Divination

DIVINATION

The Eastern people were fond of divination, magic, and the pretended art of interpreting dreams and acquiring a knowledge of futurity. When Moses published the law, this disposition had long been common in Egypt and the neighboring countries; and to correct the Israelites inclination to consult diviners, wizards, fortune-tellers, and interpreters of dreams, it was forbidden them under very severe penalties, and the true spirit of prophecy was promised to them as infinitely superior, Exo 22:18 Lev 19:26,31 20:27. Those were to be stoned who pretended to have a familiar spirit, or the spirit of divination, Deu 18:9-12 ; and the prophecies are full of invectives against the Israelite who consulted such, as well as against false prophets, who seduced the people, Isa 8:19 47:11- 14 Eze 13:6-9. A fresh impulse to these superstitions was gained from intercourse with the Chaldeans, during the reign of the later kings of Judah and the captivities in Babylon, 2Ki 21:6 2Ch 33:6 . See MAGIC, SORCERERS.Divination was of several kinds: by water, fire, earth, air; by the fight of birds, and their singing; by lots, dreams, arrows, clouds, entrails of sacrifices, pretended communication with spirits, etc., Eze 21:21 .

Fuente: American Tract Society Bible Dictionary

Divination

1. Definition.-Primitive man, under the influence of animatism and animism, came to think of himself as surrounded by in numerable spirits. These in course of time became differentiated into gods, goddesses, demons, ghosts, etc. These beings could influence, enter into, and animate not only each other, but human beings, beasts, and things. Man gradually realized that it was his duty to discover and cultivate relations, friendly or defensive, with these-a duty intensified by his covetousness of good and his aversion to calamities or privations. Some of the methods he employed for doing this became regulated and systematized into forms of worship, i.e. approved methods of approaching and propitiating the spirits. As these forms became more and more universally recognized, they acquired a sacred character, which differentiated them from, and placed them on a higher level than, other ceremonies. Still the latter continued to be practised, because the forms of worship did not meet all mens necessities. Unusual circumstances occurred through which, or on account of which, the divinities communicated with men, or by reason of which men felt the need of communicating with those beings in whose hands lay the destinies of their lives. These survivals of the lower culture, from which the regular forms of worship had shaken themselves free, may be grouped under the name Divination.

The Latin name for a divine being was deus. Divus indicates the quality possessed by a thing which makes it godlike; divinus rather the qualities which mate a being divine; divinitas means the divine nature; divinare, to see like a god; and divinatio, the power of seeing like a god. This came to be confined, in ordinary use, to the power of foreseeing. But the word has a much wider meaning. To Chrysippus and the Stoics, divination was the means of communication between the gods and men. Cicero (de Div. i. 38) argues that, if there are gods, there must be men who have the power of communicating with them. In English divination has the wider meaning akin to the original significance. Divination then rests on the idea that, apart from forms of worship, a divinity and a human being can, when necessary, come into living touch with each other, the divinity acting on or through the man, thus revealing his mind to him; or the man by approved methods so revealing his mind to the divinity that the latter acts on or through him.

2. Divination and magic.-Just as worship, by becoming systematized, left behind it the forms of communication called divination, so divination, as it became more regulated and elaborated in the hands of professional diviners, left behind it cruder and lower forms of communication which may all be included under the term magic.* [Note: C. Haddon, Magic and Fetishism, 1906; F. B. Jevons, Comparative Religion, 1913.] The distinction between divination and magic may be briefly and not inaccurately stated thus: the diviner is in touch with the divinities because he is their servant; the magician, because, for the time being, he is their master. Thus, each of these forms of communication, though existing alongside of each other and accepted by the same people, has its own distinctive features.

3. Development.-If we think of the above three methods of communication between the divinities and men as existing, in embryo, in the earliest ages, we can realize how they were each developed by such great races as the Semites and the Aryans, and how the common inheritance of each of thesis was developed along distinctive lines by the different nations springing from them. Thus, to confine our attention to divination, we have that of the Semites,* [Note: Robertson Smith, RS2, 1894; Th. Nldeke, Sketches from Eastern History, Eng. tr., 1892; ERE i. 390; J. E. Carpenter, Comparative Religion, 1913; HDB v. 83 ff. and the Literature there mentioned.] developing into that of the Mesopotamians, [Note: E. Carpenter, op. cit.; A. H. Sayce, Religion of the Ancient Babylonians, 1887; G. Maspero, Dawm of Civilization2, 1896; Stephen Langdon, Private Penance, in Transactions of the Third International Congress for the History of Religions, 1908, p. 249; L. W. King, Bab. Magic and Sorcery, 1896, Bab. Religion and Mythology, 1899; L. R. Farnell, Greece and Babylon, 1911; ERE i. 316, iv. 783, and Literature there mentioned; R. C. Thompson, The Report of the Magicians and Astrologers of Nineveh and Babylon, 1900, also The Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia, 1903-04.] Persians, [Note: ERE iv. 818; J. H. Moulton, Early Religious Poetry of Persia, 1911.] Jews, [Note: ERE iv. 806; S. A. Cook, The Religion of Ancient Palestine, 1908: T. W. Davies, Magic, Divination, and Demonology among the Hebrews and their Neighbours, 1898; HDB i. 611 ff.] and Arabians;|| [Note: | ERE i. 659.] and that of the Aryans, [Note: v. lhering, The Evolution of the Aryan, tr. Drucker, 1897; I. Taylor, The Origin of the Aryans, 1889; ERE i. 11 and the Literature there mentioned.] developing into that of the Vedas,** [Note: * Ib. iv. 827.] Greeks, [Note: W. R. Halliday, Greek Divination, 1913; ERE iv. 796, vi. 401; Gilbert Murray, Four Stages of Greek Religion, 1912.] Romans, [Note: W. Warde Fowler, The Religious Experience of the Roman People, 1911; ERE iv. 820.] Celts, [Note: Ib. iii. 277, iv. 787.] Teutons,|||| [Note: ||| Ib. iv. 827.] and Lithuanians;| [Note: | Ib. iv. 814.] while that of the Egyptians strongly influenced and was influenced by many of these.*** [Note: ** Ib. vi. 374; F. Cumont, The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism, Eng. tr., 1911, p. 73 ff.]

The Pax Romana and the toleration of the Roman Government permitted the cults of innumerable divinities and all these forms of divination to spread throughout the Empire; and Jews, Christians, worshippers of all kinds of Eastern and Egyptian deities, diviners, magicians, astrologers, and wizards jostled each other in a theological confusion to which no parallel can be found (K. Lake, The Earlier Epistles of St. Paul, 1911, p. 47).

4. Divination in the Apostolic Age.-It is difficult, but necessary, to realize this amazing profusion of divinities as a distinct feature of the Apostolic Age. Besides mentioning Jahweh, the God of the Hebrews, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, worshipped by the Christians, and some of the innumerable ethnic deities, the literature of the Apostolic Age contains references to angels, archangels, living creatures, Satan, the Devil, the Wicked One, the Antichrist, demons, unclean and evil powers, dominions, principalities, authorities, thrones, and glories.

It is not easy to decide how far belief in these affected the various classes. But practically this is true: each man had his favourite divinity to which all Gentiles added a select group of deities whom they reverenced. Rationalists like the Sadducees denied the existence of and (Act 23:8); many of the more educated viewed the existence of the minor supernatural beings with more or less scepticism; but the mass of people lived in the belief and the fear of these divine beings. In that age men felt themselves surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses (Heb 12:1), living in a world where the gods appeared (Act 14:11; Act 28:6), where Jesus appeared to St. Paul (Act 9:17; Act 9:27; Act 26:16) and to Stephen (Act 7:56), and His Spirit prohibited action (Act 16:7), where an itinerant preacher was received as a messenger of God, or even as Christ Jesus re-incarnated (Gal 4:14); where the Holy Spirit was a distinct living personality, where the assertion that a man was the Son of God made a Roman governor tremble (Joh 19:8), and the patience of His death caused a Roman centurion to exclaim: This was a Son of God (Mat 27:54). In such a world the Satan fashioned himself into an (2Co 11:14), entered into men, and were cast out by men (Luk 11:19, Mar 9:38), converts to the religion of Jesus who had believed and were baptized proposed to purchase the ability to confer the Holy Spirit (Act 8:19), the power of the evil eye was exercised (Mar 7:22), and and , principalities and powers (Rom 8:38), mustered their unseen array. Nor must we think that the Christians stood far removed from the common beliefs of the age. This is clear from many things. Think of their belief in the Satan, the antagonist who stood over against God. He was conceived as a huge dragon, or old serpent (Rev 12:9; Rev 13:11 [as amended by Charles in his Studies in the Apocalypse, 1913, p. 100] Rev 20:2), and as such was identified with . He was regarded as having his abode in the skies, in which he and his had been defeated by an Michael and his , and thrown down on the earth (Rev 12:7-9) to be flung into the abyss for a thousand years (Rev 20:3; Rev 20:7). He had his subordinate spirits. Special mention is made of the Lawless One [according to B] (2Th 2:3), and the who fought for him (Rev 12:7-9), and afflicted mens bodies (2Co 12:7), and even destroyed them (1Co 5:5). He himself could masquerade as (2Co 11:14), and could equip his servants with full powers, the miracles and portents of falsehood, and the full deceitfulness of evil (2Th 2:9-10). The Satan was the adversary of men; his chief aim was to seduce to wrong (Rev 20:3; Rev 20:8; Rev 20:10, Eph 2:2) by tempting to such sins as lying, cheating (Act 5:3), incontinence (1Co 7:5, 1Ti 5:15), gross sexual excess, his deep mysteries (Rev 2:24, Eph 2:3). He gains advantages by clever manuvres (2Co 2:11). He is the accuser of the members of the Christian brotherhood (Rev 12:10). He hinders good endeavours (1Th 2:18), but the God of peace crushes him under His peoples feet (Rom 16:20). Jews hostile to the religion of Jesus are thought of by the Christians as his servants who form his synagogue (Rev 2:9; Rev 3:9), and in places noted for wickedness he dwells in power as a king on his throne (Rev 2:13). By a deliberate act of judgment an offender could be consigned to the Satans power for the destruction of his body (1Co 5:5, 1Ti 1:20).

The natural and inevitable outcome of this multiplicity of divinities was the universal practice of divination. The testimony of history to this fact is fully confirmed by the discovery of contemporary texts, among which are innumerable horoscopes, amulets, cursing tablets, and magical books. The whole ancient world is full of miracles (Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East2, 1911, pp. 284, 393). Divination and magic were prevalent not merely among sects like the Essenes, but among the Jews generally (Schrer, History of the Jewish People (Eng. tr. of GJV).] II. iii. [1886] p. 151ff., II. ii. [1855] p. 204). The writings of the Apostolic Fathers show the relation of the Christians to these arts. In the Didache among other commandments are these, thou shalt not practise magic, thou shalt not use enchantments, , (ii.), and this entreaty, become not an omen-watcher, nor one who uses charms, nor an astrologer, nor one who purifies, i.e. one who averts disease or removes sin by sacrifices, , , (iii.). Hermas (Mand. xi. 4) cautions Christians not to consult soothsayers (). The Didache describes the Way of Death as full, among other things, of magical arts and potions, , (v.), while in the Way of Darkness, among other things that destroy the soul, are potions and magical arts, , (Ep. Barn. xx.). Ignatius speaks of the birth of Jesus as destroying or making ridiculous every kind of magic, (Eph. 19.), and exhorts his readers to flee evil arts, , but all the more to discourse in public regarding them (Ep. to Polycarp, v.). In Ps.-Ignatius, Ep. to the Antiochians, xi., the practice of magic, , is a vice forbidden even to the Gentiles. Aristides (Apol. xi.) in indicating the things which Christians should not do, omits all reference to divination or magic, and a similar omission is noticeable in Ep. Barn. xix. and in 1 Clement, xxx, xxxv. Hero is warned (Ps.-Ignatius, Ep. to Hero, ii.) to distrust any one teaching beyond what is commanded, even though he work miracles, . In the description which Aristides declares the Greeks give of their gods, he writes that they say some of them were sorcerers, [Apol. viii.), practising sorcery, (xiii.), and he calls Hermes a magician, (x.). But it is noticeable that in Ps.-Ignatius, Ep. to the Antiochians, xii. among the Church officials is the exorcist, , and in the Ep. to the Philippians, v., Christ is by way of honour called this magician, , while in Ephesians, xx., the sacramental bread is called the medicine of immortality, . Pagan testimony is to the same effect. The Emperor Hadrian (a.d. 117-138), writing to the Consul Servianus on the state of Egypt, says: There is no ruler of a synagogue of Jews, no Samaritan, no Presbyter of the Christians who is not an astrologer, a soothsayer, a quack [mathematicus, haruspex, aliptes] (Script. Hist. August., 1774, Vopisci Saturninus, 8).

These supernatural beings communicated with men by means of (angels or messengers) or prophets, by possession, by means of the hand, tongues, dreams, visions, trances, voices, sounds.

The human beings in touch with these supernatural beings, were variously named exorcists, soothsayers, sorcerers, enchanters; and, lower still, magicians, witches, and wizards. They had various methods of bringing the power of the divinities to act on men, all of which may be classed into two groups: (a) regular: blessing, cursing, pronouncing anathema, invoking the Name, embracing, laying on of hands, shadowing, signs and wonders, as e.g. healing, or smiting with disease such as blindness; (b) exceptional: the lot, the vow, the oath, and committing to Satan.

As religion has become spiritualized, divination has more and more lost its hold on the minds of men. The ultimate end will be reached when worship shall be the approach to the One Father by a man, who, because he is taught and led by the indwelling Spirit of Jesus, needs no divination, and who, because he can proffer his requests to the Father in prayer, scorns all magic. But the end is not yet.

Literature.-There is no book dealing with Divination in the Apostolic Age. Reference to its various phases will be found in modern Commentaries and in works on Comparative Religion, and Anthropology, as those of E. B. Tylor, A. E. Crawley, J. G. Frazer, F.B, Jevons, J. H. Leuba, and R. R. Marett. In addition to these and the authorities cited throughout the article , reference may be made to F. W. H. Myers, on Greek Oracles, in Essays, 1883, and to the series of articles in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics vi. 775ff.

P. A. Gordon Clark.

Fuente: Dictionary of the Apostolic Church

DIVINATION

Is a conjecture or surmise formed concerning some future event from something which is supposed to be a presage of it; but between which there is no real connection, only what the imagination of the diviner is pleased to assign in order to deceive. Divination of all kinds being the offspring of credulity, nursed by imposture, and strengthened by superstition, was necessarily an occult science, retained in the hands of the priests and priestesses, the magi, the soothsayers, the augurs, the visionaries, the priests of the oracles, the false prophets, and other like professors, till the coming of Jesus Christ, when the light of the Gospel dissipated much of this darkness. The vogue for these pretended sciences and arts is nearly past, at least in the enlightened parts of the world. There are nine different kinds of divination mentioned in Scripture. These are,

1. Those whom Moses calls Meonen of Anan, a cloud, Deu 18:10.

2. Those whom the prophet calls, in the same place, Menachesch, which the Vulgate and generality of interpreters render Augur.

3. Those who in the same place are called Mecasheph, which the Septuagint and Vulgate translate “a man given to ill practices.”

4. Those whom in the same chapter, ver.11. he calls Hhober.

5. Those who consult the spirits, called Python.

6. Witches, or magicians, called Judeoni.

7. Necromancers, who consult the dead.

8. Such as consult staves, Hos 4:12. called by some Rhabdomancy.

9. Hepatoscopy, or the consideration of the liver.

Different kinds of divination which have passed for sciences, we have had:

1. Aeromancy, divining by the air.

2. Astrology, by the heavens.

3. Augury, by the flight and singing of birds, &c.

4. Chiromancy by inspecting the hand.

5. Geomancy, by observing of cracks or clefts in the earth.

6. Haruspicy, by inspecting the bowels of animals.

7. Horoscopy, a branch of astrology, marking the position of the heavens when a man is born.

8. Hydromancy, by water.

9. Physiognomy, by the countenance. (This, however, is considered by some as of a different nature, and worthy of being rescued from the rubbish of superstition, and placed among the useful sciences. Lavater has written a celebrated treatise on it.).

10. Pyromancy, a divination made by fire. Thus we see what arts have been practised to deceive, and how designing men have made use of all the four elements to impose upon weak minds.

Fuente: Theological Dictionary

divination

(Latin: divinare, to foretell)

Seeking after the knowledge of future or hidden things through means inadequate by nature and unlawful. By natural means some effects can be foreseen with physical certainty; others surmised as probable; others are contingent upon future, free causes and knowable only to God. Divination implies the direct or indirect solicitation of a preternatural evil agency to supplement a natural deficiency. Its practise or patronage is sinful, varying with circumstances. As old as humanity, it existed in every age and country, and nowhere is it completely abandoned. Christianity undermined its power, and after centuries of effort it disappeared as an official system.

Divinatory methods are numerous. Besides man’s innovations scarcely an object or movement escapes interpretation. They are grouped into three classes:

Express invocation of a superhuman power, including oneiromancy (Greek: oneiros, dream; manteia, prophesying), by dreams; necromancy (Greek: nekros, dead person), by spiritism; by other apparitions; pythonism (Greek: python, possessing demon ), by possessed persons; hydromancy (Greek: hydor, water), by water; aeromancy (Greek: aer, atmosphere), by air; geomancy (Greek: ge; earth), by terrestrial substances; auspices (Latin: auspex, entrail- and bird-seer), by entrails of sacrifices, etc.

Tacit invocation by natural signs, including astrology (Greek: astron, star; logos, knowledge), by the stars; augury (Latin: augur, seer), by birds, men, etc., which now comprises all foretelling by signs; omens (Latin: omen, prophetic sign), by chance words; chiromancy (Greek: cheir, hand), by lines of the hand.

Tacit invocation by artificial signs, including geomancy by lines or pebbles; drawing of straws; dice; cards, etc.

New Catholic Dictionary

Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary

Divination

The seeking after knowledge of future or hidden things by inadequate means. The means being inadequate they must, therefore, the supplemented by some power which is represented all through history as coming from gods or evil spirits. Hence the word divination has a sinister signification. As prophecy is the lawful knowledge of the future divination, its superstitious counterpart, is the unlawful. As magic aims to do, divination aims to know. Divination is practically as old as the human race. It is found in every age and country, among the Egytians, Chaldeans, Hindus, Romans, and Greeks; that tribes of Northern Asia had their shamans, the inhabitants of Africa their mgangas, the Celtic nation their druids, the aborigines of America their medicine-men — all recognized diviners and wizards. Everywhere divination flourished and nowhere, even to-day, is it completely neglected. Cicero’s words were, and apparently always will be, true, that there is no nation, civilized or barbarian, which does not believe that there are signs of the future and persons who interpret them. Cicero divided divination into natural and artificial. Natural (untaught, unskilled) included dreams and oracles in which the diviner was a passive subject of inspiration, and the prediction that from a power supposed to be then and there within him. Artificial (taught, studied) comprised all foretelling from signs found in nature or produced by man. Here the diviner was active, and the divination came apparently from his own skill and observation. This division is almost the same as that given by St. Thomas with respect to the invocation of demons: divination with express invocation of spirits, embracing dreams, portents, or prodigies, and necromacy, and divination with tacit invocation through signs and movements observed in objects in nature, such as stars, birds, figures, etc., or through signs and arrangements produced by man, such as molten lead poured in water, casting of lots, etc. Dreams here mean those expressly prepared and prayed for with hope of intercourse with gods or the dead. Portents or prodigies are unusual and marvellous sights coming from the lower world. Here we are considering artificial divination.

METHODS

The variety of divinatory methods is very great. Scarcely an object or movement in the heavens, on the earth, or in the air or water escaped being metamorphosed into a message of futurity. Add to these the invention of man, and there is a glimpse of the immense entanglement of superstitions in which pagan people groped their way. They can, however, be grouped into three classes, as seen from St. Thomas’s division. A detailed list has been given by Cicero, Clement of Alexandria in his “Stromata”, and others of the Fathers. Under the first class, express invocation, come oneiromancy or divination by dreams; necromancy, by so-called apparitions of the dead or spiritism; apparitions of various kinds, which may be either external or in imagination, as Cajetan observes; Pythonism or by possessed persons, as the Delphic Pythoness; hydromancy, by signs in water; aeromancy, by signs in air; geomancy, by signs in terrestrial substances (geomancy has also another meaning); aruspices, by signs in the entrains of victims, etc. The second class, tacit invocation and signs found ready-made in nature, embraces judicial or genethliac astrology, pretending to tell the future through the stars; augury, through the notes of birds, and later covering prediction through their mode of acting, feeding, flying, and also the neighing of horses and sneezing of men, etc.– with us it comprises all foretelling by signs; by omens, when chance words are turned into signs; chiromancy, when the lines of the hand are read; and many similar modes. The third class, tacit invocation and signs prepared by man, includes geomancy from points or lines on paper or pebbles thrown at random; drawing of staws; throwing dice; cutting cards; letting a staff fall or measuring it with the fingers saying, “I will or I will not”; opening a book at random, called Sortes Virgilianae, so much was the Æneid used in this fashion by the Romans; etc. This last transferred to the Bible is still common in Germany and elsewhere. Hypnotism is also used for purposes of divination.

HISTORY

To attempt to trace the origin of divination is a waste of time, since like religion it is universal and indigenous in one form or another. Some nations cultivated it to a higher degree than others, and their influence caused certain modes of divination to spread. By its practice they gained a wide reputation for occult power. Pre-eminent in history stand the Chaldeans as seers as astrologers, but the ancient Egyptians and Chinese were also great adepts in elaborate mysterious rites. Which of them had priority therein is still an open question, though the larger share in the development of divination, especially in connection with celestial phenomena, is attributed to the Chaldeans, a vague term embracing here both Babylonians and Assyrians. In Greece from the earliest historical times are found diviners, some of whose methods came from Asia and from the Etruscans, a people famous for the art. While the Romans had modes of their own, their intercourse with Greece introduced new forms, and principally through these two nations they spread in the South and West of Europe. Before Christianity divination was practised everywhere according to rites native and foreign. In early days priest and diviner were one, and their power was very great. In Egypt the pharaoh was generally a priest; in fact, he had to be initiated into all the secrets of the sacerdotal class, and in Babylonia and Assyria almost every movement of the monarch and his courtiers was regulated by forecasts of the official diviners and astrologers. The cuneiform inscriptions and the papyri are filled with magical formulae. Witness the two treatises, one on terrestrial and the other on celestial phenomena compiled by Sargon several centuries before our era. In Greece where more attention was paid to aerial signs the diviners were held in high esteem and assisted at the public assemblies. The Romans, who placed most reliance in divination by sacrifices, had of official colleges of augurs and aruspices who by an adverse word could postpone the most important business. No war was undertaken, no colony sent out without consulting the gods, and at critical moments the most trifling occurrence, a sneeze or a cough, would be invested with meaning. Alongside all this official divining there were practised secret rites by all kinds of wizards, magicians, wise men, and witches. Chaldean soothsayers and strolling sibyls spread everywhere telling fortunes for gain. Between the regulars and the irregulars there was a very bitter feeling, and as the latter often invoked gods or demons regarded as hostile to the gods of the country, they were regarded as illicit and dangerous and were often punished and prohibited from exercising their art. From time to time in various countries the number and influence of the regular diviners were diminished in account of their pride and oppression, and no doubt at times they in turn may have adroitly mitigated the tyranny of rulers. With an increase of knowledge the fear and respect of the cultivated people for their mysterious powers so decreased that their authority suffered greatly and they became objects of contempt and satire. Cicero’s “De Divinatione” is not so much a description of its various forms as a refutaton of them; Horace and Juvenal launched many a keen arrow at diviners and their dupes, and Cato’s saying is well known, that he wondered how two augurs could meet without laughing at each other. Rulers, however, retained them and honoured them publicly, the better to keep the people in subjection, and outside classical lands, workers of magic still held sway.

Wherever Christianity went divination lost most of its old-time power, and one form, the natural, ceased almost completely. The new religion forbade all kinds, and after some centuries it disappeared as an official system though it continued to have many adherents. The Fathers of the Church were its vigorous opponents. The tenets of Gnosticism gave it some strength, and neo-Platonism won it many followers. Within the Church itself it proved so strong and attractive to her new converts that synods forbade it and councils legislated against it. The Council of Ancyra (c. xxiv) in 314 decreed five years penance to consulters of diviners, and that of Laodicea (c. xxxvi) about 360, forbade clerics to become magicians or to make amulets, and those who wore them were to be driven out of the Church. A canon (xxxvi) of Orleans 511) excommunicates those who practised divination auguries, or lots falsely called Sortes Sanctorum (Bibliorum), i.e. deciding one’s future conduct by the first passage found on opening a Bible. This method was evidently a great favourite, as a synod of Vannes (c. xvi) in 461 held forbidden it to clerics under pain of excommunication, and that of Agde (c. xlii) in 506 condemned it as against piety and faith. Sixtus IV, Sixtus V, and the Fifth Council of Lateran likewise condemned divination. Governments have at times acted with great severity. Constantius decreed the penalty of death for diviners. The authorities may have feared that some would-be prophets might endeavour to fulfil forcibly their predictions about the death of sovereigns. When the races of the North, which swept over the old Roman Empire, entered the Church, it was only to be expected that some of their lesser superstitions should survive. All during the so-called Dark Ages divining arts managed to live in secret, but after the Crusades they were followed more openly. At the time of the Renaissance and again preceding the French Revolution, there was a marked growth of noxious methods. The latter part of the nineteenth century witnessed a strange revival, especially in the United States and England, of all sorts of superstition, necromancy or spiritism being in the lead. Today the number of persons who believe in signs and seek to know the future is much greater than appears on the surface. They abound in communities where dogmatic Christianity is weak.

The natural cause of the rise of divination is not hard to discover. Man has a natural curiosity to know the future, and coupled with this is the desire of personal gain or advantage, some have essayed, therefore, in every age to lift the veil, at least partially. These attempts have at times produced results which cannot be explained on merely natural grounds, they are so disproportionate or foreign to the means employed. They can not be regarded as the direct work of God nor as the effect of any purely material cause; hence they must be attributed to created spirits, and since they are inconsistent with what we know of God, the spirits causing them must be evil. To put the question directly: can man know future events?

Let St. Thomas answer in substance: Future things can be known either in their causes or in themselves. Some causes always and necessarily produce their effects, and these effects can be foretold with certainty, as astronomers announce eclipses. Other causes bring forth their effects not always and necessarily, but they generally do so, and these can be foretold as well-founded conjectures or sound inferences, like a physician’s diagnosis or a weather observer’s prediction about rain. Finally there is a third class of of causes whose effects depend upon what we call chance or upon man’s free will, and these cannot be foretold from their causes. We can only see them in themselves when they are actually present to our eyes. Only God alone, to whom all things are present in His eternity, can see them before their occur. Hence we read in Isaias (41:23), “Show the things that are to come hereafter, and we shall know that you are gods.” Spirits can know better than men the effects to come from the second class of causes because their knowledge is broader, deeper, and more universal, and many occult powers of nature are known to them. Consequently they can foretell more events and more precisely, just as a physician who sees the causes clearer can better prognosticate about the restoration of health. The difference, in fact, between the first and second classes of causes is due to the limitations of our knowledge. The multiplicity and complexity of cause prevent us from following their effects.

Future contingent things, the effects of the third class, spirits cannot know for certain, except God reveal them, though they may wisely conjecture about them because of their wide knowledge of human nature, their long experience, and their judgents based upon our thoughts as revealed to them by our words, countenances, or acts. Unless we wish to deny the value of human testimony, it cannot be doubted that diviners foretold some contingent things correctly and magicians produced at times superhuman effects. The very survival of divination for so many centuries would otherwise be inexplicable and its role in history an insoluble problem. On religious grounds to say that divination and kindred arts were complete impostures would be to contradict Scripture. In it we read laws forbidding magic, we have facts like the deeds of Jannes and Mambres before Pharaoh, and we have a declaration of God showing it possible for a sign or wonder to be foretold by false prophets and to come to pass (Deuteronomy 13:1-12). But, except when God gave them knowledge, their ignorance of the future resulted in the well-known ambiguity of the oracles.

Attempts to give artificial divination a merely natural basis have not succeeded. Chrysippus (de Divinatione, ii, 63) spoke about a power in man to recognize and interpret signs, and Plutarch (de Oraculis) wrote on the special qualifications an augur should have and the nature of the signs, but a preternatural influence was recognized in the end. Some modes, may have been natural in their origin, especially when necessary causes were concerned, and many a prediction made without occult intervention, but these must have been comparatively rare, for the client, if not always the seer, generally believed in supernatural assistance. That some analogy may be traced between an eagle and victory, an owl and sadness–though to the Athenians a welcome omen–and that to lose a tooth is to lose a friend, may readily be admitted, but to try to connect these with future contingent events would be to reason badly from a very slight analogy, just as to stab an image, to injure the person it represents, would be to mistake an ideal connection for a real one. Human instinct demanded a stronger foundation and found it in the belief in an intervention of some supernatural agency. Reason demands the same. A corporeal sign is either an effect of the same cause of which it is a sign, as smoke of fire, or it proceeds from the same cause as the effect which it signifies as the falling of the barometer foretells rain, i.e., the change in the instrument and the change in the weather come from the same cause. Man’s future actions and signs in nature stand in no such relation. The sign is not an effect of his future act; neither do the sign and his act proceed from the same cause. The other kinds of signs from the living creatures can be passed over by almost the same reasoning. From those who believed in fatalism, or pantheism or that man, gods, and nature were all in close communion, or that animals and plants were divinities, a belief in omens and auguries of all kinds might be expected (see ANIMISM). Everywhere, as a matter of fact, divination and sacrifice were so closely connected that no strict line could have been drawn in practice between divination with and without express invocation of gods or demons. The client came to offer sacrifice, and the priest, the diviner, tried to answer all his questions, while the private wizards boasted of their “familiar spirits”.

THEOLOGICAL ASPECT

From a theological standpoint divination supposes the existence of devils who have great natural powers and who, actuated by jealousy of man and hatred of God, ever seek to lessen his glory and to draw man into perdition, or at least to injure him bodily, mentally, and spiritually. Divination is not, as we have seen, foretelling what comes from necessity or what generally happens, or foretelling what God reveals or what can be discovered by human effort, but it is the usurpation of knowledge of the future, i.e. arriving at it by inadequate or improper means. This knowledge is a prerogative of Divinity and so the usurper is said to divine. Such knowledge may not be sought from the evil spirits except rarely in exorcisms. Yet every divination is from them either because they are expressly invoked or they mix themselves up in these vain searchings after the future that they may entangle men in their snares. The demon is invoked tacitly when anyone tries to acquire information through means which he knows to be inadequate, and the means are inadequate when neither from their own nature nor from any Divine promise are they capable of producing the desired effect. Since the knowedge of futility belongs to God alone, to ask it directly or indirectly from demons is to attribute to them Divine perfection, and to ask their aid is to offer them a species of worship; this is superstition and a rebellion against the providence of God Who has wisely hidden many things from us. In pagan times when divining sacrifice was offered it was idolatry, and even now divination is a kind of demonolatry or devil worship (d’Annibale). All participation in such attempts to attain knowledge is derogatory to dignity of a Christian, and opposed to his love and trust in Providence, and militates against the spread of the Kingdom of God. Any method of divination with direct invocation of spirits is grievously sinful, and worse still if such intervention ensues; with tacit invocation divination is in itself a grievous sin, though in practice, ignorance, simplicity, or want of belief may render it venial. If, however, notwithstanding the client’s disbelief the diviner acts seriously, the client cannot be easily excused from grievously sinful cooperation. If in methods apparently harmless strong suspicion of evil intervention arises it would be sinful to continue if only a doubt arise as to the natural or diabolical character of the effect protest should be made against the intervention of spirits; if in doubt as to whether it be from God or Satan, except a miraculous act be sought (which would be extremely rare), it should be discontinued under pain of sin. A protestation of not wishing diabolical interference in modes of divination where it is expressly or tacitly expected is of no avail, as actions speak louder than words. A scientific investigator in doubt about the adequacy of the means can experiment to see if such superhuman intervention be a fact, but he should clearly express his opposition to all diabolical assistance. The divining-rod, if used only for metals of water, may perhaps be explained naturally; if used for detecting guilty persons, or things lost or stolen as such (which may be metals), it is certainly a tacit method. To believe in most of the popular signs simply ignorance or weakness of mind (see SUPERSTITION).

DIVINATION IN THE BIBLE

The Hebrews coming from Egypt — a land teeming with diviners — and dwelling in a country surrounded by superstitious tribes, would have their inborn desire for foreknowledge intensified by the spirit of the times and their environments; but God forbade them repeatedly to have anything to do with charmers, wizards, diviners, necromancers, etc., all of whom were abomination in His sight (Deuteronomy 18:10, 11). The ideal was in Balaam’s day when “there is no soothsaying in Jacob, nor divination in Israel” (Numbers 23:23), and to preserve this, the soul that went aside after diviner God declared He would destroy (Leviticus 20:6) and the man or woman in whom there was a divining spirit was to be stoned to death (Leviticus 20:27). God, however, as St. Chrysostom puts it, humoured the Hebrews like children, and to preserve them from excessive temptation, lots were allowed under certain conditions (Joshua 7:14; Numbers 26:55; Proverbs 16:33; in N.T. See also LOTS). Hebrew seers were permitted to answer when it pleased Him (Origen, c. Cels. I, xxxvi, xxxvii), prophets might be consulted on private affairs (I K. ix. 6), and the high priest could respond in greater matters by the Urim and Thummim. Gifts were offered to seers and prophets when consulted, but the great prophets accepted no reward when they acted as God’s representatives (IV K., v. 20). When the Hebews fell into idolatry, divination, which always accompanied idolatry, revived and flourished, but all during their history it is evident that secretly and again more openly wrongful arts were used and as a result condemnations were frequent (1 Kings 15:23; 2 Kings 17:17; Zechariah 10:2; Isaiah 44:25 etc.). It should be borne in mind that their history is very long one, and when we reflect how completely other nations were given over to all kinds of impious arts and silly observances we shall readily admit that the Hebrews were in comparison remarkably free from superstitions. When later these flourished more strongly and permantly it was during the decay of faith preceding and following the time of Christ (see Jos. Ant. Jud. XX, v, i, viii, 6; Bell. Jud. VI, v, 2). The Talmud shows the downward tendency.

The various methods of divinig and kinds of diviners are not always clearly distinguished in Scripture, the Hebrew words being differently interpreted and sometimes merely synonyms. The following list is based on mainly upon Lesetre’s article in Vigouroux’s “Dict. de la Bible”:– Divination by consulting the Teraphim, small household gods of which we first read in the time of Abraham and Laban (Gen. xxxi, 19). How they were consulted is not known. It was apparently Chaldean form, as Laban came from that country. They are met with in Judges, xvii, 5; IV K., xxiii, 24, and elsewhere. They sometimes deceived their inquirers (Zechariah 10:2). The Hartummim, a name translated by “interpreters” (Vulg. conjectores) in the Douay version (Genesis 41:8), elsewhere (Dan., ii, 2) by “diviners” (Vulg. arioli) and other names, especially “Chaldeans”. The Hakamim are the wise men (Vulg. sapientes) of the Bible (Genesis 41:8), a name given those skilled in divination in Egypt, Idumea (Abd., 8), Persia (Esther 1:13), Babylon (Jeremiah 1:35). Qesem or Miqsam designated divination in general and is always used in the Scripture in a bad sense except in Prov., xvi, 10. By it the witch of Endor raised up the dead Samuel (1 Samuel 28:8). “The king of Babylon stood in the highway, at the head of two ways, seeking divination (qesem), shuffling arrows; he inquired of the idols (teraphim), and consulted entrails” (Ezekiel 21:21). The arrows bore the signs or names of towns, and the first name drawn was the one to be attacked. This was Babylonian mode. The Arabs practised it so: three arrows were prepared and the first inscribed “The Lord wills it”, the second “The Lord wills it not”, and the third was blank. If the blank came a new drawing followed until an inscribed arrow was taken. The last method mentioned in text quoted was aruspicy (Vulg. exta consuluit). Nahash is soothsaying (Vulg. augurium) in the Bible (Numbers 22:23). The precise method signified by it is in dispute. The versions make it equivalent to divination by the flight of of birds, but this mode, so common among the Greeks and Romans, was apparently not used by the Hebrews except towards the time of Christ. From its derivation, as commonly accepted, it would mean divination by serpents, ophiomancy, but on the other hand it is never in this in the Scriptures. Balaam’s divination by animal sacrifices is so termed (Numbers 24:1) and also Joseph’s (Genesis 44:5, 15) which remains a vexed question in spite of Calmet’s triumphant solution (Dict. of the Bible, III, p. 30) except reasonable explanation of Grotius be accepted (Hummelauer, Com. in Gen., p. 561). Mekashsheph is the magician (Vulg. maleficus) in Ex., vii, 11, and the wizard in Deut, xviii, 10, who not only seeks the secrets of the future but works wonders. St. Paul mentions two of their leaders, Jannes and Mambres, and their modes are styled sorceries (Vulg. veneficia) in IV K., ix, 22 and (Vulg. maleficia) Micheas, v, 11. The word ‘obh signifies the spirit called and the person calling him, the necromancer. In Deut., xviii, 11, it is expressed by “seeking the truth from the dead” (the best known case is that of the witch of Endor) and elsewhere by Pythons (Isaiah 8:19), divining spirits (1 Samuel 28:7). The Septuagint translates the words by “ventriloquist” because when the necromancers failed or wished to deceive the people they muttered as if from under the ground as though spirits so spoke; it recalls Shakespeare’s of “squeak and gibber”. (Cf. Isaiah 29:4) A bottle or skin water-bag is ‘obh; the use of the word here may come from the diviners containing the spirit or being inflated by it. The Yidde ‘onim were diviners whom we generally find connected with necromacers, and the two terms are perhaps practically synonymous (1 Samuel 28:3; 2 Kings 21:6; etc). Divining by Me’onen included apparently many methods: divination by chance words, as when Abraham’s servant sought a wife for lsaac (Genesis 24:14; 1 Samuel 14:9; 1 Kings 20:33); auguries (Isaiah 11:6); observers of dreams (Deuteronomy 18:10), etc. There were also modes by charming serpents (Jeremiah 8:17), astrology (Isaiah 47:13), and by consulting the Ephod (1 Samuel 23:9). In the N.T. diviners are not specifically mentioned except in Acts, xvi, 16, concerning the girl who had a pythonical spirit, but it is altogether likely that Simon Magus (Acts 8:9), Elymas (Acts 13:6), and others (2 Timothy 3:13), including the possessors of the magical books burnt at Ephesus (Acts 19:19), practised divination and that it is included in the wonders by which Antichrist will seduce many (Revelation 19:20). Under the New Law all divination is forbidden because, placed on a higher plane than under the Old Dispensation we are taught not to be solicitous for the morrow (Matthew 6:34), but to trust Him perfectly Who numbers the very hairs of our heads (Matthew 10:30). In divination, apart from the fraud of the Father of Lies, there was much merely human fraud and endless deception the predictions were generally as vague and as worthless as modern fortune-telling, and the general result then as now favoured vice and injured virtue. (See ASTROLOGY.)

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E.P. GRAHAM Transcribed by Joseph P. Thomas

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VCopyright © 1909 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, May 1, 1909. Remy Lafort, CensorImprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York

Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia

Divination

( ke’sem, a lot [see below], or some kindred term; Gr. [but , Pytho, in Act 16:16]; used in the verb form , kasam’, only of false prophets, etc., e.g. of the Hebrews, Deu 18:10; Deu 18:14; Mic 3:6-7; Mic 3:11; of necromancers, 1Sa 28:8; of foreign prophets, as of the Philistines, 1Sa 6:2, and Balaam, Jos 13:22; and specifically of the three kinds of divination common among the Shemitic nations, viz. arrows, entrails, and Teraphim, Eze 21:21) is a general term descriptive of the various illusory arts anciently practiced for the discovery of things secret or future. The curiosity of mankind has devised numberless methods of seeking to accomplish this result. By a perversion and exaggeration of the sublime faith which sees God everywhere, men have laid everything, with greater or less ingenuity, under contribution, as means of eliciting a divine answer to every question of their insatiable curiosity: e.g. the portents of the sky and sea (Plutarch, De Superstitione, passim); the mysteries of the grave ( and ); the wonders of sleep and dreams (thought to be emanations from the gods, Homer, Il. 1:63; Hymn in Mercur. 14; Virgil, AEn. 5:838); the phenomena of victims sacrificed (deities were supposed to be specially interested or near at hand; comp. the in Potter’s Gr. Ant. 2:14); the motions and appearances of the animal creation (such as the flight of birds, a copious source of superstition in the of the Greeks and the auguriumn of the Latins, and the aspect of beasts); and the prodigies of inanimate nature (such as the , omens of the way, upon which whole books are said to have been written; the , ominous voices); and the long list of magic arts, which may be found in Hoffmann’s Lexicon, 2:97, and Potter on the Occult Sciences (in the Encycl. Metropol. part 5, which contains some thirty names ending in many, or compounds of , all branches of the magic art). Nor have these expedients of superstition been confined to one age or to a single nation. The meteoric portents, for instance, which used to excite the surprise and fear of the old Greeks and Romans, are still employed among the barbarians of Africa (e.g. musana of the Manika tribe, Krapf’s Trav. in E. Africa, page 115 sq.); and as the ancients read fearful signs in the faeces of animals (Virgil, Georg. 1:469), the savage Bakmains indicate the presence of the terrible alligator with their boleo ki bo, “there is sin” (Livingstone’s Trav. in S. Africa, page 225). SEE SUPERSTITION.

This art “of taking an aim of divine matters by human, which cannot but breed mixture of imaginations” (Bacon, Ess. 17), accordingly has been universal in all ages and all nations, alike civilized and savage. It arises from an impression that, in the absence of direct, visible guiding Providence, the Deity suffers his will to be known to men, partly by inspiring those who from purity of character or elevation of spirit were susceptible of the divine afflatus (, , ), and partly by giving perpetual indications of the future. which must be learned by experience and observation (Cicero, Div. 1:18; Pliny, 30:5).

(a.) The first kind of divination was called natural (, ), in which the medium of inspiration was transported from his own individuality, and became the passive instrument of supernatural utterances (Virg. AEn. 6:47; Ovid, Met. 2:640, etc.). As this process involved violent convulsions, the word , , soothsaying, is derived from , to rave, and alludes to the foaming mouth and streaming hair of the possessed seer (Plato, Tim. 72, B, where the is carefully distinguished from the ). But even in the most passionate and irresistible prophecies of Scripture we have none of these unnatural distortions (Num 23:5; Psa 39:3; Jer 20:9), although, as we shall see, they were characteristic of pretenders to the gift. SEE SOOTHSAYER.

(b.) The other kind of divination was artificial (), and probably originated in an honest conviction that external nature sympathized with and frequently indicated the condition and prospects of mankind-a conviction not in itself ridiculous, and fostered by the accidental synchronism of natural phenomena with human catastrophes (Thucyd. 3:89; Josephus, War, 6:5, 3; Foxe’s Martyrs, 3:406, etc.). When once this feeling was established the supposed manifestations were infinitely multiplied, and hence the numberless forms of imposture or ignorance called capnomancy, pyromancy, arithmomancy, libanomancy, botanomancy, cephalomancy, etc., of which there are abundant accounts in Cicero, De Div.; Cardan, De Sapientia; Anton. 5. Dale, De Orig. Idol.; Fabricius, Bibl. Antiq. pages 409-426; Carpzov, App. Crit. pages 540-549; Potter’s Antiq. 1, chapter 8 sq. Indeed, there was scarcely any possible event or appearance which was not pressed into the service of augury; and it may be said of the ancient Greeks and Romans, as of the modern New Zealanders, that, “after uttering their karakias (or charms), the whistling of the wind, the moving of trees, the flash of lightning, the peal of thunder, the flight of a bird, even the buzz of an insect, would be regarded as an answer” (Taylor’s New Zealand, page 74; Bowring’s Siam, 1:153 sq.). A system commenced in fanaticism ended in deceit. Hence Cato’s famous saying that it was strange how two augurs could meet without laughing in each other’s face. But the supposed knowledge became in all nations an engine of political power, and hence interest was enlisted in its support (Cicero, De Legg. 2:12; Livy, 6:27; Sophocles, Antig. 1055; comp. Mic 3:11). It fell into the hands of a priestly caste (Gen 41:8; Isa 47:13; Jer 5:31; Dan 2:2), who in all nations made it subservient to their own purposes. Thus in Persia, Chardin says that the astrologers would make even the shall rise at midnight and travel in the worst weather in obedience to their suggestions. SEE ASTROLOGER.

The invention of divination is ascribed to Prometheus (AEschylus, Pr. Vinct. 492), to the Phrygians and Etrurians, especially sages (Cicero, De Div. 1; and Clem. Alex. Strom. 1:326, where there is a great deal more on the subject), or (as by the fathers generally) to the devil (Firmic. Maternus, De Errore, Prooem; Lactant. 2:16; Minuc. Felix. October 27). In the same way Zoroaster ascribes all magic to Ahriman (Nork, Bram. und Rab. page 97). Similar opinions have prevailed in modern times (Sir Thomas Browne, Vulgar Errors, 1:11). SEE MAGIC.

Egypt, the cradle of arts and sciences, if she did not give it birth, seems to have encouraged the practice of divination at an early age; and, whether any of its forms had become objects of popular superstition, or were resorted to for the purposes of gain in the days of Joseph, it is well known that at the time of the Hebrew Exodus there were magicians in that country whose knowledge of the arcana of nature, and whose dexterity in the practice of their art, enabled them, to a certain extent, to equal the miracles of Moses. By what extraordinary powers they achieved those feats, how they changed their rods into serpents, the river water into blood, and introduced frogs in unprecedented numbers, is an inquiry that has occasioned great perplexity to many men of learning and piety. SEE JANNES (AND JAMIBRES).

It is reasonable to suppose that as Moses never had been in any other civilized country, all the allusions contained in his writings to the various forms of divination were those which were practiced in Egypt; and: indeed, so strong a taste had his countrymen imbibed there for this species of superstition, that throughout the whole course of their history it seems to have infected the national character and habits. Nor was it confined to the vicinity of Palestine, for as early as the time of Balaam (q.v.) we find it practiced by professional characters to the very banks of the Euphrates (Num 22:5; Num 22:7; see Biedermann, De mercede divinitoria, Vitemb. 1717). The diviners, who abounded both amongst the aborigines of Canaan and their Philistine neighbors (Isa 2:6), proved a great snare to the Israelites after their settlement in the promised land; and yet, notwithstanding the stern prohibitions of the law, no vigorous efforts were made to put an end to the crime by extirpating the practitioners of the unhallowed art until the days of Saul, who himself, however, violated the statute on the night previous to his disastrous fall (1 Samuel 28). But it was Chaldmea to which the distinction belongs of being the mother-country of diviners. SEE CHALDAEAN. Such a degree of power and influence had they attained in that country, that they farmed the highest caste and enjoyed a place at court; nay, so indispensable were they in Chaldaean society, that no step could be taken, not a relation could be formed, a house built, a journey undertaken, a campaign begun, until the diviners had ascertained the lucky day and promised a happy issue. A great influx of these impostors had at various times poured from Chaldaea and Arabia into the land of Israel to pursue their gainful occupation, more especially during the reign of the later kings (Isa 8:19), and we find Manasseh not only their liberal patron, but zealous to appear as one of their most expert accomplices (2Ki 21:6; 2Ch 33:6). The long captivity in Babylon spread more widely than ever among the Jews a devoted attachment to this superstition; for after their return to their own country, having entirely renounced idolatry, and, at the same time, no longer enjoying the gift of prophecy or access to the sacred oracles, they gradually abandoned themselves, as Lightfoot has satisfactorily shown, before the advent of Christ, to all the prevailing forms of divination (Comment. on Matt.). SEE EXORCISM.

Superstition not unfrequently goes hand in hand with skepticism, and hence, amid the general infidelity prevalent through the Roman empire at our Lord’s coming, imposture was rampant, as a glance at the pages of Tacitus will suffice to prove. Hence the lucrative trades of such men as Simon Magus (Act 8:9), Bar-jesus (Act 13:6; Act 13:8), the slave with the spirit of Python (Act 16:16), the vagabond Jews, exorcists (Luk 11:19; Act 19:13), and other mountebanks (, 2Ti 3:13; Rev 19:20, etc.), as well as the notorious dealers in magical writings ( ), and the jugglers () at Ephesus (Act 19:19). Among the Jews these flagrant impostors (, Josephus) had become dangerously numerous, especially during the Jewish war; and we find them constantly alluded to in Josephus (War, 6:5, 1, 2; comp. Mat 24:23-24; Tacit. Hist. 5:12; Joseph. Ant. 20:5, 1, etc.). As was natural, they, like most Orientals, especially connected the name of Solomon with their spells and incantations (Joseph. Ant. 8:2). The names of the main writers on this wide and interesting subject will be found mentioned in the course of this article, and others are referred to in Fabricius, Bibl. Antiq. cap. 12, and Bottcher, De Inferis, page 101 sq. SEE CURIOUS ARTS.

Against every species and degree of this superstition the sternest denunciations of the Mosaic law were directed (Exo 22:18; Lev 19:26; Lev 19:31; Lev 20:27; Deu 18:10-11), as fostering a love for unlawful knowledge (comp. the Koran, chapter 5; Cato, De Re Rust. 5; “vana superstitione rudes animos infestant;” Columell. 2:1); because prying into the future beclouds the mind with superstition, and because it would have been (as indeed it proved to be, Isa 2:6; 2Ki 21:6) an incentive to idolatry; indeed, the frequent denunciations of the sin in the prophets tend to prove that these forbidden arts presented peculiar temptations to apostate Israel (Hottinger, Juris Hebr. leges, pages 253, 254). But God supplied his people with substitutes for divination, which would have rendered it superfluous, and left them in no doubt as to his will in circumstances of danger, had they continued faithful. It was only when they were unfaithful that the revelation was withdrawn (1Sa 28:6; 2Sa 2:1; 2Sa 5:23, etc.). According to the Rabbis, the Urim and Thummim lasted until the Temple; the spirit of prophecy until Malachi; and the Bath-Kol, as the sole means of guidance from that time downwards (Maimonides, de Fundam. Leg. cap. 7; Abarbanel, Prolegg. in Daniel.). See below.

How far Moses and the Prophets believed in the reality of necromancy, etc., as distinguished from various forms of imposture, is a question which at present does not concern us. But even if, in those times, they did hold such a belief, no one will now urge that we are bound to do so at the present day. Yet such was the opinion of Bacon, Bishop Hall, Baxter, Sir Thos. Browne, Lavater, Glanville, Henry More, and numberless other eminent men. Such also was the opinion which led Sir M. Hale to burn Amy Duny and Rose Cullenden at Bury in 1664 and caused even Wesley to say, that “to give up a belief in witchcraft was to give up the Bible.” (For a curious statute against witchcraft [5 Eliz. cap. 15], see Collier’s Eccl. Hist. 6:366.) Much discussion, moreover, has been carried on by learned men to determine the question whether the ancient tribe of diviners merely pretended to the powers they exercised, or were actually assisted by daemoniacal agency. The latter opinion is embraced by almost all the fathers of the primitive Church, who appeal, in support of their views, to the plain language of Scripture; to the achievements of Jannes and Jambres in the days of Moses; to the divine law, which cannot be chargeable with the folly of prohibiting crimes that never existed; and to the strong presumption that pretensions to interpret dreams, to evoke the dead, etc., would never have met with credit during so many ages had there not been some known and authenticated instances of success. On the other hand, it has been maintained with great ability and erudition that the whole arts of divination were a system of imposture, and that Scripture itself frequently ridicules those who practiced them as utterly helpless, and incapable of accomplishing anything beyond the ordinary powers of nature (Isa 47:11-13; Isa 44:25; Jer 14:14; Jon 2:8). SEE WITCHCRAFT.

I. Of the many instances of divination which occur in Holy Scripture, some must be taken in a good sense. These have accordingly been classed by J. C. Wichmannshausen (Dissert. de Divinat. Babyl. [ed. Hichius et Messerer.],Viteb. 1720 sq.) as truly “divine.” (See Peucer, De praecipuis divinationum generibus, Zerbst. 1591; F.a.M. 1607.) SEE INSPIRATION.

1. Cleromancy (), divination by lot. This mode of decision was used by the Hebrews in matters of extreme importance, and always with solemnity and religious preparation (Jos 7:13). The land was divided by lot (, , sors; Num 26:55-56; Jos 14:2); Achan’s guilt was detected by lot (Jos 7:16-19); Saul was elected king by lot (1Sa 10:20-21); and, more remarkable still, Matthias was chosen to the vacant apostleship by solemn lot, and invocation of God to guide the decision (Act 1:26). This solemnity and reverence it is which gives force to such passages as Pro 16:33; Pro 18:18. (See Augustine, De Doctr. Christ. 1:28; Thom. Aquin. 2:2, qu. 95, art. 8.) Under this process of , or lot, were appointed the interesting ordinances of the scape-goat and the goat of the sin-offering for the people (Lev 16:8-10). SEE LOT.

2. Oneiromancy (), divination by dreams (Deu 13:2-3; Jdg 7:13; Jer 23:32; Josephus, Ant. 17:6, 4). The interpretation of Pharaoh’s dreams by the divinely-gifted Joseph (Gen 41:25-32), and the retracing and interpretation of those of Nebuchadnezzar by the inspired prophet (Dan 2:27, etc. and again Dan 4:19-28), as opposed to the diviners of false dreams (Zec 10:2), are very prominent cases in point; and, still more, the dreams themselves divinely sent (as those in Gen 20:6; Jdg 7:15; 1Ki 3:5; so those in Mat 1:20; Mat 2:12-13; Mat 2:19; Mat 2:22), must he regarded as instances of divination in a good sense, a heavenly oneiromancy (comp. Mohammed’s dicta: “Good dreams are from God;” “Goodd reams are one of the great parts of prophecy,” Lane’s Arab. Nights, 1:68). This is clear from Num 12:6 (where dreams [to the sleeping] and visions [to the awake] are expressly mentioned as correlative divinations authorized by God), compared with 1Sa 28:6. Many warnings occur in Scripture against the impostures attendant on the interpretation of dreams (Zec 10:2, etc.). We find, however, no direct trace of seeking for dreams such as occurs in Virgil, AEn. 7:81; Plautus, Curcul. 1:1, 2, 61. SEE DREAM.

3. The Urim and Thummim (Numbers 27:27), which seem to have had the same relation in true divination that the Teraphimn (q.v.), or idolomnncy, had in the idolatrous system (see Hos 3:4). SEE URIM AND THUMMIM. Similar to this was divination by means of the Ephod (q.v.).

4. Phonomancy, by means of the Bath-Kol ( , daughter of the voice, i.e., direct vocal communication), which God vouchsafed especially to Moses (see Deu 34:10). Various concomitants of revelation were employed by the Deity: as the Rod-Serpent (Exo 4:3); the Leprous Hand (Exo 4:4); the Burning Bush (Exo 3:4); the Plagues (Exo 3:7-12); the Cloud (Exo 16:10-11); but most instances are without phenomena (Deu 4:15; 1Ki 19:12-13; 1Ki 19:15, and perhaps Mat 3:13). This, the true Bath-Kol, must not be confounded with the fabulous one of the Rabbis, which Dr. Lightfoot calls “a fiction of their own brain to bring their doctors and their doctrines into credit” (Works, 3:132). SEE BATH-KOL.

5. The Oracles: first, of the Ark of the Testimony, or Covenant ( ), described in Exo 25:22, and 1Ki 6:16-31 (comp. Psa 28:2); secondly, of the Tabernacle of the Congregation, or Testimony ( ), described in Exo 29:42-43. In the account of the Temple, both in 1 Kings 6 and 2 Chronicles, the word is used fifteen times to designate the “Oracle,” i.e., the Holy of Holies (see 1Ki 6:16), in which was placed the Ark of the Covenant (1Ki 6:19), whose golden cover, called the Mercy-seat, was the actual situs oraculi (Hottinger, Thes. Philip. page 366). That there were several oracles of heathen gods known to the Jews we may infer both from the mention of that of Baal-zebub at Ekron (2Ki 1:2-6), and from the towns named Debir. “Debir quod nos oraculum sive responsunz possumus appellare, et ut contentiosius verbum exprimamus e verbo , vel locutorium dicere” (Jerome, ad Ephesians 1). The word “oracles” is applied in the N.T. to the Scriptures (Act 7:38; Rom 3:2, etc.). On the general subject of oracles, see Anton. 5. Dale, De oraculis; Smith, Dict. of Class. Ant. art. Oraculum; Potter’s Antiq. 1:286-326; Sir T. Browne, Tract 11, and Vulg. Err. 7:12, etc. SEE ORACLE.

6. The Angelic Voice, (e.g. Gen 22:15; Jdg 13:3; Jdg 13:13). SEE ANGEL.

7. The Prophetic Institution (, see Buxtorf, Lex. Rabb. col. 1286). This was the most illustrious and perfect means of holy divination (as the oracular system in the heathen world was the most eminent perversion and imitation of it), and was often accompanied with symbolical action (2Ki 13:17; Jer 51:63-64). We may learn the importance of the place it was designed to occupy in the Theocracy as a means of divination, by the express contrast drawn between it, on the one hand, and the divinations of idolatry on the other. Comp. Jer 51:14 with Jer 51:15 of Deuteronomy 18 :(See Michaelis’s Laws of Moses, art. 36.) Under this head of prophecy we must, of course, include the , as the Jews call the Inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The revelations of the Old Testament are most suitably included in these heavenly utterances, . (See Heb 5:12; 1Pe 4:11.) Such are the chief modes of divine communication to men, or inspired divination: they are referred to in Heb 1:1. The antithesis there points to the Son of God as the Ultimate Oracle (the Logos of John), the fulfiller of the promise, which Moses gave when he prohibited all spurious divination. SEE PROPHET.

8. Before we close our notice of divination in a good sense, we must adduce two instances of the Hebrew word at the head of this article, (ksm). Of the thirty-one occurrences of this expressive term in the O.T., no less than twenty-nine bear an evil meaning. In Pro 16:10, and Isa 3:2, we claim for it a good sense. In the former of these passages the noun (Sept. ; Vulg. divinatio) is rendered in the A.V. a divine sentence [marg. “divination”], and denotes “sagacity such as of diviners” (Poli Synops. in loc. Melancthon, as quoted by bishop Patrick in loc., refers to the acute wisdom of Solomon in his celebrated judgment, and of Gonzaga in his sentence on the governor of Milan, as instances of this ; we might add the case supposed by Solomon himself of the sagacious poor man who successfully defended the city against the mighty invader, Ecc 9:15). In Isa 3:2, the word occurs in the Poel form, (Sept. ; Vulg. ariolus), and is rightly rendered in the A.V. prudent; the company in which the term is found requires for it a good signification. See above.

9. It only remains under this head to allude to the fact that great importance was peculiarly attached to the words of dying men. Now although the observed fact that “men sometimes, at the hour of their departure, do speak and reason above themselves” (Relig. Medici, 11), does not, of course, take away from. the death-bed prophecies of Scripture their supernatural character (Genesis 49; 2 Kings 13, etc.), yet it is interesting to find that there are analogies which resemble them (Il. 22:355; and the story of Calanus; Cicero, De Div. 1:30; Shaksp. Rich. Il. 2:1; Daniell, Civil Wars, 3:62, etc.).

II. Forms of divination expressly forbidden in Scripture. Allusion has already been made in this article to Deu 18:10-12. As these verses contain the most formal notice of the subject, we will first take the seven or eight kinds of diviners there denounced in the order in which they are mentioned.

1. At the very outset we encounter in the phrase , kosem’ kesamim’, one divining divinations (Sept. , Vulg. qui ariolos sciscitatur, A.V. “that useth divination”), the same word which we have just noticed in a good sense. The verb , like the Arabic equivalent, primarily signified to cleave or divide (Meier, Hebr. Wiirtzelworterbuch, page 344; Frst, Hebr. Worterb. 2:322; Hottinger, Lex. Heptagl. 44:1); thence it acquired the sense of deciding and determining, and became a generic phrase for various kinds of divination. Rabbi David de Pomis says, “It is a word of large signification, embracing many specific senses, such as geomancy, necromancy, oneiromancy, cheiromancy, and others.” Maimonides (in his treatise : 88 , cap. 11, 6) includes besides these methods, gastromancy, lithomancy, and catoptromancy; and Rashi (on Deu 18:10) makes mainly concerned with the process of rhabdomancy. Amid the uncertainty arising from this generic sense of the word, the Sept. has rendered it by the general phrase , to divine a divination; wherein it is followed by the Targum of Jonathan, as well as by the Syriac and Arabic versions (J. Clodius, Dissert. de Magia Sagittar. [Viteb. 1675] 1:5; and Wichmannshausen, Dissert. 1:4). The word is used of Balaam (Jos 13:22), of the Philistine soothsayers (1Sa 6:2), of the Hebrew false prophets (Mical 3:3, 6, 7, 11, and in other passages), without specifying any mode of divination. We therefore regard this as a general phrase introductory to the seven particular ones which follow. The absence of the copulative , which is prefixed to every other word but , confirms this view. As the word, however, involves the notion of “cutting,” some connect it with the Chald. (from , to cut), Dan 2:27; Dan 4:4, etc., and to be taken to mean astrologers, magi, genethliaci, etc. (Juv. 6:582 sq.; Diod. Sic. 2:30). Others refer it to the (Schol. ad Eur. Hipp. 1057), since the use of lots was very familiar to the Jews (Gataker on Lots, ad init.); but it required no art to explain their use, for they were regarded as directly under God’s control (Num 26:55; Est 3:7; Pro 16:33; Pro 18:18). Both lots and digitorum micatio (odd and even) were used in distributing the duties of the Temple (Otho, Lex. Rab. s.v. Digitis micando). See above.

2. , menen’. This word is variously derived and explained. In our A.V. it is, in two out of seven times of its occurrence (besides the praet. and fut.), rendered “observer of times” (as if from , a set time, Fuller, Misc. Sac. 1:16, after Rashi). The idea is, the assigning certain times to things, and distinguishing by astrology lucky from unlucky days, and even months (as when Ovid [Fasti] says, “Mense malum maio nubere vulgus ait”) and years (Maimonides, Aboda Sarac cap. 9; Spencer, De Leg. Hebr. 1:387). So perhaps in Job 3:5; just as the Greeks and Romans regarded some days as candidi, others as atri (Hesiod. Opp. et D. 770; Sueton. Aug. 92, etc.). It is not necessary to refer Gal 4:10 to this superstition; the Mosaic institution of sacred seasons is itself there prohibited, as being abrogated to Christians (Selden, De ann. civil. vet. Jud. c. 21; and Alford, in loc.). The Sept. version, by the verb and part. (in four places), and the noun , (in two others), refers to divination by words and voices (Suidas, , ). Festus derives omen itself (quasi oramen), because it proceeds from the mouth (qua fit ab ore). Words of ill omen (, which Horace calls nale omninata verba, and Plautus obscenata [prob. obscaevata]), were exchanged for bona nomina, as when Cicero reported to the Senate the execution of Lentulus and others by the word “vixerunt,” they have ceased to live, instead of “mortui sunt,” they are dead. So Leotychides embraced the omen of Hegesistratus (Herodot. 11:91). Hebrew instances of this observing of words occur in Gen 24:14, and 1Sa 14:9-10, where a divine interposition occurred; in 1Ki 20:33, the catching at the word of the king of Israel was rather a human instinct than a , or marking, in its proper (superstitious) sense. Akin to and arising from this observance of verbal omens arose the forms of biblomancy called Sortes Homericae, Virgiliance, Bibliae, etc. The elevation of Severus is said to have been foretold by his opening at Virgil’s line, “Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, rhemento. “Most remarkable were the responses which it is said Charles I and Lord Falkland obtained, when they consulted their Virgils before the civil war. The former opened AEneid 4, where Dido predicts a violent death to AEneas, while the latter, chanced upon AEneid 11, at Evander’s lamentation over his son. According to Nicephorus Gregoras, the Psalter was the best book for the Sortes Biblicae, but Cedrenus informs us that the N.T. was more commonly used (Niceph. Greg., 8, Aug. Ep. 119; Prideaux, Connect. 2:376, etc.; Cardan, De Varietate, page 1040). This superstition became so rife that it was necessary to denounce it from the pulpit as forbidden by the divine precept, “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” The Moslems consult the Koran in similar manner, but they take their answer from the seventh line of the righthand page (see Occult Sciences, page 332). A belief in the significance of chance words was very prevalent among the Egyptians (Clem. Alex. Strom. 1:304; Plutarch, De Isaiah 14), and the accidental sigh of the engineer was sufficient to prevent even Amasis from removing the monolithic shrine to Sais (Wilkinson, Anc. Egypt. 4:144). The universality of the belief among the ancients is known to every scholar (Cicero, De div. 1; Herod. 2:90; Virgil, AEn. 7:116, etc.). SEE BIBLOMANCY.

Another origin for is found by some (comp. Vitringa, Comment. ad Isa 2:6) in the noun , the eye, the root of which occurs once only (1Sa 18:9) as a verb, “Saul eyed David.” This derivation would point to fascination, the Greek and the Latin fascinum. Vossius derives these words from , to kill with the eyes. Pliny (Holland’s transl. 1:155) says: “Such like these are among the Triballians and Illyrians, who with their very eiesight can witch (effascinent), yea, and kill those whom they looke wistly upon any long time” (comp. Aul. Gell. 9:4, 8; Plutarch, Sympos. 5:7). Reginald Scot speaks of certain Irish witches as eyebiters” (Discovery of Witchcraft, 3:15). Whole treatises have been written on this subject, such as the De Fascino, by the Italian Vairus in 1589; the Opusculum de Fascino, by Gutierrez, a Spaniard, in 1563; and the Tractatus de Fascinatione in 1675, by a German physician called Frommann. (See also Shaw, Trav. page 212.) In Martin’s Description of IV. Isles of Scotland, “Molluka beans”‘ are mentioned as amulets against fascination. Dallaway (Account of Constantinople as quoted in Occult Sciences, page 210) says that “nothing can exceed the superstition of the Turks respecting the evil eye of an enemy or infidel. Passages from tne Koran are painted on the outside of houses, etc., to divert the sinister influence.” A belief in the “evil eye,” ( ), was universal, and is often alluded to in Scripture (Deu 23:3; Mat 20:15; Tob 4:7, ; 1Sa 18:9, “Saul eyed David”). The passages of the ancients on the subject are collected in Potter’s Ant. 1:383 sq. SEE EYE.

But the derivation of which finds most favor with modern authorities deduces the word from , a cloud, so that the diviner would ply his art by watching clouds, thunders, lightnings (Meier, Hebr Wurzelwb. 5:6, page 92; Frst, Worterb. 2:167, who, however, finds room for all the derivations; and Gesenius, s.v. , leans to the figurative sense of to cloud, viz. to use covert arts). Rosenmller, Scholia in Lev 19:26, follows Aben Esra, who thinks this diviner obtained his omens from observation of the clouds. The notion that the terms east, west, , south, , north, were derived from the position of the Planetarius as he faced the east, taking his celestial observations (Goodwin’s Moses and Aaron, 4:10), is rejected by his annotator Carpzov with the greatest disgust. Jeremiah (Jer 10:2) clearly refers to this divination, which had its counterpart in Greek and Latin literature (e.g. in Il. 2:352, Nestor speaks of right-hand flashes as being lucky (see also Odys. 15:304). Diodorus Siculus (3:340, ed. Bipont.) mentions the divination by means of thunder (, and the ) of the Etrurians (comp. “fulguratores hi fulgurum inspectores,” Cato, De Mor. Claud. Neron.; Nonius, 63:21; Cicero, De Div. 2:53. [In Orelli. 2301, fuiguriator.]) Pliny, in 2:43, treats of the physical, and in 2:54, of the oracular qualities of thunder, lightning, etc.; as does L.A. Seneca in Natur. Quast. 2:41. Statius mentions the winds for purposes of divination (Thebaid. 3:512-538). See Humboldt, Kosmos, 2:135, for the probable scientific adaptations by the Etrurians of their divining arts. To this class we must refer “the astrologers” ( here only found); “the star-gazers, or rather star-prophets” (

); and “the monthly prognosticators,” or rather they that make known at the new moons what will happen to thee ( ; see Rosenmiller, in loc.), which are all mentioned in the sublime challenge of God to the Chaldee sorcerers in Isa 47:13. Astrology retained a long hold even on the minds of astronomers; e.g. Stoffler from its evaluation predicted a deluge for 1524; Cardan his own death: Wallenstein was a great amateur of astrology; Tycho Brahe studied and practiced it; so did Morinus; Kepler supposed that the planets by their configurations exercised certain influences over sublunary nature; Lord Bacon, moreover, thought that astrology needed only to be reformed, not rejected (Arago, Pop. Astron. [by Smyth and Grant] 2:8; Brewster, Martyrs of Science, 150, 211). SEE PROGNOSTIGATOR.

In Jdg 9:37, the expression “oak of Meonenim (enchantments)” refers not so much to the general sacredness of great trees (Homer, Od. 14:328, as to the fact that (probably) here Jacob had buried his amulets (Gen 35:4; Stanley, Sin. and Pal. Page 142). SEE MEONENIM.

3. The next word in our list (Deu 18:10) is , menachesh’, “an enchanter,” (Sept. ; Vulg. qui observat auguria). In Gen 44:5; Gen 44:15, this somewhat general word is used of divining by the cup, or cylicomancy (). Primitively this was the drinking-cup which contained the libation to the gods (Potter). This divination prevailed more in the East and in Egypt. The , used in the Sept. to designate Joseph’s cup, resembles both the Arabic adn: and the Hindu kundi, sacred chalice: (Schleusner, Lex. V.T. s.v.; Kitto, Bib. Illus. 1:398). One of the Assyrian kings, in the sculptures from Nimroud, holds a divining-cup in his right hand (Bonomi’s Nineveh, etc. page 306). The famous cup of Jemshid, which is the constant theme of the poetry and mythology of Persia, was said to have been discovered full of the elixir of immortality, while digging to lay the foundation of Persepolis. It possessed the property of representing the whole world in its concavity, and all things good and bad then going on in it. Homer describes Nestor’s cup in similar manner; and Alexander the Great had a mystic cup of a like kind. In the storming of Seringapatam the unfortunate Tippoo Saib retired to gaze on his divining-cup; after standing a while absorbed, he returned to the fight and soon fell. The “great magitien” Merlin’s cup is described (Spenser’s Faerie Queene, 3:2, 19), “Like to the world it’selfe, it seem’d a world of glas.” In Norden’s Travels in Egypt, and Capt. Cook’s Voyages, the use of divining-cups in modern Nubia and at Tongataboo, one of the Friendly Islands, is mentioned (compare Kitto, Daily Bible Illustrat. 1:424). The Orientals ascribe much of Solomon’s wisdom to his possession of a sacred cup; a Giamschid, or vase of the sun (D’Herbelot, s.v. Giam, Occult Sciences, page 317). Parkhurst and others, denying that divination is intended, make it a mere cup of office (Bruce’s Travels, 2:657), “for which he would search carefully.” But in all probability the A.V. is right. The Nile was called the cup of Egypt, and the silver vessel which symbolized it had prophetic and mysterious properties (Havernick, Einl. z.d. Pentat.). The divination was by means of radiations from the water, or from magically- inscribed gems, etc., thrown into it (a sort of , , or Cardan, De rerum Variet. cap. 93), like the famous mirror of ink (Lane, Mod. Eg. 2:362), and the crystal divining-globes, the properties of which depend on a natural law brought into notice in the recent revivals of Mesmerism. Jul. Serenus (De Fato, 9:18) says that after certain incantations a daemon was heard in the water. For illustrations of Egyptian cups, see Wilkinson, 3:258. This kind of divination is not the same as cyathomancy (Suidas, s.v. ), which consists in drawing omens from a common drinking-cup; much like the vulgar practice, still prevalent, of reading fortunes in the fantastic forms assumed by the grounds in a teacup. SEE CUP.

But the versions of the Sept. and Vulg. give quite a different turn to our , and point to that part of the augurial art which consisted of omens from birds, i.e., ornithomancy (, , ). The Syriac and Arabic versions favor this view (augurari ab animali alato). Birds in their flight over the earth were supposed to observe men’s seeret actions, and to be cognizant of accidents, etc. (comp. Ecc 10:20). Aristophanes (Birds) says, None but some bird, perhaps, knows of my treasure:” so that the birds assume prerogatives of deity; “We are as good as oracles and gods to you,” etc. The notes, the flight, and the feeding of birds were the main phenomena (Bochart, ed. Leusd. 2:19). Homer is full of this divination (Il. 12:310; Od. 15:160, et passim). So the Latin classics; see Servius, Virg. zn. 3:361 (“aves oscines, praepetes”); also Cicero, Fam. 6:6, 13; De Divin. 2:72, etc.; and Livy, 10:40 (tripudium solistimum). For qualities of various birds, see Potter, 15, and Occult Sciences, pages 142, 143. This divination was much in vogue in the East also; so Philostratus (Vit. Apollon. 1:14) and Porphyry (De Abstin. Animal. 3) say. Rabbinical doctors discover augury among King Solomon’s attainments, in such passages as Ecc 10:20, and 1Ki 4:30. Rashi comments , learned in the tongue of birds; so Kimchi and the Mid. bar Rabba, 19. SEE ENCHANTER. The root : has the primary sense of a low hissing, whispering sound; from this arises the derivative , a serpent, of frequent occurrence in the O.T. Gesenius, Thes. page 875; Lex. by Robinson, page 665; and Furst, Hebr. Worterb. page 31, prefer to derive from the primary sense (q.d. divinare vel augurari as general terms); but Bochart, 2:21, 22, peremptorily derives from the secondary sense of the serpent, and discovers in this the divination called ophiomancy (). Frst admits this as “tolerable.” Classical instances of divining by serpents occur in Iliad, 2:308; AEneid, 5:84; Cicero, De Div. 1:18,36; Valer. Maxim. 1:6, 8; Terent. Phorm. 4:4, 26; Clem. Alex. Strom. 7; Horace, Carm. 3:27, 5. (According to Hesychius, s.v. , and Suidas, s.v. , omens from serpents as well as from birds formed a usual branch of the augur’s art; hence probably the general phrase employed in the Sept. and other versions.) Serpent-charming, referred to in Psa 58:5, and Jer 8:17. is a part of this divination. Frequent mention of this art also occurs in both ancient and modern writers. (See Kalisch on Exo 7:12, who refers to AElian, Hist. Anim. 17:5; Sil. Italic. 3:300; Strabo, 12:814; Gellius, Noct. Attic. 16:11; Shaw, Travels, page 354; Niebuhr, Travels, 1:189; Bochart, Hieroz. 3:162; Description de l’Egypte 8:108; 18:1, 333 [in 1:159, there is a description of the feats of some Cairo jugglers with the serpent Haje]; Quatremere, Mem. sur l’Egypte, 1:202; Minutoli, Travels, page 226; Hengstenberg, Mos. and Egypt, pages 97- 103; Lane, Mod. Egypt, 2:230). The serpent was the symbol of health and healing (Plin. 24:4, 22); Moses’s brazen serpent (Num 21:9), which was a symbol of deliverance (Wis 16:6; comp. Joh 3:14), was at length made an object of idolatrous worship. Hezekiah, to destroy the charm, reduced-its name to its mere material ( =), 2Ki 18:4. SEE NEHUSHTAN. These menacheshim, therefore, were probably ophiomants-people who, like the ancient Psylli (Pliny, H.N. 7:2; 18:4) and Marmaridae (Sil. Ital. 3:301), were supposed to render serpents innocuous and obedient (Exo 7:9; Jer 8:17; Ecc 10:11), chiefly by the power of music (Nicand. Meriac. 162; Lucan, 9:891; AEn. 7:753), but also, no doubt, by the possession of some genuine and often hereditary secret (Lane, Mod. Egypt, 2:106 sq.; Arnob. adv. Gent. 2:32). They had a similar power over scorpions (Francklen’s Tour to Persia). SEE CHARMER.

4. , mekashsheph’ (Sept. ; Vulg. maleficus; Auth. Vers. “witch”). This word has always a bad sense in the Old Test. in the twelve instances in which the verb [always Piel] and the noun are used. The Syriac, however (kasap), bears the good sense of prayer and public service to God .( , , in Act 4:31; Act 13:2). The Arabic (kashaf) suggests the meaning of the missing Kal “to reveal.” In Exo 7:11, this word describes (in plur.) the magicians of Pharaoh, who are also there called , sages, and (as also in 7:22; comp. Gen 41:8; Gen 41:24) , (Clem. Alex. 6:633), or sacred scribes of Egypt. This latter title identifies these with the Magi, or sacerdotes, of the Chaldaean court (see Dan 2:10; Dan 2:27). The prophet was himself made by the king of Babylon , “master of the magicians” (Dan 5:11). The arts of these diviners (, Exo 7:11, , Exo 7:22), which enabled them to withstand Moses, were doubtless imposing, but so inferior to the miracles by which they were ultimately foiled (8:19), and their gods confounded (12:12). The conjecture of Aben Ezra, that it was “their skill in the secrets of physical science” (quoted in Carpzov, Apparatus, page 543), such as is attributed to the Etrurianfulguratores by Humboldt (Kosmos, 1.c.), which enabled them to sustain their impious contest, is not unreasonable. The names of two of these chartummim (or ) are given by Paul, 2Ti 3:8. (For Talmudic traditions about these, see Buxtorf, Lex. Tal. col. 945; comp. Pliny, Hist. Nat. 30:1, who associates Jamnes and Jotapes with Moses as Jews; Apuleius, Apol. 108 [ed. Casaub.], who mentions Moses, Jannes, etc., as inter magos celebrati; Numenius Pythag. in Eusebius, Praep. Evang. 9:8, who mentions and . The Moslems call these magicians Sadur and Gadur; D’Herbelot, s.v. Mousa; and Sale, Koran, page 237; Schoettgen, Hor. Hebr. page 893; Rosenmller, on Exodus 1.c.). How:they produced the wonders which hardened the heart of Pharaoh, whether by mechanical or chemical means, or by mere legerdemain, or by dtemoniacal assistance (as supposed by the fathers, and Josephus, Ant. 2:5), we can only conjecture. The N.T. gives us the names of other diviners also-in this respect differing observably from the reserve of the O.T. e.g. of Simon Magus (Act 8:9, ); of Barjesus or Elymas (Act 13:6; Act 13:8, ); the sons of Sceva (Act 19:13-14, ). We have alluded to the supposed scientific basis of the arts of these , or , or (for the identity of these, see Kalisch, on Exodus p. 114; and Keil and Delitzsch’s Bibl. Commentar, 1:357). The term under consideration might no doubt involve the use of divining-rods for the purpose of finding water (aqurelicium), etc., dependent on physical laws only partially understood (Mayo’s Pop. Superstitions). SEE MAGICIAN.

By Umbreit, on Job, and Deyling (Observ. Sacr. 3:129), the words , “the blackness of the day,” in Job 3:5, are taken to mean certain “incantations which darken the day,” practiced by magicians (some think them also indicated in the 8th verse by the words , “that curse the day”) who were able, as the superstitious imagined, to change the brightest day into the darkest midnight. Popular ignorance has always connected magical power with scientific skill. The foretelling of the rise and setting of sun, moon, and stars, and the prediction of eclipses, used to invest astronomers of old with a marvelous reputation (Virgil, AEn. 4:489; Ovid, Metam. 12:263; Horace, Epod. 5:45; Tibull. 1:2, 42. So Shakspeare, Temp. 5:1). In Exo 22:18, the feminine , mekashshephah’, occurs (also translated a witch in the A.V.). In the Theocratic system, where women as well as men were endued with supernatural gifts (such as Deborah, Hannah, Huldah), female pretenders were to be found-indeed, according to Maimonides (Moreh Neb. 3:37), and Babyl. Gemara (Sanhed, in Ugolini Thies. 25:776), they were more rife even than males. Their divination is referred to in Eze 13:23, and described Eze 13:17-22 (comp. Triumphii Dissert. de pulvillis et peplis prophetiss. in Thes. Nov. ad Crit. Sacr. 1:972, and Ephrem Syrus, in Rosenmller in loc., who supposes the “pillows” to be amulets for divination fitted to their sleeves). SEE WITCH.

5. The next phrase in the Mosaic catalogue of forbidden divination is (Deu 18:11) , chober’, “a charmer” (Sept. ; Vulg. incantator). The root chabar’ denotes binding, or joining together. Gesenius (by Robinson, page 293) refers to a species of magic which was practiced by binding magic knots (comp. Gordian knot). Carpzov (Apparatus, page 544) quotes Rabbinical authority, and Bochart (Hieroz. 2:3, 6), for a kind of divination which drew together noxious creatures (serpentes and scorpiones) for purposes of sorcery; and in Psa 58:6, the very phrase before us is applied to serpent charmers. (See above, under 3.) Gaulmin (in Carpzov) mentions , as if the very gods might be bound by magic arts. The Sept. version suggests our spell-bound. “Spell is a kind of incantation per sermones vel verba,” says Somner. Hence the frequent allusions to such a charm in poetry. The refrain in the chorus of the Furies (AEschylus, Eumen. 296, 318, 327), (a spell- blight), is imitated by Byron (Manfred, 1:1). So Milton (Comus, 852); Jonson’s witch (in the Sad Shepherd) is said “to rivet charms;” comp. Beaum. and Fletcher (The Loyal Subject, 2:2). This last quotation directs us to the best explanation of divination by . Its idea is binding together; the ring has always been regarded as the symbol of such conjunction (comp. wedding-ring, in the marriage service of the Church of England). In the phenomena of dactylomancy (), or divination by ring (Potter, 2:18; Smedley, Occult Sciences, pages 37-40, 343), we have the most exact illustration of the subject before us. Josephus (Ant. 8:2, 6), among the attributes of king Solomon’s wisdom, ascribes to him much magical skill, and, with the rest, necromancy and spells, and goes on to specify an instance of exorcism by virtue of Solomon’s magic ring. D’Herbelot (s.v. Giam, already quoted) calls Jemshid the Solomon of Persia; and, according to Minutoli (Reise, page 83), Solomori is ordinarily regarded in Moslem countries as the great master of divination. SEE CHARMER.

6. , shod’ ob, “a consulter with familiar spirits” (Sept. ; Vulg. qui Pythones consulit). Most writers treat this class of diviners as necromancers (so Gesenius, Thes. page 34). But, whatever be the close connection of the two as deducible from other passages, it is impossible to suppose that in Deu 18:11, is synonymous with , which follows almost next. Bottcher, De Inferis, carefully distinguishes between the two expressions (page 108), and then identifies the , which occurs in the plural in Job 32:19 (in its primary sense of a leathern bottle, or water-skin), with the noun of the same form which is found in so many other passages with a different meaning. In these the Sept. has invariably used , which connects our phrase with ventriloquism, as a branch of the divining art. (For the supposed connection between the primary and secondary senses of , see Gesenius, Thes. page 34, and Lex. by Robinson, page 20; also Bottcher, page 107. The analogy is also in close consistency with the words of Job. (Umbreit, in loc.) Having settled the sense of the word, Bittcher goes on to draw a noticeable distinction in certain phrases where it occurs. First, in the singular number designates the familiar spirit (i.e., what he calls “murmelbauch,” venter fremens [in a correct sense], or “murmelwesen,” daemon fremens [in a superstitious sense]). Hence we have such phrases as , mistress [or owner] of a familiar spirit (1Sa 28:7); , a consulter or questioner of a familiar spirit [i.e., says Bottcher, “ventriloquus vates ipse”] (Deu 18:11). Secondly, , when governed by the particle , refers not to the vates, or professional consulter, but to the person who requests his aid: thus, while is said of the diviner (loc. cit.) (with the particle) is applied to king Saul, who sought the familiar spirit by the aid of the vates, or pythonissa (1Ch 10:13). “The same distinction,” says Bottcher, “is also maintained by the Targumists and Talmudists.” (Comp. 1Sa 28:8, “‘Divine to me, , by the familiar spirit.”) Thirdly, , in the plural, is used in a concrete sense to indicate the ventriloquists or diviners themselves, and not the ” familiar spirits” which were supposed to actuate them (De Inferis, page 101, 205, where the learned writer adduces similar cases of metonymy from other languages: as , “slow-bellies,” Tit 1:12; so our “Wits about town;” the German “Witzkopfe,” “Dickbluche,” etc.) By this canon we discover the general accuracy of our A.V. in such passages as Lev 19:31, where is well rendered, “Them that have familiar spirits.” Comp. Lev 20:6; 1Sa 28:3; 1Sa 28:9; 2Ki 23:24; Isa 8:19; Isa 19:3. In Isa 29:4, the same concrete rendering is applied to in the singular, contrary to Bottcher’s first and third canons; but this rendering is inferior to what Bttcher would suggest, viz. “Thy voice shall be as of a familiar spirit, out of the ground,” etc. This is the only passage where the accuracy of our version, thus tested, seems to be at fault; it contrasts strikingly, with the Sept. in this point, which maintains no distinction between the sing. and the plur. of this word, other than the mechanical one of putting for , and for . The Vulgate is more cautious, e.g. it renders most of the plurals magi, rightly, but is, on the whole, inferior to the A.V. in accuracy, for it translates both the sing. : of 2Ki 21:6, and the plur. of 2Ki 23:24, by the same word, Pythones, and similarly Isa 8:19; Isa 19:3. (For a description of the Delphian Pytha, or Pythonissa, and why ventriloquist faculties were attributed to her [whence one of her designations, ], see Potter’s Antiq. c. 9.) A vast amount of information touching the Hebrew , and its connection with the witch of Endor, is contained in the treatise of Leo Allatius, and Eustathius Antiochen, De Engastrimytho; and the Samuel redivicus of Michael Rothard, all reprinted in Critici Sacri, 8:303-458. See also St. Chrysostom, Opera (ed. Bened.), 7:445. A concise statement is contained in Bottcher’s work, pages 111-115. The identity of and with necromancy, contrary to Bottcher’s view, is maintained in D. Millii Dissertatio, especially in chapter 6, whom Gesenius follows in Thes. s.v. . See the Dissertatio in Ugol. Thesaur. 23:517-528. For ancient Jewish opinions on the apparition of Samuel to Saul, see Josephus, Ant. 6:14, 2, and Whiston’s note in loc.; also Sir 46:20. On this subject, the second letter of Sir W. Scott, On Demonology and Witchcraft, with the note in the appendix of the volume, is well worthy of perusal. Whatever reality God may have permitted to this remarkable case of divination, the resort to it by Saul was most offensive to the divine Being; the king’s rejection is partly ascribed to it in 1Ch 10:13 : somewhat similar is the reason assigned for God’s vengeance on Manasseh (2Ki 21:11. See the remarkable canons 61 and 65 of the Trullan [Quinisextum] Council; Beveregii Synod. 1:227, 235). SEE FAMILIAR SPIRIT.

7. , yiddeini’, from , to know, is uniformly rendered in A.V. by “wizzard,” akin to “wise” and to the German verb “wissen” (old German wizan), to know. (Sept. in four places, , a knowing one; Vulg. ariolus, most frequently.) This Hebrew noun occurs eleven times, and in every instance is coupled with ; we may thus regard it as indicating a usual concomitant (perhaps of cleverness and dexterity) with ventriloquism: this view is confirmed by the Sept. , as the rendering of in Isa 19:3, a verse which proves the Egyptian arts of divination were substantially the same as the Hebrew in that age (comp. Bottcher, page 115, 231; and see Rawlinson’s note on Herod. 2:83, in explanation of a seeming discrepancy between the prophet and the historian). In another passage of Isaiah (8:19) there occurs a good description of these , in the two epithets , expressive of the chirping, piping sounds of young birds, and , applied to the cooing of the dove, in 8:19. (With the former of these, compare Horace, Sat. 1:8, 40, and with the latter, Virgil, AEneid, 3:39. So in Homer, Il. 11:101, the shade of Patroclus departs with what Shakspeare [Hamlet, 1:1] calls a “squeak and gibber.” An unexpected illustration of these arts may be met with in Captain Lyons’s Private Journal, page 358, where he de scribes the feats of the Esquimaux ventriloquist Toolemak of Igloolik. Compare the curious account of a modern necromancy left us by Benvenuto Cellini; both of these are narrated in Sir D. Brewster’s Letters on Natural Magic, pages 68-75, and 176-178.) The Sept. version, much more inexact than the English, renders the of Deu 18:11 by , or observer of omens; what the prodigies were, which, according to the extravagant belief of the Rabbinical writers, were used by these diviners, may be seen in Carpzov, Apparatus, pages 545, 546, where, among others, are adduced the bird Jiddoa and the monster Jaddua, to account for the origin of our term. This last was, according to the Rabbis, a certain beast in shape like a man (),’the bones of which the diviner held in his teeth (Maimon. De Idol. 6:3; Bulenger, De Div. 3:33; Delrio, Disquis. Mag. 4:2; Godwyn’s Mos. and Aar. 4:10). The Greek diviner ate certain efficacious parts of animals (Porphyr. De Abstinent. 2). For other bone divinations, see Rubruquis’s China, page 65, and Pennant’s Scotland, page 88 (in Pinkerton). SEE WIZARD.

8. The last designation used by Moses in the great passage before us (Deu 18:10-11) is , doresh’ el ham-methim’ (one seeking unto the dead; Sept. ; Vulg. qui gucerit a mortuis veritatem). This points to the famous art of necromancy, the , or (as they preferred to write it) of the Greeks. This was a divination in which answers were given by the dead. It was sometimes performed by the magical use of a bone or vein of a dead body, or by pouring warm blood into a corpse, as if to renew life in it (Lucan, Phar. 6:750). Sometimes they used to raise the ghosts of deceased persons by various ceremonies and invocations. Ulysses, in Odyssey, book 0, having sacrificed black sheep in a ditch, and poured forth libations, invites the ghosts, especially that of Tiresias, to drink of the blood, after which they become willing to answer his questions. (Compare the evocation of the shade of Darius, for counsel, after the defeat at Salamis, in the Persae of Eschylus, 630-634.) This evocation of spirits was called ; the offerings of the dead on this occasion were mild and unbloody; but Gregory Nazianzen (in Orat. II, contra Julian.) speaks also of “virgins and boys slaughtered at the evocation of ghosts.” From Isa 65:4, it would appear that the ancient Jews increased the sin of their superstition by using unclean offerings on such occasions: “They remain among the graves, and lodge in the monuments” (, will spend the night in these adyta); such were the favorite haunts of the necromancers: “they eat swine’s flesh” an idolatrous practice (comp. Ovid, Fasti, 1:349; Horace, Sat. 2:3, 164. Varro, De Re Rust. 2:4); “and broth of abominable things is in their vessels.” (We are reminded of the celebrated witch scenes in Shakspeare, Macbeth, I, 3; III, 5; and especially IV, 1.) Rosenmller, in. loc., refers, for a like incantation, to Marco Polo, Travels in the East, 3:24; and Sir J.F. Davis, in his China (last ed.), 2:73, mentions certain magic spells practiced by the Taou sect, “with the blood of swine, sheep, dogs, and other impure things.” A curious case of necromancy also occurs in the story of the philosopher Chuang-tsze and his wife, in the same volume pages 87, 88. In the 15th chapter of Sketches of Imposture, etc. (in the Family Library), “on Sepulchral and perpetual lamps,” may be found an interesting account of the reasons which induced the Egyptians to bestow so great attention on their dead; one of them, quoted from Kircher’s History of Egyptian Antiq., rests on the opinion “that the souls of the deceased tarry with their bodies in the grave.” This, added to the conception of the more enlarged knowledge of the dead, lay at the foundation of necromancy. The earliest historical tale of this sort of divination which we recollect is related by Herodotus concerning Periander of Corinth and his wife Melissa, whose spirit he consulted for information about a hidden treasure (5:92). In one of the most interesting dialogues of Lucian, the “Menippus,” or “Necyomanteia,” a very good description is given of various necromantic ceremonies. (For an abstract, see Occult Sciences, by Smedley, etc. pages 183, 185.) In Tertullian’s treatise, De Anima, occurs a remarkable passage on necromancy, at the conclusion of which he says, “If certain souls have been recalled into their bodies by the power of God as manifest proofs of his prerogative, that is no argument that a similar power should be conferred on audacious magicians, fallacious dreamers, and licentious poets” (c. 56, 57). We may observe, in concluding this subject, that in confining (with Bottcher) necromancy proper to the last phrase on Moses’s list, , we have the authority of the A.V., which limits the word necromancer ( in our Bible) to this phrase. SEE NECROMANCER.

III. Forms of divination merely referred to in the Bible, without special sanction or reprobation. We here find the same general phrase as in the foregoing passage of Deuteronomy introductory to another but much shorter catalogue; for in the remarkable passage of Eze 21:21 [or 26 in the Hebrew], we have the three famous divinations of the king of Babylon. The prophet represents the monarch as standing “at the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways, to use divination” ( ).

1. He “made the arrows bright” (rather, he shook them together,Vulg. commiscens sagittas, , Sept. ), “each arrow having inscribed on it the name of some town to be assaulted. From the quiver the arrows were drawn one by one, and the city which was written on the first arrow drawn out was the first to be beleaguered” (Jerome, in loc.). In this instance Jerusalem was the ill-fated object of this divination, as we learn from the next verse, where the divination for Jerus. ( ) signifies the arrow bearing the inscription of the doomed capital, as it first emerged from the divining-quiver (Prideaux, Connect. 1:85). Estius says “he threw up a bundle of arrows to see which way they would light, and, falling on the right hand, he marched towards Jerusalem.” We have here a case of belomancy (). This superstition, which is prohibited in the Koran (chapters 3:39; 5:4), was much practiced by the idolatrous Arabs (D’Herbelot, Bibl. Or. s.v. Acdah). Their arrows, which were consulted before any thing of moment was undertaken, as when a man was about to marry, or undertake a journey, or the like, used to be without heads or feathers, and were kept in the temple of some idol. Seven such arrows were kept at the temple of Mecca, but in divination they generally used but three. On one of these was written, my Lord hath bidden me; on the second was inscribed, my Lord hath forbidden me; while the third was blank. If the first was drawn, it gave the god’s sanction to the enterprise; the second prohibited it; but the third being drawn required that the arrows should again be mixed and again drawn until a decisive answer was obtained (Pococke’s Spec. Arab, page 324, etc.; Gesenius, Thes. p. 1224; Sale’s Koran, Prelim. Dissert. page 90; Clodius, Diss. de Mag. Sagitt. 3:2). Della Valla, however, says (page 276), “I saw at Aleppo a Mohammedan who caused two persons to sit on the ground opposite each other, and gave them four arrows into their hands, which both of them held with their points downward,” etc. The two arrows in the right hand of the Assyrian king (sculptured on one of the large slabs brought from Nimroud) are conjectured to be proofs that divination by arrows was practiced in ancient Nineveh. The king is represented as attended by two divinities with fir-cone and basket, and therefore is in a religious and not a martial occupation (Bonomi, Nineveh and its Palaces, 3d edit. page 306). Three suitors of an Eastern princess decided their claims by shooting each an arrow inscribed with his own name. The most distant arrow indicated the name of the successful competitor (Roberts’s Orient. Illust. page 491). We read of a somewhat similar custom in use among the ancient Teutons (Tacitus, Germ. 10), and among the Alani (Am. Marcell. 31); also among the modern Egyptians (Lane, 2:111). This sort of divination of the king of Babylon must not be confounded with the arrow shot () of Jonathan, the affectionate expedient of his secret warning to David, 1Sa 20:20, etc., in which, though there were three arrows, there was no uncertain divination, but an understood sign (Browne, Vulg. Errors, 5:23, 27). Again, in the shooting of arrows by Joash, king of Israel, at the command of the dying prophet (2Ki 13:17-18), there is in the three arrows only an accidental, not a real resemblance; moreover, we have in this action not an unauthorized superstition, but a symbolical prophecy (comp. the symbol with Virgil, AEn. 9:52). SEE ARROW.

2. “He consulted with the images,” (Sept. ; Vulg. interrogavit idola), literally teraphim. These household gods of the Shemitic nations are often mentioned in the Old Testament from the time of the Syrian Laban (Gen 31:19) to this of the Chaldee Nebuchadnezzar (see Aug. Pfeiffer, De Teraphim, in Ugolini Thesaur. 23:566, who, unnecessarily indeed, suggests, on grammatical grounds, that the king of Babylon may have used these three divinations previous to his leaving home). Dr. Fairbairn (on Eze 21:21) says, “This is the only passage where the use of teraphim is expressly ascribed to a heathen.” This form of idolomancy () is, however, elsewhere named (Zec 10:2; 1Sa 15:23, = an inquirer). These were wooden images (1Sa 19:13) consulted as “idols,” from which the excited worshippers fancied that they received oracular responses. The notion that they were the embalmed heads of infants on a gold plate inscribed with the name of an unclean spirit is Rabbi Eliezer’s invention. Other Rabbis think that they mean “astrolabes, etc.” SEE TERAPHIM.

3. “He looked in the liver,” (Sept. v.r. ; Vulgate, exta consuluit). Here we have a case of a well-known branch of splanchnomancy (), or divination by the inspection of entrails, which was called extispicium (or art of the haruspices), practiced in Rome by the Etrurian soothsayers, and much referred to in both Greek and Latin authors. Cicero (De Divin. 2:15) mentions the importance of the liver in divination of this kind; hence this branch was called hepatoscopy (, Herodian. 8:3, 17; see also Pliny, 11:37; Ovid, Metamorph. 15:136). Arrian (Alex. 7:18) mentions an evil prognostication in reference to the deaths of Alexander and Hephaestion; and Suetonius (Aug. 95:2) a happy one. Strabo also (3:232, ed. Casaub.) mentions this divination as practiced by the Lusitani: not only animals offered in sacrifice, but captives in war furnished these barbarians with victims for this bloody divination. A still more hideous mode of divination is mentioned of the ancient Britons, who would cut down at a blow of the sword one of their human sacrifices, in order to observe the posture of his fall, his convulsions, flow of the blood, etc., and so gather their predictions according to the rule of their ancestors. This is is the only instance mentioned in Scripture of this superstition. The liver was the most important part of the sacrifice for divining purposes (Artemid. Oneirocr. 2:74; Cicero, De Div. 2:13). SEE LIVER

4. One of the remaining isolated terms of divination in the Scriptures is , ha-ittim’ the charmers, which occurs in Isa 19:3, in a passage descriptive of the idolatry and superstition of Egypt. It is derived by Gesenius and Meier from a root , atat, akin to Arab. Atta, which singifies to utter a dull murmuring sound. Meier defines the noun in question by murmurers or lispers. If so, we have here a class of the ventriloquists already described. But the Sept. gives another turn to the word, rendering by as if, coming after gods, it meant their shrines. Herodotus (2:83) tells us the Egyptians possessed many oracles besides that of Latona at Buto, which was most esteemed of all. He adds that the mode of delivering the oracles ( ) varied at the different shrines. See above.

5. In Dan 2:2, four classes of diviners are mentioned: two of these are described above; of the others , ahshaphim (chald. in Dan 2:27), is probably allied by derivation with the word , mekashsheph, which we have already described (Meier says =). The noun , ashpah (a quiver), from the same root, suggests the notion of concealment and covering. This, the probable meaning of our term, suits very well with the idea of divination, though it ill accords with the A.V., which, in all the eight passages in Daniel where it is found, renders it astrologers. Divination by the stars is not implied in the original. The Sept. in every place except one (and that is doubtful, see Trommii Concord. 2:1) translates by , and the Vulg. generally by magus. This suggests the association of the with the magians of Mat 2:1. (Dutripon, Concord. Biblic. Sacr. page 824). This, add to the fact that is generally coupled with the chartummim and the chaldaeans, probably influenced our translators in their choice of the English word. The original, however, is much less specific. Some philologists have imagined the word is no other than with the first letter dropped, and have also connected it with the Persian sophi. Such a derivation would rather point to occult arts and cabalistic divination. See Astrologer.

6. The expression used by Daniel in 1:20 , ha- chartummim’ ha-ashshaphim, the magicians (and) the astrologers is an asyndeton, for other places prove the second to be a different class from the first (see above). The close conjunction of the with the chartummim indicates their participation of the qualities of the latter, the , or sacred scribes of both Egypt and Babylon, over whom Daniel was appointed rab or master. In the learned Dissertatio D.Millii de chartummim aliisve orientalium magis (Ugolini Thes. 23:529,538) nearly all the accomplishments of the divining art are attributed to this influential caste, beginning with the genethliac mysteries. The horoscope, which was much in use by these brings us back to astrology, which (though not implied in the designation was no doubt a part of their wisdom. Gesenius, in Thes. and Lex. derives the word chartummim from cheret a graving tool and (on the anuthority of Creuzer, Symbolik u.Mythologie, 1:245; and Jablonski, Proleg. In Panth. Aegypt page 91, etc) connects the arts of the chartummim with the sacred hieroglyphical writings. Not less probably, from such a derivation, these diviners might be connected with the system of talismans, so rife in the East, and in Egypt in ancient times. SEE AMULET.

The talisman (Arabic tilsam, Greek ) is defined (in Freytag, Lex Arab. s.v. 3:64) to be a magical image upon which under a certain horoscope, are engraved mystic characters, as charms against enchantment or fascination. Talismans, among other uses, are buried with treasures to prevent them from being discovered. Thus this divination appears as a counterpart against another species (in rhabdomanch) which was used for the discovery of treasure. Equally varied are the gifts ascribed to the chartummim in the translations of the Sept. And Vulg. In eleven of the fifteen occurrences of the word (all descriptive of the magicians of Egypt and Babylon), and incantator are used in these versions; and veneficus in two; and in the remaining two and interpres. According to Jablonski, the name is derived from an Egyptian word chertomthaumaturgus, wonder-worker, (for other conjectures, see Kalisch, Gen. page 647; Heidegger, Hist. Patr. 20:23) of course it must have the same derivation in Dan 1:20, and therefore cannot be from the chaldee dhardamand skilled in science (Jahn, Bibl. Arch 402). If their divination was connected with drawn figures, it is paralleled by the Persian Rummal (calmet) the modern Egyptian Zaurgeh, a gable of letters ascribed to Idris or Enoch (Lane, 1:354), the renowned chinese king, lines discovered by Fouhi on the back of a tortoise, which explain everything, and on which 1450 learned commentaries have been written (Huc’s China, 1:123 sq); and the Jamassu, or marks on paper, of Japan (Kempfes Hist. 115). SEE MAGICIAN

7. , Kasdim (Sept ; Vulg. Chaldaei) Here, says Cicero (De Div. 1:1) we have a class so named, not from their art, but from their nation. But only a section of the nation, the learned cast: the dominant race, says Ernest Renam, who gave their name, though only a minority, as the Turks elsewhere, to the mass of the population, which differed from them in descent (Histoire des langues Semitiques, pages 67,68). They are mentioned by Herodotus (1:181) as a sacerdotal caste. Cicero, l.c., notices their devotion to astrology, and their working out a science by which could be predicted what was to happen to each individual, and to what fate he was born. Diodorus Siculus, after Ctesias, assigns the same office at Babylon to the Chaldaeans as the priests bore in Egypt (Hist. 2:29). Juvenal (Sat. 6:552) and Horace (Carm. 1:11) refer to the Chaldean divination. The prophet Isaiah (Isa 47:12-13) mentions several details of it in terms which we have already described. How the same appellation,

, came to designate both the military and the learned classes of Babylon (comp. 2Ki 24:5; 2Ki 24:10 etc., with Dan 2:2), and how conflicting are the views of the modern learned as to the origin of the Chaldaeans, see Renan, l.c., and Sir H. Rawlinson, in note or Rawlinson’s Herod. 1:319. SEE CHALDAEAN.

8. One name more (occurring in Dan 2:27; Dan 4:4; and Dan 5:7; Dan 5:11) remains to be noticed descriptive of the sauans of Babylon , gazerin (Sept. , Vulg. Aruspices; A.V. soothsayers) Gesenius and Rosenmller agree in deriving this word from , gazar, to divide, cut up etc.; but they differ in the application of the idea, the former making it mean the heavens divided into astrological sections (of which he gives a diagram in his Comm. zu Jes. 3:555); the latter (Schol. in Daniel, II. cc.) supposint it to refer to the division and inspection of the entrails of victims by aruspices: both these kinds of divination have been described above. Others refers to Josephus (War, 6:5, 3) for astronomical portents such as the gazerin would interpret (see also St. August. De Doctr. Christ. 2:32, etc.). Jerome, in his Commentary in loc., defends his own version, aruspices, by the authority of Symmachus. The Sept. and Theodotion translate the word as if it were a proper noun, like Chaldaeans. SEE SOOTHSAYER.

9. In Hos 4:12, we read, “My people ask counsel at their stocks (or wood, ); and their staff declareth unto them” ( ). Those who hold that two separate prognostications are here referred to, generally make the former a consultation of wooden idols, or teraphim, which has already been treated (see Rosenmller and Pococke, in loc.). Jeremiah reproaches the Jews for “saying to a stock (), My Father” (Hos 2:27); and Habakkuk, “Woe unto him that saith to the wood (), Awake” (Hos 2:19). But Pocock (on Hos 4:12) gives reasons for supposing that only one sort of superstition is meant in this verse, namely, rhabdomancy (), divination by staves or rods. Many kinds of this are on record. Maimonides (Praecept. neg. 31) mentions the practice of “taking a staff and striking the ground with it, and making horrid noises, while the diviners would stand in a reverie, intently looking on the ground, till they became like men struck with epileptic fits; when reduced to this frenzy they would utter their prophecy.” The learned Rabbi says he saw such a case himself in Barbary. Chaskuni (quoted by Drusius on Deu 18:10) adduces another method by which “the diviner measures his staff with his finger or his hand: one time he says I will go; another time, I will not go; then, if it happens at the end of the staff to be I will not go, he goes not.” Rabbi Moses Mikkotzi (in Pococke, 1.c.) mentions a divination by a piece of stick, peeled on one side, which, thrown afar out of the hand, decided a doubt, according as the peeled or unpeeled side fell uppermost. Tacitus (Germ. 10) describes a similar prognostication among the Germans. Theophylact, after Cyril, on this passage of Hosea, mentions the use of two rods, set upright, with enchantments and muttering of verses. “The rods,” says he, “falling through the influence of daemons, suggested answers to inquirers, according as they fell to the right or to the left, forward or backward.” Staves were sometimes carried about as the shrines of deities, says Festus. Tibullus (L. Eleg. 11:15) refers to these modern deities. In allusion to the same superstition, Clement of Alexandria (Strom. 1:151) mentions certain tubes as the shrines of deities (comp. Euseb. Prep. Evang. 1:9).

Another explanation is that the positive or negative answer to the required question was decided by the equal or unequal number of spans in the staff (Godwyn, 1.c.). Parallels are found among the Scythians (Herod. 4:67, and Schol. Nicandri, ), Persians (Strabo, 15, page 847), Assyrians (Athen. Deipn. 12:7), Chinese (Stavorinus’s Java; Pinkerton, 11:132), and New Zealanders (called Niu, Taylor’s New Zealand, page 91). These kinds of divination are expressly forbidden in the Koran, and are called al Meisar (chapter 5, Sale’s Prelim. Dissert. page 89). Herodotus (7:11) describes the Alani women as gathering and searching anxiously for very smooth and straight wands to be used in this superstitious manner. Sir J. Chardin says it is common in India for diviners to accompany conquerors, to point out where treasures may be found; and he adduces a case at Surat: when Siragi went thither, he made his soothsayers use divining rods, struck on the ground, or on walls, etc. Harmer (2:282) supposes a reference to such a practice may be implied in Isa 45:3 (see St. Chrysostom, Opera [ed. Bened.] 11:518, 824). Sir J.F. Davis (China, 2:101) mentions a Chinese mode of divination by certain pieces of wood, in shape the longitudinal sections of a flattish oval. These are thrown by pairs, and, as they turn up, a judgment is formed of a future event by consulting the interpretation afforded by a Sibylline volume hung up in the nearest temple.” Captain Burton, in his Eastern Africa, mentions some not dissimilar practices of divination; nor are these “fooleries of faith,” as he calls them, unknown among ourselves. Even now miners in the south-west of England walk with their dowsing stick in hand over suspected spots; a motion of this divining rod is in their view an infallible sign of a lode. Similar superstitions have lately been practiced in this country in searching for petroleum. Rudolf Salchlin has written a treatise on this curious subject: Idolomantia et Rhabdomantia and christiana, size Dissertatio historico-theologia ad Hos 4:12 (Berne, 1715). A good deal of information may be obtained in Jacobi Lydii Syntag. Sacr. de re Militari, c. 3 (Ugolini, Thes. 27:142-146), and in Delrio, Disquis. Magic. lib. 4, c. 2, quaest. 3, section 1, sub fin.; section 3, sub init. SEE STOCK; SEE STAFF. Compare Mercersburg Review, July, 1861. On the general subject, see Andr. Riveti, Opp. (Roterd. 1651), 1:1244 sq. On the arts of divination practiced by the ancient Greeks and Romans, see Smith’s Dict. of Class. Antiq. s.v. Divinatio. SEE SORCERY.

Fuente: Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature

Divination

of false prophets (Deut. 18:10, 14; Micah 3:6, 7, 11), of necromancers (1 Sam. 28:8), of the Philistine priests and diviners (1 Sam. 6:2), of Balaam (Josh. 13:22). Three kinds of divination are mentioned in Ezek. 21:21, by arrows, consulting with images (the teraphim), and by examining the entrails of animals sacrificed. The practice of this art See ms to have been encouraged in ancient Egypt. Diviners also abounded among the aborigines of Canaan and the Philistines (Isa. 2:6; 1 Sam. 28). At a later period multitudes of magicians poured from Chaldea and Arabia into the land of Israel, and pursued their occupations (Isa. 8:19; 2 Kings 21:6; 2 Chr. 33:6). This superstition widely spread, and in the time of the apostles there were “vagabond Jews, exorcists” (Acts 19:13), and men like Simon Magus (Acts 8:9), Bar-jesus (13:6, 8), and other jugglers and impostors (19:19; 2 Tim. 3:13). Every species and degree of this superstition was strictly forbidden by the law of Moses (Ex. 22:18; Lev. 19:26, 31; 20:27; Deut. 18:10, 11).

But beyond these various forms of superstition, there are instances of divination on record in the Scriptures by which God was pleased to make known his will.

(1.) There was divination by lot, by which, when resorted to in matters of moment, and with solemnity, God intimated his will (Josh. 7:13). The land of Canaan was divided by lot (Num. 26:55, 56); Achan’s guilt was detected (Josh. 7:16-19), Saul was elected king (1 Sam. 10:20, 21), and Matthias chosen to the apostleship, by the solem lot (Acts 1:26). It was thus also that the scape-goat was determined (Lev. 16:8-10).

(2.) There was divination by dreams (Gen. 20:6; Deut. 13:1, 3; Judg. 7:13, 15; Matt. 1:20; 2:12, 13, 19, 22). This is illustrated in the history of Joseph (Gen. 41:25-32) and of Daniel (2:27; 4:19-28).

(3.) By divine appointment there was also divination by the Urim and Thummim (Num. 27:21), and by the ephod.

(4.) God was pleased sometimes to vouch-safe direct vocal communications to men (Deut. 34:10; Ex. 3:4; 4:3; Deut. 4:14, 15; 1 Kings 19:12). He also communed with men from above the mercy-seat (Ex. 25:22), and at the door of the tabernacle (Ex. 29:42, 43).

(5.) Through his prophets God revealed himself, and gave intimations of his will (2 Kings 13:17; Jer. 51:63, 64).

Fuente: Easton’s Bible Dictionary

Divination

The one exception noticed above is 1Sa 15:23, where we read that ‘rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft;’ but it would be better to say ‘the sin of divination.’ The word used is Kasam (, LXX ). It stands for Joseph’s divining cup. The original meaning of the word seems to be ‘to divide’ or ‘partition out.’ Its first appearance is where the elders of Moab go to Balaam with ‘the rewards of divination in their hand’ (Num 22:7), and where the seer announces that ‘there is no divination against Israel’ (23:23). Balaam is directly called a diviner (A. V. soothsayer) in Jos 13:22. We meet with it among the list of similar practices in Deu 18:10; Deu 18:14, where we are given to understand that it was common among the Canaanites.

The Philistines had their diviners (1Sa 6:2), and the witch of End or was asked ‘to divine by the familiar spirit’ (1Sa 28:8) in Isa 44:25, it is said of God that He ‘frustrateth the significant tokens of liars (i.e. their false miracles), and maketh diviners mad;’ and in Jer 14:14, false prophets ‘prophesy unto you a false vision and divination, and a thing of nought and the deceit of their heart.’ See also Jer 27:9; Jer 29:8; Eze 12:24; Eze 13:6-7; Eze 13:9; Eze 13:23; Eze 21:29; Eze 22:28; Mic 3:6-7; Zec 10:2.

In Isa 3:2 the word is rendered ‘prudent;’ and in Pro 16:10 we read that ‘a divine sentence,’ i.e. a word of divination, ‘ is in the lips of the king.’ The diviners were doubtless shrewd men, well acquainted with the affairs of those whom they had to do with, and able to deliver their prognostications in oracular and enigmatical language.

Three special modes of divination are alluded to in Eze 21:21, ‘The king of Babyl on stood at the parting of the way, at the head of two ways, to use divination: he made his arrows (or knives) bright, he consulted with his images (or seraphim), he looked in the liver.’

The ordinary word for a diviner in the LXX is , a seer or soothsayer. this art is only once referred to in the N.T., namely, in Act 16:16, where we read of the Philippian damsel that she got for her masters much gains by divining ().

Fuente: Synonyms of the Old Testament

Divination

Eze 13:7. Used in Scripture of false systems of ascertaining the divine will, such as are allied to idolatry: as necromancy, which evoked the dead (1Sa 28:8); prognostication by arrows (Eze 21:21). The arrows marked with names of places to be attacked were shaken (for “He made His arrows bright,” translated, “He shook”) together in a quiver; whichever came out first intimated the place selected; or else threw them in the air to see in alighting which way they inclined, toward Jerusalem or Ammon. Inspecting entrails. The healthy or unhealthy state of the sacrificial entrails intimated success or failure. In the Nineveh sculptures the king is represented with a cup in his right hand, his left hand resting on a bow, also two arrows in the right hand, possibly for divination. The “magicians” of Egypt in Gen 41:8, (chartumim, from cheret “a style” or pen,) were sacred “scribes” of the hieroglyphics, devoted to astrology, magic, etc.; else from Egyptian chertom, “wonder workers,” or cher-tum, “bearers of sacred spells.”

Daniel was made “master of the magicians” (Dan 5:11); chokmim, wise men, our wizards (Exo 7:11);” sorcerers” (mekaskphim), “mutterers of magic formulae” (Isa 47:9-12). Jannes or Anna in Egyptian means “scribe,” a frequent name in papyri of the time of Rameses II. Jambres, the other name of an Egyptian magician preserved by Paul (2Ti 3:8), means “scribe of the south.” The earliest prohibition of witchcraft is Exo 22:18, “thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” Witchcraft was an appeal to a power alien from God. So it was accounted rebellion against Jehovah. Saul’s disobedience and rebellion against God’s will led him, though zealous to extirpate witches so long as God’s law did not interfere with his impatient self-will, at last to consult the witch of Endor; Samuel’s words as to his disobedience in the case of Amalek proving prophetic, “rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry” (1Sa 15:23; compare 1Sa 28:3-20).

“So Saul died for his transgression (Hebrew shuffling evasion of obedience) … and also for asking counsel of one that had a familiar spirit, to inquire of it” (1Ch 10:13). “Wizards,” yid’oniym, from yaada “to know” (Lev 19:31). Consulters of “the dead,” ‘oboth (Lev 20:6), “those having familiar spirits” which they consulted to evoke the dead; literally, “bottles” (leather) inflated by the spirit; compare Job 32:19, “my belly is as wine which hath no vent … ready to burst like new bottles.” The pythonesses (margin of Act 16:16) spoke with a deep voice as from the belly; by ventriloquism (Septuagint so translated “them that have familiar spirits,” ventriloquists) they made a low voice sound (“peep and mutter”) as from the grave or departed person’s spirit (Isa 19:3; Isa 29:4).

Scripture has written for all ages (Isa 8:19-20):”when they shall say, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits; and unto wizards that peep and that mutter, should not a people seek unto their God? (should they seek) for the (good of) the living to the dead? To the law and to the testimony … if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” This tests and condemns modern spiritualism, the sign of “the latter times and the last days” (1Ti 4:1), “seducing spirits and doctrines suggested by demons” (2Ti 3:1-8). The phenomena seem supernatural and Satanic, and the communications often lying, as was to be expected from “the father of lying” (Joh 8:44). The Angekoks, Esquimaux sorcerers, when converted, have declared that their sorceries, when they were heathen, were not mere impostures, that they were acted on by a power they could not control; but when they believed in Jesus they had neither the will nor the power to do what they used in their pagan state.

Brainerd states the same as to the Indian diviners, namely, that all their former powers of divination departed the moment the word of God entered their souls. Satan’s design in spiritualism is, judging from the alleged spirit communications, to supersede Scripture with another authority (namely, spirit communications) in matters of faith. Satan and his demons are the real speakers in these pretended communications from the spirits of the dead. The “associate spirit” of spiritualism answers to the Scripture “familiar spirit” of the wizards. The pythoness and the witch of Endor were each a “medium” between the consulters and the powers of darkness. The consulters are put en rapport with the latter, not really with the departed dead. Scripture (Ecc 9:5-6, “the dead know not anything … neither have they any more a portion forever in anything done under the sun”; 2Ki 2:9; Luk 16:19-31) implies that it is not the spirits of the dead that make the alleged communications, though these communications assert that it is; this assertion is from a lying spirit, such as was in Ahab’s prophets (1Ki 22:22).

The dead do not return, they are personated by evil spirits. Spiritualism is virtually condemned in Deu 18:10; 2Ki 17:17; 2Ki 21:6. “Sorcerers” are especially mentioned as about to abound with “lying wonders,” and to be adjudged to damnation, at the Lord’s coming again (2Th 2:9-11; Mal 3:5; Rev 21:8; Rev 22:15). The three frog-like demons out of the mouths of the anti-trinity, the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet, shall “work miracles” to tempt the ten kings under Antichrist to the last battle for the kingship of the world, against Christ, in “the great day of God Almighty” (Rev 16:13-14; compare Zec 13:2; Mat 24:24; Rev 13:14-15). Paul was “grieved,” so far was he from seeking and welcoming like spiritualists the pythoness’ testimony to him (Act 16:17-18); for the Spirit of Christ and the spirit of divination cannot dwell together in the same soul.

God condemns those who “remain among the graves and lodge in the monuments” (Isa 65:4) for necromancy, to consult the dead. The warning in Isa 8:19-20; Mar 5:3, applies to all times. The witch of Endor was “mistress of a spirit by which the dead are conjured up” (1Sa 28:7, ba’alath ‘owb). Saul’s request, “bring me him up whom I shall name,” explains the previous “divine (qacomi) unto me by the familiar spirit.” The witch’s recognizing Saul as soon as Samuel appeared proves that her art was not mere jugglery: “Why hast thou deceived me? for thou art Saul”; she was in a state of clairvoyance. On the other hand, her “crying with a loud voice,” startled at the sight of Samuel, shows that his appearance differed essentially from anything she had ever by demon art effected before. She tells Saul, “I saw gods (a supernatural being) ascending out of the earth … an old man covered with a (prophet’s) mantle” (me’il).

Saul apparently did not see Samuel’s person, but recognized the “mantle.” Saul’s inconsistency is convicted by Samuel: “wherefore then dost thou ask of me, seeing the Lord is departed from thee, and is become thine enemy?” If God was departed from him he should have been the more afraid to increase Jehovah’s displeasure by breaking the laws in consulting the dead, as if they were less under God’s control than the living. Abject superstition never reasons. Samuel’s prophecy of his and his sons’ death on the morrow, and Israel’s defeat by the Philistines, proves Samuel’s appearance to have been of God, and not by demoniac agency nor an illusion (Sir 46:20). God for special reasons awakened His servant out of his repose (“why hast thou disquieted me,” etc.) to appear, not at a conjuring call which He forbids, but to show the witch and the king the terrible penalty of disobedience and witchcraft, as he (Samuel) had long ago declared in more general terms when alive (1Sa 15:23; 1Sa 28:17-19).

Jehovah’s principle is (Eze 14:4; Eze 14:7-8), “every man that setteth up his idols in his heart and putteth the stumbling-block of his iniquity before his face, and cometh to the prophet, I the Lord will answer him that cometh, according to the multitude of his idols, that I may take the house of Israel in their own heart … I will answer him by Myself” (by My own special interposition), answering the fool according to his folly, making the sinner’s sin his own punishment. In Egypt books containing magic formulae belonged exclusively to the king, the priests and wise men, who formed a college, being called in by Pharaoh when needful. The qecem divined the future by any mode of taking omens, from a root “to cut.” But the kashaph, mekashphim, “sorcerers” above, used fascinations and magic charms (Exo 7:11; Exo 22:18; Dan 2:2; Deu 18:10). The me’oneen (2Ki 21:6),”an observer of times,” from ‘aanan “to cover,” using covert arts; or else from ‘on, “time,” “fixed time”; those who define the exact auspicious time to travel, to traffic, etc.; or else “astrologers,” who judge by the stars auspicious and inauspicious days.

The Septuagint explain it of “observers of words,” so as to decide by them whether success will attend an undertaking or not (Gen 24:14; 1Sa 14:9-10; 1Ki 20:33). Others take it from ”Ayin, “the eye,” “one fascinating with the eyes” (Mat 20:15). “Monthly prognosticators” (mod’im), who every new moon professed by observations of it to foretell the future (Isa 47:13). Menachashim, “charmers of serpents,” from naachaash, “serpent,” “to augur.” Hobreb shamaim, “dividers of the heavens,” watching conjunctions and oppositions of the stars; in casting a nativity they observed the sign which arose at the time of one’s birth, the mid heaven, the sign in the west opposite the horoscope, and the hypogee.

Divination by rods is alluded to in Hos 4:12, “their staff declareth unto them”; a rod stripped of bark on one side, not on the other, was thrown up; if the bore side alighted uppermost it was a good omen, otherwise a bad omen. The Arabs mark one rod God bids, the other God forbids; whichever came out first from the case decided the issue. Consultation of idols’ oracles is referred to in 2Ki 1:2-6. The only true “oracle” (debir) was the holy of holies (1Ki 6:16; Psa 28:2); previously, consultation of the Lord through the priest with the ephod (2Sa 2:1; 2Sa 5:23). Our “oracles” are the Holy Scriptures (Act 7:38; Rom 3:2). Of dealings in magic in the New Testament instances occur: Simon Magus (Act 8:9-11); Elymas Bar Jesus (Act 13:6; Act 13:8); the pythoness (Act 16:16’s margin); the vagabond Jews, exorcists (Act 19:13; Act 19:19), the Ephesian books treating of “curious arts”; Gal 5:20, “witchcraft”; Rev 9:21, “sorceries.”

Fuente: Fausset’s Bible Dictionary

Divination

DIVINATION.See Magic, Divination, and Sorcery.

Fuente: Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible

Divination

Divination is a general term descriptive of the various illusory arts anciently practiced for the discovery of things secret or future. The human mind has always shown a strong curiosity to ascertain the course of fortune, and the issue of present or contemplated schemes; and in those countries and ages where ignorance of physical laws has combined with superstition to debase it, it has sought to gratify this innate disposition to pry into futurity, by looking for presages in things between which and the object of its anxiety no connection existed but in the diviner’s imagination. Scarcely a single department of nature but was appealed to, as furnishing, on certain conditions, good or bad omens of human destiny; and the aspect of things, which, perhaps by the most casual coincidence, marked some event or crisis in the life of one or two individuals, came to be regarded, by blind credulity, as the fixed and invariable precursor of a similar result in the affairs of mankind in general. By such childish and irrational notions was the conduct of the heathen guided in the most important, no less than in the most ordinary occurrences of life; and hence arose the profession of augurs, soothsayers, et hoc genus omne of impostors, who, engrafting vulgar traditions on a small stock of natural knowledge, established their claims to the possession of an occult science, the importance and influence of which they dexterously increased by associating it with all that was pompous and imposing in the ceremonies of their religion.

This science, if that can be called science which was the product of ignorance and fraud united, was divided into various branches, each of which had its separate professors. In a general view, divination may be considered as either natural or artificial: the first being founded on the notion that the soul possesses, from its spiritual nature, some prescience of futurity, which it exemplifies particularly in dreams, and at the approach of death: the second, resting on a peculiar interpretation of the course of nature, as well as on such arbitrary observations and experiments as superstition introduced. The different systems and methods that were anciently in vogue are almost incredible: as, for instance, Aromancy, divining by the air; Arithmomancy, by means of numbers; Capnomancy, by the smoke of sacrifices; Chiromancy, by the lines on the palms of the hands; Hydromancy, by water; Pyromancy, by fire, etc. but without attempting an enumeration and explanation of all the arts of divination that were anciently practiced, let us confine ourselves to the mention of those which occur in sacred history.

1. Wise men (Exo 7:11; Isa 44:25; Jer 50:35; Dan 2:12, etc.), a term applied generally to magicians, or men who were skilled in natural science.

2. ‘Wizards’ or wise men, and ‘a witch,’ from an Arabic verb signifying ‘to reveal,’ both practicing divination by the same arts, i.e. pretending to reveal secrets, to discover things lost, find hidden treasure, and interpret dreams.

3. One who foretold what was to happen by the flight of birds, or the use of lots.

4. One who, though rendered by our translators ‘an observer of times,’ foretold political or physical changes by the motion of the clouds, along with whom Isaiah conjoins those who made the same predictions from eclipses, and the conjunction of the stars (Isa 47:13).

5. ‘An enchanter’ was probably one who practiced Ophiomancy, or the art of charming serpents, which was, and still is, a favorite trick of jugglery in the East.

6. ‘A charmer,’ one who placed words and things in a certain arrangement, or muttered them, as a kind of spell.

7. ‘A consulter with familiar spirits,’ or ‘a ventriloquist,’ was a wizard who asked counsel of his familiar, and gave the responses received from him to othersthe name being applied in reference to the spirit or demon that animated the person, and inflated the belly, so that it protuberated like the side of a bottle (see Lev 20:27; 1Sa 28:8; also Act 16:16).

8. ‘A necromancer,’ one who, by frequenting tombs, by inspecting corpses, etc. like the witch of Endor, pretended to evoke the dead, and bring secrets from the invisible world (Gen 41:8; Exo 7:11; Lev 19:26; Deu 18:10-12).

9. Belomancy, as it is called, a form of divination by means of arrows (Eze 21:21; see also 2Ki 13:14-19), a notable example of which occurs in the history of Nebuchadnezzar, who, being undecided whether to march first against Jerusalem or Rabbah, allowed neither his policy nor resentment to decide the course of his expedition, but was determined wholly by the result of superstitious rites. The way of divining by arrows was, having first made them bright ‘in order the better to follow them with the eye,’ to shoot them, and to prosecute the march according to the direction in which the greatest number of arrows fell; or, having ‘mixed together’ some arrows with the names of the devoted cities marked on them, to attack that first which was first drawn out; or to put in a bag three arrows, as is the practice of the Arabs, one of which is inscribed with the words ‘Command me, Lord,’ the second with ‘Forbid me, Lord,’ while the third is left blank; so that if the first is taken out, he was to go; if the second, he was to desist; if the third is drawn, no decision being given, the experiment is to be repeated.

10. Rhabdomancy, or divination by rods (Hos 4:12). This has been confounded with the preceding. But the instruments of divination which Hosea alludes to are entirely different from those described by Ezekiel, arrows being used by the latter, whereas the former speaks of ‘staff.’ The form of divination by the staff was, after placing it upright, to let it fall, and decide by the direction in which it fell, or, according to others, by measuring the staff with the finger, saying at each span, ‘I will go’ or ‘I will not go’ and determining the course, according as it happened to be the one or the other at the last measurement. Both of these, as Jerome informs us, were frequently practiced by the Assyrians and Babylonians. Herodotus (vi.) describes the Alani women as gathering and searching anxiously for very smooth and straight wands to be used in this superstitious manner.

11. Another way of divining was by ‘images’ (Eze 21:21), which are generally considered talismans, but which the Persian and other versions render astrological instruments or tables.

12. Another form of divination was, ‘by looking into the liver’ of a newly killed sacrifice, and by observing its state and color according to certain rules, to draw a favorable or unfavorable omen.

The last form which it is of consequence to notice as alluded to in Scripture was by ‘the cup.’ But in what manner it was practiced; whether it was by observing the appearance of some magical ingredients that were infused into the vessel; or whether allusion is made to a famous cup which the immemorial tradition of the East says has been in the possession of some great personages, and represents the whole world; or, finally, whether the original word rendered ‘divineth,’ should be rendered by ‘searching’ or ‘inquiring earnestly,’ as many learned writers, anxious to save the character of Joseph from the imputation of sorcery (Gen 44:5), have labored to prove, it is absolutely impossible, and we shall not attempt, to determine.

Egypt, the cradle of arts and sciences, if she did not give it birth, seem to have encouraged the practice of divination at an early age, and whether any of its forms had become objects of popular superstition, or were resorted to for the purposes of gain in the days of Joseph, it is well known that at the time of the Hebrew Exodus there were magicians in that country whose knowledge of the arcana of nature, and whose dexterity in the practice of their art, enabled them, to a certain extent, to equal the miracles of Moses. By what extraordinary powers they achieved those feats, how they changed their rods into serpents, the river water into blood, and introduced frogs in unprecedented numbers, is an inquiry that has occasioned great perplexity to many men of learning and piety. Some have imagined that the only way of accounting for the phenomena is to ascribe them to jugglery and legerdemain; the serpents, the frogs, and the other materials requisite having been secretly provided and dexterously produced at the moment their performances were to be exhibited. Others contend that these conjurors were aided by familiar spirits or infernal agents, with the Divine permission, in the performance of their wonderful feats. ‘Earth, air, and ocean,’ says a sensible writer, ‘may contain many things of which our philosophy has never dreamed. If this consideration tend to humble the pride of learning, it may remind the Christian that secret things belong not to him, but to a higher power.’

It is reasonable to suppose that as Moses never had been in any other civilized country, all the allusions contained in his writings to the various forms of divination were those which were practiced in Egypt; and, indeed, so strong a taste had his countrymen imbibed there for this species of superstition, that throughout the whole course of their history it seems to have infected the national character and habits. The diviners, who abounded both among the aborigines of Canaan and their Philistine neighbors (Isa 2:6), proved a great snare to the Israelites after their settlement in the promised land; and yet, notwithstanding the stern prohibitions of the law, no vigorous efforts were made to put an end to the crime by extirpating the practitioners of the unhallowed art, until the days of Saul, who himself, however, violated the statute on the night previous to his disastrous fall (1 Samuel 28). But it was Chaldea to which the distinction belongs of being the mother country of diviners. Such a degree of power and influence had they attained in that country, that they formed the highest caste and enjoyed a place at court; nay, so indispensable were they in Chaldean society that no step could be taken, not a relation could be formed, a house built, a journey undertaken, a campaign begun, until the diviners had ascertained the lucky day and promised a happy issue. A great influx of these impostors had, at various times, poured from Chaldea and Arabia into the land of Israel to pursue their gainful occupation, more especially during the reign of the later kings (Isa 8:19), and we find Manasseh not only their liberal patron, but zealous to appear as one of their most expert accomplices (2Ki 21:6; 2Ch 33:6). The long captivities in Babylon spread more widely than ever among the Jews a devoted attachment to this superstition; for after their return to their own country, having entirely renounced idolatry, and, at the same time, no longer enjoying the gift of prophecy or access to the sacred oracles, they gradually abandoned themselves, as Lightfoot has satisfactorily shown, before the advent of Christ, to all the prevailing forms of divination (Comment. on Matt.).

Against every species and degree of this superstition the sternest denunciations of the Mosaic law were directed (Exo 22:18; Lev 19:26; Lev 19:31; Lev 20:27; Deu 18:10-11), as fostering a love for unlawful knowledge and withdrawing the mind from God only wise; while, at the same time, repeated and distinct promises were given that, in place of diviners and all who used enchantments, God would send them prophets, messengers of truth, who would declare the divine will, reveal futurity, and afford them all the useful knowledge which was vainly sought for from those pretended oracles of wisdom. Much discussion, however, has been carried on by learned men to determine the question whether the ancient tribe of diviners merely pretended to the powers they exercised, or were actually assisted by demoniacal agency. The latter opinion is embraced by almost all the fathers of the primitive church. On the other hand, it has been, with great ability and erudition, maintained that the whole arts of divination were a system of imposture, and that Scripture itself frequently ridicules those who practiced them as utterly helpless and incapable of accomplishing anything beyond the ordinary powers of nature (Isa 44:25; Isa 47:11-13; Jer 14:14; Jon 2:8).

Fuente: Popular Cyclopedia Biblical Literature

Divination

The numerous references in scripture to the various forms of occult science, as it is now called, and the strong denunciations against the Israelites having anything to do with it, show that it was a dangerous reality, however much deception might at times have been associated with it. We read of it first in Gen 41:8, when Pharaoh called for all the magicians, chartummim, of Egypt and the wise men, to interpret his dream. All their resources failing, God’s man in the prison was called forth to show the dream, and this proved the occasion of working out God’s purposes respecting Joseph. Doubtless the above class of men were eminent for their learning, as those were at the court of Babylon, over whom Daniel was made chief. Dan 4:7; Dan 4:9.

Among those in Egypt there were some at least who were able to exercise powers beyond what they obtained by human learning. When Moses was endeavouring by means of signs to convince Pharaoh of the power of God, the magicians of Egypt were able to turn their rods into serpents, and to simulate the first two plagues with their enchantments. Exo 7:22; Exo 8:7. These plagues were ‘turning the water into blood’ and ‘bringing up frogs upon the land.’ This was beyond mere human power, and certainly the magicians did not work by the power of God; it must therefore have been by the power of Satan. We know not the nature of the enchantments used, the word is lat, and signifies ‘secret, magic arts.’ Satan can suggest what incantations to employ, if man is willing, and can exercise his powers as far as permitted by God. After the first two plagues the power was stopped, and the magicians had to own, when lice were produced, “This is the finger of God.”

In Deu 18:10-11 there is a list of things bearing on our subject which were denounced by the Lord:

1. DIVINATION, qesem, ‘prediction.’ A remarkable passage in Eze 21:21-22 gives some instances of how the heathen divined. The king of Babylon had come to two roads, and wanting to know whether he should take the road to Rabbath or to Jerusalem, resorted to divination. First ‘he shook his arrows’ (as it should be translated). Doubtless two or more arrows were marked each with the name of one of the cities, and shaken in the quiver, whichever arrow was taken by the right hand decided which road was to be taken. Jerusalem fell to the right hand. Perhaps the king was doubtful, so he consulted with images, teraphim; it is not known how these were used for divination: cf. Zec 10:2. The king still sought another guide: ‘he looked in the liver.’ By certain set rules the intestines of a sacrifice were said to be propitious or the reverse. The king using three sets of prognostications shows that he had no great confidence in his divinations: he may have been often deceived by them previously. How different from an answer from God vouchsafed to Israel!

Other means of divination are named, as, ‘divining by the cup.’ Gen 44:5; Gen 44:15. This was practised by the Egyptians and Persians and is thus described: small pieces of metal and stones, marked with signs were thrown into the cup, and answers gathered from the marks as they fell. Sometimes the cup was filled with water, and, as the sun fell upon the water, images were seen or fancied on its surface. Another reference is “My people ask counsel at their stocks and their staff declareth unto them.” Hos 4:12. The Arabs used two rods, on one of which was written God bids, and on the other God forbids, these were shaken together, and the first that fell, or was drawn, was taken for the answer; or one rod was thrown up and the direction in which it pointed when it fell was answer. It will be seen here that a ‘stock’ or god was invoked that what the staff declared should be controlled by him. So in all divination, incantations were used, and the gods invoked to let the replies given be the most favourable. Behind all this we know there were demons who controlled the results given, so as to work out the purposes of Satan.

In the Acts we find a damsel possessed with a spirit of divination, or of Python. This was the prophetic oracle at Delphi, held to be the centre and focus of Gentile divination. An evil spirit connected with that oracle possessed this young woman. The testimony of the evil spirit to the servants of the most high God is remarkable: it may have been compelled to speak thus when brought face to face with the power of God (as the demons owned Christ): but the apostle could not tolerate commendation from such a source – the spirit was cast out by a superior power. Her soothsaying or divination was stopped, and her master lost the source of his evil gains Act 16:16-19.

2. OBSERVER OF TIMES, or, as others translate it, ‘a practiser of augury:’ it may have included both. The word is anan, which is also translated ‘enchanter, soothsayer, and sorcerer.’ An observer of times had his lucky and unlucky days, and nothing must be set on foot without the gods being consulted. We have an instance of this in Esther, when Haman wanted to find a lucky day on which his plans against the Jews should be carried out. They resorted to the lot, but doubtless invoked their god to give it success. Others practised augury for the like purpose of ascertaining the will of their god. Thunder, lightning, observing the clouds, the flight of birds, or the appearance of certain birds, answered their questions.

3. ENCHANTER, nachash, ‘a whisperer.’ This seems to refer to the songs sung or charms muttered as a preliminary to obtaining a response from the spirits they wished to consult. It was one of the things that Manasseh resorted to. 2Ki 21:6.

4. WITCH or SORCERER. The Hebrew word is kashaph, and refers to the practice of magical arts, with the intent to injure man or beast, or to pervert the mind; to bewitch. It may be that they had no power to injure another unless that person, out of curiosity or friendship, was a willing listener to the incantations used. Manasseh practised also this wickedness. 2Ch 33:6. Nineveh is compared to a well-favoured harlot, the mistress of witchcrafts. Nah 3:4. The woman at Endor is usually called a witch.

5. CHARMER, from chabar, ‘to join together, to fascinate.’ It is associated with another word, lachash, ‘to speak in a soft gentle manner,’ and then is applied to the charming of serpents. Psa 58:5. In like manner man is deceived and disarmed of his aversion to intercourse with evil spirits until he finds himself under their sway. In Isa 19:3 another word, ittim, is translated ‘charmer’ with a similar meaning, as giving a gentle sound in the incantations of the sorcerers.

6. CONSULTER WITH FAMILIAR SPIRITS. The word is ob, which signifies ‘a leathern bottle or skin,’ and is supposed to imply that the persons alluded to were professedly inflated with a spirit. It occurs sixteen times and is translated in all the places as above. As an example of the meaning of this word we have the woman at Endor whom Saul consulted: she is said to have had a familiar spirit. Saul at once said to the woman, “Bring me him up whom I shall name unto thee.” The woman, as soon as her life was secured by an oath, replied, “Whom shall I bring up unto thee?” Apparently it was her profession to call up departed spirits, but on this occasion she recognised the work of a superior power, for when she saw Samuel she cried with a loud voice. Samuel told Saul that he and his sons on the morrow would be with him. Whether having the power to call up departed spirits is always implied in the above word is not known. A remarkable thing, in connection with those who have a familiar spirit, is that apparently there is a voice heard ‘out of the ground.’ Isa 29:4.*

7. WIZARD, from yiddeoni, ‘a knowing, wise one.’ The only thing said in scripture concerning such is that they ‘chirp and mutter.’ Isa 8:19. This was doubtless a part of their incantations, used to bewilder those who came for advice, and needful perhaps to arouse to action the spirit they wished to consult. The counsel may have been good at times in order the more effectually to draw the deluded ones under the influence of the evil spirits.

8. NECROMANCER, from darash methim, ‘to consult the dead.’ This occurs only in Deu 18:11, though the same is implied in Isa 8:19; Should the living go to the dead? should they not seek unto their God? And in Psa 106:28 we read of some who ‘ate the sacrifices of the dead,’ which may have been a preliminary to consulting them. The above is the list given in Deu 18:10-11; a few still demand attention.

9. ASTROLOGERS, habar shamaym, ‘dividers of the heavens’ for astrological purposes. Isa 47:13. The word for ‘astrologers’ throughout Daniel is a different word, ashshaph, and does not imply any connection with the heavens, but is rather ‘sorcerers’ or ‘enchanters,’ as we read with reference to Babylon in Isa 47:9; Isa 47:12, where a multitude of sorceries and great abundance of enchantments are spoken of. Along with the Babylonish astrologers in Isa 47:13 are associated STAR-GAZERS, who may have prognosticated events from the altered positions of the planets in respect to the stars. To this is added MONTHLY PROGNOSTICATORS, who probably drew their deductions from the moon. Connected with Babylon is also the word SOOTHSAYER, gezar, ‘to divide, determine fate or destiny’ by any pretended means of predicting events.

In the N.T., besides the case referred to of the damsel possessed by a spirit of Python, we read of others, such as Simon who used sorcery and bewitched the people of Samaria for a long time, Act 8:9-11; and Elymas the sorcerer, a Jew who was met with in Cyprus, who perverted the right ways of the Lord. Act 13:6; Act 13:8. These used magical arts (called ‘curious arts’ in Act 19:19) and bewitched the people. Another word is used for sorceries in the Revelation, , which refers to drugs, ‘to stupefy with drugs,’ and then for any system of sorcery by incantations. Rev 9:21; Rev 18:23; cf. Rev 21:8; Rev 22:15. Sorcery is classed with the grossest of sins, and is also applied to the professing church in mystical Babylon. The same word is translated ‘witchcraft’ in Gal 5:20.

The above is a brief glance at the subtle power of Satan in the unseen world, by which he deludes mankind, at least where man is the willing victim. Is it not clear that divination should not be confounded with mere jugglery? However much that may be associated with it, the real power of Satan is behind it. Some sorcerers converted in modern times in various parts of the earth have confessed that they were controlled by a power beyond their own; but that it ceased entirely on their believing and confessing Christ. It is important to see that this power is of Satan, because of the great increase in the present day of attempting to have intercourse with the spirits of the dead, to which even Christians may be, and indeed have been, drawn out of mere curiosity. “Let no man beguile you of your reward . . . . intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind.” Col 2:18.

* It has been doubted by many whether it was really Samuel that arose, because of his being God’s prophet. The woman had reckoned that her familiar demon would personate as usual: hence her fear when God allowed Samuel’s spirit in this special instance to appear. Of course Satan can do nothing without God’s permission, but it must be remembered that it is Satan that had the power of death, Heb 2:14; and both Hades and Death, as powers of Satan, will eventually be cast into the lake of fire. Rev 20:14.

Fuente: Concise Bible Dictionary

Divination

See Sorcery

Sorcery

Fuente: Nave’s Topical Bible

Divination

Divination is the profession of foretelling future events. Deu 18:10. Various modes of doing this have been resorted to in different nations. Thus Joseph’s cup was used in this art. Gen 44:5. The Egyptian magicians used to practise divination: so did the Chaldans at Babylon. Divination was practised among the Greeks. The appearance of the sky and of the heavenly signs, the flight and song of birds, the phenomena presented by the entrails of victims, etc., were supposed to prognosticate events; and, according to these prognostications, public as well as private actions were regulated. The Romans were equally zealous in divining. The hold that such practices had upon the public mind was very strong. We need the less wonder at it when we notice the eagerness with which, even now, persons will resort to a specious fortune-teller. There is frequent mention of diviners in Scripture; and the Hebrews are repeatedly warned against the pretensions of those who affected to foretell events.

Fuente: People’s Dictionary of the Bible

Divination

Divination. Divination is a “foretelling future events, or discovering things secret by the aid of superior beings, or other than human means”. It is used, in Scripture, of false systems of ascertaining the divine will. It has been universal in all ages, and all nations alike, both civilized and savage.

Numerous forms of divination are mentioned, such as

divination by rods, Hos 4:12,

divination by arrows, Eze 21:21,

divination by cups, Gen 44:5,

consultation of teraphim, 1Sa 15:23; Eze 21:21; Zec 10:2, see Teraphim.;

divination by the liver, Eze 21:21,

divination by dreams, Deu 13:2-3; Jdg 7:13; Jer 23:32, and

consultation of oracles. Isa 41:21-24; Isa 44:7.

Moses forbade every species of divination, because, a prying into the future, clouds the mind with superstition, and because, it would have been an incentive to idolatry. But God supplied his people with substitutes for divination which would have rended it superfluous, and left them in no doubt as to his will in circumstances of danger, had they continued faithful.

It was only when they were unfaithful that the revelation was withdrawn. 1Sa 28:6; 2Sa 2:1; 2Sa 5:23, etc. Superstition, not unfrequently, goes hand in hand with skepticism, and hence, amid the general infidelity prevalent throughout the Roman empire at our Lord’s coming, imposture was rampant.

Hence, the lucrative trade of such men as Simon Magus, Act 8:9,

Bar-jesus, Act 13:6,

the slave with the spirit of Python, Act 16:16,

the vagabond Jews,

exorcists, Luk 11:19; Act 19:13 and

others, 2Ti 3:13; Rev 19:20, etc.,

as well as the notorious dealers in magical books at Ephesus. Act 19:19.

Fuente: Smith’s Bible Dictionary

Divination

(Eng., “python”), in Greek mythology was the name of the Pythian serpent or dragon, dwelling in Pytho, at the foot of mount Parnassus, guarding the oracle of Delphi, and slain by Apollo. Thence the name was transferred to Apollo himself. Later the word was applied to diviners or soothsayers, regarded as inspired by Apollo. Since demons are the agents inspiring idolatry, 1Co 10:20, the young woman in Act 16:16 was possessed by a demon instigating the cult of Apollo, and thus had “a spirit of divination.”

Fuente: Vine’s Dictionary of New Testament Words

Divination

a conjecture or surmise, formed concerning future events, from things which are supposed to presage them. The eastern people were always fond of divination, magic, the curious arts of interpreting dreams, and of obtaining a knowledge of future events. When Moses published the law, this disposition had long been common in Egypt and the neighbouring countries. To prevent the Israelites from consulting diviners, fortune tellers, interpreters of dreams, &c, he forbade them, under very severe penalties, to consult persons of this description, and promised to them the true spirit of prophecy as infinitely superior. He commanded those to be stoned who pretended to have a familiar spirit, or the spirit of divination, Deu 18:9-10; Deu 18:15. The writings of the prophets are full of invectives against the Israelites who consulted diviners, and against false prophets who by such means seduced the people.

2. Different kinds of divination have passed for sciences, as

1. Aeromancy, divining by the air.

2. Astrology, by the heavens.

3. Augury, by the flight and singing of birds, &c.

4. Cheiromancy, by inspecting the lines of the hand.

5. Geomancy, by observing cracks or clefts in the earth.

6. Haruspicy, by inspecting the bowels of animals.

7. Horoscopy, a branch of astrology, marking the position of the heavens when a person is born.

8. Hydromancy, by water.

9. Physiognomy, by the countenance.

10. Pyromancy, a divination made by fire.

3. The kinds of divination, to which superstition in modern times has given belief, are not less numerous, or less ridiculous, than those which were practised in the days of profound ignorance. The divining rod, which is mentioned in Scripture, is still in some repute in the north of England, though its application is now confined principally to the discovery of veins of lead ore, seams of coal, or springs. In order that it may possess the full virtue for this purpose, it should be made of hazel. Divination by Virgilian, Horatian, or Bible lots, was formerly very common; and the last kind is still practised. The works are opened by chance, and the words noticed which are covered by the thumb: if they can be interpreted in any respect relating to the person, they are reckoned prophetic. Charles I. is said to have used this kind of divination to ascertain his fate. The ancient Christians were so much addicted to the sortes sanctorum, or divining by the Bible, that it was expressly forbidden by a council. Divination by the speal, or blade bone of a sheep, is used in Scotland. In the Highlands it is called sleina-reached, or reading the speal bone. It was very common in England in the time of Drayton, particularly among the colony of Flemings settled in Pembroke- shire. Camden relates of the Irish, that they looked through the bare blade bone of a sheep; and if they saw any spot in it darker than ordinary, they believed that somebody would be buried out of the house. The Persians used this mode of divination.

4. Of all attempts to look into futurity by such means, as well as resorting to charms and other methods of curing diseases, and discovering secrets, we may say, that they are relics of Paganism, and argue an ignorance, folly, or superstition, dishonourable to the Christian name; and are therefore to be reproved and discouraged.

Fuente: Biblical and Theological Dictionary