Spirit Board

An interactive talking board in the old style: open the session with grounding, a boundary and opening words, move the planchette by hand (it reads each letter it rests on, a pause ends the word, and a faint trail shows its path), keep the transcript for a real wooden board in scribe mode, or let chance answer yes, no, a number or a letter — on wood, midnight or parchment, by candlelight with optional sound. Have any answer read back or spoken aloud, close with GOOD BYE, and save the transcript to your journal or look back over past sessions — with the history of the board and an honest account of why it moves. Its history is told as an illustrated timeline, from the Hydesville raps through Carpenter, Faraday's table and the planchette to the 1891 patent, Fuld and a 2012 study. Spell by raps, as the first messages were spelled from 1848: the board calls over YES, NO and the alphabet, and you rap at the one you want. Then put the board to the test: push Faraday's table of 1853 yourself, with its layered cards and paper index, and watch his sitters' table move while the index is hidden from them and stop when it is in their sight; or answer yes-or-no questions aloud and on the board, mark which you knew and which you guessed, and set your guesses against the 2012 study's.

mixer

Read this first. A screen cannot move a planchette by itself. In Your hands mode the planchette goes where your hand takes it — exactly how a wooden board works, through small movements you make without noticing (the ideomotor effect). In Chance mode the answer is drawn at random, like casting lots. Treat what it spells as something to reflect on, never as instructions — and stop if it unsettles you.

The planchette moves by

Drag the planchette slowly; a ring fills while it rests on a letter, then the letter is read. Pause off the letters to end a word. Arrow keys work too.

The board's look and feel

Board

Pace

Atmosphere

Before you begin

I have grounded myself — a few slow breaths, feet on the floor.
I have set a boundary: only what is honest and kind may answer.
I am calm, sober, and not using this to cope with grief or distress.

Need to settle first? Try the grounding meditation or a few minutes of Breathwork. The Moon and Mercury hours are traditionally kind to divination — see the best times.

Put the board to the test

In the summer of 1853, with table-turning the rage of London, Michael Faraday sat with table-turners he trusted and gave them a table with a secret. Under their hands lay four or five sheets of smooth card, held one on another by little pellets of soft cement — wax and turpentine — that kept them in place but let them creep under a steady push. The lowest was fixed to sandpaper on the table, the top one was larger to hide the rest, and a pencil line was drawn across their edges. When the table had turned, the line told which had moved first: the top card had gone furthest, the ones below less, the table least. The hands had led, and the table had been dragged after them.

Then he made the push visible: a lever of foolscap paper on an upright pin, its short arm, a quarter of an inch, fixed to a slipping card under the hands, and its long arm, eleven and a half inches, a pointer — so that a push showed forty-six times larger — with a coin to mark where it should rest. Hidden from the sitters, it moved before the table did. In their sight, the push stopped, and so did the table.

The pencil line across the edges, enlarged ten times. The dashed line is where it was drawn.

The index, from above: the paper lever on its pin, the slipping card at its short end, the coin where it should rest. A tip 0.0 cm off the coin.

Drag the hands (or use the arrow keys) to push the table, gently or hard. Can you make it move without the index moving first?

The top card 0.0 mm off the table’s mark · the table 0.0 cm from where it stood. Faraday wrote it up for The Times (printed on 30 June 1853) and the Athenaeum (2 July), and put the movement down to “a quasi involuntary muscular action”.

From raps to the board

1848

The Hydesville raps

In a farmhouse at Hydesville, New York, the young Fox sisters began putting questions to a spirit that answered in raps. Within days the family had a code: raps for yes or no, or to pick out letters of the alphabet. Modern Spiritualism grew from it. In 1888 Margaret Fox showed an audience how she made the raps with her toe joints; a year later she took it back.

Where talking boards come from, and why the planchette moves

Modern Spiritualism began in 1848 with the Fox sisters' rappings in Hydesville, New York. Through the 1850s séance-goers turned tables and wrote with the planchette, a small heart-shaped board on castors that held a pencil.

In 1852 the physiologist William Carpenter named the ideo-motor response — movement made by expectation, without any sense of doing it — and in 1853 Michael Faraday showed that table-turners were pushing the table themselves without knowing it.

In 1890 the Kennard Novelty Company of Baltimore began making a lettered “talking board” with a pointer, patented by Elijah Bond in 1891 and sold as the Ouija board; William Fuld made it famous, and Parker Brothers bought the rights in 1966. Ouija is now a trademark of Hasbro, which is why this one is simply a spirit board.

Whatever you believe about spirits, the movement comes through the sitters' hands — which is why the board can surprise you. A small 2012 study at the University of British Columbia suggested that answers given through a board can draw on knowledge people do not know they have. Many magicians treat the board as they would a scrying mirror: a way to let the deeper mind speak, to be met with the same discernment.

Read Discernment & Protection and The Occult Revival for more.

SPIRIT WRITING BEFORE THE BOARD, AND THE BOARD'S OWN HISTORY

Fuji, Chinese planchette writing

recorded from the 5th century, popular in the Song dynasty

A stylus, held by two people over sand, writes the words of a god or a spirit.

It is first recorded in the Liu Song dynasty (420–479 CE) and became widespread under the Song.
Song writers such as Shen Kuo and Su Shi tie its origin to summoning Zigu, the Purple Maiden.
The device was a suspended sieve or tray guiding a stick that wrote characters in sand or ash, and later a stick like a dowsing rod. It is sometimes called the Chinese Ouija.

Sources: Wikipedia, “Fuji (planchette writing)”; Daoinfo, “Planchette writing”

PRACTISE WITH IT

0 of 7 done

A few things to do with this tool, from a first try to a habit. Each one you tick counts as practice for the day, towards your streak and milestones.

Kept in this browser. Notes you send to the journal are kept there as well.

WORKS WELL WITH

LEARN THE BACKGROUND

5 lessons explain the ideas behind this tool.