The voice of an angel

New from the "It's Not A Sin When We Do It" department, we have: Christian Charismatics using a spin-off of the Ouija board to contact angels.

I was sent this story by a friend and long-time loyal reader of Skeptophilia, and my first thought was, "This can't be true."  Sadly, it is.  The same people who go on and on about how evil Ouija boards are and how you're risking your eternal soul even being in the same room with one are now saying that their Ouija boards are just fine and dandy.

The "Angel Board" is available from Amazon at the low-low-low price of $28 (plus shipping and handling).  In the product description, we're told that we can "ask any question we want, and the Angel Board will answer."  If you don't like that particular one, it turns out there are dozens of different makes and models, some costing hundreds of dollars.  

Because we can't just have one company capitalizing on people's gullibility.

Interestingly, if not surprisingly, the reviews have been uniformly good. One five-star review says:

I have been on a path of spiritual enlightenment for 1 year now.  I have two other friends who have shared this path with me.  We share books, experiences, thoughts and feelings, but when one of us (not me) bought this book and “game” board to communicate with our higher-level guides or “guardian angels,” it became a turning point in my journey.  I didn’t think I was “advanced enough” or “spiritual enough” to make this thing work.  I learned, in about 2 minutes, that doubting myself was doubting God and his angels!  In one evening, I met my higher guide, felt unconditional love, and knew I wasn’t alone and never had been.  I was convinced, beyond all reason, of the presence of my angel.  To this date, I call him “J” as we haven’t yet tuned our energies to really work out the spelling of the name…  I asked him if “J” would be okay, and he said, “yes.”  He has answered to “J” ever since!  One evening, before I was able to acquire an “angel board” of my own, I tried an Ouija Board.  It took several attempts before J was able to answer me, but when he did, I asked if he preferred the angel board and he responded “yes.”  We had a very difficult, short conversation that night. The angel board is a MUST for all those who seek a closer relationship with their guardian angel, and who have not had much practice in meditation and raising their energies to a compatible level with the light bodies waiting to guide us!

It's to be hoped that when they "tune their energies" and she finds out "J's" actual name, it's not a rude shock.  It'd kind of suck if she thought she was talking to the Archangel Jophiel and it turned out she was having a conversation with, say, Jar-Jar Binks.

It bears mention, however, that not everyone is so sanguine about the Angel Board.  At the site Women of Grace, we're given the following warning:

Angel boards are just as dangerous as Ouija boards, perhaps more so because they haves [sic] the same purpose as a Ouija board – contacting “spirits” – only they pretend to be summoning guardian angels to make it seem less dangerous...  This is so dangerous on so many levels.  When a person evokes spirits of the dead, he or she is never in control because they are dealing with preternatural forces.  These are powerful beings who are possessed of super-human intelligence, strength and cunning.  Only the most naïve would think that they can control summoned spirits merely by “politely” asking them to come or go...  Needless to say, angel boards should be strictly avoided.

Over at Our Spiritual Quest, "ex medium and professional astrologer" Marcia Montenegro agrees:

Any attempt to contact or summon an angel will result in contact only with a fallen angel.  Spiritism is strongly forbidden and denounced by God and angels are spirit creatures.

 
There is no example anywhere in the Bible of anyone contacting an angel.  The angels who brought messages or did other things for people in the Bible were sent at God’s command.  They were never summoned by man.

 
Asking questions using this Board is the same as using a Ouija Board.  In both cases, only fallen angels, disguised as good angels, as guardian angels, or as the dead, will respond.

I never realized that borrowing from the spiritualists was such a big thing among the hyper-religious, but apparently it is.  There's even a "Christian Tarot deck," available at (surprise!) Amazon, which says that the practice if done right is "biblically consonant."  As you might imagine, this got quite a reaction, both from the people who think Tarot cards are the instrument of the devil and those who think divination is a divine gift.

Weirder still, sometimes those are the same people, just on different days.  Kris Vallotton, pastor of the Bethel Church and self-styled "spiritual leader," heard people said that he and his church members were using Christian Tarot cards developed by a group called "Christalignment," and responded in no uncertain terms:

This is insane... whoever is doing this needs to repent the craziness in the name of "reaching people for Christ..."  There are people who listen to our teaching and create strange and/or anti-biblical applications in our name...  [W]e need wisdom as we move into the cesspool we call the world.  Stop the craziness!

Shortly afterwards, Vallotton responded to his response in no uncertain terms:

There has been some recent concern about the ministry of Christalignment and their supposed use of “Christian tarot cards” in ministering to people at New Age festivals.  While the leaders of this ministry (Ken and Jenny Hodge) are connected with several members of our community (including being the parents to our much-loved brother, evangelist Ben Fitzgerald), Christalignment is not formally affiliated with Bethel.  We do, however, have a value for what they are seeking to accomplish.

When his followers raised hell about his sudden about-face, not to mention an apparent chumminess with occultists, Vallotton responded to the response to his response in no uncertain terms:

Let’s be clear: I was speaking against Tarot cards and their use, which I am still against.  I was addressing people who were accusing Bethel taking part in this practice.  We don’t and never have been been apart [sic] of this.  So that’s still true!  The people who were named in the article, were never named in the people’s accusations of us (that I knew of at the time) nor did I name anyone in my posts.  The article turned out to be fake news against great people who love God, don’t use Tarot cards and lead 1000s of people who do, to Christ.

So there you have it.  He's unequivocally for it except in the sense that he's unequivocally against it.

But he did get some support from one of his followers who said she thought there was nothing wrong even if these were Tarot cards, because -- and I swear I am not making this up -- he says that "'Tarot' is 'Torah' spelled backwards."

Predictably, I read all this with an expression like this:

My general impression is that the whole lot of it -- Tarot cards, Ouija boards, angelology, and the entire Charismatic movement -- is nonsense.  So arguing about whether a silly board game or some funny pictures printed on cheap card stock are going to put you in touch with an angel or with the Prince of Darkness is a little like arguing over whether 2 + 3 equals 17 or 358.

Anyhow, thanks to the loyal reader who sent me the link.  I suppose it's a good thing that this is what the hyper-Christians are currently spending their time discussing.  It's less time they'll have to spend trying to shoehorn young-Earth creationism into public school science curricula and voting in Christofascist authoritarians to public office.  If those are my other options, I'll take sacred Ouija boards any day.

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Ouija analysis

What do you do with a piece of research that (from the paper itself) sounds like it was done right, but appears in a journal that is notorious for publishing highly suspect papers in the past?

That was my reaction -- well, my question, anyhow -- after reading "A Camera-Based Tracking System for Ouija Research" by Eckhard Kruse, which appeared last month in The Journal for Scientific Exploration.  The JSE has a reputation for being filled with woo, fringe/pseudoscience, and wacko claims, something that has merited the following entry in Rational Wiki (which is never afraid to speak bluntly):

JSE has much less to do with science than it does with whatever pet crank theories its editors are out to promote.  It's chock-full of all kinds of woo, including (but not limited to) alternative medicine, astrology, remote viewing, AIDS denial, quantum woo, UFOs, and much, much more!

So given that, it's unsurprising that they published a paper investigating Ouija boards in the first place.

The conventional explanation for the Ouija phenomenon is the ideomotor effect, wherein a thought, mental image, or suggestion results in a movement of the body, seemingly spontaneous or beneath the individual's conscious awareness.  The idea is that when people have their fingers on a Ouija planchette, they're subconsciously directing it to spell out a message that makes sense.

[Image is in the Public Domain]

What the researchers were looking for was evidence that the planchette movement occurred independently of the individuals touching it -- something claimed by aficionados of Ouija boards, who apparently believe that the planchette is being manipulated by a spirit, and the people involved are only acting as a conduit of the "energy" (that word being used in the usual fluffy non-scientific fashion).  They put sensors on the planchette that detected whether the fingertips moved prior to the planchette sliding (indicating the "sitters" were directing its motion) or that the fingers and planchette started moving simultaneously (suggesting the paranormal explanation).  They also looked at the speed with which the planchette selected letters, claiming that if it was the ideomotor effect at work, the selection should speed up within a particular message, because once the first couple of letters (presumably chosen at random) are selected, this suggests an actual word to the "sitters," so the rest of the message is selected more quickly.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the results were fairly equivocal.  The motion sensors did indicate that the "sitters'" fingertips moved prior to the planchette sliding, but the expected increase in speed once a message begins did not happen.  Here were a few of the conclusions the researchers made:

• When hitting a letter, details of the motion path (cusps vs. smooth curves) could indicate whether the next letter is already anticipated, hinting at (conscious or unconscious) knowledge of how the spelling will proceed.
• The time needed to spell the next letter was only weakly related to its “guessability,” i.e. the number of choices to construct meaningful words, in contrast to Andersen et al.’s (2018) statement about imposing “structure on initially random events.”
• According to the experiments with the touch sensor, it is the sitters’ fingers that are moving first, then the planchette follows. This complies with the ideomotor explanation. If there were psychokinetic effects, it seems likely that it would be the other way around and the fingers would be following the actions of the planchette.
• Often two sitters were able to move the planchette synchronously, similar to the volitional spelling of a given message. This challenges conventional ideomotor explanations, as these would require some negotiation process regarding the next, unknown target. Even though this might happen unconsciously, it would require some time for information transmission between the sitters and potentially some delay in the action of one sitter, causing similar rotations as when one sitter voluntarily leads the planchette—unless there are psi effects explaining the synchronicity.

So nothing here blows me out of the water, but still, this seems to me to be the right approach for testing any paranormal claim.

Oh, and then there's the part at the end of the paper where Kruse admits that blind Ouija sitting never works -- that as soon as the "sitters" are blindfolded, the messages stop coming.  You wouldn't think it would matter if the spirits were controlling the thing, would you?

So I'm still pretty confident that there's nothing supernatural going on with Ouija boards, however bent out of shape people get over how diabolical the things are and how they're summoning up demons and whatnot (every time I mention them in Skeptophilia I get emails about how I shouldn't ever touch one because they're eeeeeevil.).  The most parsimonious explanation is pretty clearly ideomotor phenomena, and anyone wanting to get a skeptic to believe anything else would have to come up with better evidence than Kruse did.

And, for the record, publish it in a journal that doesn't have a reputation for printing crap.  My guess is if someone did find hard, replicable evidence for any kind of paranormal claim, it wouldn't be difficult to find reputable journals interested in it -- provided it met the minimum standard for controlled experimentation.

Like every other scientific inquiry has to.

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This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is a classic: James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me.  Loewen's work is an indictment not specifically of the educational system, but of our culture's determination to sanitize our own history and present our historical figures as if they were pristine pillars of virtue.

The reality is -- as reality always is -- more complex and more interesting.  The leaders of the past were human, and ran the gamut of praiseworthiness.  Some had their sordid sides.  Some were a strange mix of admirable and reprehensible.  But what is certain is that we're not doing our children, nor ourselves, any favors by rewriting history to make America and Americans look faultless.  We owe our citizens the duty of being honest, even about the parts of history that we'd rather not admit to.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Candy bars for Satan

Happy Halloween to all of my loyal readers.  I'm saying this because "Happy Scary Day Of Your Choice" sounds ridiculous, so if you don't celebrate Halloween, you can feel free to get your knickers in a twist.

Because it's a day long associated with legends about ghosts and hauntings and demons and so on, Halloween is not a big favorite with the ultrareligious types.  It's interesting, however, that the day itself has a (sort of) Christian origin; in the Celtic calendar, there were twelve months of thirty days each, which left five days at the end that belonged to no month.  Because of this, they were thought to be days when all of the natural laws were suspended, the dead came back to life, and other special offers.  The culmination was the last of the five days, Samhain, on which your local priest was supposed to get together with the pious members of the village and fight back the forces of evil, after which there was a big celebration complete with high-fives about how they beat the hell out of the demons yet again.  This practice was later co-opted by kids, who would disguise themselves as demons and go from door to door, demanding a gift (a treat) in exchange for their not vandalizing your house (a trick).

The next day, November 1 (All Saints Day) was a holy day, celebrating the start of the new year and the triumph of good over evil, and a time to remember the dead, at least the ones who were buried on sanctified ground.  All Saints Day is sometimes called "All Hallows Day," so the day before is "Hallow's Eve."

And thus Halloween was born.

[image courtesy of photographer Jarek Tuszynski and the Wikimedia Commons]

So the whole thing has a connection to some at-least-sort-of-Christian mythology, although its roots go back much further, to the pagan rites of the ancient Celts.  I suppose I can see how the ultrareligious would object to the whole thing.  But this still doesn't explain Linda Harvey, televangelist and founder of Mission:America, who said last week that you should definitely not let your kids participate in trick-or-treating, because it could...

... turn them gay.

I kid you not.  Harvey said:

Yes, America’s recent exaltation of Halloween as a festival second only to Christmas owes a lot to promotion by homosexuals and their new favorite comrades — gender-confused males and females. 

And as usual, the “LGBTQ” folks have no problem using any tool, Halloween included, to corrupt children.

How did she figure all this out?  It's hard to say, although she says she escaped from the magnetic lure of evil only by the skin of her teeth:

When I was 14, I had my own bizarre encounter with the enemy spirit world by experimenting with a Ouija board.  Since my parents were Episcopalians, I received no warnings of spiritual danger because at that time, they lacked a mature, informed level of faith. 

But when my friend and I asked the “board” questions, some unseen force pushed the pointer around.  At times, our fingers were hanging on for dear life as it flew around the board, often spelling out messages. 

I had little biblical background to understand what this presence surely was.  Now, I can only thank God for mercifully protecting me from being drawn more deeply into this spooky and alluring world where the unseen has real, tangible power.

What "this presence" was is the well-studied ideomotor effect, where people's conscious or subconscious thoughts drive their bodies to respond, often in such a way that it feels "reflexive" or out of their control.  So there's nothing much to a Ouija board, and it's only able to tell us what we already knew (or what we might imagine).  No evil "presence" required.

Oh, and Linda: that's a hell of a dig at the Episcopalians, not to mention your own parents.  I guess "ecumenism" forms no part of your religious practice, then?  Nor familial respect?

Fortunately for Linda and her followers, there's an alternate celebration available.  It's called -- and I am so not making this up -- "JesusWeen."  The idea is instead of dressing up in costume and getting candy on the evening of October 31, you dress in conservative clothing and pass out religious study materials.

I just bet the neighborhood kids are going to be busting down the front door to participate in that.

Anyhow, if you're planning on going out trick-or-treating tonight, be ready for attacks from Satan and coming back gay.  I guess we all have to decide what kind of risks we're willing to take.  And this is just me, but if I heard that a neighbor was passing out full-sized Mounds bars, I would throw caution to the wind with respect to either of these.

The woo-woos go high tech

I suppose it was only a matter of time.  The woo-woos have gotten hold of high tech.

I find this a kind of curious idea, given how they harp so continuously on how their beliefs are Ancient Magick Passed Down From The Elders -- it never occurred to me that they would jump on the "app" bandwagon.  But given the utility, ease of use, and low cost of your typical iPhone or iPad app, it was bound to happen.

So, put away your crystals and dowsing rods and sacred knives, and get out your electronic device of choice.  Here's a few of the hundreds of apps I found. 

Rune Magic ($2.99) - "Rune Magic is a state of the art application for rune divination and studying. Ask runes about your destiny, fortune, love, health and business.  The application provides four types of runic divination with the detailed descriptions of rune meanings.  The runes will tell you about the past, the present and the future, and also will give an advice about your problems.  The application is also perfect for studying runes.  A strict compliance with all magical rules makes application predictions highly accurate. Try it, you would be impressed! The application is on sale, it is the best time to buy it."

Ouija Board version 6.2 ($1.99) - "A talking board, generically referred as "Ouija Board" and also known as spirit board, witch board, oracle board, mystic board or channeling board, is any flat board printed with letters, numbers, and other symbols, to which a planchette or movable indicator points, answering questions from people at a séance. The fingers of the participants are placed on the planchette that is moved by the spirits about the board to spell out messages. These boards are considered to be a spiritual gateway used to contact the dead or to receive information from beyond."

New Age Stone and Crystal Guide ($3.99) - "New Age Stones and Crystals Guide provides metaphysical property information for hundreds of stones and crystals. Search through indexes of stone names or property types to find the exact stone needed for your self development. The most extensive virtual stone and crystal guide available, this application identifies stones helpful for improvement of spiritual, mental and psychological aspects."

Erzulie's Voodoo ($3.99) - "Learn all about the secrets of Voodoo & Vodou with the world’s FIRST authentic Voodoo app, from Erzulie’s Authentic Voodoo in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Erzulie’s Voodoo “Advanced” app delves into the roots, detailed history, advanced spiritual concepts, Vodou rituals and magic of this vast and mysterious tradition, written by highly experienced, initiated, Vodou priests and priestesses.  Erzulie’s Voodoo Advanced App offers comprehensive information on Voodoo beliefs, performing your own authentic Voodoo spells, extensive sections on the Divine Voodoo Spirits (Lwa), how they are served in Vodou, and their Catholic Counterparts plus Magical Veve’s (sacred symbols of the Spirits), Spiritual Possession, New Orleans Voodoo, Palo Mayombe, Voodoo dolls, fetishes, Voodoo magic and much more... Perform your very own powerful Voodoo Love Spells, Wealth Spells and Banishing Spells with our extensive collection of authentic Voodoo rituals found only in the Erzulie’s Voodoo Advanced App, complete with their very own detailed instructions and resources."

Goddess Inspiration Oracle (free) - "Get inspired! The Goddess Inspiration Oracle offers a free one card oracle reading to grant you guidance for your day. It features eighty goddesses from around the world, all whom offer inspiration and guidance. These powerful feminine role models range from Abeona, goddess of gateways, to the Zorya, each of whom are represented in this app with gorgeous art and inspiring, well-researched text... Since time immemorial, humans have invoked the wisdom of goddesses by using oracles. Oracles provide an experience of synchronicity, a term created by Jung to describe a series of random events that connect within us to gain a deeper meaning. By doing so, the oracle helps us release information we already possess, thus allowing inspiration to strike when we most need it."

iTarot Classic (free) - "iTarot Classic provides straightforward two-card readings --"Daily Tarot" and "Love Tarot"-- with a streamlined design that makes consulting the Tarot effortless.
Features:
• Draw new cards with a simple shake
• Display only a one-card reading, if desired
• Use only the Major (or only the Minor) Arcana
• Allow or prohibit reversed cards
• Draw "Daily" and "Love" cards independently, from separate decks"


And those are just six out of hundreds.  I'm kind of overwhelmed, and not just because I'm a Luddite.  I just never would have thought that the whole electronic media thing would have caught on with these folks.  My question is: do they really think it's the same thing?  I mean, isn't the basis of these beliefs that when you handle the crystals, Tarot cards, rune stones, or whatever, the act of touching the objects is what is creating some kind of mystical interconnectedness of being?  Can putting your fingers on a touch screen made in China really accomplish the same thing?

Maybe we should try a different app to see if we can get an answer to this question.  How about:

Magic 8 Ball ($0.99) - "Magic 8 Ball™ has all the answers!  And now it’s available for your iOS device!   Ask it any yes or no question, shake your device (or tap the screen) and, “without a doubt,” it will give you an answer to life’s most complicated questions.  Inquire about romance, friendship, school, work…whatever! "


Let's see...  "Reply hazy, try again."


I shoulda known.

Ouija wisdom

It's interesting how woo-woo trends come and go.  Conspiracy theories are currently all the rage, especially amongst people who think our government is way more evil, and also way more intelligent, than it actually is.  On the other hand, interest  in Bigfoot and other cryptids seems to be on the wane, with the current spate of television shows about monster hunters ("squatchers") now played more for laughs than anything else.

Of course, interest can rekindle, and that seems to be the case with the Ouija board.  I remember these things from when I was a kid -- a flat board, with letters and numbers and a few words ("yes," "no," and sometimes "goodbye"), and a little piece of lightweight wood resting on three legs called a "planchette" that had a pointer.  The players lightly rest their fingers on the planchette, and "invite the spirit world to communicate with them," and if the spirits are in an obliging mood they shove the planchette around to spell out messages.

Ouija boards kind of went out of fashion for a while, but they're coming back... in fact, Universal Studios has a movie (creatively called Ouija) in production, and if it's halfway successful, you can expect a sudden upsurge in interest in the divination tool.  Not to mention a sudden upsurge in religious folks telling you how dangerous it is, how it is the handiwork of the devil and not to be taken lightly.

All of this is pretty funny, because the Ouija board is a fairly recent invention, and not by Aleister Crowley or anyone of that ilk -- it was invented in 1890 by a trio of parlor game designers, E. C. Reiche, Elijah Bond, and Charles Kennard.  Of course, they wanted it to appear mystical; they said, for example, that the word "Ouija" is the Egyptian word for "good luck," which is patently false.  When Kennard lost control of the company to his foreman, William Fuld, Fuld was interviewed and admitted that the whole mystique around the board was his own creation-- there was nothing occult about it, and in fact the name "Ouija" was coined simply by splicing together the French and German words for "yes."  And the ability of the board to spell out messages is adequately explained by the ideomotor effect, the ability of the mind to subconsciously guide actions such as small motions of the fingers.  Controlled studies of Ouija boards using blindfolded people resulted in the production of gibberish -- given that it wasn't the spirits wearing the blindfolds, you'd think it wouldn't matter.  (Actually, if there really were spirits making people's hands move, you have to wonder why the spirits can't just make the planchette itself move, and eliminate the middle man.)

Of course, a rational explanation doesn't discourage most woo-woos, and there are lots of alleged psychics who still love the Ouija board, and lots of conservative Christians who still think it's a tool of Satan.  Hasbro, who has the marketing rights for the game, is the recipient of frequent requests from church leaders to discontinue sales of Ouija boards, because they're "encouraging children to call up demons."  In 2001, a bunch of religious folks got together in Alamogordo, New Mexico and burned a pile of Ouija boards -- but they also added a bunch of Harry Potter books to the bonfire, so I'm not sure their ability to discriminate fact from fiction was all that sharp to begin with.

I remember messing with a Ouija board once when I was a kid -- a neighbor of mine had one.  We sat there, lights turned down, fingertips on the board, trying to get into a mystical frame of mind... and then... suddenly... nothing happened.  We waited for a while, but evidently most of the more helpful spirits were vacationing in Maui that day, because neither of us felt any ice-cold fingers pushing our hands around.  Eventually the planchette did move a little (I still suspect the neighbor kid may have had something to do with it.)  But after spelling out some highly important messages from the Other Side, such as "You smell bad," the spirits became balky and refused to cooperate, and we got bored and went outside to play.  And the latter, frankly, is what both the psychics and the Christians should do.

Myself, I think as divination tools go, we should go back to the tried-and-true Magic Eight Ball.  It's simple, direct, and gives you answers to any question you might have.  But of course, you have to ask yourself, is it accurate?  Is it actually accessing hidden knowledge to give you wisdom, or is it just random?  Let's see what it has to say about that.

*shakes up Magic Eight Ball*

Um... "Reply hazy, try again later."  Okay, I'll have to get back to you on that one.