Table-turning

An example of table-turning in 19th century France

Table-turning or table-tipping 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. The process is similar to that of a Ouija board.

History

When the movement of Modern Spiritualism first reached Europe from America in the winter of 1852–1853, the most popular method of consulting the spirits was for several persons to sit round a table, with their hands resting on it, and wait for the table to move. If the experiment was successful the table would rotate with considerable rapidity, and would occasionally rise in the air, or perform other movements. Whilst by many the movements were ascribed to the agency of spirits, two investigators—Count de Gasparin and Professor Thury of Geneva—conducted a careful series of experiments by which they claimed to have demonstrated that the movements of the table were due to a physical force emanating from the bodies of the sitters, for which they proposed the name ectenic force. Their conclusion rested on the supposed elimination of all known physical causes for the movements; but it is doubtful from the description of the experiments whether the precautions taken were sufficient to exclude unconscious muscular action (the ideomotor effect) or even deliberate fraud.

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.

The Scottish surgeon James Braid, the English physiologist W. B. Carpenter and others pointed out, however, that the phenomena could depend upon the expectation of the sitters, and could be stopped altogether by appropriate suggestion. Faraday devised some simple apparatus which conclusively demonstrated that the movements he investigated were due to unconscious muscular action. The apparatus consisted of two small boards, with glass rollers between them, the whole fastened together by india-rubber bands in such a manner that the upper board could slide under lateral pressure to a limited extent over the lower one. The occurrence of such lateral movement was at once indicated by means of an upright haystalk fastened to the apparatus. When by this means it was made clear to the experimenters that it was the fingers which moved the table, the phenomena generally ceased.

Some Evangelical clergymen alleged that the spirits who caused the movements were of a diabolic nature, and some amazing accounts were published in 1853 and 1854 of the revelations obtained from the talking tables. In France, Allan Kardec studied the phenomenon and concluded in The Book on Mediums that some messages were caused by an outside intelligence as the message contained information that was not known to the group.

External links

• Modern practical guide to table tilting (from ASSAP) based on the work of Ken Batcheldor
• Museum Of Talking Boards

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Table-turning". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.