Spirit Boards and Fortune-Telling
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The spirits are afoot on this holiest
of nights. It is Samhain, the Sabbat of the Hunter's Moon, the third
and final of the three harvest holidays on the wheel of the year. As
autumn dawned, we harvested grain and baked bread; upon the Equinox
we harvested fruit and vegetables to preserve against winter's want.
Now, as autumn moves through dark of night towards winter, we
celebrate the harvest of the last of the field crops in the mundane
world, and in the spirit realm, the sacred cycle of birth, death, and
rebirth. For the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest on this
holy night; so thin that the departed can pass freely.
Halloween is an evening of games and treats, a celebration with a wicked twist that belies the inverse
nature of the profound holiness of Samhain. For as scary is fun on Halloween, as we dress up as who we aren't (maybe revealing something
of who or how we are), as we scry the future in celebration of the
harvest, we are unleashing impulses that proceed from and return to
the earliest, deepest elements of our existence. We are a species
that perceives its own mortality and is compelled by curiosity; a
species terrified of death yet joyous about birth. Between these
worlds lies the shadow world, and in the shadows reside enlightenment
and terror. Intelligent species such as crows know to grieve, bats
bring back the secrets of the shadows from the depths of the cave,
ravens fly on the wings of magic. But it is the unique curse of human
beings that, seemingly alone in the kingdoms of life on earth, cognitively we know of our own mortality.
With awareness of death as the curse of
our consciousness, we try to understand the unfathomable by engaging with it. Our folklore is blessed with a rich history of practices,
impacting every field from science to history to religion to art,
that reach far to the fundamental place that Samhain and Halloween
are facile expressions of. Many believe that there is a spirit world,
peaceful to baneful in the experience of it, and that it can be
contacted. On this holy night of The Third Harvest, the forces that
shape corporeal reality converge to open the portals between material
existence and the spirit realm.
Belief in contact with the departed
leads us from the apothecary garden to the mortuary, from the
cleric's anchorage to the folklorist's tablet, from a candle aglow in a jack o'lantern to a candle standing sentinel on an altar. It provokes the study
of medicine to prolong life, creates religion to comprehend the fact
of mortality, generates social mores to palliate the inevitable. And
it provides for esoteric studies, religious practices to some, with
which some contact the spirit realm either organically or
through the use of methodologies and tools. In the modern west,
individuals so gifted are referred to as mediums, and usage of
esoteric methods and tools to reveal the hidden as divination.
Divination dovetails with otherworldly contact because it is from
contact with the shadow world that divination proceeds. Divination
tools, especially those we'd recognize in the modern west, are
conduits of spiritual energies, and the questions asked of the spirit
realm are invariably about what will happen. And so has divination
become enmeshed with fortune-telling. Anyone who's been to a
Halloween carnival has had the chance to have their palms or tea
leaves read, or a more serious reading from the crystal ball or the
Tarot.
In the morbid Victorian era, through the movement of the day known as
spiritualism, concurrently mourning became a high art and people
became fascinated by parlor magic. Genuine mediumship hid itself from
and sometimes within the trickery of the charlatan. As part of
spiritualism evolved the practice of the séance, a complicated event
that is serious indeed but became perverted towards entertainment.
Likewise divination hid from and sometimes within fortune-telling, as
serious occult devices such as the crystal ball, the Tarot, and the
spirit board were bent towards predicting the future. Spirit boards are divination tools wherein which symbols imprinted on a board –alphabet,
numbers, words, and graphics – connect through a pointer with the
spirit world. The first spirit board patents were
granted during the Victorian spiritualism era, which proves provenance as an amusement.
However, the serious practice of spirit
communication through board and pointer is time-honored. It begins
with the simple device of a pendulum suspended over a topographic or
alphanumeric map. These early pendulums were stones, gems, pieces of
wood or flint, even acorns or hazelnuts. Pendulums were used over
maps for numerous purposes from practical to esoteric, including
tracing safe and promising routes, locating water and food sources,
and, yes, receiving communications from the shadow world. From
pendulums, the divination device migrated to a wine- or water glass
standing upright and controlled by pairs of hands resting upon its
rim. The alphanumeric map became a scroll or hide, a stitched sampler, eventually a slab of wood. Because spirits are believed
to hover, the glass in whose bowl they resided was replaced by a
pointer, known colloquially as a planchette, that appeared to hover
over the board. The spirits dwelled in the space between the
planchette and the board surface, from there to spell out messages on
what was now known as a spirit- or talking board.
Today's most common name for a talking
board is a trademarked portmanteau of the French and German words for
“yes” which reportedly the board itself explained means “good
luck.” The collective term for all such boards is talking boards.
Both by occultists and collectors, talking boards are highly
sought-after items. For occultists, talking boards may be part of the
fabric of their studies and practices, often used by these trained
practitioners as the divination tools they are. For collectors, they
are either the downgrade parlor game referred to above, residing in
the hall closet with the other board games, or they are part of as
niche a collector's market as there is: magic and fortune-telling
ephemera.
Among both practitioners and
collectors, talking boards are known by brand name, or as
witch boards, spirit boards, channel boards, or oracles. Whatever the
collector's personal reasons for doing so, it is easy to see why
talking boards are popular collectibles. They are often imprinted
with delightful – and if you're a serious user, potent – images
of swamis, witches, magicians, the heavens, or ornate calligraphy.
Other collectible fortune-telling ephemera include fortune-telling
cards, programs and photographs from magic shows and séances,
vintage magic and fortune-telling books, scrying devices such as the
crystal ball or mirror, and fortune-telling amusements such as the
Oracle Box or our friend Zoltar above.
In our home office, it is Halloween every day of the year. Since childhood, I have been drawn to stage
magic and fortune-telling. Along with my collections of haunted houses and witches, on display is my collection of talking boards and
fortune-telling ephemera. I do not use the boards but treat them
respectfully as any collector should. I cleanse each new acquisition
in smoke from sage or incense, and never mar the board service with
nails, adhesive, or household cleaners other than a feather duster.
Planchettes when available are kept separate from the boards, for
while in our home we welcome spirits and practice ancient ways, we do
not want any spirit to appear uncalled. This is important, for while
the spirits should not come to the board unless called, the pointer
is a beacon for them. Thus must collectors who operate the spirit board only ever do so with a minimum of two users. Grief has led us
from our very beginnings to believe in a spirit world, closest to the
material plane on this holiest of nights. Spirit boards and other fortune-telling devices must
always be treated with due respect – for not only are the spirits
afoot on this sacred night of Samhain, they are mischievous!
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