Tulpa - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

Many authors and artists have since used tulpas in their works, both in the context of fiction and in writing about mysticism. Horror author Clive Barker, for example, envisioned his famous "Candy Man" killer to be nothing more than a myth gone terribly awry in his original story.

"Tulpa" is a series of atmospheric tunes by Swedish dark ambient composer Peter Andersson. "My Tulpa" is a song title by the Manchester post-punk band Magazine on their album titled Real Life. It was written by Howard Devoto, the lead singer-songwriter. "The Tulpa" is a series of black metal tunes by Swedish multi-style composer Chaan. •Tulpa is a psychedelic rock band from Toronto, Canada that started performing together in 1981, eventually releasing a single "Apologize to your Mother", an LP Mosaic Fish and "Live From CBGB". John Bottomley, Chris Bottomley, Sev Micron, Tom Walsh and Nic Gotham.

In the X-Files episode Arcadia (6X15), the president of the homeowners' association for an exclusive gated community uses a tulpa to enforce the neighborhood rules. In the So Weird episode "PK (or Tulpa)", Fi meets a little boy who has created a tulpa he believes to be an imaginary friend.

Authors Loren Coleman and Jerome Clark, in their writings for Fate Magazine in the early 1970s and their first two books, The Unidentified (Warner Books, 1975) and Creatures of the Outer Edge (Warner Books, 1978), modernized and popularized tulpas for a new generation of ufologists and cryptozoologists. The surviving "zooform" movement in the United Kingdom can be traced to Clark's and Coleman's reworking of the tulpa concepts. Coleman and Clark have since rejected the tulpa theories as the foundation to unexplained phenomena, and have written a new introduction to the combined republishing of these two works by Anomalist Books in 2006: The Unidentified & Creatures of the Outer Edge: The Early Works of Jerome Clark and Loren Coleman (NY: Anomalist Books, 2006, ISBN 1-933665-11-4).

In Vicki Pettersson's Signs of the Zodiac series, a tulpa is the main antagonist. In Nightingale's Lament by Simon Green, a tulpa in the image of John Taylor's client is sent after him at one point, tracking him by a hair the client left on his jacket; it disappears when the hair is destroyed. In It by Stephen King, the eponymous entity's various manifestations are given form and power by the belief of the townspeople.

In Grant Morrison’s Marvel graphic novel Fantastic Four 1234 (2002) Reed Richards muses on a fictitious journey to Tibet where, with the help of Bön priest, he creates a Tulpa, a “thoughtform”. After Richards names it ‘Victor’ the tulpa takes on a life of its own, becoming Richards’ opposite number. This was an alternative, fantastical, origin for Richards’ arch enemy Dr Doom (aka Victor Von Doom).

In the Batman story "Tulpa", an American national of Tibetan heritage embodies his own hatred and rage in the form of a terrible demon, a tulpa he names and gives the shape of Mahakala, to defend him from the depredations of a gang of criminals who extort him.

According to the book The Teachings of Don Juan Matus, a Mexican shaman by the name of Don Juan Matus, who had taught his student Carlos Castaneda, the book's author, about the true nature of the physical universe and how intense concentration can summon, apport, and even materialize objects out of thin air. It was said that Castaneda was able to materialize a living squirrel on the palm of Don Juan's hand based on the latter's instruction. Many of his claims have been disputed by members of the anthropological profession.

In The Magician, the second novel in the young adult series The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel by Michael Scott, Niccolò Machiavelli creates a tulpa in the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur in Paris.

In the RPG (role-playing game) Over the Edge, tulpas are used as background characters (NPCs). They also have natural enemies, sociopathic individuals called Sandmen, who prey on them to create either "Nightmare" (a drug) or "Dreamweb" (gossamer webs that can capture dreams from people). Dreamweb are typically used to capture the nightmares of neurotic individuals, which are also sold as something like a drug. Although the word "Tulpa" is never used in the Changeling: the Dreaming RPG, creatures known as "Chimera" fulfill a role very similar to tulpa. Chimera may be sentient or non-sentient entities made manifest in the mental alternate reality of "The Dreaming". They typically arise spontaneously due to the force of human thought and emotion, sometimes from the dreams of individuals but potentially as amalgams of all human thought. These beings are typically weakened by exposure to human doubt, but nevertheless some have the necessary strength and abilities to manifest as tangible entities in the mundane world of humans, at least for a time.

In the TV series Supernatural (TV series), Sam and Dean face a tulpa in the season 1 episode "Hell House". In the episode a group of teenagers in Richardson, Texas, visit a reputedly haunted house, but the thrills turn tragic when they find the body of a girl hanging in the cellar. However, by the time the police arrive, the body is missing. After Sam and Dean arrive on the case they realize the spirit is actually a Tulpa because the information about the spirit keeps changing according to information on a website and because in the house there is a Tibetan spirit sigil, which assists in concentrating mental energy. Sam thinks that as people view the website, they are willing into reality what they read there. After failing to get a means to kill the spirit to manifest into reality, Dean simply burns the house down, postulating that without a house to haunt there will be no spirit for people to believe in.

The title character from the Dr. Seuss story "The Glunk That Got Thunk" is a tulpa. The girl who "thunk" him in to reality was unable to "un-thunk" him and he set about ruining the house. She eventually enlisted the help of her brother and the two of them were able to "un-thunk" the Glunk.