/all reblogs

#~ghoul rambles~ -> headcanon from our own brain, rambles, any ghoul related stuff

If something doesn't have a tag and fits a description of one listed here, feel free to let us know! /pos /nf

If something is hashtaged as "~{insert word/name here} answers!~" it's is from a person in The Kenference (Tokyo Ghoul; re)! /pos /lh

Feel free to ask abt them! They have different tags to address them in asks the [-{word}] is it!

Kaneki & Haise, aux they/he and any neoprns. Digitigrade stance, half-ghoul/half-kakuja, rinkaku with an ukaku subtype. [-Kaneki, however you can specify who, i.e 240, Haise, Reaper/Yamii, King, Ryuu, etc]

><

Ask Box Stuff!

Okay Stuff;

Tone tags are needed! [Tone Indicators!]

Questions about rem! (As long as it's not too personal, i.e; address, legal name, etc.)

Headcanons [your's or ours]

Alterhuman questions [us or you]

Letting rem know if something is offensive!

Not Okay Stuff;

Hate ("-blah blah- isn't valid!", "you're not valid!", "alterhumans aren't real", etc. etc.)

Invasive questions (address, legal name, etc.)

Just generally don't be a dick [Unless; Dick Grayson; headmate/alt, alt.hu, fictionkin, etc. /lh]

⚠️Basic DNI criteria⚠️

[Please note; we are not going to post asks about donations, unless we know you, we are sorry! We were peer-reviewed for autism/asd, lexicon/language processing disorder/lpd, sensory processing disorder/spd and more but are dx for adhd, apd/auditory processing disorder, c-ptsd & multiple sclerosis]

We block and unfollow freely.

Don't judge us, won't judge you.

Anything untagged with necessary tw/cw!

Gore/Corpse/Death, unless tw/cw correctly

Anti-mspec lesbians/gays (multi-attraction)

Anti-mascspec lesbians/anti-femspec gays (she/her gays, he/him lesbians, inter/inter, etc.)

Anti-mogai, Anti-microlabel

Anti-Abortion/Forced-Birther/"Pro-Life"

Zoophilia, Pedophilia, etc.

[hazys-discourse]

Hi! Hazy or Juniper here! Whichever works. We use they/it and we are a system of 50+

We’ve decided to make a side blog for any syscourse/discourse we post/rb about

We are strictly anti non traumagenic systems, our view will never change.

DNI: radfem, anti-para/pro-contact, zionists, homophobes/transphobes/aphobes etc, non-traumagenic systems (including supporters)

[the-save-star-anomaly]

No, I'm not gonna change my name, names are literally an important part of how we work and we can't just "choose" them. It's where our energy is stored and it is vital to recognize ourselves and each other. No, I won't change my name, I can't change my name.

Nobody here "chose" their name because it is "fancy" or "aesthetic" or some other reason. Each of our names has a symbolism to it, and it is deeply linked to who we are, it is integral for us to communicate internally and recognize ourselves. Nobody chose their name. The names choose us. It's literally part of how we work and why we can't "just name" the nameless people in our system. That's not how it works for us. Names are important and significant.

You don't even know who I am and you don't know my past, don't try to police me

A Kokichi fictive

[oopsallsyscourse]

See the thing is the endogenic term discourse could have been so good.

Like it could have been a way of understanding how the term endogenic was used in scientific literature and a warning not to fall in the trap of promoting ableist articles because they "promote endogenic systems."

It could have been a warning about being cautious and doing proper research before coining new terms, especially when you're mashing greek roots together into words you assume have never been used before. It could have been a reminder to make sure in trying to lesson harm, you aren't creating new harm.

It could have been a learning opportunity.

But instead, it's the most bad faith discourse. From this never happened to you're just pretending to be hurt to hurt us. It's honestly disgusting.

[discourse-by-candlelight]

We've chosen to stay out of the current tulpa discourse since we don't need extra stress and won't change our language until the current tulpamancy community changes as a majority anyways so wouldn't make for good discourse partners. There is one thing we'd like to contribute as some food for thought though.

While the discussions are good and we see the reason and potential for a new term, tumblr is not the place you have to convince. The tulpamancy community here is tiny, but the wider tulpamancy community is massive, perhaps even larger than the entire endogenic community by a longshot if what we've observed on various forms of social media is accurate. To give one example the r/tulpas subreddit has 45.5k members, the plural subreddit only has 11k. Another example is that if you type plural into disboard, a tulpa only discord server is in the top three.

This wider tulpamancy community has it's own complete set of terminology seperate from other plurals, limited interaction with the endo or CDD communities, and mixed opinions on them. While places like the subreddit are more mixed with other plural types and highly accepting of them, multiple discord servers actually reject both disordered and endogenic systems entirely. There are many places in the tulpamancy community that look down on other types of plurals, and definitely don't care about the concept of cultural appropriation. The other major servers that do accept non tulpa plurals still are highly disconnected to them, and barely understand endogenic terminology let alone CDDs. We remember very well how all but about two people were completely confused when we mentioned endogenic language in the tulpa.info server, which has over two thousand members.

Places like those above, even the highly accepting ones, will never swap to parogenic let alone a misleading term like willogenic. Not even thoughtform has a real chance of sticking. They will either find it confusing as part of an internet subculture they are only loosely affiliated with, or hold it in outright contempt and even laugh at those who try to use it.

We think these discussions are important to have, but people like Sophie and the few tulpamancers on Tumblr are not who you have to convince if you want real change. Quite frankly the tulpamancy community is expanding far faster than anyone here probably grasps, and the system community's voice in it is weak at best. If you want to change things bringing these concerns to those places is most important, and finding a term that works for their subculture will be needed, as endo terminology won't cut it. You all need to convince tulpamancers, not the tumblr plural community. The tulpa community can and will continue to grow outside of here and the endogenic community all together, bringing back the term to each place it expands to.

We genuinely hope that maybe a new term that actually fits can be developed and adopted, but we highly doubt it, and none of the discourse happening here is going to do that.

[empressminty]

Plural Nest is encouraging a terminology shift and we are abandoning "tulpa" terminology as a mod team, but we are not going to hunt down and ban users purely for considering themselves a tulpa system.

To clarify further, our position is that "created system", "parogenic system" and "willogenic system" are all terms that are all effectively synonyms for "tulpa system".

Our goal is a gradual, voluntary phasing-out of tulpa terminology in the community (both the plural community at large and current parogenic-centered communities).

If our position on this issue is objectionable to you, there are other servers available besides ours.

https://www.tumblr.com/sophieinwonderland/723745440474005504/hey-sophie-plural-nest-recently-released-an?source=share

Yknow they didn't ban the word right? They changed a single channels name from "tulpa and paragenic systems" to "paragenic systems", changed a role similiarly, and then gave some links about the origin and to poc (specifically buddhists) speaking on the topic. They in no way banned usage of the word, and they definitely have no plan on banning tulpa systems. This is not pn saying "no members may use the word tulpa" its pn staff saying "i am personally uncomfortable with this word due to origin and not having it plastered on the walls of my server". They changed nothing for members, just made edits to their server. The staff is being bombarded with hate due to fearmongering like this.

Yes. I'm aware. I acknowledged this...

From what I've seen from Eeveecraft's essay, it looks like only the language used by the mods themselves is changing and they aren't going to be banning tulpa systems... yet.

I wasn't sure where the change happened in the server, exactly. But I knew it wasn't a ban on the terminology or those who use it.

I also maintain that tulpa systems should be prepared and have alternatives lined up because these things tend to escalate. Many systems have been in discord servers that have suddenly switched to banning large groups of plurals suddenly.

And I realize this isn't happening right now. And I've since see mods say there are no plans to do this.

But I'm saying to have backups ready because you don't know how this will escalate in the coming months.

Opinions can change quickly. The road from "we're uncomfortable with tulpamancy language and aren't endorsing it on this server anymore" to "we're uncomfortable with tulpamancy language and aren't allowing it on this server anymore" isn't a very long one. But when you reach that last point, it's already too late to prepare.

To be clear, I don't want anybody sending hate to the staff.

But I also don't want anyone caught unaware if the staff later decides to ban tulpa language entirely and not have any backup when it goes down.

And who knows? Maybe it doesn't go that way... I would just rather tulpa systems be prepared.