Drawn Into The Demonic: Mankind’s Attraction To ‘Divination’ Is Alive And Well In The Modern Era
May 23, 2025
By Dean Dwyer
Reprinted from Hsarbinger’s Daily
What do you think of when you hear the word “occult”? Opinions differ as to the broad range of activities falling under this banner but, in essence, it refers to the supernatural powers or practices relating to that which is hidden, secret, and mysterious. For many people, their foray into occultic practices often begins out of curiosity. For example, people may see a Ouija board as harmless fun, before quickly realising that the power behind such practices is dark and demonic.
God gave a very clear warning to the Israelites not to be involved in the occult. Leviticus 20:6 reads: “And the person who turns to mediums and familiar spirits, to prostitute himself with them, I will set My face against that person and cut him off from his people.” Upon entering the Promised Land, the pagan nations that surrounded Israel were steeped in divination, sorcery, witchcraft, and spiritism, and this is one reason why God gave His people the authority to drive them out of the land (Deuteronomy 18:9-14).
Although much could be written on each of the practices which falls under the banner of the occult, there are three main categories: divination, mediums and magic (also known as magick in the modern era). In this article, I will cover the practice of divination, with commentary on the other categories to follow in future articles.
The word “divination” comes from the Latin verb “divinare”, meaning “to foresee, foretell, predict, or prophesy”. It employs several different methods, but all with the same goal: to gain hidden knowledge. It is based on the pagan worldview that there is hidden information about the future that gifted humans are able to access. In Deuteronomy 18, God affirms that He would guide His people through true prophets, not through diviners. Why? Because compared to the true and living God, divination is false, deceitful, and worthless. Jeremiah 14:14 says: “And the LORD said to me, “The prophets prophesy lies in My name. I have not sent them, commanded them, nor spoken to them; they prophesy to you a false vision, divination, a worthless thing, and the deceit of their heart.”
In Ezekiel 21:21, we come across a curious passage which describes various methods of divination: “For the king of Babylon stands at the parting of the road, at the fork of the two roads to use divination: he shakes the arrows, he consults the images, he looks at the liver.” When the king “shakes the arrows,” he is practicing something called “belomancy”. Belomancy was an ancient form of divination where marked arrows are drawn at random to determine the future or answer questions. The practice involved either shooting arrows with written messages and picking up the first one encountered, or drawing marked arrows from a quiver, with the first arrow drawn indicating the answer.
Next in the king’s divination was a consultation of the images, known in Hebrew as “teraphim”. They were known as household idols or family gods. Teraphim are often associated in the Bible with idolatry and pagan worship. Even though teraphim were sometimes used by the Israelites to represent God, they were still idols. In highlighting the danger of idolatry and divination, Zechariah 10:2 says: “For the idols [teraphim] speak delusion; the diviners envision lies, and tell false dreams; they comfort in vain. Therefore, the people wend their way like sheep; they are in trouble because there is no shepherd.” We see a form of teraphim worship in modern culture when people revere objects, photos, or statues as though those things have supernatural powers within themselves.
Finally, is the somewhat bizarre practice of looking at the liver, commonly known as “hepatoscopy”. Practitioners believed they could predict a proper course of action by examining the colour and the internal segmentation of the livers of newly slaughtered animals. To assist with examination, many were trained in the practice through the use of a “liver tablet,” which directed the practitioner to the omen indicated by a mark at a given location. In fact, there is a clay model of a liver tablet that dates from 1900-1600BC and is held at the British Museum.
Of course, this issue of divination was not confined to the times of the Old Testament. Acts 16:16 tells us: “Now it happened, as we went to prayer, that a certain slave girl possessed with a spirit of divination met us, who brought her masters much profit by fortune-telling.” The term “spirit of divination” is used only once in the entire New Testament. In the Greek, it reads “pneuma python”. So, Acts 16 literally describes the young girl as having the “spirit of Python”. In Greek mythology, Python was a serpent, sometimes represented as a medieval-style dragon. The ancient Greeks believed Python (later killed by Apollo) guarded the sanctuary at Delphi. In fact, many statues of Apollo will show Python laying dead at his feet. The name Python was subsequently used to denote a prophetic demon and was also used of soothsayers who practised ventriloquism, or speaking from the belly. Some commentators even point out that those who were demonised by the spirit of Python had a peculiar characteristic – they swelled like leather water vessels with the answers coming forth from their bloated bellies.
In the modern day, we might equate ventriloquism with a harmless comedy act, but the word “ventriloquist” comes from the Latin “venter” meaning belly and “loqui,” meaning, “to speak.” In other words, it was used to describe a person from whom came a voice which was not their own. This “voice” was believed to have come from a spirit dwelling in the person’s belly. It is believed that Isaiah warned against this practice in Isaiah 8:19: “And when they say to you, “Seek those who whisper and mutter,” should not a people seek their God? Should they seek the dead on behalf of the living?” Some commentators point to the fact that the phrase “wizards who whisper” is a reference to ventriloquism – speaking from the belly.
Mankind’s attraction to divination is most certainly alive and well in the modern era. In a dissertation entitled, “Decoding Delphi: Reconstructing the Technology of Divination”, Kimberley Gibbons writes: “Lives are textured with unexpected occurrences; sometimes, in order to find the strength to carry on through tumultuous and tragic times, humans need to find meaning within struggle. Oracles and divination can provide context and meaning to our lives and therefore can become a much-needed salve. As Goodrich notes, ‘The Greek Oracles succeeded because they offered the comfort and solace men and women needed.’”
Contrary to the assertion made by Gibbons, there is no hope in the powers of the occult. Although many people are drawn to it, these powers are impotent before God. Christians in particular should avoid any practice related to divination, including fortune-telling, astrology, numerology, witchcraft, palmistry (analysing the palm of a person’s hand), tarot cards, necromancy, scrying (looking into a reflective surface such as a crystal ball) and spell-casting. The spirit world is real, but not all of it is innocent. Dark, demonic and destructive forces inhabit it, ready to deceive the unsuspecting.
