GRiMM

How did we get here?

Tulpamancy is historically the English word referring to a very specific, very old religious practice done by Buddhists (particularly in Tibet, though it is found in other areas too) This involves the spiritual belief that one can create a "Mind-made body", which can then be used to transport that person's soul to the higher realms during meditation. (Relevant source linked; info is on page 117, and then pages 125-134). This "mind-made body", or "emanation body", is also called a Tulpa. It is not a conscious being of its own, nor a separate personality or state of self; it is a non-physical body. It is part of a deeply personal ancient practice of meditation and the belief in spiritual ascension. (Note: this source is on hard-to-read text and is written in verbose language. However, it is written by a member of Tibetan Buddhism and a man with a PhD in clinical psychology. It also contains further references and sources within it).

In the late 1800s/early 1900s a new religion was founded in America, called Theosophy. The founder was Helena Blavatsky, who claimed to have been enlightened in Tibet, and created the religion based on her enlightenment. She claimed it wasn't actually a religion, but.. well, for one, it fit all the definitions of "religion", and for another most of the followers conveniently ignored her claim anyway. Most Theosophical beliefs aren't relevant to this topic, but you can read about them on the wikipedia if you're interested.

Theosophy drew from many religions, but the part taken from Buddhism that was drawn from is the idea of this "mind-made body". Blavatsky originally stated that within each human being, there is a second state of the soul known as the "higher being/ higher self". The Theosophist goal of personal ascension is to unite with your higher self, thus becoming a whole being. According to this belief, the higher self is not a conscious or separate being, but it is a different state of the soul; The human soul needs to undergo several transition states before reaching the point of unification, all of which are achieved through meditation and spiritual practice. This "Higher Self" was (occasionally) called a Tulpa.

(^This paragraph references information discussed heavily in a book. Ancient Wisdom Revived: A History of Theosophy, by Bruce F. Campbell, published 1980 by the California Press. Unfortunately, I cannot find a full free copy of the book online - only excerpts like the one linked here. If anyone has any idea where to find a copy online for free, tell me so I can link it!)

Later on, however, the founder changed this and moved away from teaching about a "higher self" to merge with. She instead claimed that you have a singular immortal spirit that remains after death, and latches on to a new mortal soul and body in a never-ending reincarnation process. Now according to her, this immortal soul was the "Tulpa", not the higher self as said before.

Even later, two British Theosophists, (Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater ) both of whom claimed they were clairvoyant among other things, wrote a book called Thought-forms (published 1901) in which she argued that thoughts are not abstract, but are things with tangible ties to what Theosophists consider physical and spiritual reality.

According to the book, thought-forms can be one of three types:

-One that takes the image of a "Thinker". If you imagine yourself to be in a place different from where you are (if you're in your room, picture yourself in the kitchen, for example), what's actually happened is you have created a "thought-form" body that is actually in the place you pictured, at least whilst you picture it (then it disappears again).

-One that takes the image of "Object". If you're an artist and you picture wanting to paint/draw/sculpt etc. a vase, you're actually creating a "thoughtform" version of that vase, which again vanishes once you begin the art.

-One that takes its own form. This is its own conscious being, separate from the person creating the thought-forms.

These "thought-forms" are what Tulpa refers to according to Besant/Leadbeater. The third one is the one we're interested in. This is the first claim that you can create entirely separate, conscious beings entirely by yourself.

I want to make it clear that the people who created this idea both also believed that the act of picturing yourself in a location would somehow generate a version of you that appears in that location. At this point, the term "Tulpa" has been absolutely appropriated by these Theosophists (or Neo-Theosophists as Besant/Leadbeater have sometimes been called) to mean something it truly does not mean.

Later into the 1900s, a different belief system known as Western Esotericism (also known as Western Occultism) became hugely popular. It's an older belief system, but as it gained popularity it also changed wildly in nature as different people would think it stood for different things, and then those new beliefs would gain popularity as well. The Western Esoteric belief in "thought-forms" was taken from the Neo-Theosophical beliefs mentioned above, and whilst it was far from the most popular parts of their belief system, it was believed that you could "create" Magical entities through practices heavily influenced by other beliefs, such as Wiccan witchcraft.

Literature published at this time describes these entities as simple, and as parts of a person's natural aura, rather than as fully separate or fully formed conscious beings. This publication from 1912, for example, described them as follows:

A thought form is practically a bit of the detached aura of a person, charged with a degree of his prana, and energized with a degree of his life energy. So, in a limited sense, it really is a projected portion of his personality.

So the meaning of "thought-form" has changed, and once again the meaning of "Tulpa" has changed. Now it's not one of the three options discussed above, as proposed by the Neo-Theosophists - it's something else entirely.

However, in 1924, we got a callback to those Buddhist beliefs with Alexandra David-Néel, who also visited Tibet. She claimed that Tulpas were "magic formations" and that they could "free themselves" from their creator's control. She claimed that she had created her own Tulpa in the form of a monk resembling Friar Tuck, the character from the Robin Hood folk tale, but that her Tulpa had gained sentience, become destructive and needed to be destroyed. (read that again because..holy fuck)

Later on, she said that her experience "may have been" a hallucination.

Are you keeping track? Don't worry if this has been confusing, it's been a lot. We've gone from:

The ancient Buddhist belief in a second, non-physical body; one that can be used as a vessel to transport your soul to higher planes, to

The original Theosophical statement that you have a "higher self" inside of you, that you should aim to merge with to become whole, to

The re-written Theosophical statement that actually no, it's not your higher self, it's your immortal spirit that reincarnates and binds with mortal souls over and over and over again, to

The Neo-Theosophical belief brought about by self-proclaimed clairvoyants who believe that you can create fully conscious beings by yourself, and also that whenever you picture an object you're actually creating a spiritual version of that object, to

The Modern Western Esoteric belief that you can create Magical entities, but they are simple in nature and exist only as parts of yourself, to

The ?????? belief that these entities are not only not just parts of your aura, but are real full beings in your head, that they can gain sentience/consciousness by themselves, escape control of the creator, and can be destroyed once they do so. (Sidenote, if the Friar Tuck tulpa was conscious, surely by destroying it she like...committed murder?? Destroying what she claimed to be a sentient, conscious, free-thinking human being, that's...that's murder right? Ok fuck I don't have the time or energy for THAT rabbit-hole right now, back to what I was saying)

"But what does this have to do with Tulpa Systems?"

Don't worry, we're getting to that now.

In around 2009, the term "Tulpa" began being used as a term for a sort of "more real" imaginary friend. "Tulpamancy" as it became to be known was a small subculture found in certain online communities, including Reddit and 4chan way back when. "Tulpamancers" believed that these beings were at least somewhat conscious and autonomous. The subculture of Tulpamancy became far more popular with the creation of Bronies, a nickname given to adult fans of the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic cartoon TV show. Bronies also came from 4chan. (Although calling them simply "adult fans of a kid's show" doesn't exactly explain the whole story. The Brony fandom is somewhat infamous).

Essentially, lots of Bronies wanted to be friends with their own versions of the Pony characters, and believed they could "create" sentient versions of these characters to live in their heads. Some wanted to do this for....nsfw reasons.

This progressed further, and the belief that you could create conscious beings along with severe misunderstandings of what it means to be a System eventually lead to the existence of "Tulpa Systems". The American Psychological Association has records of a survey done on people who claim this practice, and found them to be primarily Euro-American, White, Upper-Middle-Class, and aged from teenager to young adult, and that they "cite loneliness and social anxiety as an incentive to pick up the practice". (Note: The source cited above contains significant inaccuracies relating to the nature of Dissociative Identity Disorder, and is also not a study of the validity of Tulpa systems. It is merely a survey of those within online Western Tulpa communities. DID will be discussed later, and is different to how this source describes it. This survey source is only being used for its information on "Tulpa System" demographics)

Now. Why do people hate them?

The problems with Tulpa "Systems":

1) The blatant disrespect towards Buddhists and Buddhism. The idea of Tulpamancy and the creation of Tulpas was stolen from them, the meaning absolutely bastardized and warped by numerous Westerners over the course of the next hundred years, changing multiple times so it "fit" different beliefs - including being redefined TWICE by the same person, Helena Blavatsky, the creator of Theosophy. Even then, the bastardized meaning of Tulpa had nothing to do with creating conscious beings until that Thought-form book. And then it was changed another few times over more decades and is now used by white Western teens and young adults to apparently ""create conscious versions"" of their favourite characters, ocs, or even just types of people. It's hugely culturally appropriating.

2) You cannot create conscious beings. It is neither scientifically nor neurologically possible to create consciousness. Humans can create things that appear to be conscious, and the human mind is fantastic at believing itself, but humans have been studying consciousness and its creation for decades now; I have tried and tried and tried to find a sliver of evidence anywhere that it's possible, and I can't find it. If you or anyone else has evidence that it is, please let me know.

3) Even if Tulpas are real (they're not - most academic literature I've seen refers to them as a form of induced hallucinations, as does one of the wikis; induced hallucinations is what you can safely say they're most likely to b), people with Tulpas still aren't systems, because of what systems are. Systems are not multiple consciousnesses in one mind - rather, they are one consciousness that has split off into separate parts/alters. Comparing cases of multiple consciousnesses to cases of separate parts of one consciousness is damaging to systems as it plays into the old stereotypes and outdated information surrounding "Multiple personalities", a misconception that systems are trying very hard to get away from due to the stigma surrounding it.

4) I can't believe this is something that has to be said, but encouraging young people over the internet to deliberately give themselves hallucinations is probably a bad idea.

4) The Tulpa "System" community is incredibly predatory, to singlets and systems alike. Since spreading further than the old Brony communities, online Western Tulpa communities will often rope in lonely, depressed or anxious young people and will convince them that this will help them with those things or even fix their problems. I've seen kids as young as 13 on this very website saying that creating Tulpas will help them be a part of "one big happy family"; I've even seen it where kids from abusive homes - people who do not have actual support from their real families - are convinced by the Western Tulpa community that creating Tulpas will help them.

3) Even if Tulpas are real (they're not - most academic literature I've seen refers to them as a form of induced hallucinations, as does one of the wikis; induced hallucinations is what you can safely say they're most likely to be), people with Tulpas still aren't systems, because of what systems are. Systems are not multiple consciousnesses in one mind - rather, they are one consciousness that has split off into separate parts/alters. Comparing cases of multiple consciousnesses to cases of separate parts of one consciousness is damaging to systems as it plays into the old stereotypes and outdated information surrounding "Multiple personalities", a misconception that systems are trying very hard to get away from due to the stigma surrounding it.munities believe, like Alexandra David-Néel, that these consciousnesses should be destroyed if they become destructive. Many systems have persecutors, which are alters who harm the system in some way. Acting like these persecutors can or should be destroyed due to their destructive nature is unbelievably damaging. In fact, I decided to make this blog after yet another system I saw had once thought they were a "Tulpa System" and had been severely hurt as a result.