TL;DR - SUMMARY (Read to the line if you don’t have time)
We’re a plural system: one body, many souls/minds/people (called headmates, but we personally only use that to refer to people, not tulpae, etc). We were born this way. We don’t fit DID. We have no host or “original”, and we’re all equals; no one rules over us in the system. We have separate past life memories (we are not privy to special or secret information, they’re just lives). We believe in a multiverse and many of us come from worlds unlike this one (but we are very much attached to this one). When someone says they’re fronting, that means they’re in control of our body. When they are fronting, they will sign their post with their name. If we don’t sign a post, it means we’re blendy - a bunch of people working together to run the body at once, like right now. When someone isn’t fronting, they go to our innerworld, where we can interact with and see each other. We’re all very different people. We can’t and don’t represent any community, and we can only speak for ourselves and our own experiences. When we say “we”, we refer ONLY to our system and headmates, no one else. We believe we were put together as a system by Source/God/Creator/etc, but that’s about the extent of it. No one can leave or join our system. We’re basically super glued together, and we’re not interested in changing that. We’ve grown accustomed to how we are, and we’re a family.
Every person in our system practices their own kind of magick, so we have a wide variety as we have quite a few headmates. We want to someday help people with our magick, but we badly need to practice and better ourselves before we trust ourselves with that responsibility. We want to truly apply ourselves to magick, and felt we needed the support of a good community like this one (and wanted to support it, too). We want to compare notes, share experiments and results, give and get advice where we can. We especially want to study magick, and it was this post that convinced us to finally join here:
We work by skepticism, but are open-minded and accepting of others. When trying a new type of magick, we experiment carefully before making any decisions about how useful it is, and won’t trust that something will work miraculously on the first try. We also prefer to do our own work, instead of letting others do it for us. We want to learn all we can, in any and every field possible. Our curiosity as a group is insatiable, especially over things that make us uncomfortable or question things.
All we want is to be treated like people; like anyone else here. Since people always ask us what pronoun to use, “They” is fine for literally all of us, as most of our people will probably forget to mention their own gender and some of our names are misleading. Don’t put us on a pedestal, we aren’t special. But please don’t put us down just for being plural, either. We’re no better or worse than anyone else for any reason, we’re just a little different. We don’t want special treatment, other than the common respect given to anyone.
Ask anything you like (no need to be shy!), but you’ll find it helpful to read the full post below before posting questions (not required, ask anyway if you want). Thank you for letting us join, we heard this is an exceptional, accepting community, and we wouldn’t feel comfortable coming out about all this anywhere else.
FULL POST (Read when you have time, if not, ask questions anyway and we’ll just quote bits of it to you, doesn’t bother us)
We’re complicated, so strap in for the long haul.
First off, we’re a plural system. Meaning many minds/souls/people in one physical body. We were born this way, and we personally believe in spiritual, rather than psychological causation of our system, though not all systems are the same way, and we can’t represent plurality in general. We can only speak for ourselves and our own experiences, not for any community as a whole. We function perfectly well as a system, and our characteristics do not match the criteria for DID (we don’t lose time or black out, we weren’t traumatized, etc). We also have no host/“original”, and there is no one in the system who resembles the body, nor does the body belong to any one person in the system. No one in our system has authority over any other, we all live by an agreed upon set of guidelines, and everyone does as they please otherwise.
Everyone in our system, who are called headmates (which is a very broad umbrella term, but we use it to simply mean people, not tulpae and the like), have past-life memories of their own lives, and appear like they did in their past life, with their own past body, in our shared innerworld (where we go when we’re not fronting - fronting being when someone is in control of and driving our shared body).
Every person in the system has their own name, identity, age, gender, race (or species, for the non-humans, of which there are plenty), and whatnot, and would appreciate being treated like a person rather than an imaginary friend. We would all be very grateful to be called by our own names when addressed, for example, instead of just being called “that one headmate” or “hey you”.
There are also metapos in our system (a metapos being someone who discovers a fictional character or real person in this world that eerily resembles the identity and self-image they have had for their entire life; they tend to believe this similarity is an uncomfortable coincidence, but we don’t know for certain). Metapos can also be singlets (people who are not in plural systems), and do not have to be in a system.
We believe we are together in our system for a reason, and that it has to do with God (or Source, or whathaveyou), but we don’t think it’s some earth-shattering purpose or fate, and we don’t know what it is, it’s only a vague feeling. We mostly believe we’re just supposed to help make the world a bit of a better place in what little ways we can. We don’t believe we’re being punished by having to live this life; we just are.
We can’t give answers about other worlds or times; we just don’t know. We believe our past lives have had zero impact on this existence, other than our own disorganized, incomplete memories and our feelings about them. We can’t do anything special, either. Nothing more or less than what anyone else here can do. If anything, we’re probably below average in ability, but we’re working on that.
And no, we can’t take you into our system, nor can our headmates leave. We’re pretty well duct taped together; that wasn’t something we chose, but it is something we’ve accepted. We’ve seriously had people demand we give them our headmates, or demand to become one before! We won’t take kindly to requests of that nature, and we are fiercely protective of our own; we’re a family and won’t take threats against us lightly (you wouldn’t believe the things people have said to us just because we’re plural). If you respect us, we will gladly respect you. Likewise, we will respect you unless you seriously disrespect us.
We’ve believed in a core Creator for as long as we can remember in this life, and believe we had an experience with them/it before starting this life, but we recall no details. In our childhood, our parents started taking us to church and we were Christian for quite a while. We aren’t anymore, and just have our original beliefs, which revolve around a Source/etc, and endless possibilities in the multiverse (if you will). Essentially, any number of deities, spirits and other forces are possible in our group opinion, and we wouldn’t want to judge anyone based on their beliefs or experiences; only on their actions and intentions behind said actions.
We don’t identify with any particular path of magick, as each person in our system (there are a few thousand) have their own interests, passions and natural talents, and so our practice ends up appearing extremely spread out. We’ve been practicing since we were little without realizing it. It wasn’t until ten years ago we figured out it was magick we were doing all along. Church didn’t put as much of a damper on things as you would expect, as we always just said we called on Jesus for energy and aid. Our horizons have expanded considerably since then.
We first discovered we were doing magick thanks to the real vampire community. That is a community for people who are born with the condition of vampirism (different from the magickal practice of vampirism). It isn’t something the person chooses; it’s more like an illness, though no one knows for sure, and more research is needed (but in the works by parts of the community, such as Merticus; search for him and you’ll find his website). This “illness” is characterized by an assortment of physical and mental health issues that are not caused by another diagnosis, and, in particular, the need to consume human energy or blood (depending on the individual) to resolve said health problems, and this being the ONLY thing that treats the symptoms. The condition is referred to as “vampirism” because of this need; these people are not undead or immortal, and they cannot turn other people into vampires. They are also not identifiable by appearance - they don’t have fangs, don’t burn in the sun, etc. Though many are very sensitive to light and may feel healthier at night, and so prefer to be nocturnal when possible, but that isn’t true of all vampires of this type. Most importantly, they aren’t out to harm anyone, and often struggle with their needs and health. The vampire community places extreme value on feeding only on CONSENTING, EDUCATED donors, who are also benefiting from the relationship, and has a habit of exorcising those who would hurt someone just to feed. They put the needs of others above their own needs, in general, and are otherwise just like normal people. Many of them practice magick out of a natural talent for it (not all vampires have this), but others don’t, and their beliefs vary widely, and completely dismissing the existence of magick is common in their community - understand they are constantly flooded with Twilight fans and roleplayers with a very “sparkly” view of things, and so their impression of less-than-studied topics isn’t the best.
All of that being said - it was the vampires with the natural talent for magick who informed us of our own practices, as we also have vampirism (our body does, and so all of our headmates seem to, too), and first became involved in the community out of dire need for our health, despite being extremely skeptical. We had a massive array of health issues, but no matter what doctor and specialist we saw (nearly a hundred in the span of a year), no one could diagnose anything. We started feeding, we started feeling better. We hated it, we still hate it to a degree, but it is what it is. Before anyone asks, no, we will not feed on you. Sorry, but we already have a donor, and this one is very particular about us not grazing on others; we intend to honor that agreement. If it isn’t obvious, we get asked about that an awful lot, too (mostly from people with vampire fetishes, but, no judging).
It seems that because of our vampirism, everyone in our system is capable of naturally sensing energies and auras, and we have a fair degree of empathy that’s given us quite a bit of trouble in the past and has since been carefully contained (sorry if we come off as cold at times, but we suffer if we get too invested in other people), and we can process most any kind of energy, though we only truly benefit from human energy. Negative energy has little or no effect on us. We’re not sure why, but our current theory is that vampires have an energy network built to take in energy, and so can “digest” more types more easily than the average person. While we’re unaffected by “bad” energy, we fall extremely ill if we don’t feed on human energy often enough, but no one here has to worry about that, the most we’ll do is whine about our symptoms now and then. But we mostly just do that in the vampire community.
Perhaps because of our plurality, we are naturals at astral projection and have been doing that for as long as we can remember. That is one way we interact with each other; one person fronting, another projecting. The one fronting will have a decent awareness of the one projecting. Though this isn’t necessary to interact, as we have thoughtsharing - because we share a brain, we can hear the thoughts of all our headmates, whether we like it or not. On that note, don’t tell a secret to one headmate and expect it to not get around the system - we can’t help that, and we can’t hide anything from our headmates. However, we, as a system, don’t have to tell anyone outside of us and can keep secrets just fine in that respect.
Otherwise, as we said, each person in the system has their own path. And that varies immensely. Anything from pyromancy to feeding to taking away nightmares from someone suffering. From communicating with common plants to creating hybridized astral creatures. Absorbing death energy from a sickly person in the hopes of helping them, using energy in psychology, astral lycanthropy, magick cooking for the fae… it all depends on who you’re talking to.
Speaking of, when a specific person posts something, they will tag the end of it with their name.
-Example
We won’t now, because at the moment it’s many, many people working together to control the body. We call this “being blendy”; sometimes, when someone asks “who am I talking to?” we might say, “we’re blendy”. That just means a large group, usually of 30 or more, like right now.
Anyway, we’re feeling very driven to improve our magickal skills right now, and as there are so many people in our system, we felt that couldn’t be done without help from an experienced community, but even moreso, we want to study magick and figure out how it truly works, scientifically. We have many questions about it that we want to find the answers to, and to share those answers with others to add to group progress.
We would not have come out about any of the above in another community, but this one came strongly recommended to us as open-minded, accepting and supportive of most any endeavor one would pursue. Know that we’re trusting you with an immense amount and being truly vulnerable with you. Please don’t sting us in response to that.
We also have a goal to one day start a free service to help people with their daily woes, using magick or even just general advice. But we are in dire need of training and practice before we would trust our abilities with that; we want to refine ourselves and truly apply ourselves to magick.
We want to compare notes, share experiments and results, and give advice where we can, and ask for advice when we need it. We want to learn from and teach our peers. We’re immensely grateful for that chance - you truly don’t know how rare that opportunity is for people as strange as us, and we will put our all into this community for that.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask, we don’t bite, and we’re intensely curious ourselves and will understand that in others. There are no stupid questions, and we will happily clear up anything you may need. We can add an FAQ here over time if anyone wants us to, and a list of headmates as they choose to participate here. It’s perfectly okay to ask to speak to a specific person! The person currently at the front won’t be insulted so long as you’re patient, and the person you’re asking for will be flattered. It’s nice to be wanted, especially when you’re otherwise invisible to everyone.
We’ve been forced to become very open-minded because of our plurality, so if you need someone to talk to about something “strange”, we don’t mind listening. We see our main “purpose” in life as helping people anyway.
Fun fact: We hate mirrors, or seeing our reflection at all, as it doesn’t match anyone in the system.
) But no, if anyone knows anything about this sort of thing, we would love to figure it out.
We have indeed read about Billy Mulligan’s system, and several other well-known DID systems. (And we’re glad you know about them, too!) We have been a part of the plural community for more than ten years, which accepts all types of plurality, DID included, and so have met many other systems. We love to hear about DID systems that work well together (and it seems most do), they’re truly a marvel of the human mind. We like to think we function pretty well as a system, ourselves. 
Like we said, we’re a family.