Here's a fun video I came across about Ouija boards and other spirit communication devices. It's from back in 2015, but I apparently missed it when it first came out. Brandon Hodge, who appears in the video, is a well-known expert on Ouija boards, planchettes, and automatic writing devices, and the video includes footage of various items from his remarkable collection. We generally just think of Ouija boards when we imagine these devices, but in fact there were many other designs back in the day that had substantial followings among spiritualists.
I spent a number of years working with homemade "talking boards" of various designs when I was a teenager, and I will say that my experiences there still inform some of my work with spirits today. Over the course of those years, I worked out how to test spirits you get in contact with, how to recognize real channeled material versus made-up stuff, and so forth. That's super-important when you get into astral work and things like that, because especially when you're starting out, you can run into entities who are not the spirits they claim to be.
The biggest takeaway for me was that the easiest spirits to get in contact with are generally the dumbest, and they will tell you anything you want to hear to keep you talking. And, of course, that the board itself isn't dangerous at all, unlike fundamentalists claim. It's just a focus for your own psychic ability or that of whoever you're working with, and nonsense like burning the board won't accomplish anything if a spirit decides to come after you - which, I will add, is usually pretty rare.
Talking boards can be used in the context of magical ceremonies, too. You just have to go through the same sort of diligence that you do with a ceremony - observe the proper prayers, or forms, or whatever it is that you usually employ, and set up a proper link to the spirit that you want to contact so you can be reasonably sure that you're communicating with the right one. You do want to avoid is a random procedure, the "hey spirits, come and get me" method. It's still not dangerous for the most part, but you're unlikely to learn anything useful from it.
Morbid Anatomy presents this short film by Ronni Thomas exploring Brandon Hodge’s incredible personal collection of planchettes and other devices used to communicate with the spirit world. From his profile on the Talking Board Historical Society:
"Brandon Hodge is a collector, author, historian, and the prevailing authority on automatic writing planchettes and early spirit communication devices. Long fascinated by the bizarre occult world of tipping tables, séances, Spiritualism, and ghostly encounters, Brandon acquired his first automatic writer—a boxed E.I.H. Scientific Planchette—nearly two decades ago. He has since traveled the globe documenting, collecting, and lecturing on the world’s rarest séance artifacts."
For more, check out his website at mysteriousplanchette.com.
I spent a number of years working with homemade "talking boards" of various designs when I was a teenager, and I will say that my experiences there still inform some of my work with spirits today. Over the course of those years, I worked out how to test spirits you get in contact with, how to recognize real channeled material versus made-up stuff, and so forth. That's super-important when you get into astral work and things like that, because especially when you're starting out, you can run into entities who are not the spirits they claim to be.
The biggest takeaway for me was that the easiest spirits to get in contact with are generally the dumbest, and they will tell you anything you want to hear to keep you talking. And, of course, that the board itself isn't dangerous at all, unlike fundamentalists claim. It's just a focus for your own psychic ability or that of whoever you're working with, and nonsense like burning the board won't accomplish anything if a spirit decides to come after you - which, I will add, is usually pretty rare.
Talking boards can be used in the context of magical ceremonies, too. You just have to go through the same sort of diligence that you do with a ceremony - observe the proper prayers, or forms, or whatever it is that you usually employ, and set up a proper link to the spirit that you want to contact so you can be reasonably sure that you're communicating with the right one. You do want to avoid is a random procedure, the "hey spirits, come and get me" method. It's still not dangerous for the most part, but you're unlikely to learn anything useful from it.
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