Spirit boards – respect, not fear

If you spend any amount of time in the pagan and magical community, you know that people often ask questions about superstitions related to magik and spirituality, what is real or not, and what is dangerous or evil and what is not. This is especially true for those who are new to practice. For the most part, there are usually more experienced practitioners there to give them their input and advice to help with those preconceived fears and past teachings. This is a great thing. It is important to share our knowledge and experience with others and to continue growing and learning for ourselves as well. But there are still some topics that carry an unnecessary weight of fear and superstition for many people, even with many years of experience. One of these topics is what tools a person should or should not use. The one I want to discuss at the moment is talking boards, commonly known as Ouija boards. Every so often, we see post of people asking about Ouija boards. And it never ceases to amaze me how many people, even with decades upon decades of experience, immediately start saying “no”, “don’t use them”, “those are dangerous”, and other similar comments. And they will often finish their statements with something along the line of “if you have questions that you want answered, try something safer like tarot cards” or pendulum, meditation, channeling, mediumship or whatever other method you can think of. Sometimes they’ll even say ask your ancestors or “spirit” to give you the answers or to help you dream the answers. But again, don’t use the board that might allow a spirit to come through… Because it’s dangerous. Well, excuse my bluntness, but how exactly do you think those other things work?

While it is true that there is a bit of one’s own psychic ability at work with tarot and the like, people still often open themselves to receive those messages in some way. Many people are taught meditations or prayers to help this process when beginning using cards or most any divination. You’re still opening yourself to something.  So, let’s look at the pendulum alternative. That is something that mostly works from outside of yourself. You aren’t the one moving the pendulum, right? Did you ask a specific spirit or deity to answer? Or did you just open up and let whoever wanted to to come do it? If you did ask for a specific spirit to answer, did you first verify in some way that it was them who responded before continuing? If not, you’re still asking for some spirit or some thing that you don’t know to come and interact with you, and to do so by touching something that you are holding in your hand. Then there’s this idea of using mediumship, channeling, and asking for dreams as an alternative to the dreaded board. The problem with these methods is that you are now not only opening to spirits and beings, but you are doing it without a tool and with your own personal body and mind. You are directly connecting with these things. In our sleep, we are more susceptible to things in this area. We know that’s where many journeys and visions take place and where spirit often does give us messages. However, when it comes to asking for these dreams, you still have to be specific as to who you are asking and take precautions. Many people don’t ever think to do that when asking for aide and guidance through dreams. Especially if they are new to this work. Then when you throw in ancestors or generic “spirit”, without giving specific instructions on how and safety protocol, you’re basically telling this inexperienced person that it is not safe to use a piece of wood between them and entities but it is ok to openly invite dead people or other spirits floating around to come while they are most vulnerable, with no protection or control over their surroundings and enter their subconscious. So talking to spirits via wood is bad, but giving them a direct link to the brain is somehow totally safe. The same is true with channeling and mediumship. These are also more direct connections. And this one really bothers me to see people taught that it’s a safer alternative to the board. The reason it bothers me so much is the fact that the spirits or beings are talking through you and/or your body. So when someone tells me not to use Ouija boards because they’re dangerous but then ask me to use channeling or psychic medium abilities for them, it makes me wonder if they really know what they’re asking for. Otherwise, if they do know, its like saying “that board scares me, let the spirits use you instead”. (Because a spirit using another person’s living body is so much safer for everyone, right?) Now, please do not think that I am saying any of these methods is bad or too dangerous. Quite the contrary actually. These are all very good ways to seek answers. But so is the talking board. My point here is that opening to spirt is still opening to spirit no matter what tools you use. Any work you do in this regard is going to open you to something and will be seen by anything else that happens to be around (Ask those mediums you were talking about. Things are around whether you’re working with them at the moment or not). It is no different than preforming a ritual or casting a spell. Open is open. Even with the Ouija board. The key is doing it safely. If you’re new, have someone more experienced (or at least equally helpful) nearby. Set up your protections and be specific about who and what you are talking to.

Many people will claim they or someone they knew (or knew of) had used it safely with wards, protections, prayers or other methods and still had a really bad experience. How do we explain these cases? Though there are some exceptions, what it usually boils down to is two things. Those are the setting and their mindset before starting. One thing people always mention when talking about Ouija boards and danger is the fear of evil spirits or demons. And those are the kind of stories people tell when they claim they had a bad experience with a spirit board. But in most cases (not all but most) these people had already had the idea that evil could and/or likely would be attracted to these boards. Many of them were doing it just like you see in the movies and creepy tv shows with the lights off, candle light only, spooky atmosphere and the works. Many of them also had their only “proper protection” be a simple prayer if anything at all. Most who tell these stories describe doing it properly as simply following the instructions that read either in the box with the board or online etc. But even if they did a full circle of protection with all the bells and whistles, they often made two mistakes. One, they did not specify who they wanted to talk to and make all others stay away. And two, they already had some sense of nervousness or “what if” thoughts in the back of their mind. When we approach any spirit work with this type of thought process, we are already setting ourselves up for a potential problem. That is because, as most anyone who has any real time and experience with spirits can tell you, spirits and beings often feed on what we are thinking and putting out mentally and emotionally. And unfortunately, fear and sadness and heavier emotions put out stronger energy that can be seen by spiritual beings and entities. They are drawn to it. Even if they aren’t necessarily feeding on it, it is still eye catching as something they want to check out and play with. But it isn’t always evil. In fact, true “evil” isn’t really that common in the grand scheme of things. In many of these frightening spirit board cases, the things described as happening to people aren’t even really that bad. It is simply something that they don’t understand and aren’t used to and so it is scary to them. They then decide the spirit is dark or evil or demonic and suddenly things get worse or more frightening. The same thing happens in some cases of hauntings. A spirit is presenting minor activity and the residents say it is evil or demonic, then suddenly the activity gets aggressive and the more they do yell at it and trying to get rid of it, the angrier and more aggressive it seems to get. The problem with this is that often times it is not actually something evil, it just has heavy emotions (like sadness or anger) and now it’s pissed off that you called it a demon. Wouldn’t you be mad if someone called you a demon? This is what often happens with spirits and talking boards. The people get scared and call it evil and, many times, the activity can continue even after putting the board away simply from the energy and thoughts they put out in fearing that something else is bound to happen. It is similar to the way someone can jinx themselves with bad luck by being afraid of having bad luck. But what makes this different is that we have been raised for many generations to believe that anything that acts a certain way or is frightening and/or beyond the physical plane must be evil. So, it is a deep-seeded fear that many people have that is based primarily on superstition. That’s not to say that there aren’t some nasty things out there. But the real harmful scary “evil demon” type is not as common as people believe it is. That’s why these things tend to happen most often to people who grew up with religions that teach pure good vs pure evil or that anything dark is evil. The spirits or entities being drawn to them see that that is what is expected and will act in kind. But it doesn’t happen as often to those who don’t have that view point or who know how to handle darker types of entities without jumping into demon and hell-fire mindset. And again, these things can happen with any form of spiritual work. That is why most beginners’ books start with basic shielding and protection. Any spiritual work opens you to the possibility of spirits you don’t want being able to come through. I have had times I was doing tarot readings for people and it suddenly became channeling instead of just standard card reading. I’ve had a person’s grandmother use my mouth to cuss at her for dating somebody she didn’t like. I know how to work with this, and I protect myself and my surrounding so nothing bad happens. But even with that, there are times you just don’t know what or who is going to come through with the message. For this reason, you protect yourself before starting and be specific about what you are doing. The board is no less safe than preforming a ritual, casting a spell, or opening up your tarot deck. We’ve just been taught how to do it properly and seen it treated like a somewhat common occurrence to point it doesn’t worry us. So when it comes to using spirit boards, don’t jump to declare them dangerous and continue to feed the fears. That actually adds to the likelihood of something messing up. Yes, have a healthy respect for them. But not fear. Instead, make sure you put your protections in place, be specific about what and who you want to deal with, verify it is them, and (most importantly) don’t be scared.

That’s all for this post. I hope you found it helpful. Until next time, blessings to you all.