posted August 27, 2013 03:36 PM            

Been there done that ONCE! Scared the living hell out of me, left it in my old house in the attic...should have burned the damn thing!!!!

Are Ouija boards harmless children’s toys, or tools of the devil?
~By Patti Wigington, About.com Guide

The Ouija board is one of the most controversial forms of divination.

Question: Are Ouija boards harmless children’s toys, or tools of the devil?

I bought a Ouija board because I want to talk to spirits. My dad says it’s a tool of the Devil but I think I’ll be fine. What do you think?

Answer:

Erm… well, I’m going to let the whole “devil” bit slide, but let’s look at this a bit more in depth, shall we?

Here’s the problem with a Ouija Board — anyone can use one, and no skill is required. In other words, the thing that makes the Ouija Board so easy to use is also what can make it potentially troublesome. Toy and game companies sell them by the thousands, but most people don’t realize exactly what they are. Are they evil? No, no more than your Monopoly board is. Are they dangerous? Well, in the hands of someone who’s untrained — or an idiot — they could be. Look at it as a spiritual version of the chat room, if that helps. There’s nothing at all wrong with talking to thirty strangers… until one of them turns out to be a serial killer or a pedophile. And the thing is, you don’t KNOW who is what when you enter that room. Same with a Ouija board.

A Ouija Board is, quite simply, a divinatory tool. Its purpose is to answer a question by inviting spirits to speak to the people using the board. There’s no guarantee that anything will happen at all… but there’s also no way to control what DOES happen.

The use of a Ouija board is a form of voluntary possession. In order to get the spirit to contact you through the planchette, you basically have to give up your will — it’s the only way for them to work through you. The spirit isn’t moving the planchette, but it’s causing you to move it with your hands by way of possession. Once you’ve opened up the Ouija board, it’s a crapshoot as to what’s going to try to make contact — you don’t know who or what is moving that planchette around, or what its purpose is.

The bottom line — if you’re unsure about what you’re doing, or inexperienced with dealing with spirits, you may want to find some other method of divination that doesn’t involve voluntary possession.

.

posted August 27, 2013 09:34 PM            

You crack me up and your intelligence blows me away!!!

Thank you!!!

posted August 28, 2013 02:25 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Lexxigramer:
edited out my quoted comment>Lexx<

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If one knows what they are doing...A "parlor game" they are not.

The thing really scared me, no for me!

posted August 29, 2013 08:51 AM            

When I used one, I wasnt afraid, till afterward.

I made it clear No malifcent energies would be allowed in, blessed, prayed, etc, prior.

And still some little **** got in.

posted September 04, 2013 01:53 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by hippichick:
Gabby

When I used one, I wasnt afraid, till afterward.

I made it clear No malifcent energies would be allowed in, blessed, prayed, etc, prior.

And still some little **** got in.

Just aint for me

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Oh, im totally with you on that! Yes, i do think its fear but what are we afraid of?? Ummm, im not sure what im afraid of sometimes until it shows up in front of me and UGH...i find out something new about myself! Because of that, i wouldnt touch one...lol!
I may think ive got myself covered and have no fear, but my subconscious may have a completely different set of fears that i'm not aware of just because they havent made their way to the surfaced....yet, but im not helping them along!
I take no chances, i bet ive got some deep $h!+ going on inside my lil subconscious, i refuse to unleash any beasts into my reality...ugh, if i can help it!

posted September 04, 2013 07:34 PM              

We had lots of scary experiences. Feeling something surrounding us and noises. We were terrified one night and our grandma prayed with us. she felt the scary energy we had released into the house. we threw it away and still got 2 more boards after that.

The last time we messed with it i was about 13. We were sitting down playing and when we asked who it was it went to D then E. we all looked at eachother. When it went to V we all ran for our lives. My cousin fell on my back and i crawled out with her on my back.

We threw it away and learned our lesson.

posted September 05, 2013 12:07 PM            

Yea sold as a "parlor game."

posted September 05, 2013 02:16 PM            

Following its commercial introduction by businessman Elijah Bond on July 1, 1890, the Ouija board was regarded as a harmless parlor game unrelated to the occult until American Spiritualist Pearl Curran popularized its use as a divining tool during World War I.

Mainstream religions and some occultists have associated use of a Ouija board with the concept of demonic possession, and view the use of the board as a spiritual threat and have cautioned their followers not to use a Ouija board.

Despite being harshly criticized by the scientific community and deemed superstitious by traditional Christians, Ouija remains popular among many people.

History
China
See also: Fuji (planchette writing)
Wang Chongyang, founder of the Quanzhen School, depicted in Changchun Temple, Wuhan
A modern ouija board plus planchette

One of the first mentions of the automatic writing method used in the Ouija board is found in China around 1100 AD, in historical documents of the Song Dynasty. The method was known as fuji, "planchette writing". The use of planchette writing as an ostensible means of contacting the dead and 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. Several entire scriptures of the Daozang are supposedly works of automatic planchette writing. Similar methods of mediumistic spirit writing have been widely practiced in ancient India, Greece, Rome, and medieval Europe.

During the late 19th century, planchettes were widely sold as a novelty. The businessmen Elijah Bond and Charles Kennard had the idea to patent a planchette sold with a board on which the alphabet was printed. The patentees filed on May 28, 1890 for patent protection and thus had invented the first Ouija board. Issue date on the patent was February 10, 1891. They received U.S. Patent 446,054. Bond was an attorney and was an inventor of other objects in addition to this device. 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". Kennard claimed he learned the name "Ouija" from using the board and that it was an ancient Egyptian word meaning "good luck." When Fuld took over production of the boards, he popularized the more widely accepted etymology, that the name came from a combination of the French and German words for "yes". The Fuld name would become synonymous with the Ouija board, as Fuld reinvented its history, claiming that he himself had invented it. The strange talk about the 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 [n]Parker Brothers[/b], which was sold to Hasbro in 1991, and which continues to hold all trademarks and patents. About ten brands of talking boards are sold today under various names.

Criticism
Religious

Most religious criticism of the Ouija board has come from Christians , primarily evangelicals in the United States.
In 2001, Ouija boards were burned in Alamogordo, New Mexico by fundamentalist groups alongside Harry Potter books as "symbols of witchcraft." Religious criticism has also expressed beliefs that the Ouija board reveals information which should only be on God's hands, and thus it is a tool of Satan. A spokesperson for Human Life International described the boards as a portal to talk to spirits and called for Hasbro to be prohibited from marketing them.

Bishops in Micronesia called for the boards to be banned and warned congregations that they were talking to demons and devils when using the boards.

Popular
Ouija boards have been criticized in the press since their inception; having been variously described as "'vestigial remains' of primitive belief-systems" and a con to part fools from their money. Some journalists have described reports of Ouija board findings as 'half truths' and have suggested that their inclusion in national newspapers lowers the national discourse overall.

Academic
The Ouija phenomenon has been criticized by many scientists as a hoax related to the ideomotor response. Various studies have been produced, recreating the effects of the Ouija board in the lab and showing that, under laboratory conditions, the subjects were moving the planchette involuntarily. Detractors have described Ouija board users as 'operators'. Some critics noted that the messages ostensibly spelled out by spirits were similar to whatever was going through the minds of the subjects.

In the 1970s Ouija board users were also described as "cult members" by sociologists, though this was severely scrutinised in the field.
Use in creation of literature

Ouija boards have been the source of inspiration for literary works, used as guidance in writing, or as a form of channeling literary works. As a result of Ouija boards becoming popular in the early 20th century, by the 1920s many "psychic" books were written of varying quality often initiated by Ouija board use.

Emily Grant Hutchings claimed that her 1917 novel Jap Herron: A Novel Written from the Ouija Board was dictated by Mark Twain's spirit through the use of a Ouija board after his death.

Poems and novels written by Patience Worth, an alleged spirit, contacted by Pearl Lenore Curran, for more than 20 years, were initially transcribed from sessions with a Ouija board.

In 1982, poet James Merrill released an apocalyptic 560-page epic poem entitled The Changing Light at Sandover, which documented two decades of messages dictated from the Ouija board during séances hosted by Merrill and his partner David Noyes Jackson. Sandover, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1983, was published in three volumes beginning in 1976. The first contained a poem for each of the letters A through Z, and was called The Book of Ephraim. It appeared in the collection Divine Comedies, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977. According to Merrill, the spirits ordered him to write and publish the next two installments, Mirabell: Books of Number in 1978 (which won the National Book Award for Poetry) and Scripts for the Pageant in 1980.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouija

posted September 09, 2013 06:08 PM            

I did not believe the assortment of Ouija boards!

posted September 12, 2013 12:26 AM            

A friend and I started playing with one when we both had very small babies at home and we didn't have much to do when they were napping and stuff..

So, it was just her and I. We got the planchette moving right away!
Course I thought she was pushing it, and she thought I was pushing it.
So, we went through all the questions we could possibly ask for our own selves and we were down to asking dumb stuff when my husband came into the room.
He said, "Ask if it it knows why my Uncle (blank) committed suicide?"

So, we asked it ..
it basically said that he did that because he was secretly gay and had been with a man a couple times and he was afraid that his wife, kids, mother and sister would find out, so he decided to get drunk and take a bunch of pills.
It said he really didn't mean to kill himself.

Ok, so my husband says, "That thing is a liar, he never took any pills he shot himself! Plus nothing about him being gay was ever mentioned, that's not true.
So, we just shrugged and moved on.

A few weeks later my MIL came over and she wanted to know what the board said. I didn't say anything bc I didn't know what VERSION should I tell her. This was her dear older brother that she idolized.. my husband was there and he said tell her everything.
So, I did.
She broke down into sobs and more sobs and I felt just awful but it turned out that SHE had known about the other man! Her brother had confessed that to her before he died!! In fact, he was going to be getting a divorce soon (had he lived) because his wife knew about it too! But they kept it a secret.
And the kicker!!
His mother at the time was a cancer patient.
This was her firstborn and most beloved boy.
So, they lied..

He never shot himself, he took HER heavy duty pain pills to kill himself, but they feared if she knew that, she would lose all her will to live!! So, they made up a story and back then in the 70's people just went along with what was said, they didn't really kick up too much of a fuss.
It didn't matter anyway because she passed 3 months later.