Ouija Board

The Ouija board is a Parker Brothers product that has been sold since 1901 (Parker Brothers bought the product and all associated intellectual property in 1966 from the estate of inventor William Fuld). The name is meant to be pronounced “wee-jah” but is more commonly pronounced “wee-gee.” The Ouija is the most famous example of a spirit board, an instrument that has been around for thousands of years, repopularized in the late 19th century with the spiritualism fad.

A basic divination device, the Ouija board consists of a board and a planchette. The board has YES and NO written in the corners, with the alphabet and numbers aligned in the middle. The planchette is a wedge-shaped piece that can be moved along the board to point at the letters or YES and NO. The user or users place their fingers on the wedge and move the planchette to spell out answers to questions asked. In theory, the users do not move the planchette themselves but, rather, allow it—and the unseen, spiritual, or magical forces guiding it—to move. The questions are assumed to be asked of the dead, or of “the spirit realm” (which may or may not be inhabited by the spirits of the deceased).

Ouija boards are thus part of a larger class of divination devices that consist of the user moving an instrument that is intended to be guided by spiritual forces or—from the 20th century on—by unconscious impulses. Such devices are as old as civilization, as old as religion. Dowsing rods and magnets are among the oldest devices of the class. Ouija boards are also closely related to automatic writing, the practice of allowing one's writing hand to inscribe a message one is not conscious of—whether because of a trance state, supernatural forces, or other means. In particular, Ouija boards and automatic writing are kin in that they can be practiced and explained both by parties who subscribe to supernatural explanations and by parties who see them as instruments of psychological discovery; and both [Page 434]are abhorred by some religious groups as gateways to demonic possession, as the abandonment of will and invitation to external forces represents for them an act much like presenting an open wound to a germ-filled environment.

It is not known when the Ouija board was invented; however, a similar board was found in China dating to 1200 b.c.e. The Ouija is the most famous example of a spirit board, repopularized in the late 19th century with the spiritualism fad.

Automatic writing and Ouija boards were especially popular among adherents of spiritualism, a Second Great Awakening religious movement that began in the United States, spread to Europe, and was particularly popular from the 19th century through the end of World War I.

The Great Awakenings are cycles of American religious history during which a great many new movements are created and existing denominations are tested, modernized, or returned to basics; they are often characterized by both religious revivals and social reform movements. The growth of spiritualism transpired at a time when many American denominations were dividing over the slavery issue or reforming to adapt to modern needs; at the same time, many

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