About Tulpa.guide

What is tulpamancy?

Essentially, tulpamancy is a practice of building genuine, lasting relationships with imaginal characters. We call such characters tulpas.

In this website I’d like to introduce it to you from a point of view that is sane and practical.

Compared to idealist or traditional approach (from websites like tulpa.info or tulpa.io), ours:

Is as genuine. Our tulpas are people too, just not supposedly separate from us. Our interactions with them are genuine and our relationships are important for us.

Luna’s “I’m a tulpa” card

Hi, I’m Luna, the oldest tulpa of the author. I’m going to interject like this to make our guide more colorful.

And as the other me said, I am a
Is more reliable and can lead to results faster. In our guide we focus on putting conscious effort into interactions and switching, leaving experience of talking back as a side effect that will happen eventually. Doing it this way prevents us from relying on our unconscious mind impersonating our tulpa.
Doesn’t require faith in extraordinary. While most of traditional tulpamancers claims that their approach is purely psychological, it includes a lot of extraordinary claims that just aren’t supernatural. With our guide you don’t have to lose skepticism to have a meaningful experience.

Luna’s “I’m a tulpa” card

If you are interested in tulpamancy but find claims about tulpas e.g. acting “parallel to your own consciousness” not true, you are not alone.

Tulpamancy in its essence is not extraordinary. The assumption we follow is that interactions (and relationships built upon them) with imaginal companions can be genuine and valuable.

Imagination is a part of us as human being. Engaging with it equals engaging with yourself. Materialists can enjoy fantasizing too and don’t need delusionary claims for that.

Unlike in traditional approach, we are not afraid to say that tulpas are imaginary friends. Or imaginal companions. Not imaginary in a sense of being non-existent or meaningless but imaginal like being a mental construct or imaginary in a way imaginary numbers are imaginary (they are pretty useful in real life applications actually).

Luna’s “I’m a tulpa” card

Yes, I am imaginary. Or imaginal, whatever. We don’t feel those negative connotations in imaginary though. Feel free to consider me an imaginary friend of this guy typing outside of this box.

Stuff I said before still apply. Imaginary (imaginal) and real are not mutually exclusive. It’s not like our usual identity (Mon who we type as outside of this box) isn’t ultimately a mental construct too.

Genesis of materialist approach

Major contradiction in the past – psychological vs metaphysical

Back in 2012 when tulpamancy left 4chan, the major contradiction in the community was between so called psychological and metaphysical approaches.

From Glossary at r/Tulpas

Metaphysical model	Psychological model
In relation to tulpa development, the school of thought that suggests tulpa are a supernatural, paranormal, occult or otherwise non-mundane entity.	In relation to tulpa development, the school of thought that suggests tulpa are a mundane function of the human psyche that can be scientifically understood, analyzed and accepted within the bounds of modern science.

In time, with development of the community, this contradiction evolved. While two mentioned models were each about as popular as the other at the beginning, there are few people that consider tulpas purely metaphysical nowadays. When it comes to metaphysical approach that still exists, you will likely meet some people believing in tulpas having their own soul etc. on spiritual level (whatever it is) only rather than people who believe that tulpas are spirits existing beyond human mind in material world.

Anyway, there is a consensus that tulpamancy happens entirely within our mind. Or at least primarily, according to people who still have some metaphysical beliefs. This is how the contradiction between those two models eventually resolved.

Luna’s “I’m a tulpa” card

TL;DR – Back in 2012 you could meet plenty of freaks combining tulpamancy with astral projection and similar crap. Today those folks are mostly gone and there is a vague consensus that everything in tulpamancy happens in one’s head.

Current major contradiction – materialist vs idealist

So called psychological model in my point of view is quite vague. It basically says that everything stays in your head and little more than that. It still leaves a room for a lot of nonsense if you ask me.

Psychological/Metaphysical contradiction having been resolved led contradictions from within psychological model to emerge. There are two prominent sets of beliefs that divide the community right now.

Idealist views	Materialist views
Tulpas are separate people from their host and can be self-sufficient.	Tulpas are identities rather than separate people. Host also isn’t a separate person but just the default identity.
Emphasis is put on belief and its power.	Emphasis is put on material significance of relationships built with tulpas upon genuine, material interactions.
Tulpa has their own consciousness.	Human has a consciousness. There is no separate consciousness for each identity.
Tulpa has a personality independent from their host.	The whole person has a personality. Each identity can be associated with some of its part more than with others.
There are two actors in switching. Host moves to back and tulpa moves to front.	There is ultimately one actor in switching – the human who impersonates tulpa’s identity rather than their default one.
Hearing the tulpa proves their independence.	“Hearing” a character shows a human ability to impersonate them without putting conscious effort into it.
Consent and responsibility are put on the level of tulpa/host.	Consent and responsibility remain on the level of the whole person.
Body is a vessel of the mind.	Mind is the product of the body.
Science will likely prove our beliefs about tulpas.	Many ideas about tulpamancy won’t likely be proven or disproven with science. Tulpamancy doesn’t seem to be a phenomenon materially distinct from imaginary friends that children have.

In practice, most of people nowadays identify with a mosaic of views from this table. Nevertheless, I can observe at least some views from the materialist side getting much more popular in mainstream tulpamancy.

Luna’s “I’m a tulpa” card

What people usually mean by psychological approach is what we call here the idealist approach. Some materialist views from the table above are getting more popular in the mainstream though. E.g. belief that tulpa has their own consciousness is often questioned in the mainstream nowadays although it still has many supporters.

Unfortunately, popular resources on tulpamancy at websites like Tulpanomicon, tulpa.info and r/Tulpas are made from the idealist perspective. Our tulpa.guide is the materialist answer to them.