Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/Divination

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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.



  • 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.




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.

  • 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."


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".




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 (Deut., xviii, 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 (Lev., xx, 6) and the man or woman in whom there was a divining spirit was to be stoned to death (Lev., xx, 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 (Jos., vii, 14; Num., xxvi, 55; Prov., xvi, 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 K., xv, 23; IV K., xvii, 17; Zach. x. 2; Is. xliv, 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 (Zach., x, 2).
  • The Hartummim, a name translated by "interpreters" (Vulg. conjectores) in the Douay version (Gen., xli, 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 (Gen., xli, 8), a name given those skilled in divination in Egypt, Idumea (Abd., 8), Persia (Esth., i, 13), Babylon (Jer., 1, 35).
  • Nahash is soothsaying (Vulg. augurium) in the Bible (Num., xxii, 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 (Num., xxiv, 1) and also Joseph's (Gen., xliv, 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 Yidde 'onim were diviners whom we generally find connected with necromacers, and the two terms are perhaps practically synonymous (I K., xxviii 3; IV K., xxi, 6; etc).
  • Divining by Me'onen included apparently many methods: divination by chance words, as when Abraham's servant sought a wife for lsaac (Gen., xxiv, 14; I K., xiv, 9; III K., xx, 33); auguries (Is., xi, 6); observers of dreams (Deut., xviii, 10), etc. There were also modes by charming serpents (Jer., viii, 17), astrology (Is, xlvii, 13), and by consulting the Ephod (I K., xxiii, 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, viii, 9), Elymas (Acts, xiii, 6), and others (II Tim., iii, 13), including the possessors of the magical books burnt at Ephesus (Acts, xix, 19), practised divination and that it is included in the wonders by which Antichrist will seduce many (Apoc., xix, 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 (Matt., vi, 34), but to trust Him perfectly Who numbers the very hairs of our heads (Matt., x, 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.)

E. P. Graham.