A ouija board (correctly pronounced "weejah" wiʤə/}} although often pronounced "wee-gee" /wiʤi/ and commonly known as a 'Spirit Board' ) is any flat board printed with letters, numbers, and other symbols, to which a planchette or movable indicator points, supposedly answering questions from people at a séance. The fingers of the participants are placed on the planchette that then moves about the board to spell out messages. Ouija is a trademark for a talking board currently sold by Parker Brothers. While the word is not considered a genericized trademark, it has become a trademark that is often used generically to refer to any talking board. In popular culture these boards are considered to be a spiritual gateway used to contact the dead.
The first historical mention of something resembling a Ouija board is found in China around 1200 B.C., a divination method known as fuji 扶乩 "planchette writing". Other sources claim that according to a Greek historical account of the philosopher Pythagoras, in 540 B.C. his sect would conduct séances at "a mystic table, moving on wheels, moved towards signs, which the philosopher and his pupil, Philolaus, interpreted to the audience as being revelations supposedly from an unseen world." However, other sources call both claims into dispute, claiming that fuji is spirit writing, not the use of a spirit board, and that there is no record of Pythagoras or his students actually having used this method of achieving oracles or divinations. In addition, the claim of Pythagorian use is called into doubt by questions of historical accuracy, as Philolaus was never the pupil of Pythagoras, and indeed was born roughly twenty-five years after Pythagoras's death. The first undisputed use of the talking boards came with the Modern Spiritualist Movement in The United States in the mid-19th century. Methods of divination at that time used various ways to spell out messages, including swinging a pendulum over a plate that had letters around the edge or using an entire table to indicate letters drawn on the floor. Often used was a small wooden tablet supported on casters. This tablet, called a planchette, was affixed with a pencil that would write out messages in a fashion similar to automatic writing. These methods may predate modern Spiritualism.
