Turning Table Views
Table Turning or Table Tipping (see Ouija board) is a type of séance in which participants sit around a table, place their hands on it, and wait for rotations. The table was purportedly made to serve as a means of communicating with the spirits; the alphabet would be slowly called over and the table would tilt at the appropriate letter, thus spelling out words and sentences.
In England table-turning became a fashionable diversion and was practised all over the country in the year 1853. Dr. John Elliotson and his followers attributed the phenomena to mesmerism. The general public were content to find the explanation of the movements in spirits, animal magnetism, odic force, galvanism, electricity, or even the rotation of the earth.
A form of psychic phenomena in which a table rotates, tilts, or rises completely off the ground by the mere contact of the fingertips of an individual or group of individuals. In exceptional cases tables have been known to move or even levitate without direct contact. The familiar form of séance in table-turning is that in which the sitters place their fingertips on the table; then the table moves without conscious exercise of muscular force. By relating the raps or tilts of the table to the alphabet it becomes possible to receive intelligent messages. (See movement)
Table-turning is the simplest and oldest form of communication with extraneous intelligences or the subconscious self. In ancient times tables were used for purposes of divination as mensa divinatoriae. In fourth-century Rome, Ammianus Marcellinus described a table with a slab, engraved with the letters of the alphabet, above which a ring was held, suspended by a thread; by swinging to certain letters, messages were spelled out. Tertullian (ca. 155-ca. 222) appears to have been one of the first who knew of table communications with the unseen world.
Turning Table Images
