Heya! I thought I’d replied to this as a daemian who very much considers herself part of a median system and talk a bit about what that looks like and what my experiences are of that idea within the community.
The thing about daemonism is it’s a really broad range of experiences. I would say that I, personally, have seen a far greater range of what it can mean to have a daemon and what that can look like in the context of plurality than, say, I’ve seen in the tulpa community (nothing wrong with that; just as a comparison point). It’s also an idea that has two major facets; the finding of an animal form or forms that are in some way representative of your personality, and the communication with your daemon themselves.
It’s the latter aspect (lol) that is most relevant to plurality and medianhood. And importantly to note, for some daemians, the former is really the only part of daemonism they participate in; it’s all about form finding, maybe plus a name for their daemon - which is great and valid but worth noting as it’s a way of doing daemonism that really doesn’t, in unto itself, stray into plurality and instead is solely a form of self discovery, personal representation and personality typing.
The vast majority of daemians I know, however, in some way or another participate in actively talking to their daemon.
Now, there are obviously limits to the idea of putting things on spectrums, but for the sake of this conversation, let’s say you have singlet on one end and someone with DID or something similar on the other. There are daemian/daemon relationships to be found basically across that entire spectrum, but I would say them being median systems specifically is….pretty damn common.
There are, of course, also multiple types of median systems, but broadly speaking in the case of daemians we are looking at two different and autonomous individuals, who co-exist and overlap in their sense of self, rather than being entirely compartmentalised the way other plurals are.
For me and Theet, this manifests roughly thus: we have two separate personalities, and two separate consciousnesses (in that, we both obviously perceive the same things at the same time, but we see them from our individual points of view; we can have the same memories of the same situation but remember them differently. If that makes any sense). I have a strong sense of my sense of self, and a strong sense of his existence and how it is separate to mine.
For the most part, we do not have compartmentalised memories; but we do have compartmentalised trauma to a degree - there are things that I can objectively remember but I don’t feel the thing, and he does, and stuff where I feel it and he does not.
We both function autonomously relative to each other - but we are both perpetually co-conscious and our existence and functions is necessitated by the others. Our thought processes are literally just dialogue with each other; and so we are inextricably tied by that.
And our life is ultimately very much ours; we work very well as a team but in a world where we were somehow different people, our lives would not be the same as our joint life is now (Theet just said “both lives would be worse though” which is a valid take). Theet does front, although it’s not our default, but more than that he makes a lot of decisions for us and for what we do (he says to add “but Rachel is very much the majority of how we portray ourselves, personality wise, to the outside world. And the choices I make are based on the things she is capable of doing - which is much more than I would be able to do without her”). And I guess, yes, that’s a point about the personality thing; it’s much more me, although ultimately there is a lot of Theet that is “on display” via fronting or just me repeating things he says or doing stuff cause he wants us to - so the result is a mix.
So that is a rough tldr of how we function as a median system.
But how does this relate to daemonism? Well, I first found the daemon forum when I was 14. To us it never even occurred to us it was “roleplay” or anything remotely along those lines. I pretty much just read the main info on the page and Theet was just there. It felt as natural as breathing. And he was, basically from the beginning, as autonomous as he is now.
Now, everything I’m about to say next is more of a theory. It’s our best understanding of what happened, looking back. But at the time, all I thought of it was a. This is what happens when you find your daemon and b. Cool. But we are pretty sure the reality is more complicated than that. So I was very depressed when I was 14. And not only was I depressed, but I was deeply self hating, and was just in general going through a lot of stuff. And for various reasons there were a lot of things about myself and my personality that I was repressing or squashing down because at the time I thought those things were wrong and bad. And those things became Theet. Very naturally and easily. And then on top of this, I basically became someone else.
I think it would be technically incorrect to call Theet the original, because I think we are much more of a true split; the original was both of us; but I do think that as a child I was in many ways much more like Theta than who I am now. The split, or whatever you want to call it, left a bit of an empty shell up front and we sort of had to…construct who I was? It sounds creepy when you put it like that, and I’ve certainly had identity issues around it but ultimately it’s a plural thing and it’s chill.
There is literally no way to know if this would have happened if I hadn’t found the daemon forum when I did…but I think there is a good chance it would not have. I would have, hopefully, got mentally more healthy and I really think that the “parts of me” that were repressed and became Theet would have otherwise reintegrated. But the forum was there to trigger this other thing happening.
So - that was me, with daemonism. For various reasons, after being active in the daemon community from around 2007 to 2010, life got busy and I drifted out of the community. Theet didn’t go anywhere; but for nine years I didn’t really speak to or interact with other daemians at all. And then last year, I came back to the daemon community.
And there were a few things I discovered. Not every daemon was nearly as autonomous and separate as Theet was; which is what I had previously assumed. Secondly, there were a tonne of daemon experiences and they were all super personal and unique.
There have historically been some discussions of medianhood on the daemon forum, and something that is a tad frustrating is that most of those have petered out, without folks really delving deeper into the broader question of how medianhood relates to daemonism.
But from both what I’ve read and conversations I’ve had with daemians I can say that, I would argue, many daemian and daemon pairs are median systems.
There are also daemian and daemon pairs which absolutely constituent other forms of plurality, although I would say this seems more unusual and generally tied more closely to things like trauma or other events, or with people with much bigger systems.
“But at the same time, those people often end up staying somewhere within the daemonism community because that’s the framework they approached it from and often still relate to, despite some differences from traditional daemonism.” I think there is a lot of truth in this; I can relate a lot more to daemonism, still, than most other mainstream forms of plurality. In our case I think a lot of that, actually, is the specific lack of focus on a headspace; daemonism focuses a lot on projecting your daemon out into the world, rather than the world inside yourself; and as someone who neither has or wants a headspace, I feel much more comfortable with that in the daemon community than tulpa communities and honestly a lot of other plural communities where having an inner world is often…kind of a big thing.
And also, of course, my personal experience of daemonism has involved form finding; with Theta taking forms that represent my personality in some way and finding these forms has been a meaningful thing for us both; both the journey to find these forms and the way I see my personality and myself now reflected back in some of the forms which he takes.
In a lot of ways the things that make me and Theta, I would argue, median and not “more plural” (for want of a way of putting it) are things that are archetypal of the daemon experience; both being present constantly (this isn’t always the case, of course, but for many daemians the constant or as close to constant presence of their daemon as possible is very much a goal), sharing memories, whilst having different perspectives on things, and our inner dialogue being very much the dialogue between us.
Additionally, the fact, as the human, I do occupy more of the general being at the front thing, both literally and in terms of my identity and how we present, and Theet is more behind the scenes; which is pretty typical in a human and daemon context.
You could, at the end of the day, make an argument that being median is something of a logical goal of daemonism. In many ways, of course, daemians have strayed far from His Dark Materials; but that core desire to have a second part of yourself be an autonomous and different personality that interacts with your own…that’s pretty much what being a median is.
However, that isn’t ultimately the goal for every daemian, nor should it be. People want different levels of separation and the flexibility of the whole thing is part of what works well about it.
But I do think daemonism probably does provide a good way to become median, in a way that tulpamancy provides a pathway to maybe a slightly different form of intentional plurality, if people want to use it in that way. And I would say plenty of daemians and daemons are already median systems, or something along those lines or that could be described as such.
(also, I wrote this rather quickly, so I apologise for any typos or generally poor writing!)
Also for reference: http://daemonpage.com/forum/
EDIT: also I feel I should say; my story involves a lot of bad stuff and depression etc, but I don’t think that’s necessary on order for a daemon to become fully autonomous/to become a median system etc. That was just our reality, and probably part of why it happened very quickly. I do think it will always come more easily or naturally to some people than others, but ultimately I think for a lot of people it will just be a matter of the brain adapting over time when finding real advantage to having these two consciousnesses running at once rather than just one. It doesn’t have to be trauma/depression/etc related!
origamiaround
blakekathryn
kaledo-art
dailybridgerton
stormborns
turnnoffyourmind
discoholicmusic
yousharknotpass
baratheonpilled
