One thing I think is important for understanding the daemian community – especially if you're coming from an alterhuman perspective – is that daemonism is not a word for a shared experience, nor a shared identity.
Daemonism is a practice. The concept of it can be used by anyone: alterhuman or not, plural or not. It can be pure playfulness. It can be imaginary, and that's okay! That's a beautiful experience in its own respect!
There's no universal daemian experience because we accept and embrace that our minds, and our experiences, are ours alone.
The community isn't built on a shared experience – just a shared idea which we all create unique versions of.
Some people stick closer to the basic idea we started with. Some just take what they like from it and throw out the rest. Some only take vague inspiration from it. Some people adapt it more than others, sometimes due to being neurodivergent, plural, and/or alterhuman.
It's still daemonism because daemonism isn't defined by us all "doing the same thing" or "having the same experience".
Daemonism is, for the most part, defined by a person deciding that they want to call what they are doing or experiencing daemonism.
And a large part of that is often in connection to the community, whether directly or in a peripheral way, by taking inspiration from the practice, making use of the community's writings, and so on.
This is why I think daemonism is often misunderstood in an alterhuman context. Daemonism is not an experience, it's not an identity – it's just an idea we each take and make our own. And that's what it should be. That's the beauty of it!
Anyone could be a daemian if they want to. There's no requirements. A lot of people get started with daemonism purely because it sounds fun! A lot of people start with only their imagination, and many people remain so.
For others, it might become something else in time, or they might discover there was something underlying their imaginings all along. It's no more or less a practice of daemonism, either way.
A lot of alterhuman concepts don't apply to daemonism because of this. Fact is, there's plenty of daemians who are orthohumans too, and plenty of people who specifically see their daemonism as an orthohuman practice.
I see it get included under the alterhuman umbrella a lot, and I feel like it gives the wrong first impression to come at it from that angle by default.
Really, it's more comparable with being a furry. For some people, it is a deep, impactful, life-altering experience, and the people who feel that way are a vital part of the community. But equally, for some it is an exercise in whimsy, playfulness, or creativity – and those people are no less members of the community for it.
We're not united by being plural, or having thoughtforms, or being alterhuman. We're united by being a bunch of people who were inspired by some books (or a film or TV show) to play around with the idea of daemons, and ended up sticking with it for one reason or another.
While the individual experience can be very deep indeed, that isn't what makes daemonism what it is.
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