Asking a Ouija Board about Jesus

chotki

Member
Fascinating little piece at The Christian Century, a magazine for mainline/progressive Christians:

An oracle of the word of the Lord?

Excerpts:

For three days I watched the two of them sitting across from one another at Merrill’s dining room table. Each touched lightly the overturned teacup, whose handle served as a pointer to one place or another on the board. Taking turns, they asked their questions. In response, and to my utter incredulity, the cup shuttled purposefully, quickly, between vowels and consonants and the words yes and no. One of them took down the barrage of letters and symbols with his spare hand—a line of script that later would be divided into words and sentences. It all happened too fast for me to think that they were able to make it up on the spot. But what else could they be doing?

***
Beginning to sweat, I sat myself down at the table, joined one of my friends at the board, put my hands on the Blue Willow cup, and shut my eyes. After a little while the cup began to move in slow circles, though without apparent direction from my friend and with absolutely no help from me. Then he said, “OK, Peter, what do you want to ask?”

To my embarrassment I found that despite three days of waiting for my chance, I had not actually formulated a question. I was there on the board, a teacup under my fingers, and nothing in mind. Until all of a sudden I realized that there was, in fact, only one thing I wanted to ask, a question I had never asked before, which was so deeply buried in me that I was astonished once I heard myself put it into words. It was as if in that moment I was discovering something about myself I didn’t know, some hunger. I opened my eyes and heard myself ask, “Who is Jesus Christ?”


Click on the link to read about the answer he received.

 
Fascinating little piece at The Christian Century, a magazine for mainline/progressive Christians:

An oracle of the word of the Lord?

Excerpts:

For three days I watched the two of them sitting across from one another at Merrill’s dining room table. Each touched lightly the overturned teacup, whose handle served as a pointer to one place or another on the board. Taking turns, they asked their questions. In response, and to my utter incredulity, the cup shuttled purposefully, quickly, between vowels and consonants and the words yes and no. One of them took down the barrage of letters and symbols with his spare hand—a line of script that later would be divided into words and sentences. It all happened too fast for me to think that they were able to make it up on the spot. But what else could they be doing?

***
Beginning to sweat, I sat myself down at the table, joined one of my friends at the board, put my hands on the Blue Willow cup, and shut my eyes. After a little while the cup began to move in slow circles, though without apparent direction from my friend and with absolutely no help from me. Then he said, “OK, Peter, what do you want to ask?”

To my embarrassment I found that despite three days of waiting for my chance, I had not actually formulated a question. I was there on the board, a teacup under my fingers, and nothing in mind. Until all of a sudden I realized that there was, in fact, only one thing I wanted to ask, a question I had never asked before, which was so deeply buried in me that I was astonished once I heard myself put it into words. It was as if in that moment I was discovering something about myself I didn’t know, some hunger. I opened my eyes and heard myself ask, “Who is Jesus Christ?”


Click on the link to read about the answer he received.
Curious. Thanks.
 
Perhaps I misunderstand your question, or you misunderstood my post, or maybe I misunderstood this entire topic.
:) I meant isn't the planchette the same as a ouija board essentially? My understanding is that the planchette is the pointer that moves to the symbols on the board.
 
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Who were they contacting? If you asked an incarnated person that question, you would want to know something about them in order to understand their answer. The same should be true of spirits. Just because they're dead doesn't mean they're smart. And you also have to assess the reliability of the process based on the quality of verifiable information it provides. If it never produces anything verifiable you have no way to assess its reliability.
 
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The University of British Columbia Ouija study is pretty interesting, where they apparently show that when people truly believe they are not in control, (and I think 'believe' is the word to concentrate on here, almost like surrender... or perhaps circumventing the ego), although in this case they tricked the subjects (a bit like the mirror box used to relieve phantom limb pain), subjects gained access to what the researchers call "non-conscious" knowledge, which produced answers which were significantly more accurate than conscious retrieval.

I suspect possible similarities with facilitated communication, hypnotism, prayer, mediums, placebo effects, etc, although the team at UBC were only looking at the phenomena as novel way of accessing information using standard theories of memory... it remains somewhat unclear what exactly is going on... certainly standard theories might fit, but no one has yet ruled out wilder ideas... and the wilder ideas might better explain other anomalous human phenomena.
 
:) I meant isn't the planchette the same as a ouija board essentially? My understanding is that the planchette is the pointer that moves to the symbols on the board.
Yes, sorry I was so cryptic, All of what you say is reasonable. But is any of that any kind of answer to the question which was posed - as per title of this thread? It is as though one asked for wisdom and got potatoes.
 
Yes, sorry I was so cryptic, All of what you say is reasonable. But is any of that any kind of answer to the question which was posed - as per title of this thread? It is as though one asked for wisdom and got potatoes.
It was a response to what you said, not the original post - now I'm getting confused.

If you're asking if the response from the planchette was any kind of answer to the original question - who can say? It certainly was an answer. It did sound slightly reminiscent of a fortune cookie to me, but who knows? Perhaps it was correct. It was suitably ambiguous and depends one's interpretation perhaps,.
 
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It was a response to what you said, not the original post - now I'm getting confused.

If you're asking if the response from the planchette was any kind of answer to the original question - who can say? It certainly was an answer. It did sound slightly reminiscent of a fortune cookie to me, but who knows? Perhaps it was correct. It was suitably ambiguous and depends one's interpretation perhaps,.
Ok, I think we're all confused. Let's go through it step by step.

  • Question: "Who is Jesus Christ?"
  • Answer: "HE IS THE LENS IN THE DARK BOX."
  • I said the answer, namely "He is the lens in the dark box", sounded to me like a description of the planchette.
Admittedly the planchette doesn't usually have a lens, but many versions have a hole which focuses attention on each letter. But still, if the original question had been "what is a planchette?" and the answer came back, "it is the lens in the dark box", then it would have seemed reasonably apt.

By now of course, too much time has been spent on this rather unimportant comment I made.
 
Hi everyone, I'm new here!

I took the quote to mean that we are living in a "dark box" (the material universe) and Jesus acts as a lens to allow us to peer out into the wider, ultimate reality.

If that ultimate reality is ineffable to us in our material form, then Jesus acts as a kind of translator to nudge us in the right direction.
 
Hi everyone, I'm new here!

I took the quote to mean that we are living in a "dark box" (the material universe) and Jesus acts as a lens to allow us to peer out into the wider, ultimate reality.

If that ultimate reality is ineffable to us in our material form, then Jesus acts as a kind of translator to nudge us in the right direction.
Welcome. You may be right. I like that interpretation. The difficulty is that it is we who are interpreting it. Apparently Jesus was keen on parables so it could be right :)
 
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