One of the more important instructional articles from my residency at ChaosMagick.Com this short and punchy scale, which originally saw digital print in late 2021, highlights the sharply increasing effort and resulting payoff in complexity when generating unreal entities to assist in your spellwork. Defining language is an important aspect of occultism, and with many in the online space using the below terms interchangeably it can definitely lead to unexpected results for the practitioner should the incorrect type of artificial life be created when following a guide. This essay hopefully goes some way to addressing that issue.

The Thoughtform Scale
Memetic Complexity in the Unreal World
By Gavin Fox

Those who work within the chaos meta-paradigm know that the physical and mental realms are equally mutable given enough skill. Turning their attention to the very fabric of reality these bleeding edge occultists see little difference between the external and internal worlds, tying them together through narrative and allegory in an effort to gain an advantage when navigating both. Through trial and error many ways have been found to gift some semblance of autonomy to the rogue ideas which swirl within the social psyche, and just how powerful these pseudo-spirits will become mostly seems to depend upon the ingenuity of the magickian themselves.

It can be argued that sigils are the most basic type of thoughtform, but only if it pleases the magickian to view the method by which their desire is made manifest as having a mind all of its own. The pictographic representation of the original intent dwells within the subconscious, mechanically working towards the stated goal with very little further input needed after the fact. Unfortunately while easy to use, such a simple methodology also limits what can be achieved as it is impossible to encode enough information in a single sitting for anything but the most basic tasks.

Sigils can move closer to sentience should enough attention be directed at them, however. That was the case with Fotamecus, a time compression spell that was fed the leftover energy collected by chaotes during a Metallica show in the mid 1990’s, and eventually led them to experience a series of anomalous results during a Thanksgiving road trip later in the same year. The viral version of this glyph was released to the world in the pre 2000’s, and has become a cornerstone of modern thoughtform lore in the decades since.

This type of complex single purpose pseudo-spirit is a fine example of a servitor, and neatly highlights the role that these slightly more advanced complexes of internalised meaning tend to undertake. Requiring a greater initial outlay of energy and repeated applications of gnosis to construct they are psychological processes capable of influencing reality independently of the magickian, but only within the boundaries of the initial intent.

Tulpas are the next most complex thoughtform variation. Still internalised, they best resemble secondary personalities able to interact with the host on the mental plane. Those who share their mindscape with such pseudo-spirits claim to experience physical effects from their interactions, usually of a comforting or sexual nature. While it is possible for others to occasionally see the created entity, such as with the Buddhist monk that Alexandra David-Néel claims to have conjured during her travels in 1920’s Tibet, it is in general viewed as a purely psychological phenomena not unlike an imaginary friend.

Recently a small but dedicated group of unknowing psychonauts have began formalising this practice, and there are many blogs and essays online which go into greater depth about what they have come to call tulpamancy. The similarities between the techniques discussed as those used in general servitor creation seem to hint at a common thread running through both disciplines, though few within that maligned internet movement would claim any knowledge of chaos magick as a whole.

For a more well rounded and even autonomous pseudo-spirit much greater effort must be expended. Many hail the Philip experiment, wherein a group of parapsychologists in the early 1970’s gave birth to an artificial ghost, as an example of egrigore creation in action. Though based on its marked reliance on their presence to manifest, as well as an inability to develop beyond the ridiculous backstory that the researchers had set for it, a demotion to some form of group servitor would be much more accurate.

True egrigores are far more complex than the other examples listed so far, and usually require the input of a number of people over a protracted timeline to become realised. They are also the jumping off point whereby thoughtforms are able to exist outside of the magickian’s own deep mind, becoming something of a social contagion in their own right. Slenderman is an obvious example of this process, and all the more interesting due to it forming naturally within the geographically dispersed online creepypasta subculture without input from either chaotes or tulpamancers.

While some of a more sceptical mindset may argue that real world sightings of the slenderman or crimes of his followers are a result of hysteria and social contagion, they miss the point. Those are exactly the means by which this type of thoughtform spreads, as egrigores are generally reliant on either the continued interest of their originating group or the subsequent adoption by the wider culture to remain whole. In media, the original 1992 Candyman film stands as a surprisingly accurate representation of this process, and the love held for the Cthulhu Mythos by both readers and magickians alike further strengthens the case.

Finally we have the godforms, hugely powerful and in many cases unfathomly old egrigores that have become so ingrained in the social structure over the centuries that what their will forms the entire basis for culture. Of the very few thoughtforms who could be considered to have attained this status, only those within the big three Abrahamic religions remain as powerful today. This is mostly due to their followers fanatically seeking to erase all other deities from the social aggregate over the last 2000 years, and their efforts have disempowered the majority of these at one time locally ascendant pseudo-spirits on a global scale.

In truth the chaote’s desire to create life, no matter how simple or artificial, could well be little more than a sign of rebellion against the whims of a reality otherwise dominated by a handful of bland father Gods and their equally conservative followers. But when the realisation dawns that the universe can only ever be experienced as a perceptual construct dwelling within the individual psyche, it ultimately gives the magickian free reign to populate their own waking dream with whatever companions they so choose.