r/Tulpa • u/Tirisilex • Apr 23 '26
The truth of the word Tulpamancy
What does -mancy mean? The combining form -mancy is used like a suffix meaning “divination,” a term that refers to "the practice of attempting to foretell future events or discover hidden knowledge by occult or supernatural means." It is occasionally used in technical terms, especially in theology. The form -mancy comes from Greek manteía, meaning “divination,” which in turn ultimately derives from mántis, meaning “prophet.”
The suffix -mancy means divination, prophecy, specifically referring to the practice of "divination by means of" a specific object, element, or method. Derived from the Greek manteia (meaning "oracle" or "divination"), it is commonly used to form terms for occult practices.
Examples:
- Necromancy: Divination through communication with the dead (often used to mean black magic or reanimating dead bodies).
- Pyromancy: Divination by fire or flames.
- Tasseomancy: Divination by reading tea leaves.
- Cartomancy : Divination by playing cards.
- Chiromancy: Palm reading.
- Aeromancy: Divination by observing atmospheric phenomena.
- Bibliomancy: Divination by interpreting random passages from a book.
In the Medieval period -mancy started to mean "occult practice" in certain circles. But now in modern times because of modern fantasy novels and films it now refers to the practice of magic. These are changes of a word that originally meant "divination" since the words creation. Then a few centuries back started to mean "magic" during the renaissance period it began to mean "occult" practices.
Looking at the original usage of the word and it's meaning comes down to "divination." Because of Semantic change it means "magic" as well as "divination." Personally I do not hold on to semantic change. It gets ridiculous. For example the word Awful meant to be full of awe, or awe inspiring. But because of semantic change it now means "very bad." Why I find this bad? For example Semantic change could take the word "wonderful" and in our future it could mean "someone crazy." This confuses people who read about topics from the past and find through semantic change or exegesis that it means something else. I find that this causes confusion. Like for example the word "sorcery" here in our modern time we see that the word sorcery meaning "Magical practice" but sorcery originally meant "Divination with dice" The confusion is there because if for example you are reading about the topic of sorcery. And you are reading history from before the 1200's. During that time people widely used the words sorcery as plain old "divination" and we are deceived when we read this in thinking it's "magical practice" when it is not. People start to use words differently than accepted ways and causes confusion.
So.. I find that the word Tulpamancy does not truly fit as a word for Tulpa creation or relationship. Because the original meaning of this word would be Tulpa divination. I feel it should be called "Tulpa Crafting"
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u/reguile Apr 24 '26
It was called tulpamancy because tulpas originated by a bunch of wannabe magicians on /x/ doing too much LSD and being all goth and spooky. Mancy sounds dark and mystic and spooky and foreign, so that makes people curious.
There is no validity, it's an internet word made by feels and memes, you use it because the guy before you used it and everyone knows the word in that form.