Uji – a board game that has become a board for communication with spirits
The phenomenon of spiritualism is quite easy to explain. They come to the mediums in order to again feel the presence of a deceased person who was very close. But for this you need to find a real psychic, and there are so many charlatans and crooks around ..
And what if you try to contact the otherworldly forces yourself? After all, for this, it is enough to get the “talking board” Uijge, which, from a simple game for children, thanks to proper marketing, has turned into a tool of magic and which the spiritualists hate.
What else for “Uija”?
Uidu, or “Talking Board”, many saw in films. This is a board with an alphabet applied to it, with numbers from 0 to 9, the words “yes”, “no” and “goodbye”, to which a special tablet is attached-it is operated by a “priest” or several participants. The question is asked, the hands are placed on the tablet, and supposedly perfumes move it in the right direction, responding either with monosyllabic “yes” and “no” or pass from the letter to the letter, thus making a sentence or phrase.
The history of the “Talking Board” has not been fully investigated, but, as many experts believe, its prototype existed in ancient Egypt. The priests in temples are not anyone, but the god of wars, chaos and death of Seth tried to contact the deity to clarify the issues of interest.
They did this with a round table with the hieroglyphs applied and the rings suspended above it, which, as the ancients believed, sways the set, pointing to the hieroglyph. There are assumptions that similar devices were used in China, Greece and indigenous inhabitants of America – Indians.
Renaissance of the board to call the dead
For a while, the spiritualistic board was in oblivion until Elijah Bond met her in the 19th century. Bond saw in it commercial potential and patented like a toy for children. This is indicated in the description of the patent dated February 10, 1891: “My invention, which is designated as“ Uija ”or“ Egyptian Board of Good luck, ”is a toy or game in which two or more people can participate in order to entertain”. This is followed by a description of the board, tabletings and principles of the game. The main thing is that I will use its author, or rather an enterprising businessman, called the game, which many will subsequently attribute magical properties. It could not happen otherwise, because receiving a patent was not easy.
In 1886, the Associated Press news agency reported that the spellists of Ohio were using an amazing novelty that literally made a revolution in communicating with spirits. Charles Kennard read the note, and together with Bond and Washington Bowie, they created Kennard Novelty Company.
There are still several versions of how the board got its name – “Wigi”. One of the most popular theories that the word OUIJA is composite: from the French “OUI” and the German “ja”, which mean the affirmative form of the answer – “yes”. But there is another version according to which the daughter -in -law of Elijah Bond Helen Peters, being a strong medium, as Bond said, asked the board how she wants to be called. And the board replied: “Uija”. No one knew this word, and then the board was asked to explain what it means. The answer was received: “I wish you good luck”. A beautiful legend that increased the commercial potential of a new invention at times. Why legend? If only because Bond himself talked about the Helen medallion with a portrait of a woman, presumably, Marie Louise de la Rama, an English novelist who wrote under the pseudonym of Wida (Ouida). Perhaps in an attempt to come up with a name, they took the name of Wida, making a meaningful error in writing. But the invention needed to be patented, and in order to get a patent, it is necessary to prove its uniqueness. Bond and the daughter -in -law went to the Washington Office of the Certification Body. The head of the patent department offered the board to guess his name. And she with Helen Peters did it! A surprised official allowed to apply for a patent “Toys or games”, which was soon received. An amazing story, if not for one “but”: Bond worked for a long time at the attorney … with a patent department. Therefore, to make certificates of the boss was no difficult.
Board of wealth
Kennard Novelty Company began golden times. The mystery and the created legend about the Egyptian origin of a little -known game fueled interest. At the very beginning, the companions had the only factory in Baltimore, and a year later-two in Baltimore, Chicago and New York, plus one in London. But the cash flow that poured from the sales of Wigi washed the foundation of friendship of the founders of the company. In 1893, Kennard and Bond left the case, and in 1898 Bowie left, transferring, with the consent of the shareholders, all the rights of William Faldu for a symbolic amount of one dollar. Fald, by the way, died, falling from the factory roof. The roof, as he said, was built at the command of the “Talking Board”.
The times of increasing demand for Uzhi coincide with difficult times: the years of World War I, Great Depression, World War II, War in Vietnam, “Summer of Love” in San Francisco and so on.
Wigi makes people go crazy
Wigi aroused hatred not only among mediums that lost some customers. After all, to communicate with spirits, now it was not necessary to attend expensive sessions, the perfumes were always at hand. The board was probably hated by both the police and the doctors of psychiatric clinics. In 1920, as news agencies passed, Uzhi fans promised to reveal the murder of a gambling lover and casino Joseph Burton Elvella. The following year, New York Times spoke about a resident of Chicago, who kept the corpse of a dead mother in the house for 15 days, and after buried him in the backyard. Naturally, “at the behest of the spirits” with which she talked through a magic board. There was a case when two women from Buffalo killed the third on the basis of the leadership of Wigi. Helen Dow Peck left the spirit with her with the help of a board, 152 thousand dollars, but the court allowed not to execute this testament. There were cases when the writers stated that the written works are actually not their, but the long -deceased Mark Twain and other writers.
In 1973, Wiji was in disgraced thanks to the film “Exit to the Devil” released on the screens. According to the plot, Satan instills a girl, and he does it after the child played with the board. After this picture, the mystical component of Wigi intensified, and the game turned into a constant props of films and series associated with otherworldly and demonic forces. Needless to say, hysteria did not pass by the church, which dubbed Wydzh with a favorite way of communication unclean, and in 2001, adherents of one of the branches of Christianity in New Mexico burned the board with books about the young wizard Harry Potter.
It really works!
If you think that the order of the letters or options for the answers “yes” and “no” is selected by the session operator, then you are mistaken. But these are not the machinations of representatives of the other world. Back in 1852, physiologist and psychologist William Benjamin Carpenter described the contraction of muscles that is happening automatically, in which neither the consciousness nor the will of the individual is involved: you can burst into tears while watching a sad film and at the same time be angry with yourself for the manifested weakness. The famous physicist Michael Faraday adhered to an ideomotor explanation.
Modern scientists also do not leave attempts to explain the phenomenon of Wigi. Ron Rensink, Helen Gosh and Sidney Fels conducted a number of experiments, closely observing the participants, among which were those who saw the board for the first time. The latter did not want to part with the toy even after several hours of “communication with spirits”. Another thing is interesting that the subjects asked questions for erudition and the number of correct and wrong answers was about the same, which is natural when a person has to simply guess. Then the participants in the experiment were offered the help of spirits. Surprisingly, the correct answers became noticeably larger. Tests were carried out several times, and the results were similar. It turns out that the correct answers come to mind more often when a person is confident in help from outside. Scientists say that there are a lot of issues related to conscious and unconscious processes that arise during the game of Uidu, but it is very difficult to achieve a grant for further research with the involvement of paranormal.