A Ouija Board Killed my Mother!!!!17:21 Apr 17 2006
Times Read: 637
I am a Vitkr. My runes never lie. They are harsh and painful in what they say sometimes, but they don't lie. I have no delusions though that the runes themselves have anything to do with spirits or ghosts. Runes are simply tools used to communicate conscience with sub-conscience.
I am very disturbed to find so many young pagans that believe that tools such as these are more then that. More then any other, the Ouija Board. This is a tool created by a spiritualist and was used mainly as a tool to fool people. People payed great amounts for guidance and were lied to and scammed. Harry Houdini wanted more than anything to find a real medium and found only frauds. I urge you not to take just my opinion. There is a lot on the subject. At least stop saying foolish things like using a tool like, "A Ouija Board caused my House to be haunted!" If you know its real history, you would find that most ridiculous.
------------------------------------------------------------- Ouija (pronounced wee-juh or wee-jee) refers to the belief that one can receive messages during a séance by the use of a Ouija board (also called a talking board or spirit board) and planchette. The fingers of the participants are placed on the planchette which then moves about a board covered with numbers, letters and symbols so as to spell out messages.
Ouija is a trademark for a talking board currently sold by Parker Brothers. While the word is not a genericized trademark, it has become a trademark which is often used generically to refer to any talking board.
History
The use of talking boards has roots in the modern Spiritualism movement that began in The United States in the mid-19th century. Methods of divination at that time used various ways to spell out messages, including swinging a pendulum over a plate that had letters around the edge or using an entire table to indicate letters drawn on the floor. Often used was a small wooden tablet supported on casters. This tablet, called a planchette, was affixed with a pencil that would write out messages in a fashion similar to automatic writing. These methods may predate modern Spiritualism.
During the late 1800s, planchettes were widely sold as a novelty. In 1890, businessmen Elijah Bond and Charles Kennard had the idea to patent a planchette sold with a board on which the alphabet was printed, and thus had invented the first Ouija board. An employee of Kennard, William Fuld took over the talking board production and in 1901, he started production of his own boards under the name "Ouija" [1].
The Fuld name would become synonymous with the Ouija board, as Fuld reinvented its history, claiming that he himself had invented it. Countless talking boards from Fuld's competitors flooded the market and all these boards enjoyed a heyday from the 1920s through the 1960s. Fuld sued many companies over the "Ouija" name and concept right up until his death in 1927. In 1966, Fuld's estate sold the entire business to Parker Brothers, who continues to hold all trademarks and patents. About 10 brands of talking boards are sold today under various names [2]. See also: Ka-Bala
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How is it done?
A Ouija board is operated by one or more users. They place the planchette on the board and then rest their fingers on the planchette. The users start moving the planchette around the board and speaking to the entity (or entities) they wish to summon; They then begin asking questions of it. Eventually the planchette will come to rest on one letter after another, spelling out a message. Often an additional participant records the messages on paper. As with automatic writing, the messages are often vague and open to interpretation, or complete gibberish.
Some talking boards have words or phrases written on them to simplify the interpretation of the messages. Tarot, zodiac, and other esoteric symbols are frequently incorporated into talking board's design, along with dramatic and mystical artwork. Some users prefer to improvise their own Ouija board. They may use a sheet of paper with the alphabet written on it or lettered cards placed around a table, together with an object like an overturned glass or coin as the indicator. Hand-made Ouija boards produced by artists are valued by talking board enthusiasts and collectors.
Many users feel that the spirit with whom they are communicating is controlling their motions to guide their hands, spelling out messages. They see the board as a tool or medium through which they communicate with the spirit realm. These believers often take offense at the dismissal of the talking board as merely a game. Other users contend that they are in control of their own actions, but that the talking board allows communication with their inner psychic voice or subconscious.
Some proponents of Ouija boards claim the activity is harmless fun. Others believe that they are communicating with spiritual entities but there is no harm in doing so provided that basic guidelines are followed. These rules often vary from user to user, but usually include things like never playing alone, beginning and ending a séance "properly", and always using the board in a "comfortable" environment. Numerous superstitions surround Ouija board use.
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Skeptical view
Few people who have investigated Ouija boards from a skeptical viewpoint accept that a piece of cardboard sold as a game can conjure spirits, evil or benevolent. The accepted theory among psychologists and skeptics is that the participants are subconsciously making small, involuntary, physical movements using a well-known, and well-understood, phenomenon called the Ideomotor effect. Experiments consistently suggest that, at best, the messages are received involuntarily from the participants themselves, and, at worst, by a manipulative player, possibly with the connivance of confederates within the group present.
In some instances, users of talking boards have communicated with "ghosts" of people who were not dead, as demonstrated by the British mentalist Derren Brown in his 2004 television special Derren Brown: Séance. Skeptic and magician James Randi, in his book An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural, points out that when blindfolded, Ouija board operators are unable to produce intelligible messages. Magicians Penn & Teller performed a similar demonstration in an episode of their television show Bullshit!.
These failures indicate, as skeptics believe, that people are simply very willing to fool themselves, for example, by the Forer effect. The public (and frequently energetically flaunted) expression of native and genuine fears and subconscious desires, often concerning death or sex, while appearing genuine, can frighten impressionable people, or cause them to loosen their purse strings (or both). It is for this reason alone that many skeptics suggest that the Ouija board is best avoided, particularly when each player may not absolutely trust, or know, every other player.
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Criticism of Ouija boards
Although Ouija boards are viewed by some as a positive spiritual device or a simple toy, there are people who believe they can be harmful, including Edgar Cayce, who called them "dangerous." Critics warn that evil demons pretend to be cooperative ghosts in order to trick players into becoming spiritually possessed.
Others believe that communicating with spirits using a Ouija board is dangerous. They contend that the sources of any spiritual communications are unknown, and therefore inexperienced users may inadvertently contact "harmful" entities. More "controlled" methods of communication with the spirit world - often involving a medium - are often recommended instead for those who are trying to discover something about themselves, or who are seeking answers to their questions.
Some practitioners claim to have had bad experiences related to the use of talking boards by being haunted by demons, seeing apparitions of spirits, and hearing voices after using these boards. A few Paranormal researchers, such as John Zaffis, claim that the majority of the worst cases of demon harassment and possession are caused by the use of Ouija boards.
Many Christians claim that use of a talking board is an evil taboo, as they believe it allows communication with evil demons, which is Biblically forbidden as a form of divination. Many of these people claim they could only get rid of these problems after Christian deliverance. Other Christians believe that no dead soul can be summoned, and that summoned spirits are always demons who are trying to harm humans.
Parapsychologist Martin Ebon in his book Satan Trap: Dangers of the Occult, states:
"It all may start harmlessly enough, perhaps with a Ouija board. [...] The Ouija will often bring startling information, [...] establishing credibility or identifying itself as someone who is dead. It is common that people who get into this sort of game think of themselves as having been "chosen" for a special task. [...] Quite often the Ouija turns vulgar, abusive or threatening. It grows demanding and hostile, and sitters may find themselves using the board [...] compulsively, as if "possessed" by a spirit, or hearing voices that control or command them."
Additionally, the late Roman Catholic priest Malachi Martin believed talking boards are dangerous and claimed that by using these devices a person opens themselves to demonic oppression or possession, topics upon which Martin spoke and wrote extensively for many years.
An example of the dangers of talking boards is the subject of the novel The Exorcist. Both the novel and the film of the same name are based on a story of a demon possession, caused by use of talking boards. The spirit in this story was removed by Catholic exorcists.
See also: Christian views on witchcraft
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Literature
Talking boards appear in countless books and movies. Their role in such varies from being a benign object to an evil entity. This demonstrates what an iconic part of culture the game has become. A more peculiar role of talking boards in literature stems from authors using the board to channel complete written works from the deceased.
In the early 1900s, St. Louis housewife Pearl Curran used her Ouija board communications with the ubiquitous spirit Patience Worth to publish a number of poems and prose. Pearl claimed that all of the writings came to her through séances, which she allowed the public to attend. In 1917 writer Emily G. Hutchings claimed to have communicated with and written a book dictated by Mark Twain from her Ouija board. Twain's survivors went to court to halt publication of the book that was later determined a hoax.
Since the 1970s, author Jane Roberts has transcribed text channeled from what she described as an "energy personality essence" named Seth. Topics attributed to Seth discuss the nature of physical reality, the origins of the universe, the theory of evolution, the many-worlds interpretation, the Christ story, and the purpose of life among other subjects and form a collection of more than 10 books and a number of videos and audio recordings.
Author John Fuller used a Ouija board in his research for his 1976 book The Ghost of Flight 401. As he was skeptical of its effectiveness, he worked with a medium and claimed they both contacted Don Repo, the flight engineer on the flight which crashed into the Everglades en route to Miami. According to Fuller, the information divined described facts that neither he nor the medium previously knew.
More recently, Pulitzer Prize winning poet James Merrill used a Ouija board and recorded what he claimed were messages from a number of deceased persons. He combined these messages with his own poetry in The Changing Light at Sandover (1982).
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Etymology
The term "Ouija" is derived from the French "oui" (for "yes") and the German "ja" (for "yes"). An alternative story suggests the name was revealed to inventor Charles Kennard during a Ouija séance and was claimed to be an Ancient Egyptian word meaning "good luck," although this is known to be incorrect. It has also been suggested the word was inspired by the name of the Moroccan city Oujda.
Despite its common usage, "Ouija" is a trademark and the word should be capitalized when used in print.
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Non-occult usage
In the technique of directional drilling, a mechanical calculator was used to perform calculations necessary to solve "how do I get 'there' from 'here'" problems. This board has traditionally been nicknamed a "Ouija Board." These calculations are done by computers these days, but often the name persists as the public or internal name of the relevant module.
In US Navy, "ouija board" is an informal term for the scale model of an aircraft carrier flight deck used by flight launch and recovery officers as a visual aid to manage launch and recovery stacking of aircraft on the flight deck.
Weegee was the pseudonym of Arthur Fellig, an American photographer and photojournalist.
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Books
Gruss, Edmond C. The Ouija Board: A Doorway to the Occult 1994 ISBN 0875522475
Hunt, Stoker. Ouija: The Most Dangerous Game. 1992 ISBN 0060923504
Roberts, Virginia Kent. My Friend, the Ouija Board. 2003 ISBN 0974138304
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External links
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External links of sites with information on talking boards
Museum Of Talking Boards
Witchboard World
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External links skeptical of talking boards
The Skeptics' Dictionary: Ouija
An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural
How does a Ouija board work? from The Straight Dope
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Spiritualism is a religious movement, prominent from the 1840s to the 1920s, found primarily in English-speaking countries. The movement's distinguishing feature is the belief that the spirits of the dead can be contacted by adepts. These spirits are believed to lie on a higher spiritual plane than humans, and are therefore capable of providing guidance in both worldly and spiritual matters
Origins
Modern Spiritualism first appeared in the 1840s in the Burned-Over District of upstate New York where earlier religious movements such as Millerism (Seventh Day Adventists) and Mormonism had emerged during the Second Great Awakening. It was an environment in which many people felt that direct communication with God or angels was possible, and in which many people felt uncomfortable with Calvinist notions that God would behave harshly — for example, that God would condemn unbaptized infants to an eternity in hell (Carroll 1997).
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Swedenborg and Mesmer
In this environment the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) and the teachings of Franz Mesmer (1734-1815) provided an example for those seeking direct personal knowledge of the afterlife (Carroll 1997). Swedenborg, who in trance states would commune with spirits, described in his voluminous writings the structure of the spirit world. Two features of his view particularly resonated with the early Spiritualists: first, that there is not a single hell and a single heaven, but rather a series of spheres through which a spirit progresses as it develops; second, that spirits mediate between God and humans, so that human direct contact with the divine is through the spirits of deceased humans.
Mesmer did not contribute religious beliefs, but he contributed a technique, latter known as hypnotism, that could induce trances and cause subjects to report contact with spiritual beings. There was a great deal of showmanship in Mesmerism, and the practitioners who lectured in mid-nineteenth century America sought to entertain audiences as well as demonstrate a method for personal contact with the divine.
One can see the excitement experienced by onlookers as the Mesmerist induces a trance. By Swedish painter Richard Bergh, 1887.Perhaps the best known of those who combined Swedenborg and Mesmer in a peculiarly American synthesis is Andrew Jackson Davis who called his system the Harmonial Philosophy. Davis was a practicing hypnotist, faith healer and clairvoyant from Poughkeepsie, New York. His 1847 book The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations, and a Voice to Mankind[1], dictated to a friend while in trance, eventually became the nearest thing to a canonical work in a Spiritualist movement whose extreme individualism precluded the development of a single coherent worldview (Carroll 1997; Braude 2001).
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Linked to the Reform Movement
Many of the early participants in Spiritualism were radical Quakers and others caught up in the reforming movement of the mid-nineteenth century. These reformers were uncomfortable with established churches because those churches did little to fight slavery and even less to advance women's rights. Women were particularly attracted to the movement, because it gave them important roles as mediums and trance lecturers. In fact Spiritualism provided one of the first forums in which American women could address mixed public audiences (Braude 2001).
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Physical Manifestations and Fraud
Spiritualists often set March 31, 1848 as the beginning of their movement. On that date, Kate and Margaret Fox, of Hydesville, New York, reported that they had made contact with the spirit of a murdered pedlar. What made this an extraordinary event was that the spirit communicated through audible rapping noises, rather than simply appearing to a person in a trance. The evidence of the senses appealed to practical Americans, and the Fox sisters became a sensation. Demonstrations of mediumship (séances and automatic writing, for example) proved to be a profitable venture, and soon became popular forms of entertainment and spiritual catharsis. The Foxes were to earn a living this way and others would follow their lead (Carroll 1997; Braude 2001).
In the following years, showmanship became an increasingly important part of Spiritualism, and the visible, audible, and tangible evidence of spirits escalated as mediums competed for paying audiences. Fraud was certainly widespread, as independent investigating commissions repeatedly established, most notably the 1887 report of the Seybert Commission [2]. Perhaps the best-known case of fraud involved the Davenport Brothers.
But despite widespread fraud, the appeal of Spiritualism was strong. First and foremost, the movement appealed to those grieving the death of a loved one: the resurgence of interest in Spiritualism during and after the first World War was a direct response to the massive number of casualties (Doyle 1926). But the movement also appealed strongly to reformers, who found that the spirits were in favor of such causes du jour as equal rights (Braude 2001).
The movement also appealed to those who had a materialist orientation and had rejected religion. The influential socialist and atheist Robert Owen embraced religion following his experiences in Spiritualist circles. Many scientific men who bothered to investigate the phenomena also ended up being converted. These include the chemist William Crookes, the evolutionary biologist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913)[3], and the physician and author Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)[4] (Doyle 1926).
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Widespread but Unorganized
The movement quickly spread throughout the world, though only in the United Kingdom did it become as widespread as in the United States (Britten 1884). In Britain, by 1853, invitations to tea among the prosperous and fashionable often included Table-Turning, a type of séance in which spirits would communicate with people seated around a table by tilting and rotating the table. The first attempt to systematize the practices and ideas related to the phenomena into a consistent philosophical system was made by the French educator Allan Kardec (1804-1869), who dedicated his last 15 years of life to establish and divulgate the Spiritism throughout the whole European continent. In Brazil, spiritist ideas originated a religious movement that counts with millions of followers nowadays (Hess 1987; Carroll 1997; Braude 2001).
American Spiritualists would meet in private homes for séances, at lecture halls for trance lectures, at summer camps attended by thousands, and at state or national conventions. The movement was extremely individualistic, with each Spiritualist relying on her own experiences and reading to discern the nature of the afterlife. Organization was therefore slow to appear, and when it did it was resisted by mediums and trance lecturers. Most Spiritualists were content to attend Christian churches, and Unitarian and particularly Universalist churches contained many Spiritualists. As the movement began to fade, partly through the bad publicity of exposed fraud, partly through the appeal of similar religious movements such as Christian Science, the Spiritualist Church was organized, and this church can claim to be the main vestige of the movement left today (Carroll 1997; Braude 2001).
This photograph from 1906 Chicago shows a group of middle-class women, meeting to discuss Spiritualism. The movement was primarily a middle and upper class phenomenon, and was particularly popular with women.[edit]
Other Prominent Mediums and Believers
Amy Post and Isaac Post were Hicksite Quakers from Rochester, New York. Long acquainted with the Fox family, they took the Fox sisters into their home in the late spring of 1848. As radical Quakers, campaigning for abolition and equal rights for women, they helped put a reform stamp on the movement (Braude 2001).
Achsa W. Sprague was born November 17, 1827, in Plymouth Notch, Vermont. At the age of 20, she became ill with rheumatic fever and credited her eventual recovery to intercession by spirits. An extremely popular trance lecturer, she traveled about the United States until her death in 1861. Like most Spiritualists of her time, Sprague was an abolitionist and an advocate of women's rights (Braude 2001).
Cora L. V. Scott (1840-1923) was the most popular trance lecturer prior to the American Civil War. Young and beautiful, her appearance on stage fascinated men. The incongruity of elevated discourse with her physical girlishness lent credibility to the notion that spirits were speaking through her. Cora married four times, and each time adopted her husband's last name. During her period of greatest activity she was known as Cora Hatch (Braude 2001).
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Characteristic Beliefs
Spiritualists believe in the possibility of communicating with spirits. A secondary belief is that spirits are in some way closer to God than living humans, and that spirits themselves are capable of growth and perfection. The afterlife is therefore not a static place, but one in which spirits continue to evolve. The two beliefs: that contact with spirits is possible, and that spirits are more advanced than humans, leads to a third belief, that spirits are capable of providing useful knowledge about moral and ethical issues, as well as about the nature of God and the afterlife. Thus many Spiritualists will speak of their spirit guides -specific spirits, often contacted, who are relied upon for worldly and spiritual guidance.
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Comparisons with Other Faiths
Spiritualism emerged in a Christian environment and has many features in common with Christianity: an essentially Christian moral system, a perceived belief in the Judeo-Christian God, mystical panentheism, and liturgical practices such as Sunday services and the singing of hymns. The primary reason for these similarities is that Spiritualists believe that some spirits are "low" or mischievous, and delight in leading humans astray. Therefore, beginning with Swedenborg, believers have been cautioned to hesitate before following the advice of spirits, and have usually developed their beliefs within a Christian framework.
Nevertheless, on significant points Christianity and Spiritualism are quite different. Spiritualists do not believe that the acts of this life lead to the assignment of each soul into an eternity of either Heaven or Hell; rather, they view the afterlife as containing many hierarchically arrayed "spheres," through which each spirit can successfully progress. Spiritualists also differ from Christians in that the Judeo-Christian Bible is not the primary source from which they derive knowledge of God and the afterlife: their own personal contacts with spirits provide that source.
Spiritualists were fiercely opposed by Christian leaders. Here a 1865 tract equates Spiritualism with Witchcraft, and blames the faith for inducing the Civil War. The tract goes on to (correctly) associate Spiritualism with Abolitionism.Religions other than Christianity have also influenced Spiritualism. Animist faiths, with a tradition of shamanism, are obviously similar, and in the first decades of Spiritualism many mediums claimed contact with American Indian spirit guides, in an apparent acknowledgment of these similarities. Unlike animists, however, spiritualists tend to speak only of the spirits of dead humans, and do not espouse a belief in spirits of trees, springs, or other natural features.
Hinduism, though an extremely heterogeneous belief system, generally shares a belief with Spiritualism in the separation of the soul from the body at death, and its continued existence. But Hindus differ from Spiritualists in that they typically believe in reincarnation, and typically hold that all features of a person's personality are extinguished at death. Spiritualists, however, maintain that the spirit retains the personality it possessed during its (single) human existence.
Spiritism, the branch of Spiritualism developed by Allan Kardec and predominant in most Latin countries, has always emphasized reincarnation. According to Arthur Conan Doyle, most British Spiritualists of the early Twentieth century were indifferent to the doctrine of reincarnation, very few supported it, while a significant minority were vehemently opposed, since it had never been mentioned by spirits contacted in séance. Thus, according to Doyle, it is the empirical bent of Anglophone Spiritualism —its effort to develop religious views from actual observation of phenomena— that kept Spiritualists of this period from embracing reincarnation (Doyle 1926: volume 2, 171-181).
Spiritualism also differs from occult movements, such as Order of the Golden Dawn or the contemporary Wiccan covens, in that spirits are not contacted in order to obtain magical powers (with the single exception of obtaining power for healing). For example, Madame Blavatsky (1831-1891) of the Theosophical Society only practiced mediumship in order to contact powerful spirits capable of confering esoteric knowledge. Blavatsky apparently did not believe that these spirits were deceased humans, and in fact held beliefs in reincarnation that were quite different from the views of most Spiritualists (Braude 2001).
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Developments after the 1920s
Already by the late nineteenth century Spiritualism had become increasingly syncretic, a natural development in a movement without central authority or dogma (Braude 2001). In its most syncretic form, Spiritualism is not readily distinguishable from the similarly syncretic New Age movement, and like the New Age movement draws heavily from shamanism and embraces the idea of reincarnation. Nevertheless, the form of Spiritualist practice is much the same today as it was 100 years ago, centered on a medium and her clients, sitting singly or in a séance. Perhaps the greatest difference is the increased importance of the Spiritualist Church as a network linking mediums and believers. Organized Spiritualism today appears much more like a religion, and has discarded most showmanship, particularly those elements resembling the conjurer's art. There is thus today a much greater emphasis on "mental" mediumship and an almost complete avoidance of the miraculous "materializing" mediumship that so fascinated early believers such as Arthur Conan Doyle (Guthrie, Lucas, and Monroe 2000).
Nevertheless, Spiritualism's empirical orientation has many adherents today, who largely avoid the label of "Spiritualism," preferring the term "Survivalism." Survivalists eschew religion, and base their belief in the afterlife on phenomena susceptible to at least rudimentary scientific investigation, such as mediumship, near death experiences, out-of-body experiences, electronic voice phenomena, and reincarnation research. Many Survivalists see themselves as the intellectual heirs of the Spiritualist movement[5].
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References
Brandon, Ruth. 1983. The Spiritualists: The Passion for the Occult in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Braude, Ann. 2001. Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women's Rights in Nineteenth-Century America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0253215021.
Britten, Emma Hardinge. 1884. Nineteenth Century Miracles: Spirits and their Work in Every Country of the Earth. New York: William Britten.
Brown, Slater. 1970. The Heyday of Spiritualism, New York: Hawthorn Books.
Buescher, John B. 2003. The Other Side of Salvation: Spiritualism and the Nineteenth-Century Religious Experience. Boston: Skinner House Books. ISBN 1-55896-448-7.
Carroll, Bret E. 1997. Spiritualism in Antebellum America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0253333156.
Doyle, Arthur Conan. 1926. The History of Spiritualism. New York: G.H. Doran, Co. Volume 1 Volume 2. ISBN 1410102432.
Guthrie, John J. Jr., Phillip Charles Lucas, and Gary Monroe (editors). 2000. Cassadaga: the South’s Oldest Spiritualist Community. Gainesville, FL : University Press of Florida. ISBN 0813017432.
Hess, David. Spiritism and Science in Brazil. Ph.D thesis, Dept. of Anthropology, Cornell University, 1987.
Weisberg, Barbara. 2004. Talking to the Dead, San Francisco: Harper.
Wicker, Christine. 2003. Lily Dale: the True Story of the Town that talks to the Dead, San Francisco:Harper.
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See also
Spiritualist Church
Spiritism
Theosophy
Necromancy
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Critics
Michel Eugène Chevreul
Harry Price
Harry Houdini
Thomson Jay Hudson
James Randi
COMMENTS
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