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What is a biblical view of divination?

Divination is to supernaturally explore and discover spiritually hidden things. It includes fortune-telling, soothsaying, sorcery, reading tarot cards and tea leaves, consulting astrology, and other dark arts.

People in nearly all cultures have created or learned ways to access the spirit world, or pretend to, for power and wealth. Some divination appears to be real access to the spirit world; all is dangerous and God tells us to avoid it completely. Read what He tells Israel in Deuteronomy 18:10–14:

"There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD. And because of these abominations the LORD your God is driving them out before you. You shall be blameless before the LORD your God, for these nations, which you are about to dispossess, listen to fortune-tellers and to diviners. But as for you, the LORD your God has not allowed you to do this."

Other Old Testament prohibitions against divination and the like include 1 Samuel 15:23, 2 Kings 17:17, and Jeremiah 14:14. In the New Testament, Galatians 5:20 mentions sorcery as a work of the flesh.

Also in the New Testament, Paul, Silas, and Luke encountered a diviner in Philippi who was used by her owner to make money. Her abilities were the result of a demon and Paul cast the demon out of her, angering her owners and others (Acts 16:16–24).

Consulting those who work in the spiritual realm is dangerous and is to be completely avoided. Do not even dabble in such practices, such as the use of a Ouija board or through tarot cards. Divination is a sin and it is not harmless and not to be used as entertainment. The spiritual world is real. Any spirit that is not the Holy Spirit or a holy angel is an evil spirit. If we are in Christ, we need not fear them, but we should also have no involvement with them (1 John 4:1–6; 1 Peter 5:8–9; James 4:7; Ephesians 6:10–18).

Our wisdom is available and comes from God Himself (James 1:5; 3:15–17). Our access to the spirit world is only through a faith in Jesus Christ and by the Holy Spirit Himself who will guide and protect His own.

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