A Ouija board is a flat board marked with letters, numbers, and other symbols, theoretically used to communicate with spirits. It uses a planchette or movable indicator to indicate the spirit’s message by spelling it out on the board during a seance. The fingers of the seance participants are placed on the planchette, which then moves about the board to spell out messages.

Users subconsciously direct the path of the triangle to produce a word that is in that person’s subconscious thought process. This subconscious behavior is known as ideomotor action, a term coined by William Carpenter in 1882. It is also known as automatism. Some people may be convinced that the powers of the ouija board are real because they are unaware that they are in fact moving the piece and therefore assume that the piece must be moving due to some other spiritual force.

The subconscious thought process may produce an answer that is different from what the user expected in their conscious thought process, thus perpetuating the idea that the board has mystical powers. One experiment was conducted using unbiased participants. Questions were asked of the late William Frawley with very strong answers. The participants were then blindfolded and the board was turned 180 degrees without their knowledge. With continued questioning, the planchette then traveled to bare areas of the board where the participants believed the Yes and No marks were located.

The first historical mention of a Ouija board is found in China around 1100 B.C., with a divination method known as fuji or planchette writing. Other sources claim that according to a Greek historical account of the philosopher Pythagoras, in 540 B.C. his sect would conduct seances 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.

There are several theories about the origin of the term Ouija. The Oxford English Dictionary states that the origin is unknown, but mentions three possibilities. According to one of these, the word is derived from the French oui and the German ja, both meaning yes. An alternative story suggests that the name was revealed to inventor Charles Kennard during a Ouija seance and was claimed to be an Ancient Egyptian word meaning good luck. It has also been suggested that the word was inspired by the name of the Moroccan city Oujda.

Ecstasy is subjective experience of total involvement of the subject, with an object of his or her awareness. Because total involvement with an object of our interest is not our ordinary experience since we are ordinarily aware also of other objects, the ecstasy is an example of altered state of consciousness characterized by diminished awareness of other objects or total lack of the awareness of surroundings and everything around the object. For instance, if one is concentrating on a physical task, then one might cease to be aware of any intellectual thoughts. On the other hand, making a spirit journey in an ecstatic trance involves the cessation of voluntary bodily movement.

For the duration of the ecstasy the ecstatic is out of touch with ordinary life and is capable neither of communication with other people nor of undertaking normal actions. Although the experience is usually brief in physical time, there are records of such experiences lasting several days or even more. Subjective perception of time, space and/or self may strongly change or disappear during ecstasy. The word is often used in mild sense, to refer to any heightened state of consciousness or intense pleasant experience. It is also used more specifically to denote states of awareness of non-ordinary mental spaces, which may be perceived as spiritual.

Ecstasy can be deliberately induced using religious or creative activities, meditation, music, dancing, breathing exercises or physical exercise. The particular technique that an individual uses to induce ecstasy is usually also associated with that individual’s particular religious and cultural traditions. Sometimes an ecstatic experience takes place due to occasional contact with something or somebody perceived as extremely beautiful or holy, or without any known reason.

People interpret the experience afterward according to their culture and beliefs: as a revelation from God, a trip to the world of spirits or a psychotic episode. When a person is using an ecstasy technique, he usually does so within a tradition. When he reaches an experience, a traditional interpretation of it already exists. The experience together with its subsequent interpretation may strongly and permanently change the value system and the worldview of the subject.

Inner Light is a concept which many Quakers use to express their faith and beliefs. Each Quaker has a different idea of what they mean by Inner Light, and this also varies internationally between yearly meetings, but the idea is often taken to refer to God’s presence within a person, and to a direct and personal experience of God. Quakers believe that God speaks to everyone, and that in order to hear God’s voice, it helps to be still and actively listen for it.

They believe not only that individuals can be guided by this Inner Light, but that Friends might meet together and receive collective guidance from God by sharing the concerns and leadings that he gives to individuals. In a Friends meeting it is usually called “ministry” when a person shares aloud what the Inner Light is saying to him or her.

It is important to note that many Friends consider this divine guidance distinct both from impulses originating within oneself and from generally agreed-on moral guidelines. In fact, a person can be prompted to say something in meeting that is contrary to what he or she thinks. In other words, Friends do not usually consider the Inner Light the conscience or moral sensibility but something higher and deeper that informs and sometimes corrects these aspects of human nature.

Historically, Friends have been suspicious of formal creeds or religious philosophy that is not grounded in one’s own experience. Instead one must be guided by the Inward Teacher, the Inner Light. This is not, however, a release for Friends to decide and do whatever they want. It is incumbent upon Friends to consider the wisdom of other Friends, as one must listen for the Inner Light of others as well as their own. Friends have various established procedures for collectively discerning and following the Spirit while making decisions.

Friends are not in complete agreement on the importance of the Inner Light in relation to the Bible. Most Friends, especially in the past, have looked to the Bible as a source of wisdom and guidance. Many, if not most of them, have considered the Bible a book inspired by God. But Quakers have generally tended to regard present, personal direction from God more authoritative than the text of the Bible.

Early Quakers did not believe that promptings which were truly from the Spirit within would contradict the Bible. They did, however, believe that to correctly understand the Bible, one needed the Inner Light to clarify it and guide one in applying its teachings to current situations. In the United States in the nineteenth century some Friends concluded that others of their faith were using the concept of the Inner Light to justify unbiblical views. These “Orthodox” Friends held that the Bible was more authoritative than the Inner Light and should be used to test personal leadings. Friends remain formally, but usually respectfully, divided on the matter.

Transmigration of the soul is similar to the philosophy of reincarnation. The idea of transmigration of the soul comes from the ancient Greeks. In transmigration after death, the soul drinks from the river Lethe and loses all past memories of their previous life while in Hades, or the underworld, and then moves transmigrates into another human form and is reborn. It was thought the soul had been, and always would be, eternal, having no beginning or end.

Some psychic mediums of a variety of religious persuasions and some Spiritualists believe in transmigration of the soul but hold that reincarnation is an anomaly if it occurs at all.

The believed nature of the soul has a significant impact on the Hindu belief of transmigration. In Hinduism, a soul is both immutable and eternal and thus the character of a soul from a previous life is imprinted on the new one.

Buddhists, however, do not subscribe to the concept of universal Atman, Soul, or Self or the individual atman, soul or self. Thus, the concept of transmigration differs from Hinduism on this fundamental point. The Buddhist concept of transmigration, rather, is understood as the effect of karma, karma being defined as volitional action.

Transmigration, although not directly referred to as such, has been used frequently to the point of being an overblown cliché in the sense of people “switching bodies,” in which the identities of two or more characters transmigrate to each others bodies. This concept has been used many times in various films.

An examination of transmigration in the arts, perhaps more directly spiritual than the popular culture aspect above, was author Philip K. Dick’s novel The Transmigration of Timothy Archer.

Kenosis is a Greek word for emptiness, which is used as a theological term. It is the concept of the self-emptying of one’s own will and becoming entirely receptive to God and its perfect will. It is used both as an explanation of the Incarnation, and an indication of the nature of God’s activity and condescension.

An apparent dilemma arises when Christian theology posits a God outside of time and space, who enters into time and space to become human. The doctrine of Kenosis attempts to explain what the Son of God chose to give up in terms of his divine attributes in order to assume human nature. Since the incarnate Jesus is simultaneously fully human and fully divine, Kenosis holds that these changes were temporarily assumed by God in his incarnation, and that when Jesus ascended back into heaven following the resurrection, he fully reassumed all of his original attributes and divinity.

Specifically it refers to attributes of God that are thought to be incompatible with becoming fully human. For example, God’s omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience as well as his aseity, eternity, infinity, impassibility and immutability. The Orthodox Mystical Theology of the East emphasises following the example of Christ. Kenosis is only possible through humility and presupposes that one seeks union with God. The Poustinia tradition of the Russian Orthodox Church is one major expression of this search.

Kenosis is not only a Christological issue in Orthodox theology, it has moreover to do with Pneumatology, namely to do with the Holy Spirit. Kenosis, relative to the human nature, denotes the continual epiklesis and self-denial of one’s own human will and desire. With regards to Christ, there is a kenosis of the Son of God, a condescension and self sacrifice for the redemption and salvation of all humanity. Humanity can also participate in God’s saving work through theosis; becoming holy by grace.

Another perspective is the idea that God is self-emptying. He poured out himself to create the cosmos and the universe, and everything within it. Therefore, it is our duty to pour out ourselves. This is similar to C.S. Lewis’s statement in Mere Christianity that a painter pours his ideas out in his work, and yet remains quite a distinct being from his painting. In so doing, we become deified like God. Another term for this process is theosis.

Emanuel Swedenborg was a Swedish scientist, philosopher, Christian mystic and theologian. Born in 1688, Swedenborg had a prolific career as an inventor and scientist. At the age of fifty-six he entered into a spiritual phase in which he experienced dreams and visions. This culminated in a spiritual awakening, where he claimed he was appointed by the Lord to write a heavenly doctrine to reform Christianity.

Swedenborg explicitly rejected the common explanation of the Trinity as a Trinity of Persons, which he said was not taught in the early Christian Church. Instead he explained in his theological writings how the Divine Trinity exists in One Person. Swedenborg also rejected the doctrine of salvation through faith alone, since he considered both faith and charity necessary for salvation, not one without the other.

In 1744 he traveled to the Netherlands. Around this time he began having strange dreams. Swedenborg carried a travel journal with him on most of his travels. It provides a first-hand account of the events of his transformation. Analyses of the diary have concluded that what Swedenborg was recording in his Journal of Dreams was a battle between the love of his self, and the love of God.

There are three well known incidents of psychic ability reported in literature about Swedenborg. The first was from July 29, 1759, when during a dinner in Gothenburg, he excitedly told the party at six o’ clock that there was a fire in Stockholm, that it consumed his neighbour’s home and was threatening his own. Two hours later, he exclaimed with relief that the fire stopped three doors from his home. Two days later, reports confirmed every statement to the precise hour that Swedenborg first expressed the information.

The second was in 1758 when Swedenborg visited Queen Louisa Ulrika of Sweden, who asked him to tell her something about her deceased brother Augustus William. The next day, Swedenborg whispered something in her ear that turned the Queen pale and she explained that this was something only she and her brother could know about. The third was a woman who had lost an important document, and came to Swedenborg asking if a recently deceased person could tell him where it was, which he was said to have done the following night.

Swedenborg considered his theology a revelation of the true Christian religion that had become obfuscated through centuries of theology. However, he did not refer to his writings as theology since he considered it based on actual experiences, unlike theology. Neither did he wish to compare it to philosophy, a science he discarded because it “darkens the mind, blinds us, and wholly rejects faith”.

Water puppetry is a tradition that dates back as far as the 11th century when it originated in the villages of the Red River Delta area of northern Vietnam. Today’s Vietnamese water puppetry is a unique variation on the ancient Asian puppet tradition.

The puppets are made out of wood and then lacquered. The shows are performed in a waist deep pool. A large rod supports the puppet under the water and is used by the puppeteers, who are normally hidden behind a screen, to control them. Thus the puppets appear to be moving over the water. When the rice fields would flood, the villagers would entertain each other using this form of puppet play.

The art remains highly developed today in this country. In ancient Vietnam, the rural Vietnamese believed that spirits controlled all aspect of their lives, from the kitchen to the rice paddies. The Vietnamese devised water puppetry as a way to satisfy these spirits, and as a form of entertainment using what natural medium they could find in their environment. In ancient times, the ponds and flooded rice paddies after harvest were the stage for these impromptu shows.

Modern water puppetry is performed in a pool of water 4 meters square with the water surface being the stage. Performance today occurs on one of three venues: on traditional ponds in villages where a staging area has been set up, on portable tanks built for traveling performers, or in a specialized building where a pool stage has been constructed.

Up to 8 puppeteers stand behind a split-bamboo screen, decorated to resemble a temple facade, and control the puppets using long bamboo rods and string mechanism hidden beneath the water surface. The puppets are carved out of wood and often weigh up to 15 kg.

A traditional Vietnamese orchestra provides background music accompaniment. The instrumentation includes vocals, drums, wooden bells, cymbals, horns, gongs, and bamboo flutes. The bamboo flute’s clear, simple notes may accompany royalty while the drums and cymbals may loudly announce a fire breathing dragon’s entrance.

The puppets enter from either side of the stage, or emerge from the murky depths of the water. Spotlights and colorful flags adorn the stage and create a festive atmosphere.

Happiness is a state of mind or feeling such as contentment, satisfaction, pleasure, or joy. A variety of philosophical, religious, psychological and biological approaches have been taken to defining happiness and identifying its sources.

Research has identified a number of correlates with happiness. These include religious involvement, parenthood, marital status, age, income and proximity to other happy people. Happiness economics suggests that measures of public happiness should be used to supplement more traditional economic measures when evaluating the success of public policy.

Michael Argyle developed The Oxford Happiness Inventory as a broad measure of psychological well being. This measures happiness as an aggregate of self esteem, sense of purpose, social interest and kindness, sense of humor and aesthetic appreciation. This has been criticized for lacking a theoretical model of happiness and because it is felt that certain aspects overlap.

There is now extensive research suggesting that religious people are happier and less stressed. Surveys by Gallup, the National Opinion Research Center and the Pew Organization conclude that spiritually committed people are twice as likely to report being very happy than the least religiously committed people. An analysis of over 200 social studies contends that high religiousness predicts a lower risk of depression and drug abuse and more reports of satisfaction with life and a sense of well being.

Explanations of happiness in mystical traditions are related to full balance of so called inner energy lines. In a balanced state, two main lines (left & right, Ida & Pingala) form a third line, called Shushumna. Full activity of a third or central line is happiness. Left and right lines include all aspects of normal human life: sleep and awake, body and mind, physical and spiritual. To attain the balanced state of these two lines is a main task of life, a result of all activities and endeavours combined with full relaxation or tranquility.

Happiness forms a central theme of Buddhist teachings. Ultimate happiness is only achieved by overcoming craving in all forms. More mundane forms of happiness, such as acquiring wealth and maintaining good friendships, are also recognized as worthy goals for lay people. Buddhism also encourages the generation of loving kindness and compassion, and the desire for the happiness and welfare of all beings.