THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE OUIJA BOARD[45]
Before we proceed to discuss the intelligence lying behind the Ouija Board, I must offer a few remarks upon the subject of automatic writing in general, passing in very brief review the various theories that have been advanced from time to time by way of explanation of the action of this extraordinary little device.
One of the sanest and most rational popular accounts of this instrument and its workings that I have so far come across (all things considered) is a little pamphlet entitled The Planchette Mystery, very little known, from which I shall quote in writing this review. Epes Sargent's book, Planchette: the Despair of Science, contains in reality very little on the planchette board, and the title is somewhat deceptive. Mr. Myers's articles on the subject (particularly in Proceedings of S.P.R., vol. ii. pp. 217-37; vol. iii. pp. 1-63; and vol. ix. pp. 26-128) are, of course, classical, but are involved and inaccessible for the general reader, even had he the time to read them carefully; so that perhaps the following résumé may not be unnecessary or out of place.
It is to be presumed that every reader of this book knows what a Ouija Board is, and, roughly, what it does. How it does it is a more difficult question to answer; in fact, it may be said that no definite answer has even yet been forthcoming. All that has been done, or that we can do, is to examine the facts, and to advance an explanatory theory that is really explanatory and in accord, as nearly as possible, with accepted theories and teaching.
First, let us consider the movement of the board. There can be little doubt that the same force which propels the planchette board propels the ouija board also; and this is still further demonstrated by the fact that, in many experiments, the planchette board is used as a ouija, and points to the letters, which are written out on a large piece of paper, and the pencil point indicates the letter in the same manner as does the ouija. It certainly appears far easier for the board to point to letters than to write—and this is most suggestive and interesting when we consider it. It would seem to indicate that the controlling intelligence found it easier to convey its thoughts when the letters were before it, in plain sight—a very suggestive fact, taken in conjunction with certain mediumistic phenomena.[46] Of course there is the alternative explanation of this fact—that a straight push-and-pull action is easier to accomplish than the more detailed and complicated action of forming words and letters. But that would not make plain to us why it is that no attempt at writing should be made, very often, until the letter-pointing system is adopted.
Presuming, then, that the movement or impelling force is the same in each instance, the question is: What is this force? In the great bulk of cases there can only be one answer to this question: unconscious muscular action. Whenever muscular contact is allowed, this may safely be assumed to be the explanation of the movements of the board—even if it shows an apparently independent will and movement of its own, and apparently drags the hands of the sitters with it. I have discussed this at some length in my Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism, pp. 66-72, and it is unnecessary to go into the question again here. Unconscious muscular action will account for so much that, even if it were not the true explanation of the facts, in reality, we should have to assume that it was.
It will be observed that I have said "in the great bulk of cases." Some of my readers may object to this limitation, and say that it is the true and sufficient explanation of all the cases, without exception. Personally I doubt that fact. There are numerous cases on record when the board has continued to write after the hands of all the sitters have been removed from it. Now, if there be operative a force which has been in some way generated during the sitting, it is quite possible, of course, that this same force may be operative in those cases where contact is allowed, only it is difficult to prove that fact.[47] Personally I have no difficulty in conceiving such a force or power, at least theoretically. This force may be the first glimmerings of the force whose more powerful manifestations we see in the movements of tables (witness Gasparin's experiments, e.g.), and ultimately in telekinetic phenomena, as, for example, in the Palladino case. This would seem to indicate that such forces and powers are possessed by every one in a limited degree, but that it is only in certain individuals that it becomes so marked and extraordinary that it produces the phenomena spoken of above.
Granting, then, for the sake of argument, that the board is moved by the sitter, either consciously or unconsciously; by unconscious muscular action or by some "fluid" emanating from his fingers (and we must remember that even were a spirit using the writer's organism to manifest through, it must use the muscular and motor system), the great and vital question still remains: What is the intelligence behind the board that directs the phenomena? Who does the writing? What is the source of the information so often given?