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Monday, November 11, 2013

Don't Try This at Home

When I was growing up, Ouija Boards were a Big Thing. They consisted of a board with letters around the edge, and a planchette, a wheeled pointer that would be used to point at letters to form words and sentences. The 'operator's eyes are closed.

And, of course, the messages came from...somewhere else...and were transmitted through the person whose hands lay on the planchette.

A variation on this exercise is automatic writing, in which a pen is mounted to the planchette, and is used to actually write the words. (A vivid description of automatic writing is given in Nevil Shute's novel No Highway; Shute is the bloke who wrote A Town Like Alice, serialized on PBS a number of years back.)

Seeing this in practice is unnerving, because while often the 'messages' are gibberish, sometimes they're not. They can be bland, like "Hello" or "How is the weather?", or simple, and slightly incongruous statements such as "There is a table".

Occasionally they seem friendly.

And there are a significant number of communications that are evil, filled with hate and fear and threat. Makes the hair on the nape of my neck stand up, writing about them. I won;'t quote the ones I have seen.

It's easy to dismiss the Quija Board / automatic writing phenomenon as an expression of the operaor's subconscious - i's what his benighed, blindfolded person would wan to say.

That's a simple, rational explanation. I believe it's quite wrong. First, in cases I've seen there's been a lack of internal consistency in the 'personality' and knowledge base of the operator and what was written. Phrasing was different, and there were things written that the operator should not have known.

Second, visual observation of the planchette's movement indicated some kind of external control. It was jerky, but the operator's hands were relaxed.

Something is out there...but what?

I don't think it's your Dear Departed Aunt Mildred. If you look at near-death experiences, and at the Bible, you find no indication that the 'departed' would have any trouble contacting us if they needed to do so. We are their 'shadow world'. A clumsy board 'game' would be laughable to them.

So, who? Given the number of malign contacts that come up, I think that when we play around with this stuff, we kick a hole in the 'hedge of protection' God has put around us...and give access to something unspeakably bad.

The existence of demons has been a given in almost every culture on this planet - including Western Christianity. Some would now scoff, thinking that, well, we can go to the moon, and we're too grown up to believe in demons.

We can no longer go to the moon. That knowledge and experience base has been lost.

And the demons aren't scoffing. They're waiting.

Don't play around with this stuff.

Please.

9 comments:

  1. Andrew. Strangely enough, out of the blue, my eleven-year-old asked me what a Ouija board was week before last. She's home schooled, but attends a "Community Day" with other kids in her program on Tuesday mornings. Even in those brief hours (3) of teaching - there are wonderful teachers who create class settings and school activities for the kids - there are opportunities for these kids to gather around the recess/lunch table and throw this stuff down.

    Now, I'm of the mind that the more my daughter "hears" in the outside world, the more opportunity I have to speak truth into her life, so I don't EVER balk at her questions, but answer them as forthrightly as possible. But it doesn't lessen the profound evidence that the spiritual world is alive and well and you're so dead right. WHY on earth would we willfully "punch holes in the hedge of protection" around us?

    Great post. Great challenge. Thank you.

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    1. Becky, thank you - that means a lot.

      There are those who feel we should "be Christian" and be "tolerant" of those who want to monkey around with malign powers.

      Being Christian does not mean having no backbone. It means standing strong against evil, from whatever direction it comes. A world of souls is at stake.

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  2. In 1967 when I was 14 years old, a Ouija Board and autonomic handwriting destroyed my life.

    I mean that literally. Forty-six years later, I am still living with the aftermath. Was it demons? Schizophrenia? PTSD? A combination thereof? This is what my memoir, Going Crazy, is about. I'm having such a hard time writing my story, that lately I have been teetering on the brink of giving up. Then I read this post of yours, and Becky's comment about her little girl, and.... I believe I really need to tell my story, painful though it is to write, if for no other reason than to serve as a warning to others.

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    1. I hope you will tell your story, Lynda. There are so many people who need to hear it.

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    2. Thank you, Andrew. I feel an urgency about writing my story while I am still healthy enough to do it. Since I turned 60 and became a great-grandmother this year, the thought that keeps going through my mind is that I don't want to take my story to the grave! And, if not NOW, WHEN? But I'm finding this very difficult to write. Thirteen years ago I wrote and published a novel. That was a lot of hard work, too, but enjoyable. Writing my memoir, on the other hand, is something else.

      After reading this post of yours last night, I've been wondering if the reason I'm struggling so hard is because my focus is wrong? I've been focusing primarily on the psychological aspect of my history, which is a major part of my story, but -- maybe I need to focus more on the spiritual. The problem is, I am concerned that most people will not believe my story is true, if I go too much into the "exorcist" aspect of it. I am concerned, too, that not very many people would be interested in reading about my experiences with the occult, whereas many people, from all walks of life seem to be interested in stories about people who have overcome Schizophrenia, MPD/DID, Bipolar, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, etc.

      I want so much for my story to be a help to troubled people, and at the same time to be a Christian witness. Particularly as I believe that Christ is the only real and lasting help there is, for ALL of life's troubles ... but again, if I go too much into detail about the spiritual aspect of things, I'm concerned that non-Christians won't want to read it, so those seeds will never be planted.

      More than anything, though, I want to do this God's way, not my way. I have been praying for guidance, but right now I'm not sure what is coming from Him, and what is coming from me.

      My current full working title is GOING CRAZY, from Horror to Healing. Today I've been thinking of changing that to something like Wrestling with the Devil: How I Lost My Faith and My Mind and (Mostly) Got Them Back Again.

      But that's way too long... I guess I just need to stop worrying about all this, and keep writing. It's kind of silly for me to get all hung up over who will or who won't want to read a book that isn't even written yet!

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  3. For what it's worth, Lynda, I think that spiritual is the right way to go. If you put your story into God's hands, He'll help you write it - and He'll help you find the audience.

    Don't worry about 'believable'. There are still people who think that the moon landings were faked, and people like that - you'll never convince them.

    If you're true to your story, true to your heart, the people who need to hear you WILL hear you.

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  4. Thank you so much, Andrew! I just copied your comments onto a sticky note to keep on my screen for inspiration.

    Speaking of those long-ago moon walks, here's a funny and sad thing: I was 16 and had been in a state insane asylum for going on two years -- it was one of those massive, Gothic-looking places that has since been closed and torn down -- when one of my fellow patients ran down the hall looking for me. "Lynda! Come quick, you've got to see this! One of our astronauts is walking on the moon!" she exclaimed.

    "You're crazy!" I told her.

    "Yes, I know, but there really is a man walking on the moon," she insisted. So I followed her to the TV alcove, and we stood side by side and watched in amazed silence as the Giant Leap for Mankind was broadcast in front of our eyes.

    I almost never watched television when I was in the state hospital, despite the fact that there was nothing else to do there. I could not bear to watch, because the shows were all about people living lives: falling in love, getting married, having children, having careers, all of which I believed I would never get to have. You see, shortly after my mother had put me in the asylum, I had asked the ward doctor how soon I could go home, and he gruffly replied that 97% of the people in that institution would never be released! Not wanting to believe this horrifying statistic, I asked the other patients on my ward how long they had been there, and the shortest answer I got was 8 years, the average closer to twenty years, and beyond.

    I was not a criminal, and I had never tried or threatened to harm anyone, myself included; and yet at the age of 14 my life was apparently over. Why? Because, after a series of extremely horrific traumas, I had gotten involved with a Ouija Board and séances with some school friends as a way to escape from the harsh reality of life. I was also trying to contact the spirit of my loving grandfather who had recently died. He had been a practitioner of witchcraft and had made me, his eldest grandchild, his sole heir... which turned out to be the worst "gift" anyone could ever be given.

    In December 1969, after the longest two years of my life, I beat those terrible odds when a new doctor took over my case, decided I was not schizophrenic, and set me free. For the past 4 decades I've tried to put my bizarre psychotic episode behind me. Speaking up and telling my story now is hard, and scary -- but it is also freeing.

    Please say a prayer that I will get this book written, in His timing and, most importantly, in HIS WAY! Thanks!

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  5. PS: I've just gone back and copied this entire post and every comment on a sticky note for guidance and inspiration. Now, if you don't here from me for a while, hopefully that will be because I am busy writing my memoir!

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    1. Lynda, I am so impressed by your faith and courage.

      Very, very few people could have survived what you survived. Even fewer would have made a life.

      I do know something of the road you were forced to walk in childhood, but I'll never have the guts to write about it. Therapy was bad enough. My formative years are closed and locked, and I've been strongly advised to leave them that way.

      You have my unqualified admiration and respect. I'm so honored to have met you through this forum!

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