Monday! I have been having fun with online Ouija boards lately. Partly because I'm curious, and partly because it's ...interesting. I don't own an actual Ouija board at the moment, but I am thinking of getting one. I had one, in the 1980's, but a devoutly Catholic boyfriend threw it out! He claimed that it was the tool of the devil. I knew that it wasn't, but decided not to fight about it. It's just a game...isn't it?
As you can see by Itzl's concerned look, this group gives Kossacks a safe place to check in, a daily diary where we can let people know we are alive, doing OK, and not affected by such things as heat, blizzards, floods, wild fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, power outages, earthquakes, or other such things that could keep us off DKos. It also allows us to find other Kossacks nearby for in-person checks when other methods of communication fail - a buddy system. If you're not here, or anywhere else on DKos, and there are adverse conditions in your area (floods, heatwaves, hurricanes, earthquakes etc.), we and your buddy are going to check up on you. If you are going to be away from your computer for a day or a week, let us know here. We care!
IAN is a great group to join, and a good place to learn to write diaries. Drop one of us a Kosmail and ask to be added to the Itzl Alert Network anytime! We all share the publishing duties, and we welcome everyone who reads IAN to write diaries for the group! Every member is an editor, so anyone can take a turn when they have something to say, photos and music to share, a cause to promote or news!
We do have a diary schedule. But, when you are ready to write that diary, either post in thread or send FloridaSNMOM a Kosmail with the date. If you need someone to fill in, ditto. FloridaSNMOM is here on and off through the day usually from around 9:30 or 10 am eastern to around 11 pm eastern.
Monday:
BadKitties
Tuesday:
ejoanna
Wednesday:
Caedy
Thursday:
art ah zen
Friday:
FloridaSNMOM
Saturday:
Most Awesome Nana
Sunday:
loggersbrat
Ouija boards have been around for well over a hundred years. Not, as mistakenly stated elsewhere on the Interwebz, since the time of Pythagoras in 540 AD. They came into being during the Spiritualist era of the 19th century.
The practice of obtaining secret knowledge through supernatural means is as old as humankind, or nearly so. Divination by shamans and seers was a staple of most ancient civilizations. While we no longer predict the future by sifting through bird droppings and animal entrails, there is still a thriving market for popular forms of fortune telling like astrology, tarot, the I Ching, palmistry, and the Ouija board. When we search the distant past for ancient talking boards we simply don't find any, despite claims to the contrary. Talking boards are unique to the Spiritualist movement of the 1800's. Not so for the other divination instruments writers often mistake for Ouija boards. The pendulum oracle described by fourth-century Roman historian, Ammianus Marcellinus, in his The Later Roman Empire (A.D. 354-378), is the most notable example and is often offered as proof that talking boards existed in ancient civilizations. In Marcellinus' narrative, two unfortunate individuals, Patricius and Hilarius are under arrest for creating an oracle to define who would succeed the emperor. They plead before the court:
My lords, in an unlucky moment we put together out of laurel twigs in the shape of the Delphic tripod the hapless little table before you. We consecrated it with cryptic spells and a long series of magical rites, and at last made it work. The way in which it did so, when we wished to consult it about hidden matters, was this. It was placed in the middle of a room thoroughly fumigated with spices from Arabia, and was covered with a round dish made from the alloys of various metals. The outer rim of the dish was cunningly engraved with the twenty-four letters of the alphabet separated by accurate intervals. A man dressed in linen garments and wearing linen sandals, with a fillet around his head and green twigs from a lucky tree in his hand, officiated as priest. After uttering a set prayer to invoke the divine power which presides over prophecy, he took his place above the tripod as his knowledge of the proper ritual had taught him, and set swinging a ring suspended by a very fine cotton thread which had been consecrated by a mystic formula. The ring, moving in a series of jumps over the marked spaces, came to rest on particular letters, which made up hexameters appropriate to the questions put and in perfect scansion and rhythm, like the lines produced at Delphi or by the oracle of the Branchidae.
Circumstances did not go well for Patricius and Hilarius after the inquisition: "both the accused were fearfully mangled by the torturers hooks and taken away unconscious." This is a wonderful example of an ancient alphabet oracle in the same divination class as talking boards but it is clearly a pendulum oracle. As we mentioned earlier, pendulum divination uses a hanging, swinging weight as a message indicator. It does not slide or pivot across the surface of a board and that's an important distinction. That doesn't mean that you can't use a pendulum over a talking board but once you do, it becomes a pendulum oracle and it is no longer a talking board. Non-believers may say that there is no supernatural intervention and that you are moving the pendulum or the divining rod yourself. Therefore, they are the same. This is a basic misunderstanding and has nothing to do with the operation of the devices. You shoot a gun and you shoot a bow and arrow but you can't mistake one for the other.
Museum of Talking Boards
The boards, originally tables on four short legs, evolved over time into the familiar boards
of today. The name "Ouija" was supposedly picked either by the board itself, or an Egyptian word meaning, "Good luck."
There are, of course, many legends and stories about Ouija boards. Are they all true? Who knows. I don't have time to chase them all down :) I will share a couple of my own experiences, though:
One of my former roommates in college, Paula R., got the same answer EVERY time that she asked the board whom she would marry: "Tommy White." Did she ever marry him? I don't know. We lost touch after our junior year. I have googled her, but nothing turns up. It's like she fell off the face of the earth. She is NOT the evangelical pastor Paula White.
I asked whether I would go to London. It said, "Yes," and I did, a few years later. Well...not that difficult a question :)
I also remember, vaguely, something about my being an accountant. Which I also was, for about two years or less. That was odd because I was an English major and expected to be an editor at a New York publishing house, eventually. I just rejected forensic accounting as my next career in favor of forensic psychology.
My father said that the boards simply manifested one's subconscious. He thought that they were harmless. My friend Michelle did freak out and flee one night as we were playing, but I don't remember why. She's fine now, 25+ years later, and we're still friends.
So...the online boards. These are generally enabled by Javascript. I have never gotten the jumble of nonsense that you sometimes get with an actual board, but I HAVE gotten some strange answers, like these from Friday night:
Well, that's interesting. At first I thought that it might mean my quite fearsome father, who died in 2009. So I went further:
Huh. Sounds perfect. I am not perturbed in the slightest. I don't want another wussy and am rather terrifying myself :D But just to be safe, I asked another question:
All good :)
And then today I asked who hated me, and got this answer: "A LIAR." I know exactly to whom that refers. Not surprised.
This is the board that I use most frequently:
Brainjar Online Ouija
However, it occasionally gets short-tempered and tells me to "LEAVE ME NOW." Little spooky, because if you ignore that command and ask another question, it says, "LEAVE ME NOW" again. Eeek.
Another free online board is this one.
But where Brainjar has the response in a box, on e-tarrochi, you have to follow the letters and spell the answer yourself. Of the two, I prefer Brainjar.
There are also interactive boards here.
Ouija boards are still readily available, on Amazon and eBay, as well as from craftsmen. Here is a list from the Museum of Talking Boards.
In conclusion...it's probably just a game, especially online. Online boards will never give specific names, unlike the "real" ones. I do get a lot of "Not Clear" or "Not Known," and the occasional "Ask Later." But...certain questions ALWAYS get the same answer. So...who knows? Not I. While I wouldn't make any life decisions based on a Ouija board, online or otherwise, it's still fun.
More reading:
Slate: History of the Ouija Board
Happy Monday! Have NO idea when this will publish, but hoping for the best. Might be an hour early. No clue.