Tibetan Buddhism’s terma tradition is usually framed as a luminous, providential means by which enlightened masters hide and later reveal teachings at the exact moment needed. That’s part of the story, but it’s not the whole story by any means. Read closely, and a darker current runs through the terma corpus: treasures hidden and guarded by wrathful powers, revelations that arrive through strange, sometimes malevolent intermediaries, and rituals whose intent and method look remarkably like what modern people would call dealings with spirits or demons. In short, many tertons don’t simply find teachings; they negotiate with non-human, often wrathful forces that can reasonably be described as demonic. Below I’ll examine Dylan Esler’s study of Gya Zhang Khrom (rGya Zhang khrom)¹ and other scholarly sources as a base to examine the phenomena of tertons and terma.
What the words mean
A terma (gter ma) is literally a “hidden treasure”: text, ritual object, or practice concealed (often in a rock, lake, or the mindstream of a guru) to be discovered by a tertön (gter ston), the treasure-revealer. Academic treatments correctly emphasize the social and legitimating functions of these discoveries in prophecies, lineages, and performative acts that make the revelation believable to followers. But the same sources that record authentication narratives also preserve striking descriptions of how termas are hidden, guarded, and recovered: they are defended by territorial spirits or “treasure-lords,” transmitted by non-human yogins, and often carry explicitly wrathful, “black magic” contents. Non-human yogins can take the form of visionary yogins, dakinis/dakas, local spirits, or wrathful entities, and they act as the intermediaries who hide, protect, or hand over the treasure.
A close example: Gya Zhang Khrom and wrathful treasures
Dylan Esler’s article on Gya Zhang Khrom in the (Byang gter) Northern Treasures tradition recounts the classic terma motif: a mysterious yogin leads the future tertön to a hidden cache of ritual objects and scrolls that come out of fissures in rock, and the revealer deciphers and transmits material that includes both beneficent and harmful ritual instructions. Esler notes items described as “cycles for benefiting and harming,” in other words, materials for both white and black magic, and he situates Gya Zhang’s revelations within a Northern Treasure program that explicitly deploys wrathful, coercive ritual means. That combination of secret caches, hidden custodians, and instruction sets for destructive rituals is exactly the pattern that supports reading many termas as arriving via a demonic or semi-demonic channel.
Treasure-protectors and Lords of the Treasures: the institutional side of the “demonic”
The literatures that record terma narratives repeatedly mention gter srung (treasure-protectors) and gter bdag (lords of the treasures). These are not neutral filing cabinets: they are spirits of place, frequently wrathful, who demand protocols and substitutions (gter tshab) when a cache is opened. Ethnographic and textual scholarship treats these beings as part of the class of local, elemental, or “demonic” forces that Tibetan ritual both confronts and incorporates. Scholarly surveys of protector deities and the oral/ritual ecology around termas make clear that treasures do not simply sit inert but are guarded by active, sometimes dangerous entities. If a tertön is authorized by prophecy, that can mitigate local resistance; if not, accusations of theft and collusion with spirits arise.²
Demon-taming, wrathful methods, and ambiguous agency
The well-known motif of Padmasambhava as demon-tamer is instructive: foundational tantric figures are often framed as subduers of hostile spirits, and the very act of revealing a terma can be portrayed as the tertön’s success in negotiating or subduing a guardian force. But negotiation is not always tame or benign. A number of terma traditions preserve wrathful practices intended to overthrow enemies, cure epidemics, or control hostile spirits—techniques that look like pacts or coercive exchanges with non-human agencies. Scholarly work on Dzogchen/Northern Treasure liturgies and on early treasure careers shows repeated, explicit intersections between revealing termas and advancing ritual technologies of domination or protection over local powers.³
So, do tertons get their termas from demons?
In many traditional narratives and ritual contexts, yes. Termas are mediated by, guarded by, or negotiated with non-human beings that function similar to what observers would call demons. That’s a historical and anthropological claim. The primary sources and modern scholarship present a consistent pattern: treasures are hidden in the landscape or mind, are protected by wrathful custodians, and are sometimes transmitted by shadowy yogins or through visions that are indistinguishable from encounters with spirits. Where the contemporary, institutional presentation emphasizes enlightened intent and salvific purpose, the deeper ritual ecology reveals frequent recourse to powers that are territorial and morally ambiguous.
Final thoughts
Terma studies that stop at the rhetoric of revelation miss the subterranean reality that produces and polices those revelations. Esler’s account of Gya Zhang Khrom’s discoveries of materials explicitly useful for harming as well as helping presents a pattern replicated across the terma corpus. Read with discernment, the terma tradition looks less like a straight line from enlightened source to human disciple and more like a braided negotiation between the human revealer, local spirits or demons, and the institutional needs of Buddhist communities. That picture is central to my argument: many tertons operate at the shadowy margins where demonic forces and tantric techniques meet, and their termas are as much the products of those encounters as they are of the “pure” spiritual origins claimed by their lineages.
Notes:
- Dylan Esler, “Yamāntaka’s Wrathful Magic: An Instance of the Ritual Legacy of gNubs chen Sangs rgyas ye shes on the Byang gter Tradition via the Figure of rGya Zhang khrom,” Revue d’Études Tibétaines, no. 62 (Feb. 2022): 190–215, https://himalaya.socanth.cam.ac.uk/collections/journals/ret/pdf/ret_62_08.pdf (accessed Oct. 7, 2025).
- Jean-Luc Achard, “A Brief Note on the Northern Treasures of the Bon Tradition,” Revue d’Études Tibétaines, no. 68 (Jan. 2024): 16–35, https://d1i1jdw69xsqx0.cloudfront.net/digitalhimalaya/collections/journals/ret/pdf/ret_68_02.pdf (accessed Oct. 7, 2025).
- Christopher Bell, “Worldly Protector Deities in Tibetan Buddhism,” in Brill’s Encyclopedia of Buddhism, vol. 2: Major Personages in Myth, Hagiography and Historical Biography (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 1254–66, https://brill.com (entry available online; access depends on subscription) (accessed Oct. 7, 2025).
Tantric Deception 