As the table turns ...

12th July 2024. Reading Time: 12 minutes General, Famous Paranormal Cases, Paranormal Theories. 889 page views. 0 comments.

Table tipping or table turning as it was once known has become popular again within the paranormal realm. I look at the work Michael Faraday did in trying to understand what was causing the tables to move and some of the theories as to how it all works.

During the 1800's, there was a spiritualist movement wherein mediumship and spirit communication became quite popular. Séances, spirit boards, and table tipping started to become quite popular. Its popularity peaked in the early 1900's. The era in time is affectionately referred to as the Victorian Era. A lot of advancement in the paranormal field was made during this time, so much more back then than what we have ever achieved or discovered in modern times. Notable figures during the Victorian Era include Sarah Winchester, Nikola Tesla, Harry Houdini, Aleister Crowley, and Harry Price just to name a few. Table turning or table tipping was a hugely popular concept during this movement. While professional mediums who were very popular at the time would use this method, essentially anyone could do table-turning (or rapping) as all you needed was people and a table.

Image Source: Occult World

Michael Faraday's debunking device

In 1852, well-known scientist Michael Faraday was suspicious of table-turning and set out to prove that it was not spirit that was manipulating the table, but rather the person themselves. He felt it was an unconscious involuntary muscle contraction known as the ideomotor effect which I'll explain further down. Initially, he took bundles of cardboard that were the same size as the table and lightly glued each piece together. Each sheet got smaller from the top through to the bottom. Faraday would then mark with a pencil where each cardboard piece sat. He put his makeshift cardboard device on the table and then encouraged participants to communicate with spirit and asked them to move the table. This would allow Faraday to see where the force to move the table was coming from. If it were spirits that were controlling the movement, the cards would move from the bottom up. If it was the person with their hands on the table, the cards at the top would move first.

Source: Illustrated London News, July 16th 1853 (Wikimedia Commons)

Faraday was of the opinion that it was human force moving the table, however he also felt it was not done in a deceptive way. He thought that the participants were moving the table, but were doing so with no awareness. During tests, after the table moved, he would check his apparatus to see where the force that moved the table was coming from. As he suspected, the table was being moved from the top down meaning that it was moved by human force. He also found that even when the table was not moving, there was force being applied from the top, again indicating that human force was attempting to move the table. The participants were not aware that they were moving the table and he theorized that they may have felt force coming from the table which would cause them to unconsciously move the table. He also tried using various items in his contraption, however the outcome was always the same.

Believing that the first cause assigned - namely, a quasi involuntary muscular action (for the effect is with many subject to the wish or will) - was the true cause; the first point was to prevent the mind of the turner having an undue influence over the effects produced in relation to the nature of the substances employed. A bundle of plates, consisting of sand-paper, millboard, glue, glass, plastic clay, tinfoil, cardboard, gutta-percha, vulcanized caoutchouc, wood and resinous cement, was therefore made up and tied together, and being placed on a table, under the hand of a turner, did not prevent the transmission of the power; the table turned or moved exactly as if the bundle had been away, to the full satisfaction of all present. The experiment was repeated, with various substances and persons, and at various times, with constant success; and henceforth no objection could be taken to the use of these substances in the construction of apparatus. The next point was to determine the place and source of motion - i.e. whether the table moved the hand, or the hand moved the table; and for this purpose indicators were constructed. One of these consisted of a light lever, having its fulcrum on the table, its short arm attached to a pin fixed on a cardboard, which could slip on the surface of the table, and its long arm projecting as an index of motion. It is evident that if the experimenter willed the table to move towards the left, and it did so move before the hands, placed at the time on the cardboard, then the index would move to the left also, the fulcrum going with the table. If the hands involuntarily moved towards the left without the table, the index would go to the right; and, if neither table nor hands moved, the index would itself remain immoveable. The result was, that when the parties saw the index it remained very steady; when it was hidden from them, or they looked away from it, it wavered about, though they believed that they always pressed directly downwards; and, when the table did not move, there was still a resultant of hand force in the direction in which it was wished the table should move, which, however, was exercised quite unwittingly by the party operating. This resultant it is which, in the course of the waiting time, while the fingers and hands become stiff, numb, and insensible by continued pressure, grows up to an amount sufficient to move the table or the substances pressed upon.

Michael Faraday - Letter to Editor of Times 28th June 1853

Changing tact, Faraday thought that if the participants were made aware of the fact that they were moving the table that the results of the experiment might change. To alert them in real time, Faraday constructed an indicator made from paper. The paper was connected to the cardboard apparatus and lifted from the table using a pin. The pin acted as a lever, with the shorter arm near the participant’s hands and the longer arm showing the direction of any force applied to the table by the hands. This index would show the participants if they were moving the table and in what direction it was being moved.

the most valuable effect of this test-apparatus (which was afterwards made more perfect and independent of the table) is the corrective power it possesses over the mind of the table-turner. As soon as the index is placed before the most earnest, and they perceive - as in my presence they have always done - that it tells truly whether they are pressing downwards only or obliquely, then all effects of table-turning cease, even though the parties persevere, earnestly desiring motion, till they become weary and worn out. No prompting or checking of the hands is needed - the power is gone; and this only because the parties are made conscious of what they are really doing mechanically, and so are unable unwittingly to deceive themselves.

Michael Faraday - Letter to Editor of Times 28th June 1853

The main takeaway from Faraday's experiments was that he did believe it was a real phenomenon, just not in the way people had come to believe. He didn't necessarily believe they were communicating with spirits but rather in a battle with their own subconscious movements. It is largely connected to what is known as the ideomotor phenomenon.

The ideomotor phenomenon

This term was originally coined by William B. Carpenter in 1852. He used this as an explanation for the movement of dowsing rods, pendulums, sticks, or even a planchette on an Ouija board. He wasn’t at all claiming that people were being deliberately deceptive, but they were completely unaware that their slight muscle movements were causing these items to move. One of the examples he commonly used was that of dowsing rods. When using dowsing rods to track water, if you were to tell someone who hasn’t used the rods before that there is water at a certain point in the ground, when they reach it, their rods will cross. They aren’t doing this deliberately. It is because subconsciously they know where the water is so their subconscious is controlling the muscle movement. In Faraday's case, he would ask participants to move the table left. They seemed to do so unknowingly because that is what they were instructed to do.

If you would like to know more and how this has affected other experiments, check out my article The ideomotor phenomenon

Other theories

The ideomotor is one of the leading theories when it comes to table tipping, but it is not the only possible explanation out there. In a letter written to Michael Faraday in 1853, F.W.M theorizes just how it may be that a human moves the table while being unaware.

Is it not possible (I ask with the greatest deference) that the electricity may be, as it were, renewed or accumulated in our bodies as fast as we part with it? if so it may take 20 minutes or 1/2 an hour for a sufficient quantity to have passed through our hands to charge the table. Supposing this to be true, I venture to hope that an idea which occurred to me on first seeing this extraordinary phenomenon may also have some truth in it. My idea is this. 1st It is the room which moves & not the table. The room goes round with the Earth from West to East, & thus accounting for the apparent movement of the table from East to West. 2dly the electricity in our bodies acting on the table, lifts it slightly from the ground, (the 100th part of an inch would do), and 3dy this being the case, as we use no force, but passively submit to follow what I must call the power of Electricity, we are obliged to rise from our chairs as soon as the room goes on without the table (which has been released from the power of attraction by the power of electricity), & we continue to follow it or rather to keep pace with the Earths movement.

F.W.M. to Faraday 8 June 1853

A controversial theory which F.W.N later apologized for writing to Faraday anonymously as it was considered to be a breach of etiquette. Her reasoning was an example of the times as it was "disagreeable for a lady to make her name public under these circumstances".

Another theory I have heard floated around is that of genetic memory. Faraday himself said that the participants were not aware of their movements. While it seemed to be a subconscious action, Carl Jung ponders ... what exactly is in our subconscious?

Do we hold the genetic memories of our ancestors that provide us with answers to questions that consciously we couldn't possibly know? When we think we are receiving an answer from a loved one who has passed away, is it because we have their genetic memory stored in our unconscious? Carl Jung referred to this as the collective unconscious.

My thesis, then, is as follows: In addition to our immediate consciousness, which is of a thoroughly personal nature and which we believe to be the only empirical psyche (even if we tack on the personal unconscious as an appendix), there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical
in all individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited. It consists of pre-existent forms, the archetypes, which can only become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic contents.

Carl Jung

The Concept of the Collective Unconscious

If we go with this theory, when we are communicating with what we believe is a spirit of a family member, are the answers we are receiving because we are indeed communicating with this spirit, or are we simply accessing the answers via our genetic memories? Can we psychically project these memories and create our own spirit? What I find interesting is that when people participate in table tipping, they report receiving communication that is extremely personal from family members and not necessarily tied to the location they are at. Is this an argument for genetic memory?

Something I find quite fascinating is that table tipping over the last few years has started to make a bit of a resurgence within the paranormal community. For a while there, people were so focused on using equipment to investigate the paranormal likely because that is what they were seeing on television. Over the years as more and more people try it, they feel they have a connection to this form of communication. Like anything, there are 100% going to be some people who deliberately move the table. In fact there is a whole other article I will eventually write about the ways people modified tables. In many cases, it appeared like they were levitating a table in a trick described as 'table lifting'. Then there is a hook and ring device that allows people to tilt the table in a certain direction. There are also going to be people who are moving the table yet are completely unaware. There are going to be times when absolutely nothing happens at all. Then you have the very small occurrences with claims of levitation and tables moving seemingly on their own. I have heard accounts from people I respect highly who have had experiences and witnessed tables moving on their own that they were unable to explain. Like everything with the paranormal, you have a mixed bag of accounts and a whole lot of opinions.

While table turning has become popular again, perhaps we need to take it a step further and implement more controls like what Faraday did above to try and understand the phenomenon a bit more. If we are going to rely on techniques used from the past, we should also rely on the controls implemented as well.

I'd love to hear from you. What are your thoughts on table tipping and do you think there is merit in introducing controls like Faraday did above? Or is it just a personal thing that doesn't need to be explained?

References:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/oct/20/seances-and-science

Faraday to the Editor of the Times 28 June 1853

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp96-00789r003800330001-4

A “Careful Examination of All Kind of Phenomena”: Methodology and Psychical Research at the End of the Nineteenth Century
Claudia Cristalli Chapter 6 (2024)

“Faraday2691,” in Ɛpsilon: The Michael Faraday Collection accessed on 12 July 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/faraday/letters/Faraday2691

“Faraday2686,” in Ɛpsilon: The Michael Faraday Collection accessed on 12 July 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/faraday/letters/Faraday2686

Cover Image: By Ange Louis Janet - Internet Archive identifier: l-illustration-1853-05-14, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=87190571

If you enjoy LLIFS, consider buying me a book (otherwise known as buy me a coffee but I don't drink coffee and I LOVE books). Your donation helps to fund the LLIFS website so everyone can continue to access great paranormal content and resources for FREE!