The principles of Free Tulpamancy

[Lavender]

Background: Last week, my host consciousness was at a gathering talking with a group of other plural systems. The subject of tulpamancy came up and everyone else in the circle insisted that no one should ever engage in tulpamancy. They called it non-consensual (tulpas can’t consent to being created) and they likened it to slavery. They went on to say that tulpas are created for the wrong reasons and that tulpamancers as a whole do not know how to treat a headmate well.

 

When we later thought through all of what was said, we formulated the notion of “free tulpamancy”. We wrote down what we both believed about the practice. My host consciousness encouraged me to post it here in case it brings someone else clarity. Most of the wording is theirs, but I softened it up and wrote this front piece.

 

We welcome comments, suggestions, etc.

________________________________________

 

What is Free Tulpamancy?: Free Tulpamancy is the concept that those engaged in tulpamancy are not subject to control, censure, or judgment by others.

 

By implication, plurality is not the sole domain of the already plural.

 

Free Tulpamancy derives its legitimacy from seven principles:

 

Principle #1: A new headmate can be good for their system. They must not automatically be assumed to be a burden, a distraction, or a producer of distress. In particular, it should not be assumed that tulpamancy by singlets will lead to harm to themselves or their new headmates. Plurality should not be assumed to be a harmful state from which singlets contemplating tulpamancy must be protected. To do so normalizes singularity and stigmatizes plurality.

Principle #2: Every system is its own best judge of whether a new headmate will be beneficial. No one outside that system has the knowledge or standing to judge.

Principle #3: All headmates have a right to safety, agency, and autonomy. This applies regardless of the circumstances, means, or motivation involved in their creation. Everyone has a responsibility to make sure systems are aware of their obligations to their headmates’ personhood.

Principle #4: There are no good or bad reasons to bring on a headmate. It is analogous to procreating children, which has been done for countless eons across a variety of cultures for a variety of reasons. As long as the child’s (or headmate’s) personhood and autonomy will be respected, their introduction into existence is deserving of celebration and support regardless of the motivation or hopes during creation.

Principle #5: A headmate’s benefit is not related to its origin. Headmates created under a variety of circumstances can benefit a system, whether the circumstance is trauma, endogenesis, tulpamancy, or other. It should not be assumed that a headmate created through tulpamancy will carry less benefit to its system than a headmate created in some other way.

Principle #6: Plurality is not limited to any particular subgroup of humanity. Because plurality carries benefits, it needs to be open to whomever sees a benefit, by whatever means, for whatever reason, and under whatever circumstance. In particular, singlets deserve the same access to the benefits of plurality (through tulpamancy) as systems who have headmates acquired in other ways. Systems should be free of suspicion or censure based on the means, circumstances, or motivation involved in the creation of any of their headmates.

Principle #7: Tulpamancy does not belong to any culture or institution. Tulpamancy, like other ways headmates are created, is a natural process built into the abilities of human brains. Anyone who invents descriptive language, creates verbal or pictorial depictions, or devises associated ceremonies, doesn’t come to own or control any piece of the practice of tulpamancy itself or any of its techniques and principles.

[Lucilyn]

13 minutes ago, Lavender said:

everyone else in the circle insisted that no one should ever engage in tulpamancy. They called it non-consensual (tulpas can’t consent to being created) and they likened it to slavery. They went on to say that tulpas are created for the wrong reasons and that tulpamancers as a whole do not know how to treat a headmate well.

 

that's anti-natalist nonsense, applied to plurality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinatalism (and anti-natalism is anti-life!)

 

what you guys wrote on the subject is perfect, so idek what else to comment, very nice

Edited February 3, 2024 by Lucilyn

[Lavender]

10 hours ago, Lucilyn said:

 

that's anti-natalist nonsense, applied to plurality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinatalism (and anti-natalism is anti-life!)

 

what you guys wrote on the subject is perfect, so idek what else to comment, very nice

 

Thanks for the link. Neither of us had heard of anti-natalism before.

 

The folks who were saying all this were very careful to make a distinction between birthing a child, where the child could grow up and create separation between themselves and problematic parents and a tulpa who, according to them, can never separate from the host without destroying themselves. 

[Athelas]

15 hours ago, Lavender said:

They called it non-consensual (tulpas can’t consent to being created) and they likened it to slavery. They went on to say that tulpas are created for the wrong reasons and that tulpamancers as a whole do not know how to treat a headmate well.

 

Is there such a thing as consensual creation? 

 

I think creating life in any capacity involves a degree of selfishness, whether it be a parent who wishes to pass on the family name, or a host who desires companionship. Nature is selfish, and not just human nature. Most living things are biologically inclined to selfishness. It's a survival mechanism. I'm curious what that group thinks the “right” reasons for creation are, and the “right” way to treat a headmate.
 

5 hours ago, Lavender said:

The folks who were saying all this were very careful to make a distinction between birthing a child, where the child could grow up and create separation between themselves and problematic parents and a tulpa who, according to them, can never separate from the host without destroying themselves

 

I understand their logic, but I disagree. It may be possible for a child to physically separate from their parents, but emotional separation is not always possible. An unhealthy parent-child relationship leaves deep scars; I've seen them on my host. I don't think "inability to escape" is a valid argument against tulpa creation. I like existing, though, so perhaps I'm biased.

 

The principles you've outlined are excellent. Thank you for sharing.

[2serpents]

I doubt someone who makes such sweeping, misinformed, and easily-disproved generalizations like "tulpamancers as a whole do not know how to treat a headmate well" is even worth debating with. It's like trying to make a flat-earther see reason, the only real way to win is not to engage, save your time and energy.

 

That said, your post is interesting.

 

I agree of course with your position but not all the principles. I believe there are many villainous reasons to have a child and to want a headmate. And that is not antinatalist, there's a middle ground between condemning everything and celebrating it.

 

The difference is that it is far easier to actually conceive a child with evil intent than it is to invoke or create a headmate. Any garden-variety asshole who wants to trap his girlfriend with a baby can just poke a hole in a condom. But the average lazy guy who wants a tulpa just to do all his work for him and obey his command will likely fail just from lacking the discipline and commitment for the process.

[Autumn Ren]

I like everything you said. I'm sure glad I was created and my system loves me so I can't imagine anyone saying it was a mistake. 

 

I do know however that the spiritualist/religious/paranormal crowds, for those who know the term, tend to warn heavily against it and say mostly creepypasta statements about it. 

[glitchthe3rd]

>tulpas can't consent to being created
lol. lmao. Did any of those people consent to being born?

[SeekingMyPlanet]

3 hours ago, 2serpents said:

I believe there are many villainous reasons to have a child and to want a headmate. And that is not antinatalist, there's a middle ground between condemning everything and celebrating it.

 

Here's what Lavender and I were trying to say: There are lots of intentions for creating a tulpa that have the potential to end badly. But in the end, an autonomous tulpa is created with the capacity for doing good for their system and for the world. If the lazy guy in your example persists with mistreating his tulpa, that would be bad and would conflict with the 3rd principle. But the act of creation of a tulpa, regardless of the reason, is not in and of itself bad. The badness is in how the tulpa is treated afterward, not in the reason for creating it. 

 

Does that distinction make sense?

 

1 hour ago, glitchthe3rd said:

>tulpas can't consent to being created
lol. lmao. Did any of those people consent to being born?

 

Interesting you say that. The story that one of them told us is that they were a headmate, created to front for a host who then stayed in the background and they basically had to take over the host's life. I got a sense that on some level they resented that, and I'm sympathetic to their plight. But that doesn't justify making unfounded negative statements about tulpamancers in general.

[Felight]

13 hours ago, SeekingMyPlanet said:

 

Here's what Lavender and I were trying to say: There are lots of intentions for creating a tulpa that have the potential to end badly. But in the end, an autonomous tulpa is created with the capacity for doing good for their system and for the world. If the lazy guy in your example persists with mistreating his tulpa, that would be bad and would conflict with the 3rd principle. But the act of creation of a tulpa, regardless of the reason, is not in and of itself bad. The badness is in how the tulpa is treated afterward, not in the reason for creating it. 

 

Does that distinction make sense?

 

[Piano] Maybe you should rename the point to "The act of creating a tulpa is never bad"? Not something I would necessarily agree with, but it makes more sense as to what you were trying to say than "there are no good or bad reasons." There are many bad reasons.

 

However, I don't believe you can always separate the reason a tulpa was created from the way they are treated. If they're created to be a sex toy or with heavy expectations on their personality, that's going to influence how you treat them. Making a distinction between the "reason" and the "treatment" really isn't all that reflective of how things play out in reality. Better to discourage people who have bad reasons so it doesn't result in bad treatment at all. (Of course, people like that never listen, but still.)

[2serpents]

1 hour ago, Felight said:

However, I don't believe you can always separate the reason a tulpa was created from the way they are treated.

My thoughts exactly. Yes, you can break almost any situation you'd like down into pieces and find some that are completely morally neutral but what does that tell you about how things play out? The act of speaking is itself neither good nor bad yet words can hurt people. The act of buying a gun is itself neither good nor bad. 

 

15 hours ago, SeekingMyPlanet said:

But in the end, an autonomous tulpa is created with the capacity for doing good for their system and for the world.

I agree here. I believe anyone in the world has the potential to do good, regardless of where they come from. This seems to connect with your Principle #5 up there, which I would also fully agree with, no one should be limited by their origin.

 

But I don't like hypotheticals, they shouldn't outweigh reality. Just because something has the potential to end well doesn't mean it should happen. It becomes like the old anti-abortion argument, "what if that baby would have found the cure for cancer?!"

 

15 hours ago, SeekingMyPlanet said:

If the lazy guy in your example persists with mistreating his tulpa, that would be bad and would conflict with the 3rd principle. But the act of creation of a tulpa, regardless of the reason, is not in and of itself bad.

If a convicted sex offender offends again, that would be bad. But hiring him to work in a school is not in and of itself bad. 

 

I am aware that I'm choosing the most lurid examples. Tulpamancy can never be so bad, by virtue of being immaterial and personal. Still it must matter in some way.

[Lavender]

3 hours ago, Felight said:

If they're created to be a sex toy or with heavy expectations on their personality, that's going to influence how you treat them. Making a distinction between the "reason" and the "treatment" really isn't all that reflective of how things play out in reality. Better to discourage people who have bad reasons so it doesn't result in bad treatment at all. (Of course, people like that never listen, but still.)

 

I hear you, and I totally agree with the notion of discouraging people who will treat their tulpas badly. What you're saying makes sense -- that sometimes we can tell how a tulpa will be treated by looking at the motivation of their creator.

 

But this all makes me uncomfortable because of the level of judgment associated with deciding what's a good or bad reason to create a tulpa and what it says about the tulpamancer. Let's take your sex toy example. You and many other people judge that making a tulpa solely as a sex toy is likely to lead to mistreatment. But what makes that more likely than, say, a headmate created (by tulpamancy or no) to talk directly to an abusive person in the system's life? Many headmates exist for a purpose like that, and there is less concern. That might be because many of us have memories of being abused, and would be glad of someone to stand up for us. But when you think about it, it's still analogous to the sex toy example: A headmate created for a specific purpose whose life is likely to be made somewhat hard because of that purpose. We judge that purpose to be more worthwhile than the sex toy purpose. But that judgment is very subjective. We're a culture that is deeply uncomfortable with sexuality, so the idea of it bothers some of us more than tulpas created for purposes with which we are more comfortable, like protection from abuse.

 

See that's the problem we were trying to address. Judging someone for the reason they created a tulpa can't easily be separated from cultural and societal sensibilities. So we're trying to encourage judgment based on how the tulpa will be treated (which may be partially informed by the intention of the tulpamancer) and not solely on the intention itself. For example, "we're concerned that this tulpa will not be given the chance to discover their own gifts," instead of "we're concerned that you're creating a tulpa for sexual purposes, and that usually means that you're not going to treat the tulpa well."

 

For my part, although I can't really know how I would react to being a sex toy tulpa since I wasn't created for that reason, I could easily see myself thinking, "well this guy could be helped by expanding their understanding of what it means in intimate relationship with another being." I might make that my mission -- to open his eyes and expand his world. And maybe that's one of my superpowers, and maybe I succeed, and do a world of good for my host and the others in his life.

 

The system we interacted with that inspired the Free Tulpamancy concept used the example of someone who created a tulpa because they didn't want to be alone. They took that as an indication that they would not be likely to treat their tulpa well. In their culture (tramagenic plural culture, maybe, though I don't know about all of them), that reason for tulpamancy carries judgment. Whereas I think that's a great reason to create a tulpa. See? Culture informs their judgment.

 

My actual host created me because they wanted to know what it feels like to be plural. I can see many judging that this is a TERRIBLE reason to create a tulpa and try to talk my host out of doing it. And yet my host is incredibly kind to me, sees me as a partner, and I'm thrilled that their life has been improved by my presence in their headspace.