Fortune telling in Islam and Christianity
Have you ever had your fortune read? It’s tempting isn’t it? The tarot cards spreading before you, with the answer of every question you ever had. The past, the present, the future, all together as one, in the palm of your hand or at the bottom of a coffee cup. What would you give for those answers? Are you willing to pay the price?
Since the beginning of times, humans yearned for answers and control. This way, many forms of the occult were born in different parts of the world, and then kind of merged together with traveling knowledge. In later religions, these were banished and strongly condemned, but kept living in the shadows. Why? Why was christianity and islam so against it? Letโs find out together!
Part 1: Christian Point Of View
โLet no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead.Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord; because of these same detestable practices the Lord your God will drive out those nations before you.โ
~Deuteronomy 18:10โ12
There are many verses in the Bible that show us the prohibition of these mystical tools, like Leviticus 19:26 or Isaiah 8:19, but I personally think that the ones above show best whatโs meant to be shown. However, for your own curiosity and for my own satisfaction, I will list them also below (you can skip them if you want):
โDo not eat any meat with the blood still in it.
Do not practice divination or seek omens.โ ~ Leviticus 19:26
โWhen someone tells you to consult mediums and spiritists, who whisper and mutter, should not a people inquire of their God? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living?โ ~ Isaiah 8:19
But the Bible doesnโt just forbid divination, it also gives us cautionary tales about those who dared to cross the line.
Part 1.1: The Witch Of Endor (1 Samuel 28)
King Saul, the first king of Israel, had lost hope. God had stopped answering him through prophets, dreams or secret lots. Desperate and in panic, he was thinking about the war with the Philistines. What may happen? Why had God stopped helping him? Was this a test? A way to prove his loyalty? Feeling like he was going crazy with worry, he surrendered. He asked his men to find him a medium, even though he knew it was forbidden by all the teachings. In disguise and with 2 of his followers, he went to a woman in Endor, who had a reputation as a witch, and asked her to summon the spirit of Samuel, a previous prophet that had died. The woman protested, since this was the king that had outlawed mediums and spiritists. He promises her she wont be punished. In between a kings law and a kings promise, she chose the later, and started performing her act until she cries out. She sees a spirit coming up on earth. The description was โan old man wrapped in a robeโ, and he realises is Samuel, bows down and the conversation with the spirit begins. The spirit told Saul that he and Israel would be defeated, and that Saul and his sons would die the next day.
The prophecy came true.
Now the Bible doesnโt focus on the ritual, like many other old books would do. Maybe because it was trying to send another kind of message and not leave room for interpretation regarding chants or other stuff.
But why did Saul lost the battle? Was it a punishment? Was he really meant to lose the battle? Or was it a self fulfilling prophecy?
Well since he didnโt really saw himself the spirit, Iโm guessing more of the latter. He already was afraid of the battle going wrong, and maybe the witch wasnโt really fond of his ruling.
In psychology, a self-fulfilling prophecy is a belief or expectation that unconsciously causes itself to become true by influencing a person’s behavior in a way that makes the expectation a reality. So, in other words, when a person truly believes that something will happen, every action that he does without knowing will lead to that outcome. Sadly this works only for beliefs that are not good.
Saulโs fear of defeat shaped his decisions. By believing in the prophecy, he may have fought with despair rather than courage, leading him exactly to the fate he feared.
So was Saul doomed by Godโs will, tricked by a spirit, or undone by his own mind?
Part 1.2: The Slave Girl with the Spirit of Divination
Saul sought answers from the dead, this girl had answers while being alive. Without any rituals or seances, she spoke the truth.
When Apostle Paul was traveling to spread the message of Christ, a girl kept following them in the city of Philipi. She had what in greek was called python. Not the snake, but โThe Spirit Of Divinationโ, linked to the oracle of Delphi. Her masters won a lot of money from her prophecies, and right now she was yelling another:
โThese men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation!โ
Even though her words were true, and letโs not deny it kind of flattering especially when you are having a hard time being believed, the source of them was not God, but a spirit.
Paul finally turned and commanded the spirit: โIn the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to come out of her!โ The spirit left instantly.
Of course her masters were furious because a source of income was ruined for them, so Paul and Silas were driven before the authorities.
Here we understand that in Christianity, fortune-telling is seen as demonic manipulation and not divine force.
So, can truth spoken by the wrong voice still be trusted? Or does its source corrupt it?
A pretty similar approach we will see in the Islamic point of view.
Part 2: Islamic Point Of View
โWhen Allah decrees a matter in heaven, the angels strike their wings in submission to His words, which sound like a chain dragged over a smooth rock. When their hearts are relieved, they (the angels) ask: โWhat did your Lord say?โ They reply: โThe truth, and He is the Most High, the Most Great.โ Then the stealthy listeners (shayatin) hear this, and one passes it to another until it reaches the ear of a magician or soothsayer. They add one hundred lies with it.โ
~Sahih al-Bukhari (Hadith 6213)
In Islam there arenโt any demons, but there is a creature called Jinn. The idea is pretty similar and also pretty distinct. Jinns were created before humans, by fire. And Satan, or as it’s called in Islamic studies Shaytan, was the best of them. He was so obedient and so perfect, that he sat amongst angels in heaven in meetings where only the angels were present. He didnโt like the idea of God to create humans from mud and to have them all bow to them. The story from here goes the same. Just that there is no falling, but the jinns are creatures that live in the same dimension as us, and they move so fast and we cannot see them. They have families just like us, and just like us they can be good and they can be evil.
This Hadith paints a vivid pictureโtruth stolen from the heavens, whispered down by Jinn, and twisted with lies. In simpler words, it describes fortune telling as an act of cheating and lying with a spice of truth in it. When God tells the angels what will be done, they clap their wings with a specific sound, and they talk amongst each other. At this moment the jinns eavestrop.
Now even if the walls of heaven are protected by fire stars, the word goes from one to another, until it reaches the word of a fortune-teller. But the truth is one, and along with it, they add a hundred other things that are not true.
This actually contains strong doses of self fulfilling prophecy and misguidance. For instance, they tell the truth and along with it they may say that someone near you put a spell on you for bad fortune. Now if the truth happens, what will someone think about the other? Is it true or is it a lie? Either way the suspicion is there, and you may start analyzing situations that will lead to that conclusion.
In the Quran there are a few verses that show that these acts are prohibited.
โ[He alone is] Knower of the unseen, and He does not disclose His unseen to anyone, except to a messenger He has chosenโฆโ ~Surah Al-Jinn 72:26โ27
Clarifies that only prophets, not fortune tellers, may receive parts of the unseen, and only directly from God.
โO you who have believed, indeed, intoxicants, gambling, [sacrificing on] stone alters [to other than Allah], and divining arrows are but defilement from the work of Satan, so avoid them that you may be successful.โ ~Surah Al-Maโidah 5:90
This verse directly condemns divination practices (in pre-Islamic Arabia, arrows were used for fortune telling).
โIndeed, We have adorned the nearest heaven with an adornment of stars, and protected it from every rebellious devil. They cannot listen to the higher assembly [of angels], and they are pelted from every sideโฆ except one who snatches a little, but he is pursued by a burning flame.โ
~Surah As-Saffat 37:6โ10
This is where the eavesdropping jinn appear: they try to steal fragments of heavenly knowledge, but are chased away by shooting stars.
ย ย ย Whether you see fortune-telling as a mirror of the soul, a trick of the mind, or a forbidden path, the allure remains. The cards still whisper, the coffee still swirls. The question is, when the answers come, will you listen?
