A Mysterious Force

Here it is interesting to note an expression of the well-known fortune-teller Jeanne Dixon, who sometimes uses a pack of cards to tell fortunes: “I don’t know a single thing about telling fortunes with cards. I simply have a person hold them so that I can pick up his vibrations.” Similarly, the book Patterns of Prophecy (1973) says concerning palm reading: “Palmists seem to derive their most astute impressions not from the lines of the hand, but from touching the person to make psychic contact. . . . a number of German palmists were unable to make accurate statements about people’s characters when only photocopies of the handprints were presented to them.”

Thus it is not the heavenly bodies, the cards, someone’s palm or any other omens that result in the occasional “direct hits” of fortune-tellers. Their successes are principally due to a mysterious “psychic force.”

Such a strange power is involved in several other methods of probing into the unknown or the future. An example is cleidomancy, or divination by a key held suspended on a thread. When asked questions, the key may revolve or move back and forth to indicate “Yes” or “No” answers or to provide other types of information. Some substitute another object, such as a pendulum, in place of a key. At times such devices, when held over a map, have pointed out the location of hidden or lost objects and missing persons. When dangled above letters of the alphabet laid out in a circle, the pendulum has been known to move toward certain ones in succession to spell out a message.

Similar is the Ouija board, which contains the words “Yes,” “No,” “Good-bye,” the letters of the alphabet and the numbers 1 through 9 and 0. Atop this sits a heart-shaped device mounted on three felt-tipped legs. When consultants put their hands on this, a force causes it to move about the board, spelling out words and sentences that can provide information not previously known to the persons using the board.

The same principle operates in the case of the planchette, which is a triangular or heart-shaped board mounted on tiny wheels with a pencil projected downward. One or more persons place their fingertips on the board and a mysterious power causes it to write.

What is the force that enables fortune-tellers to make correct forecasts on occasion or to obtain accurate information that they could not normally know? What makes the pendulum, the planchette and the three-legged device atop a Ouija board move about in a way that communicates information not obtainable by normal means? What engenders visions in crystal balls that at times accurately describe the unknown or the future? Obviously there is an intelligently directed force at work. Scientists and psychic researchers are not sure what that force is. Would it benefit you to explore such a mysterious power? Would it help you to “try it just once” to satisfy your curiosity?

The Real Power Behind Fortune-telling

The Bible warns all who wish to win the approval of God to keep away from such a thing. God’s view of the matter is set forth at Isaiah 1:13: “I cannot put up with the use of uncanny power along with the solemn assembly [for worship].” Commenting on the Hebrew word aʹwen, here rendered “uncanny power,” Johannes Pedersen, a professor of Semitic languages, writes:

“Properly speaking it denotes strength, but gradually it has chiefly come to be used of the false strength, the magic power, and therefore it has all the characteristics of sin.” “[It] denotes the false strength, deeds involving disaster, witchcraft and magic arts.”​—Israel: Its Life and Culture, pp. 431, 448.

Other scriptures associate “uncanny power” with divination, which includes fortune-telling. (1 Sam. 15:23; Num. 23:16-18, 21; Josh. 13:22) Persons desiring to worship God acceptably must shun any involvement with such a force, for it does not originate with God. Where, then, does it come from?

Pointing to the real source of much fortune-telling ability, the Bible, at Acts 16:16-18, relates:

“We met a slave girl who had a clairvoyant spirit. She used to bring substantial profit to her masters by fortune-telling. The girl began to follow Paul and the rest of us . . . She did this for several days until finally Paul became annoyed, turned around, and said to the spirit, ‘In the name of Jesus Christ I command you, come out of her!’”​—The New American Bible.

After the apostle Paul had expelled the “clairvoyant spirit,” or demon, from this girl, her masters “saw that their source of profit was gone.” (Acts 16:19, NAB) She had lost her fortune-telling ability.

It is clear from this that the Word of God links up the uncanny power behind fortune-telling with wicked spirit forces, or superhuman, invisible demons. (Eph. 6:12) That is why God commanded his people to shun every type of divination, saying:

“There should not be found in you anyone who . . . employs divination, a practicer of magic or anyone who looks for omens or a sorcerer, or one who binds others with a spell or anyone who consults a spirit medium or a professional foreteller of events or anyone who inquires of the dead. For everybody doing these things is something detestable to Jehovah.”​—Deut. 18:10-12.

All forms of divination, whether by interpretation of omens or by some other use of psychic power, are covered by that prohibition.

Fortune-telling is, therefore, a form of divination, a procedure for gaining knowledge of the unknown or of the future by extraordinary means. That is why the names of many of its methods end in -mancy (from the Greek man·teiʹa: “the mode of divination”). There are, for example, cartomancy (fortune-telling by cards), chiromancy (by the lines of one’s hand) and crystallomancy (by use of a crystal ball or other transparent object).

More importantly, since fortune-telling involves the use of “uncanny power,” which God condemns, it brings His disfavor, making a person “detestable to Jehovah,” preventing him from having an acceptable relationship with God. (Deut. 18:12) Moreover, the Bible associates prediction of the future by fortune-tellers with the influence of demons. Dabbling in fortune-telling can open up one to harassment from the invisible realm.

No genuine good, therefore, can come from seeking the guidance of fortune-tellers or reading literature designed to help people to develop psychic powers. Christians do well to follow the example of persons of the first century C.E. whom the Lord Jesus Christ favored because they “did not get to know the ‘deep things of Satan.’”​—Rev. 2:24.