Paranormal ProductsInstruments, made by one hand since 2003
II · Automatic-Writing Planchettes

The instrument of 1853

Made as it should have been made then: heavy, proportioned, on brass feet, with a clamp that holds the pencil to the paper by a hair.

ParisThe Little Board

The planchette is older than the board it is now sold with, and it was never meant to point. It was meant to write.

Paris, 1853. The tables of the spring rapped and turned, and by summer somebody had fitted a pencil to the leg of an upturned basket and was getting sentences. Within months the basket had become a small heart-shaped board on two castors with a pencil through its nose, and within a decade it was in every parlour in Europe and America. Allan Kardec's Spirits' Book was dictated through one. The word is French for little board, and that is all it is.

What it does is simple to state and hard to make well. The hands rest on the board; the board rests on castors and a pencil point; the smallest motion of the fingers becomes the pencil's largest, because the pencil is at the apex and the castors are at the base, and the geometry multiplies. Everything the sitter cannot feel themselves doing, the pencil records. Over a session the marks go from scribble to loops, from loops to shapes that look like letters, from letters to words. It is the most patient of all the instruments and the one that leaves a record, which is why it is the one I recommend to anyone who intends to take the practice seriously rather than to be entertained by it.

Automatic-writing planchettes on the pad
Automatic-writing planchettes on the padFive writers in five timbers, a boxed Mysterious Planchette of the 1920s behind them, and the script the sitters left on the paper during the day.
The workshop's planchettes, 2004
The workshop's planchettes, 2004Teardrops in figured walnut and rosewood with brass lens rings, solid-brass castings, and the pencil model with its clamp.

What I MakeHeavy, Proportioned, Quiet

Made as it should have been made then

The Victorian planchettes were made by the thousand, in cheap wood, on hard castors that chattered across the paper. The one in the boxed set on the photograph below, a Mysterious Planchette of the 1920s, is typical: thin, light, and skittish. A light planchette writes small and fast and mostly rubbish, because the sitter's tremor is transmitted before their intent. A heavy one writes large, slow, and legible. This is the single most important thing I have learned about the instrument, and it is the opposite of what the trade has done for a hundred and seventy years.

So mine are heavy. They are cut from dense hardwoods, bloodwood, purpleheart, rosewood, ebony, or from solid glass to the 1860 pattern, or from stone. They are cut to one to phi, the width to the height, so that the hand finds its place on them without looking. They run on three brass feet rather than castors, turned in my shop, so that they glide instead of rolling and never chatter. The pencil clamp is solid brass with a thumbscrew, set so that the point touches the paper by a hair and no more, and it will hold a pencil, a stylus, a brush or a pen.

The finish is either the timber's own colour under oil and wax, or dragon's blood, which is the resin of a tree dissolved in spirit and built up in coats until the grain glows red through it. The red planchette is the one people ask for by name. The photograph of the raw resin is on the materials page; the tree it comes from grows on an island off Yemen, and the colour has been used on violins and reliquaries for as long as there have been either.

The automatic-writing planchette
The automatic-writing planchetteBloodwood, on brass feet, with the solid-brass pencil clamp and thumbscrew made in my own shop. The pencil is set to touch the paper by a hair and no more.
A writing planchette in dragon's blood
A writing planchette in dragon's bloodThe red is resin, not pigment: dragon's blood dissolved in spirit and built up in coats over the timber until the grain shows through it like a lamp.
1 : 1.618 square
The proportionA golden rectangle: cut a square from it and what remains is another golden rectangle. The planchette is cut to the outer figure, its window sits where the spiral converges.

The specification

Three of my planchettes on my first production board
Three of my planchettes on my first production boardThe first board I made in numbers: an edition of fourteen. One, the artist's proof, stays in my collection; the other thirteen have sold. The pointer on the right is finished in dragon's blood. Photograph courtesy of the Museum of Talking Boards, used with permission.

UseTwenty Minutes

On use, briefly

Twenty minutes, at a table, in ordinary light, with a companion who has agreed to time it and end it. The hand rests; the mind is given something dull to do, a page to read aloud, a list to count. The pencil is left alone. Whatever it does is kept, dated, and not interpreted until the following day. The full method, with what to do and what not to do, ships with the instrument and is on the channeling site at length. I will only say here that the people who get somewhere with this are the ones who keep the paper, and the people who do not are the ones who read it in the moment.

Not for everyone. If you have, or have had, a psychotic illness, a dissociative disorder, mania, or any period in which you could not tell what was real, this instrument is not for you and I will not knowingly sell it to you. It works by loosening a seam that in most people is firmly stitched. If yours is already loose, do not do this, and see a doctor.

CommissionOpen an Instrument

Name the instrument, the timber, the stones, the wording, and what you intend it for. I reply with a drawing, a quotation, the current number in the register, and a date range rather than a date, because timber and the sky both keep their own time.

The RegisterEnter Your Name

The register is written to when a numbered instrument is completed, when one becomes available, and when a new family is opened. It is never sold and never lent.

Occasional, and never passed on.