Ouija Boards and Replenishing your Creativity

How to get out of Your Creative Drought.

What do ouija boards have to do with creativity? Ouija boards are used as tools for divination by many a mystic and satanist. Both of whom we shouldn’t be liable to trust too much. However, in researching creativity, I happened upon something called the Ideomotor phenomenon. Ideomotor phenomenon is when our movement (i.e, hands-on an ouija board, dowsing rod, or a musical instrument) is guided by the subtle urges and inklings of our unconscious mind.

I’ve experienced ideomotor phenomena while playing the piano, composing digital music, and even while writing poems. If you can get into the state of mind necessary to engage this type of movement, I’ve found it exceptionally useful as a generative razor (A tool for generating novel, experimental, or playful work; useful if you are in a creative drought.)

So how can we engage ideomotor phenomenon? Should I go to the dark web and buy myself an authentic ouija board?

First of all, hold your horses. You don’t know what kind of demons you’re playing with. And second of all, the board doesn’t matter so much as the state of mind.

I engaged in ideomotor phenomena while writing a poem on my computer. The blank screen sat there staring at me. With a Rachmaninoff piano concerto blasting in my ears, I looked down at my hands on the keyboard. Then I just started moving, slowly at first, hovering over a single key, wondering if I was gonna push it down or not.

I repeated this process, typing out seemingly random letters. Sometimes I would formulate a full word this way, or my nonsensical words would remind me of a real word and I would replace it with a new one. The poem that resulted from this process was by far the most creative poem I’ve written (I don’t consider myself much of a poet.)

I think my successful ideomotor engagement has something to do with the following:

• Ignoring my inner critic

• Paying extremely close attention to subtle urges from my inner-artist

• Micro-level trial and error (erasing nonsense and trying again)

Try it for yourself! Get out your instruments, open your music software, bring out the paper pencils pens, or paint. The empty canvas is your ouija-board, and all you have to do is listen closely to what the spirits are trying to tell you.