Poundland’s Ouija Board – Opportunistic or Opportunity?
It’s the month of October and the shops are stocking up their aisle of Halloween merchandise. This year, the UK shop, Poundland, are stocking cheap Ouija boards – for sale to over 18s. I was asked for comment on this by Premier Christian Radio for their news section, and decided to put up the entire text of the thoughts I relayed to them on the subject, some of which they captured in a news article on their website:
“I’m not surprised that Ouija boards are being sold in mainstream shops these days. It’s not something new, and was widely available in toyshops in the UK since the latter half of the 20th century.
In the past hundred years, we have had a few instances where there have been large scale deaths in society, where people haven’t been able to say farewell to their deceased loved ones, especially when they were abroad when they died – in foreign fields of World War One and Two. At these points, not being able to properly say farewell often left people unable to move on from their grief, so they ended up asking questions such as “Where are they now?”. Where the Church has been reluctant to engage with a theology of the dead beyond “Well, they’re either in heaven or hell”, people have looked elsewhere for a more satisfying answer, either intellectually but often experientially – hence the 20th century’s rise in spiritualistic practices of contacting the dead, either through self-professed mediums, or DIY divinatory objects such as the Ouija board.
Today we’re seeing lots of loved ones being lost through COVID and unable to be there at their deathbed, saying farewell as they’re placed into an ambulance. So as a result of them not being able to properly say goodbye, there are times when you would expect the opportunity, I would say cynically being marketed as such, to provide a supposedly quick and easy way of saying farewell or finding out what granny or granddad, or whoever, wanted to say to you before they died. Again, the process of grieving and letting go has been removed and / or curtailed, even at limited number of attendees funerals. Could the Church use this time to plan safe spaces for our communities where, when restrictions are lifted, memorial gatherings can be organised?
Add to this an increase in the number of films and tv programmes with paranormal themes, ghost hunting groups (in the UK alone there are currently approx. 900 of these), and we’re seeing a revival in interest in issues of a spiritual nature. Where and how is the Church addressing this interest and engaging in mutually respectful dialogue in the paranormal arena?
Regarding Ouija itself: it was originally designed as game to contact your own subconscious thoughts. Then it became known as a divinatory tool to attempt communicate with the dead. I believe the dangers of it are twofold: Firstly, our subconscious nature can carry a lot of potentially harmful stuff from our upbringing that can, if brought into our conscious in uncontrolled ways, where there are no professional medical people to help, can cause us much harm psychologically. Secondly, we’re warned by God in the Bible that attempts to initiate contact with the dead is forbidden – not because it doesn’t work (God doesn’t deal in absurdities by banning things which don’t work – the Bible’s text clearly says that Samuel was summoned from the realm of the dead by the medium in order to speak to Saul), but because we invite beings from the other side of the veil to reach through – though we cannot be 100% certain that if anything does come through, it isn’t the one we intended to contact. God has our best interests at heart, in mind, body and spirit, and anything that can interfere with our wholeness of being is put off limits simply because God loves us.”
Premier edited this to a soundbite, but an interview with BBC Radio Nottingham’s Francis Finn was able to deliver more time for a deeper, reflective piece. Interview and follow-up comments and callers to the station can be found here:
| BBC Nottingham 11/10/2020: Francis Finn and Poundland’s Ouija Boards |
