Section III. Divination

We here suppose that the devil, a wicked spirit of great intelligence and power, but subject to God, exists and continually interferes in the affairs of men in order to ruin them. This truth belongs to the Catholic faith and cannot be denied without sin. The sin of divination is committed when the devil is invoked expressly or tacitly in order to discover what is secret and hidden. There is express invocation of the devil when his aid is expressly implored. The devil is tacitly invoked when altogether inadequate means are used to find out what is occult, means which are not sufficient for the purpose naturally, and which have not been ordained by God for that purpose. The devil is eager to be appealed to in order the more easily to attain his own ends, and anyone who uses such inadequate means to find out hidden secrets virtually appeals to the devil to help him. A great variety of such means of divination has been in use from the earliest times among all nations; and periods which have witnessed a decay of faith have also witnessed a recrudescence of these superstitions. The following are some of the better known methods of divination practised from the earliest times. The devil sometimes takes possession of the body of a human being and manifests what is secret through it; this was called pythonism. The devil had his prophets as God had. In necromancy the devil answers through the dead called to life again. At certain places he gave oracles through idols. Sometimes he communicated with men through dreams, In all the foregoing methods we have the express invocation of the devil. He is tacitly invoked when the lines of the hand are consulted as indications of the future, as is done in chiromancy; or the course of the stars, as in astrology; or the flight or song of birds, as in augury; or some chance event is taken as foretelling what is going to happen, as in omens.

Divination is mortally sinful, for it is a great insult to God to hold intercourse with and seek aid from the devil, his bitter enemy; and, besides, it is most dangerous to the parties concerned. He is wont gradually to insinuate himself until he has his victim within his power, and then he works on him his evil will. Such practices as those of divination are specially declared to be hateful to God in Holy Scripture: ‘‘ Neither let there be found among you anyone that shall expiate his son or daughter, making them to pass through the fire; or that consulteth soothsayers, or observeth dreams and omens, neither let there be any wizard, nor charmer, nor anyone that consulteth pythonic spirits, or fortune-tellers, or that seeketh the truth from the dead. For the Lord abhorreth all these things, and for these abominations he will destroy them at thy coming.”¹ Although tacit as well as express divination is grievously sinful of itself, yet it is frequently only venial on account of the ignorance and simplicity of those who indulge in it, or because they do not entirely believe that the future can be known by such methods, and they use them in joke or out of curiosity. In this way young people who consult gipsies or palmists are ordinarily excused from grave sin.

¹ Deut. xviii 10-12.

We know from Holy Scripture that almighty God has sometimes made known his will to men by means of dreams, and the devil, too, is able to fill the mind with his suggestions during sleep. If God in some rare instance uses dreams to make known his will, he should of course be lovingly obeyed. The suggestions of the devil, on the contrary, should be repelled and despised. We can distinguish between the two sources by observing whether the impulse received is towards good or evil, whether what is suggested is worthy of God, whether it tends to disturb our peace or leaves us tranquil and disposed to the service of God. Dreams have ordinarily a natural cause, but they are no indication of what the future will bring. We may not, then, guide our conduct by dreams; God has given us our reason and the Church to teach us what we should do; we must follow these and not dreams if we would act aright. Constantly to guide ourselves by dreams would be mortally sinful, to allow them to influence us occasionally and in matters of little moment would not be more than a venial sin.

There is no harm in casting lots to decide a doubtful claim; the parties merely agree to stand by what turns up by chance. It is superstitious and sinful to cast lots in order to discover some secret, or with a view to shaping one’s life according to the issue. Sometimes this method of deciding doubts has been adopted by holy men in consequence of an intimation received from God, or sometimes because no better way out of the difficulty appeared.

The use of the divining-rod under the belief that a stick of a special shape cut from a particular kind of tree or bush will point out hidden treasure, or mines, or springs of water, is superstitious and sinful. For it is certain that there is no natural force which acts in the arbitrary manner in which the divining-rod is said to act under the circumstances. It is not impossible but that particular individuals may be very sensitive to the presence of water or minerals even when hidden under the surface of the earth, and perhaps the frequent finding of springs by dowsers is partially to be explained in this way. Then by practice and experience a power of detecting the presence of underground water from the vegetation or other signs on the surface may be developed. There is also without doubt a great deal of fraud in such matters. Finally, the devil may sometimes intervene.

Modern spiritism is obviously the pythonism, necromancy, and other forms of divination which have been mentioned above. It is gravely sinful, therefore, to act as a medium or to consult one with a view to finding out something which is not known. Crystal-gazing, table-turning, the use of the planchette for occult purposes, is also divination and grievously sinful. It is not impossible that the movements of the table in table-turning and of the planchette are due to the unconscious action of the sitters. On this hypothesis it would not be unlawful to make experiments with a view to finding out the truth; divination comes in when by such means the sitters seek to discover what it is certain none of them knows, consciously or unconsciously.

It is well to bear in mind a remark which St Thomas Aquinas makes after St Augustine, that the devil wishes to excite among men a greater curiosity about occult matters “ so that being implicated in these observances, they may become more curious and get themselves more entangled in the manifold snares of pernicious error,””