Ouija
[2] Following its commercial patent by businessman Elijah Bond being passed on 10 February 1891,[3] the Ouija board was regarded as an innocent parlor game unrelated to the occult until American spiritualist Pearl Curran popularized its use as a divining tool during World War I.
[2][5][6][7][8] Mainstream Christian denominations, including Catholicism, have warned against the use of Ouija boards, considering their use in Satanic practices, while other religious groups hold that they can lead to demonic possession.
[9][10] Occultists, on the other hand, are divided on the issue, with some claiming it can be a tool for positive transformation, while others reiterate the warnings of many Christians and caution "inexperienced users" against it.
The use of planchette writing as an ostensible means of necromancy and communion with the spirit-world continued, and, albeit under special rituals and supervisions, was a central practice of the Quanzhen School, until it was forbidden by the Qing dynasty.
Following the American Civil War in the United States, mediums did significant business in allegedly allowing survivors to contact lost relatives.
[20][21] Various studies have been conducted, recreating the effects of the Ouija board in the lab and showing that, under laboratory conditions, the subjects were moving the planchette involuntarily.
[24] According to professor of neurology Terence Hines in his book Pseudoscience and the Paranormal (2003):[25] The planchette is guided by unconscious muscular exertions like those responsible for table movement.
Nonetheless, in both cases, the illusion that the object (table or planchette) is moving under its own control is often extremely powerful and sufficient to convince many people that spirits are truly at work ...
A dissociative state is one in which consciousness is somehow divided or cut off from some aspects of the individual's normal cognitive, motor, or sensory functions.Some involuntary movements are known as "Automatism".
[26] Ouija boards were already criticized by scholars early on, being described in a 1927 journal as "'vestigial remains' of primitive belief-systems" and a con to part fools from their money.
Cautionary tales that the board opens a door to evil spirits turn the game into the subject of a supernatural dare, especially for young people.
Crowley also discussed the Ouija board with another of his students, and the most ardent of them, Frater Achad (Charles Stansfeld Jones): it is frequently mentioned in their unpublished letters.
Crowley has stated, of the Ouija Board, that[45] There is, however, a good way of using this instrument to get what you want, and that is to perform the whole operation in a consecrated circle, so that undesirable aliens cannot interfere with it.
A few simple instructions are all that is necessary, and I shall be pleased to give these, free of charge, to any one who cares to apply.Ouija boards have figured prominently in horror tales in various media as devices enabling malevolent spirits to spook their users.
Using a Ouija board the young girl Regan makes what first appears to be harmless contact with an entity named "Captain Howdy".
In 2011, The Ouija Experiment portrayed a group of friends whose use of the board opens, and fails to close, a portal between the worlds of the living and the dead.
[citation needed] The rap group Bone Thugs-n-Harmony referenced Ouija on their Horrorcore albums Creepin on ah Come Up and E. 1999 Eternal, having been inspired by seeing the board at Toys "R" Us.
[63] Jeremy Gans' nonfiction book, The Ouija Board Jurors: Mystery, Mischief and Misery in the Jury System, based on an article he wrote for the University of Melbourne,[64] recounts an incident in which four jurors sought the help of a Ouija board during a double murder trial, both for guidance and to relieve the stress precipitated by the brutal images of evidence.
[65] The sitcom Steptoe and Son in Series 8 Episode 6, includes a scene with a Ouija board where Harold briefly fools Albert into believing that they are in contact with the ghost of Adolf Hitler.
