The Curse Of… The Mars Volta:

The board... was in fact a talking board, an archaic version of today’s Ouija board. Used by occultists for thousands of years to summon and communicate with spirits, talking boards are said to date back to 500 B.C. when Greek philosopher, mathematician and mystic Pythagoras allegedly used them in seances.

"It was sort of like sleepwalking," he says. "It was like something bigger than me was telling me to do it. I just felt drawn there somehow, just like when I went to Israel. I’d never heard of this place, but that’s where I was going. I got there, went out and buried it and didn’t make any conscious effort of figuring out how to get back there ever again. When it was done, I felt like there was nothing inside of me. I cried for days and days and didn’t understand why. For days afterwards, I wasn’t sure I wanted to play music. I wasn’t sure I wanted to do anything or have anyone around me. It was complete emptiness."

--Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, The Mars Volta

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