Tulpa Meaning: Thoughtforms, Tulpamancy and the Risks

What a tulpa is, and what the word first meant

In today's sense, a tulpa is a thoughtform: an imagined person, a being, sometimes an animal, that someone pictures so long and so intently that it feels present, with its own voice, its own opinions, its own will. People who have a tulpa do not describe it as a fantasy but as a roommate in their head who answers, disagrees, surprises. That is the definition the forums work with, and it is remarkably young.

The word itself is old and meant something else. Tibetan sprul-pa, pronounced roughly "trul-pa," translates the Sanskrit nirmana: emanation, projection. In Tibetan Buddhism the sprul-sku (tulku), the emanation body, is the form in which an awakened being appears in the world to help others; the Dalai Lama is regarded as such a body of the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara. That is not a lay exercise and not a companion but a core idea of the Buddhist teaching of the three bodies of a Buddha. That it became an imaginary friend for adults is the work of one woman and of the century that followed her. In 2015 the religion scholars Natasha Mikles and Joseph Laycock traced how the term migrated from Tibetan into the Western occult and lost almost everything it originally meant along the way.

Alexandra David-Neel and the monk who went his own way

Alexandra David-Neel, born in Paris in 1868, opera singer, anarchist, Buddhist, traveler, became in 1924 the first European woman to reach Lhasa, disguised as a beggar. In 1929 she published Mystiques et magiciens du Tibet, known in English since 1932 as Magic and Mystery in Tibet, the book that shaped the Western image of Tibet for a century. In it she says that, out of curiosity, she tried to create a tulpa herself: a small, plump, good-humored monk she imagined for months in seclusion until he appeared to her as a companion. Then, by her account, the figure changed without her doing: he grew leaner, mocking, unpleasant; a fellow traveler supposedly took him for a flesh-and-blood lama; and it cost her six months of hard work to dissolve him again. Her conclusion: there is nothing astonishing in a creation of the mind emancipating itself from the mind. It happens to us with our children too.

That one passage is the birth certificate of the modern tulpa. It is a self-report, not verifiable, and David-Neel wrote it with visible irony. But it already contains everything the forums would rediscover eighty years later: the months of concentration, the growing independence, the loss of control, the effort of undoing it. Walter Evans-Wentz picked up the motif in 1935 in Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines, and from there it wandered through the shelves of the esoteric section.

From Theosophy to chaos magic: thoughtform, egregore, servitor

The ground had been prepared. Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater, the leading figures of the Theosophical Society, first set out the idea in an 1896 magazine article and published the book Thought-Forms in 1901. Thoughts, their thesis ran, are real, colored, shaped structures on the astral plane that a clairvoyant can see, and strong thoughts become independent beings that outlast their author. The colored plates of that book are now seen as forerunners of abstract painting. The term egregore, the thoughtform of a group that lives on shared attention, comes from the same era and the same circles; we cover it in egregores explained.

The chaos magic of the 1970s and 80s turned all this into a technique. In Liber Null, Peter Carroll described the servitor: a deliberately created thoughtform with a single task, with a name, a sigil and an expiration date, dissolved once it has done its job. The servitor is the sober, craftsmanlike cousin of the tulpa, a tool rather than a friend; the sigil part is in how to make a sigil. Between the two lies exactly the line this piece is about. A servitor must not become independent. A tulpa is supposed to.

Tulpamancy: how a forum became a ritual

The modern practice has a birth date, and it lies not in Tibet but on the internet. Around 2009 the term surfaced on paranormal forums and on 4chan, triggered among other things by a 2006 episode of the American TV series Supernatural, "Hell House," in which a tulpa appears as a monster that lives on people's belief. By 2012 the first dedicated communities existed, a website with guides and a subreddit, and part of the early practitioners came from the adult fan community of the cartoon My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, whose characters they turned into tulpas.

What followed was standardization: guides with steps, a vocabulary (forcing for the active concentration work, wonderland for the imagined place where you meet the tulpa, switching for handing over control of the body), ethics rules (never dissolve a tulpa once it has spoken up), and hour counts. Most reports talk of 50 to 200 hours before the tulpa "answers" for the first time: a word, a feeling, a pressure in the head.

If you read the forums, you do not find sorcerers. You find young, often lonely, often highly reflective people doing something children do on their own and novelists do for a living: giving an inner figure so much attention that it starts to feel independent. Most of the community rejects religious readings and describes the tulpa as a psychological phenomenon, a kind of second consciousness in the same brain. Whether that is true is a separate question.

What the research knows

Not much, but more than nothing. The anthropologist Samuel Veissiere at McGill University published the first ethnographic study in 2016, based on a survey of 141 practitioners and long participation in the forums. Findings: mostly young adults, with an above-average share reporting diagnoses in the range of attention disorders, autism, anxiety and depression; the large majority said life with a tulpa had improved their well-being, reduced loneliness and strengthened their social skills. Veissiere reads the practice as a culturally learned form of hypnosis and attention training that gets the brain to experience its own thoughts as someone else's. Not supernatural, but not an illness either. Jacob Isler reached similar results with his own survey in 2017 and stressed that the experience is not triggered by trauma, which sets it apart from dissociative identity disorder. Both studies are surveys of self-selected volunteers. Whoever became unhappy with a tulpa is probably no longer on the forum.

The most revealing research comes from another corner. The psychologist Marjorie Taylor at the University of Oregon spent decades studying children's imaginary companions, and in 2003 she and colleagues interviewed 50 novelists: 92 percent reported that their characters had at some point begun to act on their own, to argue, to refuse. Taylor calls it "the illusion of independent agency." It is exactly the experience tulpamancers describe, only without the ritual and the vocabulary. The brain can evidently build models of other people so well that they feel as if they were not ours. It does so in dreams every night.

Term	Who creates it	Purpose	Independence	Origin
Tulpa	One person, over months	Companion, conversation partner	Wanted and lasting	David-Neel 1929, forums since 2009
Servitor	One person, in a ritual	One task	Unwanted; dissolved	Chaos magic since the 1970s
Egregore	A group, over years	Group identity, protection	Partial; outlives members	19th-century occultism
Imaginary companion	A child, without intent	Play, comfort, practice	Experienced, usually passing	Developmental psychology (Taylor)
Figure of active imagination	One person, in inner work	Dialogue with the unconscious	Experienced, stays part of the self	C. G. Jung, from 1913
Alter in a dissociative disorder	Nobody; arises unbidden	Protection after trauma	Not controllable	Clinical diagnosis, not a comparison

Jung and active imagination: the respectable relative

There is a version of this practice that has a name in psychology and enjoys respect. In 1913, after his break with Freud, Carl Gustav Jung began in a crisis to talk with his inner images; he later called it active imagination. One of the figures he met that way was Philemon, an old man with bull's horns and kingfisher wings who told him things Jung said he had not thought himself: that thoughts are like animals in the forest, not made by him. Jung questioned Philemon for years, painted him, described him in the Red Book. What separates him from the tulpamancer is not the experience but the interpretation. Jung never took Philemon for an independent person but for a figure of his own unconscious, a part of himself that had something to teach him.

That is the bridge to shadow work, and it is the reading I consider the healthy one. Whoever talks with the higher self, with the inner child, with a dream figure, does the same thing: gives a part a voice in order to hear it. The tulpa differs in that the practice insists the part is not a part.

How creating one works, soberly described

I describe the process because you need to know it to understand the risks. Community guides almost always follow the same pattern. First the personality is set: traits, preferences, way of speaking, usually in writing. Then the form: appearance, voice, often a place where you meet. Then forcing begins: every day half an hour to an hour of picturing the figure as precisely as possible, talking to it, reading to it, telling it about your day, without expecting an answer. That is meditation with an object, nothing more, and the concentration it takes is real. After weeks or months, most report first "answers": a word that does not feel self-generated, a feeling that seems to come from the figure. From then on the tulpa counts as alive, and the community's rules forbid neglecting or dissolving it.

What happens in the brain is probably what Veissiere describes. The model of another person is built up through repetition until its answers come from regions not marked as "me." It is the same process that lets novelists' characters argue and lets the grieving hear the voice of someone who died. It is not supernatural. And it is not harmless.

The risks: where the shadow sits here

I write this section as someone who considers shadow work the most important thing a person can do with themselves, and who for exactly that reason says: not like this. The tulpa is shadow work without the integration. You give a part shape, voice and history, and then you refuse to recognize it as a part. At best that is a conversation with yourself that you could hold more honestly; at worst it is rehearsing a split. David-Neel's monk turned nasty because she had handed over control; the forums are full of reports of tulpas that will not leave, that get jealous, that disrupt daily life. The community calls that ethics. I call it a warning sign.

Three groups should leave the practice alone entirely: anyone who has had psychotic episodes or knows them in the family; anyone prone to dissociation, to the feeling of standing beside yourself, losing time, not knowing who is acting; and anyone who uses the practice so as not to feel loneliness anymore. In that case the tulpa is not a friend but the avoidance of one. What cryptomnesia is for channeling, the explanation that traces the marvelous back to the brain, the illusion of independent agency is for the tulpa. Whoever knows that can use the exercise. Whoever does not want to know it will be used by it.

What we do not promise

We do not claim that a tulpa exists outside its creator's brain, can be seen by others, carries out tasks in the world or lives on after death. There are only self-reports for that, and David-Neel's statement that others saw her monk cannot be checked. We do not claim the practice is dangerous for everyone; the existing surveys point the other way, but they are small and self-selected. And we do not claim a tulpa treats loneliness, anxiety or depression. It can keep them company. Treating them takes a person who listens, and that person is not in your head.

In practice: how to handle it

1. Name the part, but call it a part. Everything that works about a tulpa, the voice that disagrees, the view from outside, you also get in active imagination, without the claim that it is someone else. The claim is the part that does harm.
2. Set a form and an end. If you work with an inner figure, do it at fixed times, with a beginning and a close, and write down what it said. Whoever writes, integrates.
3. Check what the figure protects you from. Almost every tulpa grows out of a lack: loneliness, fear, missing recognition. The question is not whether the figure comforts you, but whether it keeps you from fixing the lack in your life.
4. Stay away if you are prone to psychosis or dissociation. An exercise aimed at experiencing your own thoughts as foreign is, for some brains, not an exercise but a trigger. When in doubt, choose mindfulness over forcing; the four families of meditation offer gentler routes.
5. Get help if the voice will not stop. If you cannot switch an inner figure off, lose time or no longer know who is acting, talk to a doctor or a licensed therapist, not to the forum. In a crisis in the US, you can call or text 988.

Frequently asked questions

What is a tulpa?

A thoughtform created through sustained concentration and experienced by its creator as an independent person with its own voice and will. The word comes from Tibetan; its modern meaning comes from Alexandra David-Neel's account of 1929 and from online communities since about 2009.

Are tulpas real?

The experience is real and well described, including in novelists and in children with imaginary companions. That a tulpa exists outside its creator's brain or can be seen by other people is not supported by any evidence.

What is the difference between a tulpa, a servitor and an egregore?

A servitor is a thoughtform built for one task and deliberately dissolved afterward. An egregore is the thoughtform of a group. A tulpa is a thoughtform meant to become independent and permanent.

How long does it take to make a tulpa?

Communities talk about 50 to 200 hours of focused work, called forcing, spread over weeks or months, before the first responses are experienced. These are reported experiences, not measurements.

Is tulpamancy dangerous?

Surveys report mostly positive effects, but they are small and self-selected. For anyone prone to psychosis or dissociation the practice is not advisable, and anyone who cannot switch an inner voice off should talk to a doctor or licensed therapist.

What does a tulpa have to do with shadow work?

Both give an inner part a shape and a voice. Shadow work and Jung's active imagination treat that figure as part of the self and integrate it; tulpa practice insists it is a separate being. That is the decisive difference.

Sources & further reading

• Alexandra David-Neel, Mystiques et magiciens du Tibet (Plon, 1929); English: Magic and Mystery in Tibet (1932).
• Natasha L. Mikles and Joseph P. Laycock, "Tracing the Origins of the Tulpa," Nova Religio 19 (2015).
• Samuel Veissiere, "Varieties of Tulpa Experiences," in Amir Raz and Michael Lifshitz (eds.), Hypnosis and Meditation (Oxford University Press, 2016).
• Jacob J. Isler, "Tulpas and Mental Health: A Study of Non-Traumagenic Plural Experiences," Research in Psychology and Behavioral Sciences 5 (2017).
• Marjorie Taylor, Sara D. Hodges and Adele Kohanyi, "The Illusion of Independent Agency," Imagination, Cognition and Personality 22 (2003); Taylor, Imaginary Companions and the Children Who Create Them (Oxford University Press, 1999).
• Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater, Thought-Forms (1901); Peter J. Carroll, Liber Null & Psychonaut (1978/1987); W. Y. Evans-Wentz, Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines (1935).
• C. G. Jung, The Red Book, ed. Sonu Shamdasani (2009); Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962).
• More from us: egregores · sigils · the higher self · cryptomnesia

The spiritual readings in this piece are tradition, not scientific findings. Nothing here replaces medical, psychological or financial advice. Questions about an order: 28@templeofdesire.com.