I can't even say definitively if it's racist

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The tulpa was first described by Alexandra David-Neel (1868-1969) in Magic and Mystery in Tibet (1929) and is still regarded as a Tibetan concept. However, the idea of the tulpa is more indebted to Theosophy than to Tibetan Buddhism. This article explores the murky origins of the tulpa to show how the concept emerged from a dialogue between East and West in which Theosophical metaphysics were combined with terms adapted from Tibetan Buddhism.

Significantly, both David-Neel and Evans-Wentz had backgrounds in Theosophy and relied on the translation services of Kazi Dawa Samdup (1868-1923), who was educated at the Butia Boarding School in Darjeeling, a school created to train interpreters and geographers to advance British interests in Tibet.8 Samdup became an important interpreter for the British and an influential translator. Although not a monk, he apparently had an interest in religion and esotericism. David-Neel described him as "an occultist and even, in a certain way, a mystic."9 **Whatever Samdup's metaphysical interests were, they almost certainly shaped how David-Neel and Evans-Wentz came to understand tulpas.**

The earliest mention of tulpas appeared in Magic and Mystery in Tibet (1929) by Alexandra David-Neel (1868-1969), who defined tulpa as "phantoms." She explained that tulpas were related to tulkus, which she said were "forms created by magic. . . . . By David-Neel's own admission, the difference between tulpa and tulku is murky; tulpas are created by magicians while tiilkus are an aspect of buddhas and bodhisattvas and are more enduring.5 . . . . Tiilkus and tulpas appear again in Walter Evans-Wentz' [also helped translate Book Of The Dead] (1878-1965) version of The Tibetan Book of Great Liberation ( 1954), where he built on David-Neel's distinction ... "The Tibetans call the One Mind's concretized visualization the Khorva (Hkhorva), equivalent to the Sanskrit Sangsara [samsara]; that of an incarnate deity, like the Dalai or Tashi Lama [Panchen Lama], they call a Tul-ku (Sprul-sku), and that of a magician a Tul-pa (Sprul-pa), meaning a magically produced illusion or creation.7"

“Its [ the book] great merit is that it conveys the authentic flavor of Tibet as she found it, described with affectionate humor. Perhaps scholars and historians today would challenge many of the author’s opinions, but this does not affect her work’s intrinsic worth” ( Gyatso i). The idea that one of the leading voices on Tibetan history and culture would claim that a westerner was able to provide a level of authenticity regarding his culture is a significant statement. Indeed, the idea that a western woman could produce an authentic Tibet within her books is in direct contradiction with much post-colonial theory.