A tulpa is a thoughtform that comes to life and the practice of this is called tulpamancy. The concept of tulpamancy can be traced back to Tibetan Buddhism. Monks practiced this; to create tulpas to overcome emotional attachments like phobias. An example of their practice that I discovered to explain this would be if a monk was afraid of a spider they would strongly focus during meditation that there was a spider (but it was really a tulpa) until there really was one that they could see. Ultimately, they would then use this to teach themselves that the fear of something was utterly useless. These creations would move, speak or do whatever was required for the monk to overcome the fear.
In a modern more fictitious explanation through example, that I can relate this to would be from the Harry Potter movies where the audience was introduced to a ‘boggart’, a creature that took upon itself the viewer’s worse fear. I do not know the Harry Potter world in-depth, so I do not know if this was the basis for this creature in the books and movies, but that was what came to mind when I first learned of tulpas.
Another example of a fictitious explanation I can refer to is from a television show would be from the television show Supernatural. On the episode of Supernatural, basically, a group online was reporting the legend of Mordechai Murdoch, over time the group’s forum changes details of Murdoch, then the details of the spirit of Murdoch people were seeing would change. This goes along the lines of believing is seeing, that’s how a tulpa in the Western world works. If you believe in it enough it becomes real, the intense focus of the object.
THIS IS JUST PART OF THE FULL POST. This was one of two posts I had done over at The Buzzkill Magazine, with permission I posted just part of it as this project is there. To read the full article go here.
The Official Website of L. Bachman 