Plural positivity

“Tulpamancy: Myths and Facts” is a presentation given at the 2019 Plural Positivity World Conference. Tulpamancy is a form of (purported) magic popular within a peculiar subculture dominated by teenagers and very young adults, a subculture known as tulpamancers. Very little outside information on this phenomenon seems to exist. In this context, a “tulpa” is defined as a “deliberately created system-mate”. I guess a more advanced occultist would call it a thought-form. Skeptics would argue that the “tulpa” is really an imaginary friend many of us had as children (I didn´t), but in this case, the imaginary friend is imagined to be very real indeed! The presentation argues that tulpamancy isn´t a form of mental illness, but many would indeed see it that way, perhaps as schizophrenia. (Just wait until you learn what “plural positivity” means!)

The term tulpa was apparently popularized in the West by Alexandra David-Néel, a Belgian-French explorer who made several visits to Tibet and in 1929 published a book titled “Magic and Mystery in Tibet”. However, the lecturer admits that few people in the tulpamancy milieu ever read the book (he hasn´t read it himself) and there is very little influence on the subculture from Tibetan Buddhism, except the word “tulpa” itself (and even that is spelled differently in David-Néel´s book). The real beginning of the tulpamancy community, at least in the United States, was in 2011 at the 4Chan message board, more specifically the Creepypasta community. Some people start claiming that tulpas are real and the phenomenon starts growing. In 2012, the 4Chan moderators banned tulpamancy as a topic from the Creepypasta forums, at which the new subculture simply migrated to the Brony community. Yes, at this point there was a considerable overlap between tulpamancers and Bronies, the latter being fans of the animated series “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic”. The lecturer says that he at one point hosted a forum where at least 20 people claimed to be tulpas of Twilight Sparkle, a character from “My Little Pony”! In 2013, the community became more open and diverse, which includes openness to other forms of “plurality”. (Tulpamancy isn´t the only slightly schizophrenic youth subculture in American cyberspace.) Many in the US tulpamancy community consider themselves to be transgendered, and there is an overlap with plurality. Interestingly, Japan and Eastern Europe (including Russia) have even larger tulpamancy communities than the United States. The exact character of these communities is unknown to the lecturer.

I admit that I´m extremely skeptical to this movement. Even if we assume that tulpas can be “created” one way or another, the tulpamancers still look unserious. The lecturer points out that when tulpamancy was a new thing, it took months or even years to “create” a tulpa. Remember, a tulpa is an imaginary friend that nevertheless looks and acts as if “real”, perhaps like a character from a lucid or hypnagogic dream. Nowadays, people create tulpas in a matter of weeks or even days. Nor does it involve any complex rituals or meditation techniques. Just “talk to someone in your head until they talk back”. Compare this to Therian Otherkin, teenagers who claim to be animals (sic) without bothering to act like their chosen animal. I get the impression that American teenagers have simplified, perhaps even profaned, ancient magical and shamanistic techniques and turned them into commodified subcultures.

What´s the point of creating tulpas? The lecturer admits that most “hosts” create tulpas of the opposite gender from themselves. Girls create boy tulpas, and boys create girl tulpas (of course, this is inapplicable in the case of transgendered individuals). About 50% of the “hosts” have a “relationship” with their tulpa, presumably of a romantic or erotic nature. A survey of how many of these teenagers and young adults are autistic and/or incels might be interesting, perhaps. Originally, the host (the creator of the tulpa) was in charge of his creation, today tulpas are seen as equal with their hosts, while hosts increasingly have their own fantasy identity when they interact with the tulpa. This also sounds as if the entire exercise is literally “all in the mind”, rather than a magically created thought-form “out here” (if you believe such things are possible). Most tulpamancers only create one tulpa, but “systems” of two or more do exist. The lecturer once met a “system” of 60 tulpas (or perhaps 59 tulpas and one host).

Tulpamancers frequently use a weird terminology all their own, which gives the milieu a slightly cultic feel. “Switching”, “possession”, “wonderlands”, “fronting” and “imposition” are examples. The lecturer admits that the meaning of many of these words is actually unclear. The main point here seems to be that the tulpa can temporarily posses the body of the host, and that the soul of the host sometimes leaves its body. A “wonderland” is a fantasy world inhabited by the tulpa when it doesn´t appear in our world, and the soul of the host can travel there, too. While this does sound like an out-of-body experience or astral travel, I suspect that this too is simply a vivid fantasy picture in the mind of the tulpamancer.

Overall, a relatively good presentation and introduction to this weird little corner of suburbia…