Ouija Boards Demystified: Facts and Folklore

diana: Imagine a dark and quiet room. with only the flickering glow of a single candle. The shadows are dancing across the wall. The you're sitting at is of carved wood. There are symbols, letters and numbers. Your fingertips are resting lightly. triangular wooden pointer. And then it happened. Slowly the pointer begins to slide. For over a century, pop culture, horror movies, and toy companies have sold us their carefully crafted story about this moment. They've told us it's a dangerous parlor game. A piece of cheap cardboard pulled from a brightly colored box. A toy designed for midnight dares and teenage sleepovers. But what if we told you that entire narrative is a corporate illusion built for the modern age? What if the origin of the talking board doesn't belong to 20th century toy manufacturers, but reaches back through millennia? What if we told you that its roots are tied to temples of ancient mystics and imperial courts? Welcome to Beyond the Spiritual Nexus. Your Cosmic Connection. I'm your host, Diana Rose. And I'm Zandra. Welcome back to Cosmic Monday, where we like to talk about all things mystical, magical, and supernatural. Today, we want to dip into the supernatural by stripping away the plastic wrapping of modern myth and digging deep into the history of the Ouija board. And the truth, as it turns out, is far more interesting than any Hollywood ghost story. Zandra, where do we find ourselves if we follow the roots of this practice? Well, ⁓ if we want to find the birthplace of the Ouija board, we actually have to forget the image of a Western seance for a bit, okay? We actually have to travel back before the first European mediums ever sat at a table. We have to step into the mountain temples of Imperial China during the Song dynasty. ⁓ that's very, very interesting. That would be about a thousand years ago. That means that while Europe was in the depths of the Middle Ages, their Chinese counterparts were actually mastering spirit communication. And for them, it was not a game. It was a sacred Daoist and folk ritual known as Fuji, which translates in modern English to literally do planchette writing. And in terms of spiritual orders, Fuji was very high. So it was practiced by the high intelligentsia, the literati, and priesthood. So Zandra, would you please paint the picture for our listeners? exactly what did a Fuji ceremony look like. Okay, ⁓ so I want you to picture an opulent temple chamber, okay? You got it in your mind? Mm-hmm, I do. And inside of it the air is thick with incense burning and within the center of the chamber sits a big wooden tray and it's filled to the brim with sand or Sometimes they used incense ashes and those would be smoothed over until they were flat. Now, the primary tool in this practice was a wooden stylus carved into a Y shape. Most often actually the wood came from a peach tree because, get this, in Taoism, peach trees are a really, really sacred, very important symbol. ⁓ They hold incredibly powerful, strong... protective qualities. they do. Peach tree wood is actually used in exorcisms. then you'd have ⁓ two highly trained mediums and they would be standing on either side of the tray holding one arm of the stylus each one the Y shape at the top and it would just hover very barely over the sand. So it was Y shape kind of like like a dowsing rod. like a branch, you know. So they weren't actually consciously writing, right? It wasn't a performance. Right. No, not at all. The mediums would enter a deep trance achieved through chanting and meditation and energy work. Once the mediums' consciousness became linked, they would invite specific deities, ⁓ elevated spirits or ancestors to descend into the chamber with them. And that's actually where magic would meet physical. Because as the entity integrated with the energies within the room, the stylist would begin to move across the tray carving Chinese characters directly into the sand. Yeah. And because the mediums were in a trance, they couldn't see or interpret what was being rented. So a third party, a trusted scribe would stand at the edge of the altar. It was their duty to watch the stylists move and read the characters as they formed and they would record those characters before the sand was smoothed over for the next message. So it was kind of like a stenographer does in a courtroom. Yeah So what amazes me most Zandra about Fuji is how it was used because they didn't use it to like answer trivial questions. These sessions were actually used in state matters and to connect with ancestors. There are actual actual entire volumes of Taoist scriptures and complex poetry which still exists today that was dictated through this method of spirit communication. Yeah like you said it was very integral to society. ⁓ You know it continued and it developed with the times. By the time you got to the Ming dynasty, 14th to 17th century China, the practice of Fuji had gone past the temples, beyond the temples. Emperors were captivated by it and the clarity of the messages that came through. They had private and very well guarded altars installed inside the walls of the Forbidden City. So let's just... Think about that for a minute. What modern society locks away in a closet are fears as the money. was back then considered holy, pure, carved from sacred trees. It was used by emperors to govern nations, record holy text, a thousand years ago. This was an art form. It wasn't an art form. It was divine dictation. Yeah, and tides of time were not kind to spirit communication. Although the core concept, using the tool that was allowed, unseen to talk back to us, it migrated across the globe and it did eventually find itself in the West. When it did arrive in Europe, when they did arrive here, it made quite the splash. So to understand how we got from Fuji to Ouija, we actually have to jump forward in time to the year 1848, all the way to Heidsdale, New York. There, we want to go to the home of the Fox sisters. They claim to hear intelligent rhythmic knocking sounds echoing from the walls and floors of their house. They discovered... If they clap their hands, the knocks would mimic them. They created their own sacred language with the spirits actually. Yeah, and from then the spiritualism movement just sort of exploded. yeah. So in a few years, millions of people across America and Europe, they were fascinated with the chance to speak to the dead between, you know, it makes sense because you have the Civil War in America and there was a really high mortality rate. the Victorian era society was pretty, I would say largely traumatized. People were bereft and searching for proof that their loved ones existed beyond the grave. Yes, Andra, they wanted to reconnect with them. But you know, there was a problem with early mediumship in the West, Andra, because the methods were very slow. I mean, it was just... In the mid-19th century, the primary way to receive a message from a spirit was through a method called spirit wrapping. Now that was where the medium would sit in a group with, they'd sit with a group of people around a table only ever wooden in complete darkness. With a little candle burning perhaps. Maybe, yeah. To get a message, the medium would have to recite the entire alphabet out loud. So you, she'd be sitting there going, A, long pause. B, long pause, C, and they would have to pause for each letter. If the spirit wanted to spell out the word, sorry? If the spirit wanted to spell out the word hello, the medium would have to go through the alphabet until she got the knock, you know? ⁓ So you would get to the letter H and then they'd have to start all the way over back at A. It took forever. Yeah. It would have to be a long pause. They would have to wait for the spirit to know. Hours. Hours. It just took hours. Just fell out a single sentence, The sessions were almost all the times cut short because the sitters or the medium just ran out of energy. They just ran out of juice. You know, society was rapidly developing at that time. They were becoming more more modern. Yeah, well, by their standards. Yes. by their standards. Exactly. The telegraph had been invented, know, ⁓ allowing people to send instant text or what we would call nowadays instant text. But back then there were messages. You could be able to send them long distances. You know, people wanted to have a spirit telegraph too. They wanted to connect with their loved ones from the beyond. They wanted speed. Yes. Yeah. So let's step forward. Now it's the 1850s. Okay. And here come the French spiritualists. They recognized that there was an inefficiency with the spirit wrapping and they made the decision to adapt the ancient concept of automatic writing. Okay. In 1853, they created a mechanical tool that would revolutionize the seance room, the planchette. ⁓ la planchette. That is French for the little plank. Because that's exactly what it is. It's a small heart-shaped piece of thin wood. But they had a twist, and here's what it was. They attached two tiny wheels to the wider end of the heart. Okay. And at the tip, instead of a third wheel, they drilled small hole and in that little hole they would put a little graphite so it was like a pencil. Okay I would think that would be very just messy. So you'd have the medium and you'd have the sitter and they'd be sitting at a regular table. Yeah any table. And it would be covered I would imagine with large sheets of paper. Yeah. Right? Yes. And they would gently touch their fingers to the planchette. And because of the wheels, it was incredibly sensitive to the slightest movement. Yeah, sounds familiar, right? So, ⁓ yeah, when a spirit entered, the planchette would begin to move around the paper effortlessly and drag that little pencil with it. ⁓ The goal for the planchette was for the spirit to use the medium's trance to write in a continuous flow. And it actually caught on Zandra. Yeah. The planchette was actually a big commercial success long before the Ouija board. By 1858, it had made it onto American shores. And it was such a cultural frenzy that it became a household staple actually. But as popular as it was, the planchette had its own set of issues. As you guessed at the beginning, the handwriting, you know, was notoriously atrocious. Have you ever read historical cursive? No. No, okay. So you can't. It's very difficult to decipher. I've seen it. It is very difficult to decipher. And just imagine trying to read cursive written by a spirit and the pencil they're using use this makeshift planchette and moved around and So the letters would overlap or the lines would run off the edge of the paper. the lead would completely snap. Yeah. And there was also the problem of smudging. Like you said, it was messy. And that ultimately led to the invention of the spirit board. So by the time we get to the late 1870s and the early 1880s, professional mediums and everyday spiritualists, they grew tired of the pencil upkeep and the scribbles and trying to read it. know, their solution actually was simple and much more practical, Zandra. Instead of having the spirit write the letters blindly, why not print the letters on a board and have the spirit simply point to them, which... that did start a sort of DIY-fication of spiritualism across America, particularly in spiritual enclaves like Lilydale, which that is still a thriving community of mediums to this day. Anyway, people were creating their own tools. They took smooth planks of wood and wrote the letters of the alphabet onto it, and beneath the alphabet they painted the numbers zero through nine. And then In the upper corners, they would put the simplest forms of communication, the words yes and no. Yes, you didn't need to have a board that you went out and bought, Sandra. You could actually make your own Ouija board. The handpapers are really really different, So that meant that the planchette went completely pencil-less now. And it was further modified by removing the wheels. And in their place they put like little pieces of felt. Yeah. And that actually made the planchette glide. Yeah. Glide or move much more easily. Yeah. So the tip of the heart would act like a pointer to each letter or number. Yes. The handmade boards had a bunch of different names attributed into them actually. Some of which you've probably heard like alphabet boards and dial plates. you've definitely heard of which boards. Absolutely. Something to keep in mind here is that these tools were built and handled with a lot of ritual respect. Yes, that's because... ⁓ At the time, the perspective of them, they didn't treat them as toys. they're not toys. Witch boards were kept in private spaces. ⁓ Before one of us ever touched, the room was cleansed energetically and physically. Protections were prayed over them. Intentions were set. I mean, the participants approached the board with the same gravity one would approach a sacred ritual, you know, or even a memorial service. Remember, this was a tool that was used to communicate with loved ones from the great beyond. It was commonly used to bring comfort to grieving families. So by now, you're probably wondering how something regarded as so so sacred ended up in the toy aisle next to Monopoly and Yahtzee. And the answer like it tends to in modern history boils down to opportunistic capitalism and much more uncommonly an undertaker. Yes, and this is where the plot thickens. Back in Jester town, Maryland during the mid 1880s, a business businessman named Carl can ⁓ my gosh, my tongue is twisted. Zandra Charles can are you know, running a fertilizer business. I think you just didn't want to talk about fertilizer. Perhaps not. It's not my favorite topic. No, his office happened to be right across the hallway from a Prussian immigrant named EC right now, right? He's got an interesting backstory. He wasn't in the business of spirituality and he Obviously he wasn't in the game business. He was actually a craftsman, specifically a master cabinet maker. So he worked with wood. He was a woodworker. And in the 19th century, if you were a woodworker, your business eventually just naturally evolved into building coffins. That's just the way it broke down. ⁓ So E.C. Reich became Chester Town's primary town undertaker. Around the time Reich's business was shifting, the Associated Press published reports about the talking board. The craze started sweeping the nation, actually. Charles Kennard read these articles and he saw dollar signs. Of course. He wanted to mass produce Tim Zandra. Yeah. But Kennard was a Yeah, he was a salesman, yeah. But he didn't know the first thing about working with wood. So he pitched the idea to the undertaker across the hall. Yeah. And after that, Wright took the concept and hand carved the first physical prototypes of what would later become the Ouija board. You know, I do, I do wonder at this point, what's the likelihood that the wood used in the prototypes was scrap wood from coffins. I think that that'd be like a heck of a connection to the veil. Absolutely, I would think so too. You know, it makes sense. Considering what he was using the wood for in his shop, right? Yeah. I mean, anyway, in 1890, Charles Kennard took the Undertaker's prototypes, packed his bags, moved to Baltimore, met up with an attorney named Elijah Bond, and they formed the Kennard Novelty Company. So at this point, Kennard and Bond had the boards, but they didn't have a name for it. Plus they didn't know how to actually prove how it worked, because you needed to do that to get the patent. So that's where Helen Peters enters the story. That's an important name in this history, Zandra. Helen Peters. Yeah. Let's see. She was Elijah Bond's sister-in-law. But actually, more importantly... Yeah, she was a highly respected and deeply sensitive medium. She's credited as being the mother of the commercial spirit for it. Yeah, and she joins the story in April of 1890 when Helen sat down with Charles Kennard in a Baltimore boarding house. Ooh, you hear that thunder? They sat in that boarding house and they asked the board what it wanted to be called. The letters spelled out O-U-I-J-A. And Helen asked the board what Ouija meant. And then the board simply replied, good luck. ⁓ What a threat. Exactly. But Helen's role actually goes deeper than that, Zandra, because the U.S. Patent Office refused to grant them a patent unless they could prove that the board actually worked. ⁓ they were confident. Yes, they were. So in 1891, Elijah Bond took Helen Peters directly to the Patent Office in Washington, D.C. The chief patent attorney demanded a demonstration from them. He stated that if the board could actually spell out his name, which supposedly was supposed to be completely unknown to Helen and Bond, he would approve their application. Well, obviously they sat down and Helen Peters channeled her energy and took the plan check and the board spelled out the patent attorney's name. the story goes that the attorney was visibly shaken and granted the patent immediately. So a woman's genuine mediumship is the entire reason the patent exists. Just think about it, Sandra, without her they never would have had the patent. They would not have. Yes, but still, Cunard left right behind in Chestertown. He ignored Helen's spiritual legacy, claimed the invention was entirely his own, and he filed the famous 1891 patent. As for Helen, you know, she came to be known as the mother of the Ouija board, but she actually tried to distance herself from the company because she was reportedly heartbroken, Zandra, over the way that the board was packaged and commodified. Which leaves Ryke. obviously he was furious when he saw the board selling like hotcakes. He actually launched a massive legal battle against Kennard's company and they were eventually forced to pay him a settlement after he proved to a court that he was the real designer of the boards. The Canard Nauti Company then took this patented Ouija board, stolen from an undertaker's workshop, named and activated by a forgotten female medium and adapted by ancient mystics, packaged it in a cardboard box and launched an aggressive marketing campaign, They intentionally marketed it as a mysterious polar game to maximize their profits. In 1966, the patent was sold to Parker Brothers, fully rendering the Ouija board into a commercial novelty, ultimately stripping away over a thousand years of spiritual tradition. the story of the Ouija board really is rooted in the reality of how a tool can be completely removed from its sacred context just to fit a retail shelf. ⁓ When we lose touch with the true history of our tools, we lose touch with how to navigate the current shift. Absolutely, Zsandra. Absolutely. Well, speaking of navigating currents, let's look up towards the sky, Okay. It's time for cosmic currents, everybody. Our weekly look at the energetic tides moving through our lives for the week of June 22nd. We are fresh off the summer solstice, everybody. We're swimming deep into nurturing intuitive waters of cancer season. And it's a really tender atmosphere this week, Diana, sort of a homecoming for ourselves. starting today, June 22nd, Mercury swims into cancer alongside the sun, shifting our communication from a fast intellectual Gemini buzz into something more heartfelt. Yes. And this transit is You know, it's an invitation to swap out the surface level text, to swap them out for late night, open hearted communication. You know, gathering around the kitchen table. Midnight margaritas. Sure, I love midnight margaritas. You know, we previously mentioned how slow living was catching on with people. Zandra and this pushes towards what people have been calling analog hobbies Everyone online is pushing back against the chaos of internet culture right now. Instead of over the top, fast-paced context, the mundane is starting to take off, Zandra. You know, cooking, having simple meals, having warm, relaxing spaces, you know, making your quiet evening a priority. You can thank Mercury for that and cancer because it's giving us sort of a cosmic stamp of approval. lean into that shift offline, that swift offline energy. But brace yourselves because the cosmic tempo quickens on June 28th when Mars leaps into Gemini. Now Mars and Gemini is restless, it's dynamic, it wants to do three things at once, four if you can. It's a complete shift from slow living back into mental hyperdrive. Yes. And while it gives us a fantastic burst of mental adaptability, a quick warning for our collective words can carry a sharp fiery edge under this transit. So before you let a reactive comment fly or get sucked back into online debate, just pause a little bit. Take a moment. Because the very next day, June 29th, the cosmos hits us with a double feature. mercury stations retrograding cancer and a powerful hormone eliminates cancer. Now don't record. I'm sorry, now don't panic retrogrades are just a cosmic pause button. Yes, this one is explicitly asking us to do some internal housekeeping, know regarding our emotional boundaries and our home life. So Paired with a with the Capricorn full moon which shines a bright light on our outer responsibilities and career, the universe is bringing a massive reality check to our work-life balance. You know try asking yourself what heavy burdens am I carrying? If you've been letting the outside noise disrupt your inner sanctuary, June 29th is the perfect evening for a releasing ritual. Write down all the expectations, any rigid structures or pressure that constantly produces, and safely burn the paper. You know, like we taught you in the last episode. As this week closes out, honor these quiet emotional tides and Listen to your intuition and give yourself some extra grace. The magic, the protection and the sanctuary always reside within you. It's all about spiritual discernment and inner growth. And on that note of returning to clarity, it's time for our favorite segment, tea and taro. Zandra, what are you brewing? To ground us after all this historical journey and cosmic forecast, it's got me spinning, Zandra. Yeah, that's a lot of information. Yes, it is. Well, it's late June and getting real hot down here in Houston. So with the solstice behind us, we are Sipping on a hibiscus and mint herbal tea. I made it iced because it's hot. Yes. And the vibrant red hibiscus brings in that bright solstice energy to help us see things clearly. And the crisp mint cools down the emotional waters of cancer season. hopefully that helps us find some focus. Here we go. That's perfect, Sandra. It's delicious. The mint settles everything instantly. Okay, everybody. I'm holding on to our tarot deck. I'm going to shuffle our cards and I'm going to focus on the collective intention on cutting through the noise. dropping false narratives and standing in clear truth. Let's see what the cosmos has for us this week. What does it want us to focus on? ⁓ Zandra. ⁓ we the Ace of Swords. ⁓ okay. Okay. So, Ace of Swords. This is all about mental clarity, breakthroughs, and honest truth. Now, in the traditional art, it's a single steel sword piercing through a golden crown surrounded by laurel leaves. And it represents your mind using your mind. to cut right through illusions. Yes, it's that sudden, you know, that moment when you go, In a tarot reading, all aces represent a fresh start. You know, a new beginning, a wave of insight that changes how you see things. It's tied to the element of error. It rules our thoughts and communication. When this card shows up, the universe is giving you the clarity you've been waiting for. And that sword going through the crown. Now, the crown itself, that represents our ego and the mental limits we place on ourselves. Yes. When the sword cuts right through it, it clears space for truth. For those golden droplets, those little leaves falling from the blade, those represent spiritual support and showing the unit. It shows the universe has your back when you choose honesty. Exactly. You know, the truth can feel a bit sharp sometimes at first, but when it cuts away, it's something you've been holding on to. And then the path clears. It's for peace and victory. Remember, those laurel leaves, the symbol of victory. So trust your gut, speak honestly, and look at your life. with real objectivity. Thank ⁓ all so for tuning in, keeping an open mind and stepping beyond the spiritual nexus with us. Now hold on just a second, don't leave yet. Before close out the week, ⁓ we want to hear from you. ⁓ Our favorite part of creating this space is being able to build the literal nexus of community. And that means bringing your voices onto the show. Yep. So have you ever had a wild spiritual coincidence happen? Do you have an unexplainable experience with the metaphysical? Or maybe you just happen to have a burning question about tarot, astrology, or spiritualism that you want us to unpack. Whatever it is, you can send it our way. can email us your stories, send a short voice note directly to hello at spiritualnexuspodcast.com. again, that's hello at spiritualnexuspodcast.com. You can also contact Zandra or myself through Instagram. Our handle is the Spiritual Nexus. We will be answering your questions and sharing your cosmic experiences in our upcoming episodes. Thank you so much for sitting down with us today at the Spiritual Nexus. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to hit subscribe, leave us a review, and share this episode with a friend who appreciates a little bit of history and a little bit of magic. Until next time, protect your peace, stay curious, take care of each other. Until we meet again, next Cosmic Monday, in the Nexus. Peace out everybody.