Aleister Crowley and the Ouija Board

[thurnandtaxis]

Feral House has just published this new book on the history of the Ouija Board, likening it to the Enochian systems of divination. Not a game or a toy but a serious occult tool, the Ouija Board can create severe psychic disturbances in the hands of the untrained. I've never really messed with one outside of a futile drunken attempt during a party-but have always felt that there was something to it.<br><br>I've yet to buy the book myself, but here's a link to the Feral House site that offers a pdf download of the first two chapters.<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://feralhouse.com/press/mini_sites/ouija/">feralhouse.com/press/mini_sites/ouija/</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> <p></p><i></i>

[CyberChrist]

Incidentally, the folks that brought us that whole STS and STO debate (Laura Knight Jadzcyk and the Cassiopeans) used a Ouija board to contact the Cassiopeans. <p>--<br>CyberChrist<br>http://www.hackerjournal.org<br>My brain is hung like a horse.</p><i></i>

[Col Quisp]

Yeah, but Laura was drunk when she used the board. <p></p><i></i>

[ivanbo2003]

Read on people,there is a lot of it:<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://vincentbridges.com/cassIntro.html">vincentbridges.com/cassIntro.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> <p></p><i></i>

[Col Quisp]

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>In some ways I agree with those researchers who have wondered whether or not the board is safe for the average person to use; like Grady, I too believe that it is probably one of the most dangerous devices ever placed in the hands of humanity. It easily opens the doorway to an invisible world, allowing individuals to immerse themselves into realms beyond their wildest fantasies by merely laying their hands upon an instrument called the planchette, or pointer. The Ouija board is well known for causing such tragedies as obsessions and possessions, hauntings, or the<br>unleashing of terrifying poltergeists. It is an instant portal into the lower astral plane. Yet these types of manifestations prove beyond a shred of a doubt that the board is capable of bridging the invisible world with our own.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>They have some excerpts posted on their website. Thanks for sharing this! It is very interesting that the OB has been seen as a toy or a joke, while other magickal tools (e.g., Tarot cards, runes) are taken seriously by the magickal crowd. Yet, as the author points out, the OB is used by many people as a parlor game. Perhaps that is its purpose: to allow ordinary people to open gates for lower elementals to enter our realm. If so, it is extremely insidious.<br><br>I have had mixed reactions from using the OB. Usually nothing happens. But recently, I was at a gathering where the planchette moved forcibly and practically without anyone touching it. There was no way any of us could have done it surreptitiously. However, the board had nothing important to say and seemed to be playing around with us -- talked about having been murdered but provided no verifiable details. We did not take it seriously. <br><br>The host of the evening said that previously, when using the board with his twin daughters, they successfully summoned the host's dead mother. It scared one of the twins so badly that she refused to ever touch the board again.<br><br>Based on these experiences, I would say that certain people are more easily used as channelers (my host, for example), or certain locations may be better gateways.<br><br> <p></p><i></i>

[Floyd Smoots]

I have yet to see any evidence to convince me that all of the High Wierdness, from Ouija Boards to UFO's cannot be demons masquerading as whatever they please. Look at the Biblical view of those life-forms, just for a moment. If they have been around since the dawn of creation, and one-third of them rebelled against God, and were forced to live(?) out thousands of years of their incarceration on or very near Earth........<br><br>Then, they not only have observed the whole sweep of human history, but being already immortal, and once-perfect, they know every word that has ever been uttered by any human who ever lived. That would make it awfully easy to pretend, in seances, to be Old Grandma, Dearest Father or Mother, Crazy Old Aunt Betty, Babylon's Founder, Nimrod, King Tut, Alexander the Great, Murdered King Whomever, The Girl (anywhere) Who Was Just Murdered Last Week, etc.<br><br>I really do believe in the reality of channeling, I just firmly believe that the channel you open when you do it, only invites pandemonium to enter your own life and do its level best to destroy you and your beloveds. Again, I say, I have neither seen, nor read of any event ever, that, Biblically, is beyond the power or purview of these "extra-terrestrials".<br><br>Unconvinced Otherwise,<br>Floyd<br> <p></p><i></i>

[Rigorous Intuition]

Saw the book today on a shelf and wish now I'd picked it up. I would have if I'd realized it was a Feral House title. (Though I got a signed copy of Graham Hancock's <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>Supernatural</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> instead, so it wasn't a total loss.) <p></p><i></i>

[Wolfmoon Lady]

Why is it that Ouija Boards, in particular, are so dangerous for opening portals?<br><br>I understand the points already made in the above posts about it being a parlor game that often falls into the wrong hands, as in those who are not familiar with occult practices.<br><br>I also think it's often used by young people who think it's all a joke until it's too late.<br><br>My niece had a scary encounter with a Ouija Board when she was about 12. She got something interested in her and kept asking more and more questions. Finally, she asked the entity to describe what she was wearing. It did, of course. She ran screaming to my sister (her mom) and they burned the damn thing. I think there were subsequent problems with bad dreams and my neice hearing voices.<br><br>My sister placed some angel statues next to her daughter's bed, along with a small cross. She also lit a white candle and prayed to God for help and protection. When she was done, she did what came naturally to her: she yelled like a maniac for the thing to 'stay the Hell away from my daughter'.<br><br>The phenomena stopped, eventually, but they never forgot it.<br><br>Later on, we realized that Roxanne had a kind of Sixth Sense -she "saw" my mother shortly after she died, and was able to describe a dress my mother wore, one that only my sister and I would have recognized. She claimed my mother stood at the foot of her bed and was trying to communicate through her but she was too frightened to listen. She pulled the sheets over her head and stayed that way until morning.<br><br>She finally grew out of it. Nothing has happened in years. <p></p><i></i>

[Floyd Smoots]

Wolfmoon Lady, I'm really not trying to pound nails here, but your post only adds first person witness to what I was trying to say. Thank you for sharing that with us. Mayhap, it will wake up a few, very few, folk to not mess with the supernatural, outside of heartfelt prayer to God, through Jesus.<br> <p></p><i></i>

[Rigorous Intuition]

for opening portals?"<br><br>If I understand the premise of the book, it makes the argument that the board is based on the system of Enochian evocation which John Dee (court astrologer to Queen Elizabeth I) was given by the "angels." Overhauled and introduced to a modern audience by Crowley. Said, by those who practice it, to be quite powerful. <p></p><i></i>

[Wolfmoon Lady]

You're most welcome, Floyd. I tellya, it was horrible for my sister. We were not brought up in any religion at all and she had nothing to go by except her excellent instincts.<br><br>Our family were, technically, Episcopalian, but non-practicing.<br><br>Being a curious child, I wanted to know about church. When I was about 8 or 9, off I went to a Baptist Church with a school friend. I liked the Sunday School lessons but the hellfire and brimstone preaching scared the crud out of me. I soon left and never returned.<br><br>However, when I was about 13, I met another school friend, an Italian Catholic, who invited me to attend Sunday Mass with her family. How I loved it - the beautiful cathedral, the singing, the mysterious drone of the Latin words, the hushed and quiet people on their knees running fingers over their lovely prayer beads. When my friend's mother saw how interested I became, she arranged for me to take Catechism lessons. Through that effort, I met a wonderful priest who saw me through more sorrow than I care to remember. Bless him, where ever he is now, for he was a true Man of the Cloth.<br><br>During lessons, I remember asking him once if he was afraid to die. He said he was, and that he had moments of doubt. All humans do, he said. He was no different. I loved that he let me see his human side and never ever lied to me. He was a father to me when my own father was out drinking up the rent money. I always felt safe knowing he was at the rectory and I could walk over if things got weird at home.<br><br>Time passed, as it tends to do, and when I became an adult, I reached a point where I no longer wanted to continue worshipping as a Catholic, at least formally. That said, I still pray to the Blessed Mother, but non-denominationally. If this sounds contradictory, since I came out as a non-believer, just chalk it up to me being a complicated person.<br><br>I did a 'create my own theology' thing, which is something offered by the local Unitarian Universalist Society to help those who don't really fit in anywhere else. Please know that my non-belief has more to do with a dislike of organized religion than in whether or not there is a God. I have no right to make proclamations about something as big as God.<br><br>Floyd, keep on believing, because you've become a constant in my life here at RI. I trust you. I know you're never going to waver. I know you're not going to lie. I'd rather have you on my side in a battle than many secularlists I know. Truth!<br><br>BTW: You're the only other person I've 'met' who uses the word 'mayhap.' It was a word my grandmother used often. How lovely! Bless you! <p></p><i></i>

[thurnandtaxis]

A few things strike me about the idea that negative entities are usually<br>the easiest to conjur. <br><br>I am assuming that the notion of ego-death and the over-coming of the adversarial aspects of ones consciousness seems to be a guiding factor in the work of a ceremonial magician. However as the magician deals with evoking the baser elemental forces s/he is usually sheilded by an invocation of the four cardinal points, or the archangels, and this is the ritual that finds its common christian or catholic expression in the "sign of the cross".<br><br>To my knowledge there are no instructions to perform any type of banishing or protective activities prior to the usage of the board. It usually informs you to just start asking questions.<br><br>Is this carelessness born simply from the marketing notion that it's just a parlour game, one apparently first commercially manufactured to coincide with the victorian era's almost pop-cultural fascination with spiritualism?<br><br>Or are there those familiar "sinister forces" working through a serendipitous combination of a concerted effort put forth by the few so-called initiates and random curious events drawn in a fortean manner from the general zietgeist-at-large?<br><br>That being said here's a rather thorough site devoted to the "talking boards":<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.museumoftalkingboards.com/index.html">www.museumoftalkingboards.com/index.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>Lots of history plus a nifty workable html version of the ouija.<br><br><br>-Also that "casseopeian" stuff resonated with me as i've spent a good deal of time in the area of Florida where those stories emanated from.<br>Lots of Wiccan/ Golden Dawn / Scientologist / New Age / Gothic /<br>Death Metal types scattered throughout a 3 or 4 county area.<br>There's a pretty "dark" vibe in general. I actually dated a few rather messed up women down there involved in one aspect or another of those various subcultures, and in retrospect I'm sure that one of them was ritually abused, though she tended to downplay her parents activities as just fukked-up 70's crap, involving "withcraft", and<br>"orgies". <br><br>Florida seems to REALLY attract the weirdos -- maybe after a while the heat down there just fries people's brains.<br><br><br><br><br> <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=thurnandtaxis>thurnandtaxis</A> at: 2/27/06 11:43 pm<br></i>

[Wolfmoon Lady]

Yes, I'm pretty sure that the lack of instructions about how to use the board is part of the problem. It is marketed as a 'game' and how that ever came about, I dunno. Your point about the game being embraced by Victorians who were also engaged in the Industrial Revolution is very interesting! I'll check out the 'talking boards' site tomorrow. <br><br>Jeff, thanks for extrapolating about the Enochian aspects of the Ouija Board. Goodness, if more people knew what it was about, I don't think they'd let their kids use one! <p></p><i></i>