Ouija

Padma said:

I had to look up Lily Dale I had never heard of it before!

And...even a pink Ouija doesn't tempt me

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we will go there when I win the lottery. I have a feeling it will be like "Ah! Here is where all my people have been hiding!" lol My husband said that I should just astrally travel there to save money. Jerk. haha!

I did see a very old hard carved ouija board at an antique store once. It was amazing. Angels carved all over it. Dark wood. Beautiful! I was tempted until I saw the $2000 price tag. Ouch!

GotH said:

Wow.. Look at that. Targeted to go nicely next to the Barbie Malibu Beach House! I know you are a collector so I really hope I don't offend you but I find that more creepy than a vintage, antique spirit board. Thanks for sharing the pic..

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Bahaha, I'm not offended in the least. I have quite a few God-awful things for the collection's sake. You don't want to know how bad some old Atari games are, for example.

It's not creepy to me at all. Silly, absolutely. The cards are the sorts of questions 12 year olds ask at slumber parties, and most could be answered by a pendulum and not a talking board.

@EA: the $2000 price tag is more than a bit steep, even for a handmade work of art. Although really, the value would depend on the buyer.

Hell, if people don't want to cough up even 15 for a basic board, get a posterboard, Sharpie, and a shot glass. It works just as well as a commercial board.

bonebeach said:

Essentially...yeah, I'd say it's necromancy, if you're taking a really broad view of necromancy. But among many religions, ancestor worship is common, with shrines to the beloved dead, and you ask them questions, or they help you with spells...is that, too, necromancy? Because a lot of it is white tablecloths and nice glasses filled with holy water, and not what people typically think of as necromancy.

Latin America still has a lot of influence from the Spiritualism movement of the 19th-ish century, and I personally don't *really* think of seances and spirit boards as necromancy...but they also...essentially are. If working with the dead is necromancy, then that stuff is necromancy.

I grew up practicing Santeria and Vodoun, and while in Santeria specializing in talking to the dead is its own thing and you're supposed to build a nice little separate area for offerings and stuff...no one thinks of it as necromancy. In vodoun, the dead are the ghede and they are EVERYWHERE, can come into any ceremony, at ANY time, and eat anyone's offerings. They are the tricksters. They have the best dances. They're the most *lively* of the spirits. It's all very interesting stuff.

All of that said, I *never* used a ouija board growing up. It just wasn't a thing that people did, because the vibe is so--different? from talking to the ancestors with coconut pieces and whatever. I make myself a ouija board for fun one Halloween, well into my late 20's. It was fun, but nothing mind blowing happening either way. It definitely "worked," but my spirit contacts were all very silly (and likely ghede).

I also don't really think of myself as a necromancer...though I no longer formerly practice the religions I grew up with, so I do this solitary witchcraft thing that involves lots of hanging out in graveyards...but just because I work with a dead god (or loa--technically not a GOD GOD but like a saint, sort of, but really kind of more than that, too--translation is tricky), I still don't actually do much with the dead themselves, so...is that necromancy? No idea. I don't really mind either way. I wear a lot of black and too much eyeliner and have a third of my head shaved, so why not.

Lots of Asian religions are also really heavy on the ancestor worship, and arguably some of the rituals are necromantic, but it's still not what people mean when they say necromancy. It just depends on what paradigm you're working in. But I think that if you use the broad definition of working with the dead = necromancy, and OH BOY, the world has a *ton* of necromancers in it, and most of them aren't at all concerned that they're following a dark path or anything... because its very normal.

Anyway, sorry for the long answer! I just wanted to give a different cultural perspective.

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Hi bonebeach! Wow, thanks for all that insight. And from an adept of Santeria and Vodoun! Man, if I were anywhere near you I am so taking you out to lunch. I have so many questions about it, but that would be heavily off topic. You must be fascinating. And please take that as it is, since I don't do sarcasm.

Just to qualify though. I was raised in a predominantly Roman Catholic milieu that is nevertheless very open to a few things proscribed by the Church. Very few people would bat an eyelash here about Tarot and cartomancy, and they might even be interested in it. Many schoolkids engage in Spirit of the Glass or Spirit of the Coin, a makeshift version of the Ouija board where they crudely draw letters, numbers and the Yes/No on a clean white board and use large coins or glasses in lieu of a planchette. We do honor our dead - every year for three days (from Halloween in October 31 to the All Souls' Day in November 2) we visit the cemeteries and mausoleums where our dead relatives and ancestors rest. It is a bit cheery rather than morose, since we believe that our ancestors would be more satisfied seeing us happy than grieving. We sometimes pray that they support us in our decisions, and if they may, to intercede for us with the great spirits they dwell with in heaven. We do care about our dead, but we do not really wish to make absolute contact with them. Our traditions draw a line at necromancy.

Necromancy for me does not mean simply working with the dead. It is not the Chinese burning paper offerings to gain their ancestors' favors, or Catholics sometimes beseeching their dead to intercede for them in times of great crisis (we usually pray directly to saints, angels, Mama Mary, or the Holy Trinity), or a recently bereaved widow "talking" to her deceased husband about how much she misses him, and how the kids are doing great, etc. I think necromancy refers to trying to communicate with the dead and expecting them to make contact with you, either directly through seances or through traditional systems like the Ouija. Just like the -mancy part of cartomancy, geomancy, etc., necromancy involves invoking dead souls in order to gain knowledge of hidden things - like the future for example. So mages accessing the spirits of dead guardians to know where treasures are buried and how to avoid traps in it practice necromancy, as do giggly people who consult the Ouija and ask if their crushes would ever be their boyfriends.

However, necromancy posits that you contact particularly the spirits of the dead (the necro- part) to gain arcane knowledge. If other spirits (like elementals, nature spirits, or evil beings) are invoked, whether accidentally or not it is not exactly necromancy per se. In the Christian Bible, King Saul asked the Witch of Endor to summon the spirit of the prophet Samuel to help him against the
Philistines when he received no answer from God. Many scholars say that it was not Samuel's spirit that was invoked, but a demon or evil spirit that assumed his form. I remember in grade school (yep, I was a Catholic schoolboy), the nuns taught us that there are no dead spirits here on earth per se, that the souls of the dead proceed either to Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory, and that what we see as ghosts are actually wayward spirits. I am not so clear about the Christian dogma on that as it was years ago. The point is: if authorities do not believe that the ghosts of the dead roam the earth, then technically necromancy is impossible, right?

My apologies if I rambled on too long. This subject just fascinates me.

By the way, I do believe that the spirits of the dead roam here still. And even if it is verboten, I do not condemn necromancy at all. I even find it interesting. But if it the malignant, then like most people I definitely would not approve of it.

That said, perhaps one day I will try the Ouija. With friends, in a hotel room on the night of the Day of the Dead. I hope someone hear posts a detailed ceremony or ritual for this, with the appropriate methods for invoking and closing. I hear that the consequent problems people experience is because the spirits were not "released" properly at the conclusion of the session. There are some guides in the internet (of course) but I think nothing would beat a detailed rundown from a person who actually hosted a session that had no ill after-effects to any of the participants.

EmpyreanKnight said:

That said, perhaps one day I will try the Ouija. With friends, in a hotel room on the night of the Day of the Dead.

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This totally makes me want to count down the days until Halloween!


By the way.... Is anyone interested in getting married on Halloween this year? I'd LOVE to plan your wedding.. I dream of it.

EmpressArwen said:

I had one in my teen years. I was given a name of a "spirit" that spoke through it. I won't write the name. I know some people feel comfortable with ouija boards, but I'm not. There was a strange feeling of darkness around when I used it. I wouldn't do it again.

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You can write the name backwards without worry of summoning unwelcome entities. For future reference of course.

Sent from my DROID RAZR HD using Tapatalk

EmpyreanKnight said:

I would never use one of those darn things, ever. Here in my country, there are far too many anecdotes of silly schoolgirls getting possessed after trying to finish a session incorrectly, and which authorities attribute to mass hysteria.

Just a question. Usually, it is the spirit of deceased person/s that are summoned in Ouija sessions, right? And sometimes, you can even ask these spirits questions about the past, present, or even the future. I guess this is self-explanatory since we are in this sub-forum anyway. In any case, if you ask a dead person these questions, I guess that means that you practice necromancy? I dunno, but I heard that among the different types of divination techniques, this is the most forbidden.

Please don't think I am pre-judging people who use Ouija boards. It would be refreshing to know their or other people's points of view though.

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That is an interesting question, about necromancy. Several months ago, many of us ATers started a "Tarot and Ancestor Work" thread, in which we used our tarot cards to find out information about our deceased relatives. I don't think any of us had the intention of being necromancers, but we did receive "messages" that seemed to relate to our deceased family members. However, if we had been using a Ouija board for the same purpose, it would have felt more creepy and completely wrong (to me). I wonder why? What is the difference, really?

Also, I was raised as a Roman Catholic, and though the Church didn't encourage us to pray to our deceased relatives, it was (and still is) a common practice in my family to do so. We have always lit candles and asked our deceased loved ones to be intercessors, or to pass on information to us. Yet, if the topic of Ouija boards comes up, my family is horrified and considers it the work of the Devil.

It's interesting to see the distinctions people make, and where they are willing to draw the line.

GotH said:

This totally makes me want to count down the days until Halloween!

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Yeah! There's a top-tier hotel here that holds a monstrously decadent annual Halloween Masked Ball. There are stories here that certain rooms there are haunted, some say by suicides. I guess I'd just gather three more friends and rent a suite, play the Ouija in our costumes, and just party the night away in case things get too scary. Or even if they don't. Anyway, we would have to be careful not to touch the board while we're inebriated - that seems like the perfect formula for a clusterf*ck.

Btw, is it true that you must never ever have five people play the Ouija board at the same time? They say that doing so would form a pentagram, and in that case either an evil spirit or demon would be summoned, and/or that one of the participants will be bound to die soon.

RiverRunsDeep said:

That is an interesting question, about necromancy. Several months ago, many of us ATers started a "Tarot and Ancestor Work" thread, in which we used our tarot cards to find out information about our deceased relatives. I don't think any of us had the intention of being necromancers, but we did receive "messages" that seemed to relate to our deceased family members. However, if we had been using a Ouija board for the same purpose, it would have felt more creepy and completely wrong (to me). I wonder why? What is the difference, really?

Also, I was raised as a Roman Catholic, and though the Church didn't encourage us to pray to our deceased relatives, it was (and still is) a common practice in my family to do so. We have always lit candles and asked our deceased loved ones to be intercessors, or to pass on information to us. Yet, if the topic of Ouija boards comes up, my family is horrified and considers it the work of the Devil.

It's interesting to see the distinctions people make, and where they are willing to draw the line.

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The Ancestor Work thread sounds interesting. I'm going to dig that up.

Usually we pray to saints, our guardian angels, to the Holy Family, etc. when we are in a tight crisis, or even if we have problems that we can't seem to shake. And sometimes we do pray to our ancestors and deceased love ones, especially those who have been close to us in life, to guide us and help us steer our family's ship through sometimes difficult waters. For some people, if they have important family decisions to make which they have tried to rationally analyze but could not solve, they ask for feedback from their dead in the form of signs or omens, or through dreams. I wonder if these can be called necromancy if there are no formal rituals or systems involved.

Regarding the unease with which people regard the Ouija, I think this is because of its blatantly corporeal nature. With the Tarot or oracles or playing cards, it is still our hands which shuffle and cut and deal. We have many explanations as to how these are so effective - that through deep meditation we channel guides who stay our hands when the cards have been precisely dealt to show us the right answers, etc. When we look at the position of tea leaves in a cup, or throw three coins in the air and note of how they landed, or even peer through the fresh, steaming entrails of a sacrificial goat, these may be very mystical and meaningful, but these too are hardly supernatural. Even with pendulums - it may just be a providential draft of air. Or some say that under a deep, meditative state, we can access the Akashic records and know the answer to almost anything. When we have drawn the answer from this well, subconsciously our brain sends signals to our fingers that result in nervous microtwitches, precisely controling the swing of the pendulums to reflect the hidden knowledge we have dredged. Again, the running theme through all of these methods is the benign and inherently passive way with which our guides, angels, higher self, etc. provides us with insight to our problems.

But with the Ouija, it is different. We actually feel an active, physical force pushing and guiding the planchette. This is the finger of fate made manifest, the otherwordly made palpable in our material plane. In this we recoil in horror because whatever illusion of control we maintain in the other methods of divination is forcibly stripped away. This may be an external entity that we know we may not have any mastery over, that may itself be sentient and capable of its own thoughts, and that, if it proves malignant, may actually physically hurt us. If it can move a piece of wood, who knows what else it can be capable of manipulating.

And there is the sense of one's having invited an entity over, a thing whose nature one is not entirely sure of. Are they beings of light, souls of the dead, nature spirits, or something entirely darker? One cannot be sure that these entities are compelled to tell the truth, they may actually say anything to exert a reverse control over the summoners. And having invited them over, one has a sense that whatever happens next, whether good or bad, is their very own fault. Because one has to suffer the consequences of one's actions, right?

This is an interesting thread... my partner recently got a ouija 'board' which is just the image of a board printed on fancy paper. We've talked about it on different occasions, but I really have no interest in communicating with spirits, so I put it away. If we ever did use it, I doubt we would do it in our house... our roommate is a bit paranoid even without the release of spirits in the living room.

One of my friends sees spirits all the time, as does her sister. They're mischievous sometimes, they play pranks on her that would freak out people who don't consider that a part of life. So I guess I do 'believe' that these entities exist, but personally I feel I've always been protected in a way from the lower kinds. I've only felt the presence of beautiful creatures. Maybe there's a part of me that wants to keep it that way.

This same friend's father (who has now passed on) played with a Ouija board in his youth... and was harassed by a spirit for many years after. He had to burn the board. I was warned against using it and told this story as an example...

I also think there's something to the idea that the dead don't need to be disturbed. If there are many stages that they go through after death, they can do without our trying to ask them frivolous questions during that. I'm also not curious about what they could potentially convey to us, because in my experience, if a loved one wants to tell you something from beyond the grave, they have many ways of doing it. I've received messages from my grandmother through dreams and through my mother's dreams and memories. I wouldn't try to talk to her through a ouija board because I don't need to.

Given a chance though, I would definitely communicate with a spirit that was already present somewhere it shouldn't be. Like if someone I knew felt that their house was 'haunted', and had had experiences with an entity there, I would probably use a pendulum to try to persuade it to leave. I believe that in most situations like that, the spirit doesn't know that it needs to move on, and could use some gentle prodding.