Doris And The Ouija Board
From James Donahue’s Journal
Doris and I were going through a strange period of spiritual awakening. We didn’t understand just what was happening or where it was all going, but we were discovering ourselves and it seems that forces were at work to help, hinder or misdirect us in ways it is now hard to put into words. I was living in a "forced" retirement from my newspaper job. In January I resigned my position with the church, not really understanding why. Doris and I both were looking for something but had no way of knowing how to find it. We made trips to Ann Arbor, near the campus of the University of Michigan, where we explored book shops steeped in occult lore. There we discovered Christian antagonists, writers who skillfully challenged the deity although not the existence of Jesus. We read about the American Indians, acquainting ourselves with their history, their customs and beliefs. We discovered Mary Summer Rain's books, and absorbed the wisdom of the blind psychic No-Eyes, who saw beyond this world and gave us our first insight into a spiritual universe teeming with life that exists all around us. We fell in love with such wonderful thinkers as Joseph Campbell, C. G. Jung, Robert Anton Wilson, Dr. Timothy Leary and eventually plunged headlong into the works of Alister Crowley.
We experimented with leaving our body, reading palms, seeing auroras and using a strangely designed form of a Ouija board to talk to the spirit world. Doris had a vague memory of what a Ouija board looked like because she had watched her grandmother use one when she was young. She designed a crude board on a plain white sheet of paper that looked nothing like a real Ouija board, and found a small green plastic elephant that once hung on jewelry her grandmother had given her. She first tried using this to direct her fingers on the board. Later she used an Indian head penny her father had owned.
She and Jennifer experimented that first day by putting their fingers together on the plastic elephant and asking questions. They were surprised when the elephant began moving in circles and pointing out letters. Messages began to come to them. But it was clear that they were in touch with bad energies at first. It took Doris time to learn how to clear the room, identify the entities she was communicating with, and learning how to reach and identify valid helpful spirit forces. By then, Jennifer had given up. Once Doris gained proficiency at “doing the board” the entities she talked to began to influence dramatic life changes.
During those experimental times we drove our dog crazy because we were constantly bringing unwanted forces into our home. Dogs seem to live in another dimension and have not lost their ability to see entities that live in a universe that co-exists with ours. He would let us know they were around and then we had to learn how to drive them out again. We soon learned to sense their presence on our own. All things are sources of energy, we discovered, and when we are mentally and psychically aware of them, we also know they are near.
Doris and Jennifer discovered they had natural psychic powers that simply were at their fingertips to use when they became aware of them. Mine were somewhat different. I discovered that I had a “sixth sense” about things, after years of work as a newspaper reporter. I suppose I always had this ability and learned to use it skillfully in dealing with the politics of city and county governments. I never could use the Ouija board, but I discovered that I was quite good at working a pendulum to find things on maps, get “yes” or “no” questions answered, finding bad energy spots in the home, and even heal.
The entities Doris communicated with on her board began giving us information that appeared to be teaching us things about ourselves, our family and our reason for being on this planet at this time. We were astounded at some of the messages. Looking back on them, I realize that we put too much stock on some of the information and should have taken it all with a grain of salt.
For example the "board" gave us a wild story that our son Aaron is a special person, sent to Earth to fight and kill Mabas, a great beast that would rise up during the tribulation. Aaron also was to do battle with a demon named Tron, which was a giant electronic network of computers and television sets. Mabas was a church leader, but the same beastly energy also lived in the hearts of many of our government leaders, the messenger said.
Fascinated by what we were learning, we asked for more information about Aaron. We were told that he is a member of a white brotherhood, an organization of old and enlightened spirits who came to Earth with a special mission. Part of this mission was to wake up those of us who were planted here, but allowed to sleep until our time to awaken arrived.
All of the personalities on our board seemed to look to Aaron, as something they both feared and respected. Even the demons that popped up on occasion seemed to be willing to bow down to Aaron. We found this most perplexing. They identified him as "The One," the "Pathana" of the Hopi Indians, the "purifier" and "teacher." We found all of this very hard to believe. It crossed my mind that the stories were merely a fabrication out of the mind of a loving mother, but I don't think I ever said this. This is the way the mind of a journalist works. Because of the nature of our work, we are among the biggest skeptics in the world.
Looking back on that time, I am not sure we would have trusted the word of these unknown entities as much as we did. Among our first "friendly" contacts was one that called itself Elohim. We didn't recognize it then, but this is an ancient name of the many Gods known among the Old Testament Hebrews. There was a story that it was another name for Lucifer, but later we knew this was not true. Elohim also was identified as one of four angels of the apocalypse, which in itself, was a remarkable visitation. After the other entities arrived, Elohim rarely had anything to say. In those days Doris usually had about three visitors with her each time she opened the board. Elohim sometimes was present, but rarely provided information. We were fascinated to learn that all forces living in what we call the astral plane, or sub-space seemed to know the future and the past. Time does not appear to exist there so they know the outcome of what we perceive as future events. They also could find out what happened in the Earth's history. The only thing these entities lacked was a reference point as to just when events happened, or were to happen. This also appeared to be linked to the non-existence of time. Thus a prediction of some future event was sometimes years or months away.
Soon after Elohim’s arrival, Doris met Adoni, identified in the ancient books as a powerful angel of fire. After Adoni, Michael, the great archangel mentioned over and over in both the Old and New Testaments arrived. When he was near the room sometimes became bathed with a violet hew. These personalities soon became regular inhabitants of our home. The last visitor to arrive was Aiwass. He became the most vocal of the personalities Doris spoke with, almost becoming a trusted personal friend and confident. His or her identity puzzled us for a while. This was not an angelic name, nor that of a demon. When we asked, Aiwass said it was a messenger representing the powers that controlled the universe. Then, one day while pouring over the strange work by Crowley titled Liber Al vel Legis, also known as The Book of the Law, I discovered that this brooding work was allegedly created by a spiritual force named Aiwass in 1904. As Crowley tells the story, Aiwass visited him for three days in a row, dictating one chapter daily until the three-part book was completed.
I was quite excited when I made this discovery. Could the Aiwass on our Ouija board be one and the same? When asked, Aiwass did not deny it. In fact, at a later time, he identified himself as the one who dictated the Book of the Law.
This was an amazing time in our lives. Not a day passed that Doris and I did not come to one another with some new idea or thought to share. She was so quick to learn. Like a bright star that absorbed new knowledge and then cast it out so that I too might learn. Once we could shake off the yoke of Christianity, we quickly broke away from our old molds, made new friends, tried marijuana for the first time, and, after reading Leary, we even experienced an LSD trip. I worked at turning on my right brain.
As mentioned above, I began taking walks in the woods around our home. Once while listening to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on my portable tape player, I really saw the brilliant colors of the wild flowers for the first time in my life. I once encountered a deer in a clearing. It stood quietly looking at me, as did I, it. There was mental communication. The deer understood that I was not its enemy. After saying hello, it walked slowly back into the trees.
Life was getting very interesting.
From James Donahue’s Journal
Doris and I were going through a strange period of spiritual awakening. We didn’t understand just what was happening or where it was all going, but we were discovering ourselves and it seems that forces were at work to help, hinder or misdirect us in ways it is now hard to put into words. I was living in a "forced" retirement from my newspaper job. In January I resigned my position with the church, not really understanding why. Doris and I both were looking for something but had no way of knowing how to find it. We made trips to Ann Arbor, near the campus of the University of Michigan, where we explored book shops steeped in occult lore. There we discovered Christian antagonists, writers who skillfully challenged the deity although not the existence of Jesus. We read about the American Indians, acquainting ourselves with their history, their customs and beliefs. We discovered Mary Summer Rain's books, and absorbed the wisdom of the blind psychic No-Eyes, who saw beyond this world and gave us our first insight into a spiritual universe teeming with life that exists all around us. We fell in love with such wonderful thinkers as Joseph Campbell, C. G. Jung, Robert Anton Wilson, Dr. Timothy Leary and eventually plunged headlong into the works of Alister Crowley.
We experimented with leaving our body, reading palms, seeing auroras and using a strangely designed form of a Ouija board to talk to the spirit world. Doris had a vague memory of what a Ouija board looked like because she had watched her grandmother use one when she was young. She designed a crude board on a plain white sheet of paper that looked nothing like a real Ouija board, and found a small green plastic elephant that once hung on jewelry her grandmother had given her. She first tried using this to direct her fingers on the board. Later she used an Indian head penny her father had owned.
She and Jennifer experimented that first day by putting their fingers together on the plastic elephant and asking questions. They were surprised when the elephant began moving in circles and pointing out letters. Messages began to come to them. But it was clear that they were in touch with bad energies at first. It took Doris time to learn how to clear the room, identify the entities she was communicating with, and learning how to reach and identify valid helpful spirit forces. By then, Jennifer had given up. Once Doris gained proficiency at “doing the board” the entities she talked to began to influence dramatic life changes.
During those experimental times we drove our dog crazy because we were constantly bringing unwanted forces into our home. Dogs seem to live in another dimension and have not lost their ability to see entities that live in a universe that co-exists with ours. He would let us know they were around and then we had to learn how to drive them out again. We soon learned to sense their presence on our own. All things are sources of energy, we discovered, and when we are mentally and psychically aware of them, we also know they are near.
Doris and Jennifer discovered they had natural psychic powers that simply were at their fingertips to use when they became aware of them. Mine were somewhat different. I discovered that I had a “sixth sense” about things, after years of work as a newspaper reporter. I suppose I always had this ability and learned to use it skillfully in dealing with the politics of city and county governments. I never could use the Ouija board, but I discovered that I was quite good at working a pendulum to find things on maps, get “yes” or “no” questions answered, finding bad energy spots in the home, and even heal.
The entities Doris communicated with on her board began giving us information that appeared to be teaching us things about ourselves, our family and our reason for being on this planet at this time. We were astounded at some of the messages. Looking back on them, I realize that we put too much stock on some of the information and should have taken it all with a grain of salt.
For example the "board" gave us a wild story that our son Aaron is a special person, sent to Earth to fight and kill Mabas, a great beast that would rise up during the tribulation. Aaron also was to do battle with a demon named Tron, which was a giant electronic network of computers and television sets. Mabas was a church leader, but the same beastly energy also lived in the hearts of many of our government leaders, the messenger said.
Fascinated by what we were learning, we asked for more information about Aaron. We were told that he is a member of a white brotherhood, an organization of old and enlightened spirits who came to Earth with a special mission. Part of this mission was to wake up those of us who were planted here, but allowed to sleep until our time to awaken arrived.
All of the personalities on our board seemed to look to Aaron, as something they both feared and respected. Even the demons that popped up on occasion seemed to be willing to bow down to Aaron. We found this most perplexing. They identified him as "The One," the "Pathana" of the Hopi Indians, the "purifier" and "teacher." We found all of this very hard to believe. It crossed my mind that the stories were merely a fabrication out of the mind of a loving mother, but I don't think I ever said this. This is the way the mind of a journalist works. Because of the nature of our work, we are among the biggest skeptics in the world.
Looking back on that time, I am not sure we would have trusted the word of these unknown entities as much as we did. Among our first "friendly" contacts was one that called itself Elohim. We didn't recognize it then, but this is an ancient name of the many Gods known among the Old Testament Hebrews. There was a story that it was another name for Lucifer, but later we knew this was not true. Elohim also was identified as one of four angels of the apocalypse, which in itself, was a remarkable visitation. After the other entities arrived, Elohim rarely had anything to say. In those days Doris usually had about three visitors with her each time she opened the board. Elohim sometimes was present, but rarely provided information. We were fascinated to learn that all forces living in what we call the astral plane, or sub-space seemed to know the future and the past. Time does not appear to exist there so they know the outcome of what we perceive as future events. They also could find out what happened in the Earth's history. The only thing these entities lacked was a reference point as to just when events happened, or were to happen. This also appeared to be linked to the non-existence of time. Thus a prediction of some future event was sometimes years or months away.
Soon after Elohim’s arrival, Doris met Adoni, identified in the ancient books as a powerful angel of fire. After Adoni, Michael, the great archangel mentioned over and over in both the Old and New Testaments arrived. When he was near the room sometimes became bathed with a violet hew. These personalities soon became regular inhabitants of our home. The last visitor to arrive was Aiwass. He became the most vocal of the personalities Doris spoke with, almost becoming a trusted personal friend and confident. His or her identity puzzled us for a while. This was not an angelic name, nor that of a demon. When we asked, Aiwass said it was a messenger representing the powers that controlled the universe. Then, one day while pouring over the strange work by Crowley titled Liber Al vel Legis, also known as The Book of the Law, I discovered that this brooding work was allegedly created by a spiritual force named Aiwass in 1904. As Crowley tells the story, Aiwass visited him for three days in a row, dictating one chapter daily until the three-part book was completed.
I was quite excited when I made this discovery. Could the Aiwass on our Ouija board be one and the same? When asked, Aiwass did not deny it. In fact, at a later time, he identified himself as the one who dictated the Book of the Law.
This was an amazing time in our lives. Not a day passed that Doris and I did not come to one another with some new idea or thought to share. She was so quick to learn. Like a bright star that absorbed new knowledge and then cast it out so that I too might learn. Once we could shake off the yoke of Christianity, we quickly broke away from our old molds, made new friends, tried marijuana for the first time, and, after reading Leary, we even experienced an LSD trip. I worked at turning on my right brain.
As mentioned above, I began taking walks in the woods around our home. Once while listening to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on my portable tape player, I really saw the brilliant colors of the wild flowers for the first time in my life. I once encountered a deer in a clearing. It stood quietly looking at me, as did I, it. There was mental communication. The deer understood that I was not its enemy. After saying hello, it walked slowly back into the trees.
Life was getting very interesting.