Table turning (table tipping)

Table Turning or "Table Tipping" is a type of seance in which participants sit around a table, place their hands on it, and wait for rotations. The table was purportedly made to serve as a means of communicating with the spirits; the alphabet would be slowly called over and the table would tilt at the appropriate letter, thus spelling out words and sentences.

(Spirituality, New Age, Astrology & Self-help / Alternative Belief Systems) the movement of a table attributed by spiritualists to the power of spirits working through a group of persons placing their hands or fingers on the table top.

The Scottish surgeon James Braid, the English physiologist W. B. Carpenter and others pointed out, however, that the phenomena could depend upon the expectation of the sitters, and could be stopped altogether by appropriate suggestion.

English performer Derren Brown recreated this with four random audience members being asked to place their hands on a table and then using the power of suggestion to have them move the table around and across the stage even though individually they all said they were not moving the table.

This was effected by repeatedly telling those with their hands on the table that if the table started to move (to the back of the stage, for example) then they shouldn't try to stop it. If it starts to move just let it move don't try to stop it.


This reflects the movement being based on unconscious muscular action caused by an expectation of where and how the table would move.