The Disadvantages of Ouija Board Dating Services

Copyrighted by Lorna Tedder. Originally published in Life in the Third Degree.

Ouija boards are risky creatures. I’ve heard that all my life. Growing up Southern Baptist, I remember the terror instilled in my teen friends and me by our pastor on Youth Night. I don’t remember the details, but the story had something to do with a girl and friends playing with a Ouija board on her fifteenth birthday.

Working Through Grief

 

“How old will I be when I die?” the girl asked.

Stupid frigging question. First, does the entity you’re speaking with really know? Just because Uncle Billy Bob passed over does not make him an expert on your life and what’s going to happen to it. If you’ve managed to contact an Archangel, the results are certainly more reliable. So credibility is a big issue. Second, would you really want to know the date of your death? But then again, when you’re 15, you feel that you’re immortal and anything over 18 is a long way off.

Then came the answer to when the girl would die: “At 15.”

The girl, according to the pastor, was so upset that she drove herself crazy for the next year until she finally committed suicide…at 15.

Okay, so this concocted story sufficiently scared us into staying far, far away from Ouija boards. My mom, who still goes to the same church and remembers that story, recently mentioned psychic Sylvia Browne’s warning to stay away from the boards. And I wholeheartedly agree in regard to most people—people who don’t typically deal with the Spirit world and ask asinine questions like “When am I going to die?”—but then, I’m a Third Degree High Priestess and not opposed to communicating with the Dead, with angels, with spirit guides, with the Higher Power, or even with any “Good Aliens” hanging around the Ether.

I have not yet evoked any Medieval daemons, mind you, but I don’t consider talking with the Spirit world to be particularly risky as long as I take the precautions I’ve been taught and accept guidance only from credible sources. After all, people don’t turn into monsters just because they die—their energy still exists but in another form.

Since I began training to be a High Priestess and cleared out various personality flaws and old wounds that have held back my spiritual development, I’ve become more and more psychic and frequently receive “messages” in different forms. Since my ex moved out almost seven months ago and our marital problems aren’t the focus of every breath I take, my sense of “knowing” has become eerily accurate. So for me, Ouija boards are just one more tool to use in receiving messages from my spirit guides, angels, and teachers, aka The Entourage. That said, I’d never touched one until a week ago.

So it’s ironic that I suddenly have this new circle of amazing friends who’ve come into my life this month. We try to meet weekly for healing circles, and I provide some modest instruction in Wicca and spiritual transformation. It’s an odd mix of neophytes who remind me of myself a several years ago, a couple of renegade High Priestess types who left their previous clans over integrity issues, and our resident Star Woman, who makes spirit boards out of beautiful birch wood with burned-in etchings of Celtic, Native American, or other preferred pantheons.

The first time I saw the spirit boards was at Star Woman’s house. The energy seemed to buzz right off the wood, making my fingers tingle every time I got within a few feet of one. We cast a heavy-duty circle, banished anything we didn’t want hanging around (including an overly loving and drool-y dog), and called in our guides and angels. Kitty, one of the neophytes with a bright smile I’d love to see more often, paired with me at the board. We sat with our knees touching and four to six fingers each on the planchette to create a circuit. We’d chosen a powerful spot in Star Woman’s house, under a double pyramid structure where the energy seemed to swirl around the room. I asked if there was a message for me—even joked that perhaps the Ouija Board Dating Service could find me a good man in town—and the planchette began to move.

I’ve always heard skeptics sneer that Ouija board players move the planchette themselves. That’s partly true, as I discovered. Before I ever put my fingers on the planchette, a heaviness filled the air around me, making it hard to breathe. Star Woman explains this as energies crowding in around us, like too many crayons trying to fill a box. Then my arms, from my elbows down, began to ache. As I let my shoulders go loose, I felt pressure—like a dull ache or heaviness—on my shoulders and elbows, almost like a gentle nudge to go this way or that.

Kitty closed her eyes, and I called out the letters as the planchette paused over each one. The daughter of one of the women jotted down the letters as I said them.

Life Coaching Tips

LRNA

What? As in Lorna? Cool. It was spelling my name, minus a vowel. So this was what it was like. Then,

FIRST OF TWO

At this point, I couldn’t tamp down my excitement. I’d had no idea where the planchette would pause, and I didn’t see the words until they were spelled out, written down, and held up for me to see. So I was the First of Two, but two what?

Then, IM JG. Okay, were those the initials of the entity speaking with us? We didn’t know. But I made a comment about wondering who the other of the two is.

HE IS [man’s first name, long form, missing a vowel]

Kitty’s eyes were still closed. The energy turned sporadic, and she and I could no longer hold onto the planchette. It spun out of our hands, and we stopped. No one else in the room saw the paper with the words on it, and I discreetly took it home with me. No one saw the man’s name. I knew of one man with this name, and a scant few hours later, he called me and talked until midnight had come and gone, but I didn’t tell him his name had shown up on the board. That would have been too risky.

A week later, we met at Kitty’s cozy home with its Medieval sconces and candles everywhere, and I cast a circle using Archangel energies and some remnants of Germanic Wicca. We sat on the floor and called in high-level guides and teachers, plus any Archangels that chose to join us. Star Woman asked if our newest members wanted to start but they declined, wanting to watch instead. I suggested Star Woman and Kitty run the board and I would ask for the first message and jot it down as Star Woman called out the letters under their fingers while Kitty stared into a candle flame without looking at the board. There was a sense of anticipation in the air, something a little risky and exciting.

And just that quickly, we were off!

ONE OF TWO, LORNA

“Hey,” I said to Star Woman as I noted the perfectly spelled words, “that’s like last week when it said LoRNA, FIRST OF TWO.” It reminded me of Star Trek’s Seven of Nine and the Borg. “ONE OF TWO is me, just like I’m the FIRST OF TWO.”

YES spelled the board.

We agreed that we probably were talking to the same entity. The syntax was similar. The feeling in the room was similar. Every entity that joined us was different in personality and communication.

Our excitement turned a little chaotic with me quizzing, “Two of what? Whose two?” and Star Woman asking, “Who do the two belong to?”

THEIR YOURS

Okay, not so perfect spelling, but still pretty clear. I work with aerospace engineers and rocket scientists who don’t spell any better. At least, the words were clear. The meaning was lost on us.

Star Woman kept sensing that The Two referred to a twin energy, like that of a twin soul. Had I been part of a set of twins and one died at birth or before?

NO

Then my impatience got the better of me. “Who’s the other one of the two?” I demanded.

WAIT

Argh! I’d just been slapped down for my impatience. By an invisible entity. At first, I thought I was being told I needed to wait to find out, which sounded too much like friends of mine who’ve told me to wait a year to date, but what the board meant was that it wasn’t finished with the message and I was rushing the messenger. Yeah, I’m known to do that.

“Is this other person someone coming into Lorna’s life?” Star Woman asked gently. “Is this someone in her future?” We waited for it to spell YES or NO.

Instead, I watched in horror as it began to spell a name. No mistake about it. Every letter perfect. I knew by the third letter what the name was, and it was the surname that went with the first name from the week before. I guess there are no secrets on the spirit board!

[SURNAME], SECOND OF TWO

I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach. I couldn’t breathe. Just the idea that I had some connection with this man felt scary. And yet, his not-terribly-common last name had been spelled out clearly. Not even his common first name that could be quibbled over as one of many possibilities, but a surname definitive and right there for everyone to see and question? Oh, God. What was I to do now? I’d had no idea the spirit board would present a risk of this type, with everyone staring at the name on the paper.

They asked, did I like this man? Yeah, very much.

They asked, was there anything going on between us? No, just friends. Some wonderful conversation but nothing more.

“Maybe the two of you were twins or sisters in a past life?” Star Woman suggested, but the board had other ideas.

NO

Frustrated, Star Woman said, “Okay, okay, so what is this man to Lorna?”

SECOND OF TWO

We all sighed at the same time. Finally someone asked what was it we needed to know and the board spelled again.

SHE HAS WAITED. ONE IS READY NOW.

I stared at the words for a long time before one of the newer members asked what I was ready for. A man? Sex? Lots of snickering with this dirty-minded group!

“Spring,” I joked. For renewal. For beautiful things to grow again.

“What’s holding you back?” Kitty asked. “What are you waiting for?”

I ignored the first question, partly because I didn’t have an answer and partly because her second question took me by surprise. I’d heard, “What are you waiting for?” time and again during the last year of my marriage. Friends kept asking me why I hadn’t been to see a divorce lawyer yet and what was I waiting for that would push me over the edge so that I would finally call it quits. In their minds, the marriage was long over, but I’d never declared it dead because I still had an inkling of hope that things would get better.

But the message we got was clear that night. I’d waited, I’d worked on fixing my life, and now–Lorna, One of Two—was ready to move forward with a clean slate. Ready. Ready now.

I cried most of the way home, thinking about this “twin soul” as Star Woman called him. I may be at the point of starting fresh with a clean slate, but he isn’t. He still has issues to work through, and I’m not sure I want to invest in his pain. I’m not sure if it’s good for me. I’m not sure if he’ll hurt me. Once you get your heart trampled, it’s hard to open it up to the next man with cleats.

It’s safer to keep these thoughts close. Safer to stay guarded. Safer to say nothing to him of what I’ve been told by entities in the Ether. To tell him that his name was spelled out by a Ouija board as Second of Two to my First of Two, well, that would be far too risky.


Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *