Ouija Boards

[Faith1960]

Really? By using something that originated as a parlor amusement that was then seized upon by the gullible when spiritualism became all the rage? Maybe I can miss work tomorrow if I tell them that I asked the Magic 8 Ball whether or not I should wear a tie, and was then seized by a demon who wanted me to fall behind in my work!

I had a Ouija board and a Magic 8 ball when I was a kid and suffered no ill effects.
Once when we played with the Ouija board the pointer did move, but despite her insisting she didn’t move it herself, I still think my friend moved it on purpose.

 

[Tim_D]

I had a Ouija board and a Magic 8 ball when I was a kid and suffered no ill effects.

I’m not surprised. I’m sure that millions upon millions of both were sold throughout their heyday. If a Ouija board was a dangerous as some here maintain, then there would scarcely be a person who did not know someone who *wasn’t *dealing with some kind of nefarious devilish events.

 

[Tim_D]

Once when we played with the Ouija board the pointer did move, but despite her insisting she didn’t move it herself, I still think my friend moved it on purpose.

“Paranormal and supernatural beliefs associated with Ouija have been harshly criticized by the scientific community, since they are characterized as pseudoscience. The action of the board can be parsimoniously explained by unconscious movements of those controlling the pointer, a psychophysiological phenomenon known as the ideomotor effect.”

 

[Gertabelle]

Just curious as to how CAF members here would define “divination” in their interaction with these toys. When is it harmless fun? When have you crossed a spiritual line that shouldn’t be crossed?

The CCC says this about divination:

**2115 **God can reveal the future to his prophets or to other saints. Still, a sound Christian attitude consists in putting oneself confidently into the hands of Providence for whatever concerns the future, and giving up all unhealthy curiosity about it. Improvidence, however, can constitute a lack of responsibility.

2116 All forms of divination are to be rejected: recourse to Satan or demons, conjuring up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to “unveil” the future. Consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers. They contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone.

To this day, if I’m walking down the toy aisle at Walmart and there’s a Figure 8 Ball on the shelf, I’ll pick it up and ask, “Will this shopping nightmare ever end?” I hate shopping.

That doesn’t seem like divination to me – just harmless fun… until I throw the thing when it answers me “Never.”

So, in following with Our Lord’s own words – “For out of the heart come evil thoughts–murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander” (Mt 15:19). – it seems that what would or would not make these toys dangerous is what takes place in the heart.

Asking a nonsense question to get a laugh in a situation that generally irritates me – harmless fun.

Asking a question out of an “unhealthy curiosity” about the future – maybe then I’m approaching that line that shouldn’t be crossed.

What are your thoughts?

 

[mommy_k]

Just curious as to how CAF members here would define “divination” in their interaction with these toys. When is it harmless fun? When have you crossed a spiritual line that shouldn’t be crossed?

The CCC says this about divination:

To this day, if I’m walking down the toy aisle at Walmart and there’s a Figure 8 Ball on the shelf, I’ll pick it up and ask, “Will this shopping nightmare ever end?” I hate shopping.

That doesn’t seem like divination to me – just harmless fun… until I throw the thing when it answers me “Never.”

So, in following with Our Lord’s own words – “For out of the heart come evil thoughts–murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander” (Mt 15:19). – it seems that what would or would not make these toys dangerous is what takes place in the heart.

Asking a nonsense question to get a laugh in a situation that generally irritates me – harmless fun.

Asking a question out of an “unhealthy curiosity” about the future – maybe then I’m approaching that line that shouldn’t be crossed.

What are your thoughts?

A ouji board pupose is to conjure and many posters have seen the pointer move independently… or give answers that no child or teen would have knowledge about.

If a magic 8 ball gave an answer not printed on the cube inside I would throw that thing away too.

Off topic a bit…am I the only person that noticed that location pointers on phones look like a ouji board pointer? No snarky answers please, just an observation.

 

[GEddie]

A ouji board pupose is to conjure and many posters have seen the pointer move independently… or give answers that no child or teen would have knowledge about.

If a magic 8 ball gave an answer not printed on the cube inside I would throw that thing away too.

Off topic a bit…am I the only person that noticed that location pointers on phones look like a ouji board pointer? No snarky answers please, just an observation.

Isn’t it an octahedron? Therefore “magic 8”



ICXC NIKA

 

[hu324b]

Who? Who says that a “demon has to be invited?” And don’t just say “The Church” or “exorcists.” If a Ouija board is a doorway to the depths of hell, then we should all be drowning in demons with the tens of thousands, if not millions, of Ouija boards sold throughout the century.

Go ahead then use your Ouija board

Your inviting the dead to come when you use it - a demon might show up and then what?

But I can see you don’t really believe this.

 

[Bookcat]

Catholic Answers:

catholic.com/quickquestions/are-ouija-boards-harmless

Full Question:

A friend of mine has used a Ouija board on several occasions. I have advised him against using it, but he insists it is used just for fun and that it is harmless. Is this true?

Answer:

No. The Ouija board is far from harmless, as it is a form of divination (seeking information from supernatural sources). The fact of the matter is, the Ouija board really does work, and the only “spirits” that will be contacted through it are evil ones.

It’s true that many people view the Ouija board as harmless. They often claim, “Oh, I don’t believe in it,” or something to this effect. However, a disbelief in something does not necessarily mean that something isn’t real. The Ouija board has an objective reality that exists apart from a person’s perception of it. In other words, it’s real even if you don’t believe in it. And we know this because God himself tells us so.

The Lord repeatedly condemns any and all occultic practices, including divination. While many Bible passages could be cited, the following one is typical of his view of occultic practices: “Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord” (Dt 18:10–12, NIV).

On the experiential side of the issue, we have the testimony of the Church’s exorcists. Their experience shows that Ouija boards are far from harmless. Some investigating supernatural phenomena from a Catholic perspective have gone so far as to say that 90 percent of their very worst cases involving demonic activity have been linked to the use of the Ouija board.

Simply put, nothing positive can ever come from the use of the Ouija board, and God warns us against such things for our own spiritual safety.

 

[hu324b]

from Fr. Gabriel Amorth, the chief exorcist of Rome - who passed away recently

You know more than him I guess.

And the devil is not only active among leaders of society but in general culture as well. “People have lost the faith, and superstition, magic, Satanism, or Ouija boards have taken its place, which then open all the doors to the presence of demons,” he explained in an interview in 2006.

 

[hu324b]

from Fr. Gabriel Amorth, the chief exorcist of Rome - who passed away recently

You know more than him I guess.

And the devil is not only active among leaders of society but in general culture as well. “People have lost the faith, and superstition, magic, Satanism, or Ouija boards have taken its place, which then open all the doors to the presence of demons,” he explained in an interview in 2006.

More on him:

THE world is under renewed attack by an army of demons, and the battle is so intense young priests are too scared to engage in exorcisms, says a 79-year-old Vatican exorcist.

Father Vincenzo Taraborelli told the BBC he treats up to 30 people a day in his windowless room at the back of a church in Rome.

He says he cannot retire as he cannot find a replacement: “I told the bishop that I can’t find anyone willing to do this. Many of them are scared. Even priests can be scared. It’s a difficult life.”

Demonic possession is said to occur when an agent of the devil, Satan, enters a body. Sometimes many different demons with different characteristics supposedly co-inhabit the same person, directing their behaviour towards evil and dragging their soul to hell upon death…

In 2014, the Vatican officially recognised the International Association of Exorcists. The group had been established in the 1990s to promote awareness of the “dramatic reality of exorcism”.

Its founder, Father Gabriele Pietro Amorth, died in Rome last month, aged 91. He claimed to have conducted 160,000 exorcisms.

He said his most difficult case was a married woman, whose demons he battled for 13 years.

“Another man, who was a Satanist, wanted her,” he told the BBC. “She refused. So this man told her: ‘You’ll pay for this.’ He cast so-called spells to attract her to him, twice a week.

“Then they came to me, in this room. I started to pray, and she went into a trance. She would blurt out insults, blasphemies. I quickly understood she was possessed.

“As the rite continued, she started feeling worse and worse. So when I told the devil: ‘In the name of Jesus, I order you to go away’, she started to vomit little metal pins, five at a time.”

“All it takes is a little opening. A dabbling in the occult or paganism is all. Perhaps an experimentation with a Ouija board, or some other dalliance is all the devil needs.”

Christian Today reports the number of designated Roman Catholic exorcists in the United States has grown from 12 to 50 in the past 10 years.

Father Amorth told the Sunday Telegraph in 2004 that he regularly spoke with the Devil.

“I speak with the Devil every day. I talk to him in Latin. He answers in Italian. I have been wrestling with him, day in day out, for 14 years,” he said.

Amorth became famous after claiming the Harry Potter book and movie series encouraged the black arts.

Father Taraborelli is equally adamant of the reality of demons.

“Someone who believes knows that the devil exists, you can read it in the gospel,” he said. “Then you only need to see how the world is nowadays. It has never been this bad. These violence acts are not human. So terrible …”

 

[Katherine438]

All I need is for the Catholic Church to tell me something is evil … and that is the end of it … it’s all part of following our Catholic faith.

 

[on_the_hill]

All I need is for the Catholic Church to tell me something is evil … and that is the end of it … it’s all part of following our Catholic faith.

Has the Catholic Church told us this about Ouija boards?

The CCC tells us to avoid divination. It doesn’t mention Ouija boards specifically. People may believe that Ouija boards are portals to Hell. But nearly any object can be misused for divination.

Is it divination if a person picks up a forked stick, a “divining rod”, and tries to find water?

The question recurs: What, materially, makes paperboard with letters printed on it evil?

(edit–I have staunch Catholic relatives who won’t touch a Ouija board, but who believe that a dowser really is capable of using a divining rod to locate underground water.)

 

[Tim_D]

Go ahead then use your Ouija board

Your inviting the dead to come when you use it - a demon might show up and then what?

But I can see you don’t really believe this.

Well, you got one out of three correct!

 

[Tim_D]

Its founder, Father Gabriele Pietro Amorth, died in Rome last month, aged 91. He claimed to have conducted 160,000 exorcisms.

160,000??? No one in the world has done anything 160,000 times in their life.

“Then you only need to see how the world is nowadays. It has never been this bad.

Father obviously was not a history major.

 

[lynnvinc]

Yeah…and I was once buzzed by a UFO while watching Bigfoot run across the lawn.

As mentioned we first ran an experiment of having our 3 brothers come out of a hall in any order they chose, and did that about 5 times. Each time it gave the correct order, even when in the last second on one of the trials, the boys changed placed (the board made a last second change). We asked the boys and they said they had changed places in the last second before coming out.

Note that there is only a 17% probability of being right by chance each time on that 3 boy experiment, and the chance of being right on all 5 times is even much much smaller.

That is what set us to thinking this was something real, not just a fun game. That’s why we took the rest of the answers more seriously, why is was very scary and spooky, and why we just put the board away and never got it out again.

 

[po18guy]

If you are devoted to the devil, this is one of the best ways of serving him. Feeling alone? Possession by a demon is only a ouija board away.

 

[ConfusedLucy]

A Ouija board either is or isn’t a doorway into the netherworld. How can 99% of people “just messing about” with it be free from harm but others supposedly suffer the tortures of the damned?

I’m guessing it takes a certain reverence and seriousness to get it to work but it’s not something I have looked into. I’m guessing their is an element of chance as to what you contact if you do contact anything, the “entity” in my mothers example seemed more mischievous than evil and I’m not convinced that there are demons everywhere. There is certainly evil in the world but most of it has a more straightforward explanation than demons.

 

[mikekle]

Has the Catholic Church

The question recurs: What, materially, makes paperboard with letters printed on it evil?

(edit–I have staunch Catholic relatives who won’t touch a Ouija board, but who believe that a dowser really is capable of using a divining rod to locate underground water.)

Its about the intended use that make them evil, sure, nothing wrong with a list of numbers and letters on a piece of paper, but when people attempt to use that in order to contact spirits, it becomes a tool of evil. There is only one specific use for a ouija board too, it does not have multiple uses.

The times I was involved with using one, it was a group of 12 teenager friends, we found 2 girls had the best luck and we would stand around, telling them the questions to ask, I decided to have the girls ask it a question none of these friends could possibly know, “what type of dress did my mom have on at her funeral”…needless to say the board answered correctly. I knew for a fact none of those people knew this.

There was also another instance where the board instructed us to go to specific spot in town and dig down 4ft, it told us what we would find…sure enough it was correct, the metal item was not significant in anyway, but it proved itself to be real, as it was obvious this piece of metal had been buried for decades.

 

[Katherine438]

Has the Catholic Church told us this about Ouija boards?

The CCC tells us to avoid divination. It doesn’t mention Ouija boards specifically. People may believe that Ouija boards are portals to Hell. But nearly any object can be misused for divination.

Is it divination if a person picks up a forked stick, a “divining rod”, and tries to find water?

The question recurs: What, materially, makes paperboard with letters printed on it evil?

(edit–I have staunch Catholic relatives who won’t touch a Ouija board, but who believe that a dowser really is capable of using a divining rod to locate underground water.)

I have heard a priest tell us during a sermon to stay away from them … I don’t need to question further than that … I keep it simple.