You'd Better Have a Good Morning. Or ELSE.

I have to say that I find the social obligation to greet everyone you meet first thing in the day with a cheery "Good Morning!" is a bit oppressive for me. Even after specific formal training I have undergone that has helped me understand the logic and value of being a smiling, friendly, font of joy, I still cannot force myself to manufacture enthusiasm for at least a couple hours after I wake up. Never have. What can I say? I’ve never been a morning person. I just can’t seem to get excited about leaving my warm comfy bed before I’m good and ready, which I assure you is almost never at the time of the morning that I have to get up for work. For whatever reason, once I’m physically out of bed, I need an hour or two to become Socially Awake. My interpersonal coffee needs time to brew, if you will. And I’m not alone! I know lots of people who aren’t shot out of a cannon in the morning, and if I know so many non-morning-people, I’m sure everyone else must be aware of their existence as well.  So why is it then, that people in a workplace cannot seem to live and let live in the AM? It’s like, We know that not everybody is super-enthusiastic in the morning, but people better fake it or there’s going to be an interrogation, right here in the breakroom. And if I can struggle past the obligatory Good Morning, some people even feel the need to take it one step further, and want to also know How I’m Doing. And you’d better not come back with a simple “Fine” either. You’d better be Great! “How are you this morning?” “Fine.” Disapproving tone: “Well that doesn’t sound good.” You can almost hear the tisk-tisking, the implication hanging there, heavy with disgust, like Why can't you just get your shit together and just be theme-park-ecstatic like everyone else? Why is it unacceptable to be having just an average day? Why are you made to feel like something is wrong with you if you aren’t singing and dancing at the crack of dawn? No one wants a real answer to the How Are You Doing question anyway. “How are you this morning?” “Meh. I’d rather be home asleep in my beat-up sweatpants and green furry socks that make my feet look like a Muppet's, but I’m here anyway because I’ve got to pay the bills and the boss won't just let me stroll in at whatever time I feel I've had enough sleep and am ready to tackle the day.” Just chew on the reaction you’d get to that one. One of my favorite responses is “I’m alive.” That's my go-to expression for days when I'm just not in the mood to play the False Enthusiasm Game. Somehow this always gets taken as a negative, rather than what it really means, which is, hey, things are humming along at about the normal rate; the needle is not jumping around that much on the seismometer of my life. Not bad. Just average. Nothing wrong with that, in my opinion. There is a much lower tolerance for honesty in our daily lives than one would expect. If you want me to put on an act for you right after I wake up, then I’m gonna need you to pay me Scale.

A Talking What? How Does That work?

I work frequently with a talking board. That's right, you heard me. No, not a Ouija Board, as I have previously decried, but a fairly unique round board labeled (in appropriately new age jargon) The Mantic Message Mat.  I didn't name it, cut me some slack.

What is a talking Board?

A talking board is a tool that can be used to increase the ease of communication between us (the living) and The Collective (the dead and other non-inhabiting entities). I don't really like the terms "the living" and "the dead", because I feel this has positive and negative connotations, as well as implies a level of activity versus inactivity, however for the sake of time, I may use these words.  Also, technically the living are also a part of The Collective, but since we are typically so unaware of it, I may also use this phrase when talking about them (spirit entities not inhabiting bodies) as opposed to us (live people). 

A tool is something you can use to make a task easier. We could do all that long division, sure. We learned how in school. But most of us own a calculator and pick it up at the mere hint than an equals sign might drop into the conversation.  Need to remove some really tight lug nuts? You could bust out the old tire iron and some elbow grease, but why would you if you had an impact wrench right there? Sometimes doing things the hard way is good to keep oneself in practice and one's muscles in good order, and there is no shame in that whatsoever. In fact it's always good to make sure we don't get rusty. Usually, however, we'd all like to make the most efficient use of our time. When it comes to talking to The Collective, this is where a talking board comes in handy.

There are many ways to converse with The Collective. Too many for me to even list here. One of the more difficult ways (for most people, natural psychics excluded) is to just literally listen for them to talk to you and answer back, and have yourself a whole conversation. There are many terms associated with different versions of this method: Psychic, Clairvoyant, ESP, etc.  Intermediate methods many people call Divination, and these typically utilize various media, skills, and abilities to obtain information. Many of these are familiar to us: Tarot Cards, Rune Stones, Tea Leaves, Pendulum, I Ching, and many more. Most of the time there is some object that is "randomly" (but of course not randomly, the selection is influenced by what The Collective wants you to know) selected or arranged and then the Reader interprets the meaning. The most direct, easiest method (for me anyway) has been the talking board. Ask your question, get answers. No, it's not always as simple as that, but that is a blog for a later date. I almost feel like I'm cheating somehow and I'm just waiting for some sort of spiritual auditor to show up and insist I do things only the hard way. Which is not all bad for me, I must say.

Most talking boards have a few features in common: they are printed with the letters of the alphabet, usually a "Yes" and "No", and perhaps some other shortcut words like "Maybe" to make communication not so tedious. For more information on the many talking boards out there and a bit more on their history, check out Museum of Talking Boards - they have a great collection and a lot of info. Our particular board has the above mentioned text as well as names for family members (Mother, Father, etc.), days of the week, numbers, and around the outside a zodiac wheel  complete with all signs of the western zodiac (Capricorn, Libra, etc.) and an assortment of additional appropriate astrological associations for each sign and house, including dates. This enables a lot of shortcuts in getting information across without having to spell out every single word. The other thing common to almost all talking boards is a leaf, or planchette (as you prefer). This is a smaller instrument  that usually features either a pointer at one corner or an "eye" through which to view the desired letters, and upon which each participant places their fingertips and lets The Collective make use of their bodies' energy to move the leaf around the surface of the board and get their message across.

Focus!

As a tool, the talking board acts as a focus for the people wanting to receive information. To some extent, we can all hear The Collective, even without a board, but many of us (myself included) frequently have our minds so cluttered up with ongoing chatter and nonsense that we are lucky if we hear anything relevant at all. And if we did, we would just assume it was more of our own brain rattling around in our head and dismiss it as nothing of worth. When you use a talking board, the moving leaf (pointer) can cut through all of that clutter and get right to the matter at hand. Imagine being in a crowded room where everyone is talking and someone  across the room is trying to say something to you, but they are not able to yell. Good luck hearing them. But then imagine they pick up their cell phone and call you. Now they can speak right into your ear and their voice is separate from the din. This is what it is like to use the board. And unlike other Divination methods, like Tarot (which I do not disparage and in fact use myself), there is far less interpreting that must be done. I don't feel that I have to second-guess the message when it is spelled out for me and I have the opportunity to ask for clarification if I don't understand. Again, not to say this can't be done with other methods, I just personally find it a lot harder, and some of that stems, to be quite honest, from a lack of self-confidence in my abilities.

Round Boards Versus Square

Our talking board has a round design, which I have been told is the preferred shape for such a tool. Who told me this? Dead people, of course. Why should I believe them? Well, in short, because they are right about a whole lot of other stuff, which I have no room to explain here. I will, just not today. They have explained that the round design allows for a circular flow of energy to happen as the leaf is making its way around the board, and this circular pattern is what attracts useful energy to the board (i.e. talking to someone who has something pertinent to tell you, or just has a helpful attitude) and keeps out less useful energies (entities who are trouble-makers or possibly not "all there" to whom talking will do you no good). I try to put reasonable terms on types of energies, as I don't like to get into "Good and Evil Spirits". Ooooooh!! Booga Booga Booga!  That's all very dramatic and Hollywood, but to be honest, the dead are pretty much the same mix the living: most are good and want to do right, some have issues, some are a pain in the ass. But no one is going to come through a talking board and possess anyone. So let's everyone calm down with that nonsense, OK?  Sure, you can get a rectangular board to work for you, but you have an increased likelihood of conversing with an entity who only spells out swear words and other useless babble. Demons? Possession? Not so much. Not to say no one has ever caused some nutty stuff to happen, but a supreme amount of dumbassery, which you would have to go out of your way to accomplish, is necessary for that.

Our Board - The Mantic Message Mat

Our talking board, as I mentioned above, is titles "The Mantic Message Mat." It has a copyright date of 1973 on it, and notes Glendale, California as the location (see picture at right). This board was clearly made by a professional printer, but my husband and I have never encountered another board like ours anywhere else. The story, as it was told to us by his grandmother (from whom we obtained the board) is that a friend of hers designed it and wanted to make a test batch to be able to give a few to her peers and see how they performed. Apparently this woman had a friend in the printing business who ran a special lot for her of around 30 boards. Hubby and I are in possession of 2 of them, and we do not know where any of the remaining boards are at this time. It does not appear that after the initial run of boards that any additional were made.  I have heard debate that this board must have been mass produced due to its construction and there must have been at least several hundred of them made as most commercial printers have fairly large minimum quantities, however this is discounting the board's designer's personal friendship with the printer which allowed her to obtain a quantity far below the minimum as a favor. Our board has a four-sided leaf made of metallic gold plastic that has indentations of each side of the leaf for people's fingertips to rest, and a round viewfinder in the center.

Various sessions on our board have seen The Collective referring to the board as a Matty. At first we thought that this was just a cutesy version of the Mat in Mantic Message Mat.  At another point we were under the belief that Matty was the name of the entity who instructed the board's original designer on the layout of the board. I do not remember if this was folklore that my husband brought with him from before I came into his life, or if this was something that we were told together in a board session. It has been many years, and unfortunately I was not documenting these things at the time. But now we have pressed again for information, and we have settled that Matty is a general term for any such design on a physical object that is made for The Collective to work with us for some purpose. Any functional talking board is a Matty. I think you could even count it as a Matty when people use an upturned glass and a smooth table with letters on it for the same purpose.

Two Heads Are Better Than One

A two-person team is usually the best configuration (and typically the minimum number of persons needed) to properly work a talking board. Sure, it can be done with one person, but usually not on a round board (a solo flight might happen on a rectangular board), and usually the communication will not be as clear. By the way, this is just what I've been told by The Collective. If you have solo board experiences that worked out well for you, I am more than happy to hear about them. I have personally attempted to get movement out of our leaf and board by myself and nothing happens. Not a twitch. Other people jump on with me and the leaf usually starts right up like my reliable ancient toaster that's older than I am. Anywho, you two-person board team should consist (for maximum efficacy) of a Speaker and a Battery. The Speaker is the person who will do most of the talking: asking questions out loud of The Collective, spelling or calling out the letters or other text as the leaf indicates, and so on. This is usually the more extroverted of the two people, the more masculine energy. Note that I am using masculine in the archetypal sense, I am not literally referring to who is the most manly. Masculine energy projects, feminine absorbs. The Battery will be the person who acts as primarily a power source for the entity who is attempting to communicate. They can still talk and ask questions, but they are chiefly better at receiving information and being, well, a battery. They will usually have the more feminine, introverted energy. This masculine/feminine, Speaker/Battery duo gives the necessary balance for ease of two-way communication. A board may be used with two people of the same type (both Speakers or both Batteries) but the conversation tends to be less clear and more difficult. The leaf will move more slowly around the board, acting very stubborn. Words spelled out sometimes make less sense than normal. More embarrassing, if there is in fact an available Battery person in the room who is not using the board, the board may refuse to function unless that person joins in. This has happened many times to my husband, the Battery in our house. If you're not sure who might be suited for what role, a good starting point could be your Sun sign. Fire and Air signs tend to make better Speakers, Water and Earth signs tend to be more suited as batteries. Not a hard and fast rule, just an idea.

So talking boards, not so scary, right? Next time I'll get into what it's like to actually use the board and maybe try to cover some of the common fears and myths associated with the use of this tool.