Tulpamancy as Agent Cognition in Cognitive Companion Construction

Cognitive Companion Construction (CCC), as a provisional model, suggests the examination of the preceding factors in encounters with immaterial beings or agents often deemed supernatural. A meditation tradition rising out of the internet in the past decade offers a seemingly novel exposition of how one might create a persistent encounter with an immaterial being or supernatural agent. Tulpamancy prescribes a training curriculum of visualization and narrative development that is equal parts excogitation and phenomenological creation of the imagined agent. Through the lens of CCC, the agents encountered in Tulpamancy are situated as cognitive constructs. The emic terminology and prescriptive practices of Tulpamancy resemble an experiential model supported by the CCC framing, in which a Tavesian building blocks approach and predictive coding theory structure the agent encounter as trainable, repeatable, and companionate as a result of cultural priors both inherent and explicit in Tulpamancy practice.