Here's an interesting overview of the famed seance accessory, the Ouija board. Originally spawned from the nineteenth century's Spiritualism craze, it gradually got to be decried as an instrument of Evil. It's been depicted this way for about 80 years now, figuring in numerous horror movies. I think a recent one is just called "Ouija", although I haven't seen it.
Of course it's a mass-produced and mass-marketed item now. For me that makes it doubtful that it would provide much of a genuine mystical experience, for good or ill. I do like, though, the tidbit that James Merrill used one to compose poetry. He was a very nifty poet, and I might have to highlight his work here later on.
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Operating on the principle that science can take the fun out of anything, it turns out the likely reason that Ouija board planchettes move the way they do is because of a psychological phenomenon known as the ideomotor response.
That's interesting enough but once again it points out the things we know that we don't we know (kind of like Rumsfeld's known unknowns). The things have been understood to provide some astonishingly relevant answers even though we realize they couldn't actually come from beyond. Or could they?
I've seen dowsing work which is no real surprise. However, I read large portions of the book 'A Course in Miracles' some years ago when Inger gave it to me. Written over the period of several years it's been understood by many to be a product of automatic writing. A number of people dismiss it but I have no reason to deny the possibility that it really is an impressive example of channeled text.
As Shakespeare once mentioned, 'There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'
One of the people who studied the ideomotor response was William James, who I seem to remember us talking about here not too long ago. It's something I can see arising in these circumstances, given a little--or big--help by the power of suggestion.
But then of course there's the thing of how much we don't know or understand. Or maybe it's just in the nature of the universe that so many phenomena are open to interpretation. And certainly skeptics aren't always as objective as they claim to be.
I had never heard of A Course In Miracles until just now. Of course it came out when I was just a kid, and not yet into things like that. It was also published during a little boom in mystical type books, so maybe it's gotten lost in the shuffle. The author--or by her own account, transcriber--was named Helen Schuchman, and apparently she was a clinical psychologist. Kind of an interesting tidbit with everything else.
Those are wise words from the Bard. It makes sense to be humble in the face of it.
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