Glass Divination Experiment

No one can be certain of the true origins of glass divination, but it has been practiced by investigators, mediums and psychics for decades. Glass divination is very similar to using an Ouija board in the way that in which it is conducted, the main differences between the two are that an Ouija board opens up a gateway to spirits from potentially anywhere (or so I'm told) where as glass divination only uses energies which are already present. The most visibly noticeable difference is that an Ouija board uses letters and numbers where as glass divination does not. It can be performed using any glass on any smooth table.

Some people believe that when the glass moves around the table that it is being controlled by a spirit using the glass to make communication. As a sceptic I personally think the movement of the glass is entirely down to the people with their fingers on the glass, I don't think they are all out to make the glass move by simply pushing it themselves intentionally nor do I think they have divine powers that enable them to communicate with spirits, to find out why the glass moves we have to look a bit deeper.

Pressure - If you pick up a glass, turn it upside down and place it onto a smooth surface at home I am quite confident that you will be able to push the glass around in several directions with great ease. This of course only happens if you press down on the glass hard enough, during a glass divination process the individuals are only just touching the glass very lightly, but could it be that four of five lightly placed fingers is the equivalent to one finger pushing hard on the glass? If so then this explains how the glass is able to move despite only touching the glass as lightly as possible.

Psychology - It is very rare that anyone who attempts glass divination doesn't want it to work, those who do take part usually believe that the glass can move and are all willing it to move. My belief is that firstly they listen to the command being made to the spirit, such as moving to an individual and then as people's fingers begin to move and wobble everyone else taking part follows. The amount of people taking part is enough to create momentum and the more the glass moves the more people push it through trying to keep up.

One day I decided to create an experiment to test this idea. The brief of the experiment was to be able to remove the human element without removing them from the table completely, the experiment was to be fair and simple to give the spirit a fair chance of success. A table was designed with a series of numbers ranging from 1 to 9, using this table for the experiment, we would ask the spirit to solve a simple equation which would be visible to it, but not to the individuals around the table. The image below shows how the experiment was set out.

With the participants around the table unable to see the equation they could not possibly know where to move the glass to, the only way the glass could move to the correct number was if there was an unseen intelligence controlling it. If the glass did not get the correct answers however then this would add support to my belief that glass divination is indeed controlled subconsciously by the living rather then by spirits.

So what happened? Well during the experiment we made 25 attempts, the results of which are listed below with the correct answers in green and the incorrect answers in red.

With a score of four correct answers out of twenty five attempts my belief that the glass is influenced purely by those on the table remains the same. Not to be beaten however I have already devised a new experiment using the same table and method that makes it even easier for the spirit to display evidence of communication, so we will be conducting this soon and the results will be posted on this website.

- Report by Richard O'Connor

Pictures from the experiment and the table preparation can be seen below.

 

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