As I mentioned in my previous post, 'tis the season for warning kids not to play with Quija boards. This naturally raises the question of what they actually are – portals to another world or a cheap parlor game?
Before we answer, we need to consider the state of American theology. For most of American history, it was predominantly Protestant, and largely Puritan. The Puritans were something of a paradox: radical monotheists with no use for saints or intercessors, but people acutely terrified of the devil and witchcraft. Protestants seem to have been particularly preoccupied with witches, no doubt a subset of their belief that the Catholic Church was the Anti-Christ. The same animating spirit that wanted Jesuits killed on sight was convinced that sharp-tongued housewives could bring crop failures or droughts.
The Salem Witch Trials have since come to mean different things to different people. Are they the result of superstition gone mad? A stinging indictment of Christianity? A classic case of crowd psychology? The epitome of the Patriarchy victimizing women?
Like the vast majority of Americans, for much of my young life I embraced a combination of the above, and subconsciously followed the cultural Protestant notion that while God did exist, He did so at a distance. Miracles were rare and because there was only one God, everything else was hallucination or manipulation. The Jews had a line to God, but every other pagan society was just randomly thrashing about, cutting open animals and looking at their entrails in fever desperation and stupidly following their instructions out of ignorance.
I've since come to learn that I was the ignorant one, and that a close, orthodox reading of the Bible indicates that the pagan gods are in fact renegade angels. The pagan gods are real.
What this means is that my old take on Ouija boards (which I never used) was radically wrong. Back then I thought there were no spirits other than God, so playing with one was like a fixed game of three-card monte. The same was true with Tarot decks – they were the tools of card sharks and their marks, entirely secular in form and function.
I now know otherwise. American society was subverted by wicked people who used secular materialism as a way to drive people away from God. "Let your kids play with Quija boards, and if there are subsequent behavioral issues, medication will solve the problem. Under no circumstances should you look for a spiritual solution to the problem."
That was their mantra, and it was very effective. However, at this late date, the truth of the spirit world is undeniable. When governments ban silent prayer, you know something is up.
That being said, I'm not sure what I believe regarding moral panics. There is an uncanny anticipation here, eerie parallels between the demonic daycare scares of the 1980s and the claimed association of D&D with devil worship. Both were thoroughly debunked, but in a way that made actual scandals easier to deny. Was it an accident that the daycare devil worship was used to paper over priestly abuse of minors? That the overblown panic over D&D so precisely anticipated actual demonic practices in Hollywood and Washington?
Unlike a nerd-driven role-playing game, today we have people openly bragging about their pagan politics. Perhaps the future will provide additional clarity.
In the meantime, stay away from those Ouija boards!
Chateau Lloyd 
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