Plan 9 said:
It wasn't Wiccans I was thinking of as not being exactly a barrel of laughs.
My working theory (not that anyone will read my posts here but you
) is that the proscribed O.T. behavior was just that which the notorious "Witch of Endor" was ordered to perform: necromancy.
I read somewhere a breakdown of the forms of divination that were proscribed by the OT and the ones that were not proscribed. I can't locate it today, but you might find this interesting. It's from religioustolerance.org
Examples of divination in the OT
[font=trebuchet ms,arial,helvetica]In
Genesis 44:5, Joseph's household manager refers to a silver drinking cup
"...in which my lord drinketh and whereby indeed he devineth". Later, Joseph accuses his brothers of stealing the cup, saying
"that such a man as I can certainly divine [the identity of the thieves]". These passages show that Joseph engaged in scrying. This is an ancient occultic method of divination in which a cup or other vessel is filled with water and gazed into. This technique of foretelling the future was used by Nostradamus and is still used today.[/font]
[font=trebuchet ms,arial,helvetica]
Numbers 5:12-31 describes a ritual of black magic that the Priest would perform on a woman if her husband suspected that she he had committed adultery. Verse 17 says: "
Then he shall take some holy water in a clay jar and put some dust from the tabernacle floor into the water.." She and her husband would go, with an offering of barley meal, to the tabernacle. The priest would make a magical drink consisting of holy water and sweepings from the tabernacle floor. He would have the woman drink the water while he recited a curse on her. The curse would state that her abdomen would swell and her thigh waste away if she had committed adultery. Otherwise, the curse would have no effect. If she were pregnant at this time, the curse would certainly induce an abortion. Yet nobody seems to have been concerned about the fate of any embryo or fetus that was present. There was no similar magical test that a woman could require her husband to take if she suspected him of adultery.[/font]
[font=trebuchet ms,arial,helvetica]The Urim and Thummim were two objects mentioned in
Numbers 27:21 and
1 Samuel 28:6 of the Hebrew Scriptures. They were apparently devices (perhaps in the form of flat stones) that the high priest consulted to determine the will of God. They might have worked something like a pair of dice.[/font]
[font=trebuchet ms,arial,helvetica]Elisha was on his way to Bethel. Some small boys came out of the city and made fun of him because of his lack of hair; they called him "baldy". In a violent display of the power of black magic, Elisha cursed the children in the name of God. Two bears, apparently prompted by God, came out of the forest and tore 42 of the boys to shreds. The implication is that the children were all murdered. See
2 Kings 2:23-24.[/font]
[font=trebuchet ms,arial,helvetica]Lots -- pieces of wood or stone with markings -- were used to determine the will of God. They were similar to dice. See: Numbers 26:55; Proverbs 16:33 Proverbs 18:18. [/font]
[font=trebuchet ms,arial,helvetica]Daniel, the prophet, was employed for many years in Babylon as the chief occultist to the king. He was supervisor
"of the magicians, astrologers, Chaldeans and soothsayers". See
Daniel 5:11.[/font]
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Sorcery in the NT[/font]
[font=trebuchet ms,arial,helvetica][font=trebuchet ms,arial,helvetica]St. Paul engaged sorcery as described in
Acts 13:6-12. (Sorcery is here used in the same way as Exodus 22:18: a person saying magical words or performing magical rituals in order to harm or kill another person). During his journey to Cyprus, St. Paul met Bar-Jesus, who was an attendant of the Roman proconsul Sergius Paulus. He had a conflict with cursed Bar-Jesus, saying:
"You are a child of the devil and an enemy of everything that is right! You are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery. Will you never stop perverting the right ways of the Lord? Now the hand of the Lord is against you. You are going to be blind, and for a time you will be unable to see the light of the sun. (NIV)
Bar-Jesus heard the curse and immediately was blinded.
[/font][font=trebuchet ms,arial,helvetica]St. Peter also engaged in sorcery, as described in
Acts 5:9. After he determined that Sapphira had lied to him, he cursed her, saying
"How is it that ye have agreed together to try the Spirit of the Lord? behold, the feet of them that have buried thy husband are at the door, and they shall carry thee out. (ASV)
She collapsed and died immediately.
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Deuteronomy 18 contains the verse you may be thinking of regarding the Witch of Endor.
"There shall not be found among you anyone that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer"
That's KJV. Other translations use English phrases like:
augur, black magic, calls up the dead, charm, consults with spirits, fortune teller, interpret omens, look for omens, magician, medium, sorcerer, soothsayer, spiritist, weaves or casts spells, witchcraft, and
wizard.
The Hebrew words that were translated are:
- yid'oni Making contact with spirits (not of God).
- sho'el 'ov Making contact with the dead .
- qosem q'samim Foretelling the future by using lots or a similar system.
- m'onen Predicting the future by interpreting signs in nature.
- m'nachesh Enchanting (perhaps related to nachash, a snake).
- chover chavar Casting spells by magical knot tying.
- m'khaseph evil sorcery; using spoken spells to harm other people.
- doresh 'el hametim "One who asks the dead", probably via another method than sho'el 'ov
The trouble comes in trying to match these concepts to New Age divination and magic. Not all techniques fit into this scheme. For instance, is tea leaf reading proscribed? Palm reading?
And is it m'onen to judge the harshness of the coming winter by the furriness of a caterpillar or the amount of moss on a tree or rock? Is it m'onen to divine the next day's weather by the color of the clouds at sunset?
It would be interesting to ask a Christian Wiccan what he or she believes is proscribed by Deuteronomy. Maybe one will stop by and enlighten us.
