Asian Art

Automatic writing

Automatic writing, also called psychography, is a claimed psychic ability allowing a person to produce written words without consciously writing. Practitioners engage in automatic writing by holding a writing instrument and allowing alleged spirits to manipulate the practitioner's hand. The instrument may be a standard writing instrument, or it may be one specially designed for automatic writing, such as a planchette or a ouija board. Religious and spiritual traditions have incorporated automatic writing, including Fuji in Chinese folk religion and the Enochian language associated with Enochian magic. In the modern era, it is associated with Spiritualism and the occult, with notable practitioners including W. B. Yeats and Arthur Conan Doyle. Claims associated with automatic writing are unfalsifiable, while some documented examples result from the ideomotor phenomenon.

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See also

• ▸History of the Jews in Ghana
• ▸European Geniza
• ▸Cuisine of the Thirteen Colonies

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