This page collates links and material from other places online about soulbonding. A good part of it is archival material, either pulled from the Wayback Machine (Internet Archive) or from sites that are simply no longer updated. Quite a pity, but there is much to explore here nonetheless. Active sites are, of course, included as well. My own writings can be found here, and scattered elsewhere across the site, rather messily.
If you have a site (active or otherwise) about soulbonding and/or links you would like to contribute to this collection, you may submit them by contacting me here. I am sharing many perspectives here through these links. That doesn’t necessarily constitute agreement with any or all of them. It doesn’t matter, though. This isn’t about agreeing with everyone about everything. I just want to gather what I can on this topic into an accessible place online. I would love to visit some sites about general alterhuman topics, too, but might not include them here if they’re not specific to soulbonding.
I am including some discussions and discourse between people in the community. Absent here are posts, videos, and podcasts that existed just to mock soulbonding and related phenomena, though. Most of these add nothing to the conversation, since they largely took trolls at face value, focused on extremes, and adopted a sensationalist tone. That should be obvious. Some material has been left out because those who created it specifically asked to be removed from soulbonding-related conversations. On that note, if your own site is linked here and you’d like it to be removed, do contact me and I can do that, too.
Note: Some writers of older material may not want to be associated with this anymore, and some in particular have let me know this. For that reason, some sites aren't going to be linked here. Keep that in mind.
Unfortunately, while there were many, many actual websites about soulbonding throughout the early 2000s when I was young, most are gone now. True of a lot of topics online, with the move towards social media, isn't it? Either way, this makes it quite difficult for those who may have only just heard the term to learn its history, and also for us older folks wishing to revisit sites even as our views have changed. Most of the older soulbonding sites are not even archived. I actually had a small one myself in 2002-ish, and believe me - it is long gone. I have pulled other sites that I was able to find from the archives and am providing links to them, as well as to summaries of the history of soulbonding.
The oldest (and largest, most detailed) soulbonding site seemingly extant online (Soul Whispers) is hosted by the almost-unnavigable situation of Lycos, and has been abandoned for almost twenty years. The site is difficult that site is to navigate, read, and I suspect Lycos/Tripod isn’t long for this cruel web.
I (with much trepidation, admittedly) pulled the actual text (much of it) from the site itself into a PDF available for download by clicking here. This is not a book; it’s a haphazard, messy PDF, and no, I’m not cashing in on this. I have done this for preservation purposes only, and if any of the original authors happen across this site, they’re welcome to get in contact, of course. I want to be as respectful as possible, since this was all (at one point) quite meaningful to my young self.
These pages are currently online, and concern soulbonding in general. You'll find a variety of perspectives on what soulbonding is, and what it isn't. Some give advice and tips for soulbonders and soulbonds, too. Some are simply one or two posts; others are entire sites or blogs. Be mindful that, while still present and live on the web, some of these seem to have been posted long ago and haven’t been updated since. Others are more recent. I'm not endorsing these sites; some I do love, but others I disagree with about some soulbond-related matters. Regardless, I've organized these into loose categories...
No one ever had an easy time trying to explain soulbonding. Many have done just that, though, and these links (mostly) curate those, alongside some general hubs. Some of these resonate with me, at least in part. Some do not. If you're a soulbonder, I'm sure the same will be true for you. These are worth a look, though, even if it's just for context on how the word "soulbonding" gets used by different people. Personal favorites of mine, oddly, include the Fictionkin site, and the Pavilion Library. Absent here are media depictions of soulbonding, which I've quarantined (a couple) in the category, unfortunately.
We all experience soulbonding differently. At least, that seems to be the case. There are commonalities, or we wouldn't be orbiting this word, but still. Some of these links point to the experiences posted by soulbonders, or provide tips and guides for enriching your friendships with your bonds. Some of them even discuss forging soulbonds. As usual, I can't say I agree with all these links or everything and such, you should, as usual, draw your own conclusions. Note: if you've got a website about soulbonding, or adjacent to it, and would like me to share your links here, get in touch..
These resources do not fit other categories, largely involve discussions of terminology, the history of the concept, related ideas and the culture surrounding it. The article about Robert Howard is of particular interest - everyone really ought to read it if interested in this topic. I definitely do not agree with everything said within this messy field of links. I think most visitors to this site know that I dislike the usage of the word "tulpa," for example. I'm sharing these because I know they informed many people's perspectives on soulbonding, though, and those using the term "tulpamancy" are not malicious in it.
Soulbonding caused extreme controversy from the very inception of the term. My first encounter with it was a little article mocking the concept - that was in 2001. Some pockets of the internet saw soulbonders as essentially adults trying to legitimize having imaginary friends into adulthood, as childish people seeking attention (from whom?), or both.
While the term soulbonding had been coined by writers, not fans, plenty of media fans were soulbonders and had soulbonds originating from popular culture. The word quickly caught on amongst fanfic writers and readers alike, it seemed. Slash (and yaoi) were popular genres at the time, and sometimes soulbonds developed from these media, yes. This ultimately led fandom to stereotype soulbonders as “crazed fujoshi” with harems of pretend anime bishonen as bonds, trivializing the entire concept.
Others just claimed that soulbonding had initially been a decent word for a real phenomenon, but only ought refer to a mental or psychological phenomenon experienced by writers, rather than anything metaphysical. They thought that those who were saying their soulbonds could take control of their body, talk for them, and such were clearly fantasizing, childish, or lying, and had ruined the word.
I don’t have many links (yet) showing that.
Beyond those (quite usual for the internet) controversies, soulbonding was thrust into the wider internet spotlight to a degree with the publication of A Public Warning: Documentation of the Final Fantasy VII House. Told from the perspective of an ex-member, this website gave an account of life in an apartment amongst a small cult (I use that term purposefully) of FFVII soulbonders living in Pennsylvania in the early 2000s. There seems to be plenty of information suggesting the events described on the site actually occurred. I consider it required reading for any soulbonder because it does demonstrate how manipulative people use concepts like soulbonding for their own selfish ends.
A later document posted on a (completely unrelated) Livejournal community seemed to continue the story of the cultists, though, describing how one of them had moved to California to begin a Suikoden-based soulbonding cult. This woman, nicknamed “Sarah” as an alias, allegedly lived off the donations of fellow soulbonders and ticked nearly every box on the “crazy liberal with woo beliefs” bingo card, right up to “meat is murder” at the poor sap’s barbecue.
It is difficult to prove a negative, especially in this case, but while “Sarah” was a real person and an influential early soulbonder, she never ran a Suikoden cult scam. The story posted on Livejournal was entirely made up, likely by someone who knew just enough about her to make it sound realistic. The author, however, knew nothing about the legal system, California, and the Bay Area, which led to a lot of massive holes in his lies. People still believe it, though, because it suits them, I guess.
There have been cult-like groups that tried to capitalize on soulbonding for recruitment purposes, though. I include, at the end, a link to LB Lee’s coverage of a group that formed on Livejournal through RP communities. They caused a ruckus (and drew much ire) within the soulbonding community in the mid-2000s after bizarre attention-seeking attempts related to their supposed religion based around the 1999 film, The Matrix. These actually made the news, as you’ll see below.
Please consider reading these links in order. They begin with the earliest of discourse, and slowly move through what I’ve been able to find of these situations. That is why they, unlike the others on this page, take the form of a numbered list.
Absent from this section (right now, anyways) are materials concerning “syscourse” and controversies later on. I’m still digging into archived sources for some of these, with decent, relatively-unbiased ones being hard to find. It is also relevant to note that the term soulbonding as well as a lot of the metaphysical structures associated with it tended to fall out of the community a bit over time. I can’t really count some of the later controversies involving related subjects, then - at least not for sure.
Multiplicity is a complex, thorny term I don’t dare attempt to define on my own. The links below do so in many different ways. I knew hardly anything about multiplicity when I first learned of soulbonding. I had seen and heard of movies like Sybil and knew that something called “Multiple Personality Disorder” or “Dissociative Identity Disorder” was listed in psychiatry books, of course.
After a bit, I learned that not all was copacetic with the psychiatric manuals, though. Long before the coining of the word soulbond, there were some multiple systems who felt that perhaps this wasn’t disordered at all, or perhaps that integration wasn’t the proper solution. Some were even saying that a person could be born multiple rather than later “fracturing” due to trauma.
This wasn’t without controversy as one might expect. Plenty of others argued that those who made these claims were either dysfunctional and in denial, or merely pretending to be multiple for fun. They, either way, considered it offensive, because it parodied a serious mental illness by implying it could be a natural, normal thing. I don’t know what I believe about this conflict. I lack the background (in psychology, I guess it would be) to really know who is right, and who is wrong, if anyone at all. I suspect no matter what, there is a lot of nuance to the situation.
These resources are included because, since the early-2000s, there has been an overlap between the soulbonding and non-disordered multiplicity communities, especially online. Many pages reference both, and it seems that some soulbonders see soulbonding as a manifestation of, or related to, plurality/multiplicity in some way.
If you are a soulbonder who considers your soulbonds and you to be a system and finds this kind of thing resonates, you’re welcome on my site. Just realize I’m thus far agnostic towards the so-called syscourse because I just don’t know enough. I do believe there is much more to the way selves are structured than the contemporary West wants us to believe.
Me myself? I am definitely a soulbonder, but not plural/multiple. I researched how folks were describing it back in 2014-2015, and ultimately concluded it did not fit me. I still think that’s true. I explore different manifestations of myself, especially (but not only) online, but this doesn’t seem to track with what multiples experience. The people (on Discord etc) who were saying that I’m plural didn’t take the time to actually get to know me.
I’m a single person in a single self that manifests in many different forms. I do have guests fairly often. I’m a spiritworker like many witches and occultists. I refer to both as soulbonds because I lack another term for these fiction-related entities, and I grew up using it.