“Keep telling yourself it’s just a game”
This is the promotional tagline for Ouija, the latest low-budget horror movie to be released in time for Halloween. The story centers around a group of friends who use a Ouija board to try to make contact with a recently deceased friend, but end up awakening a dark and malevolent presence. The only redeeming quality of this movie might just be the fear that it instills in moviegoers who just might think twice before engaging in the very sinful and dangerous practice of divination.
Divination (from the Latin divinatio: the power of foreseeing, prediction) is the practice of seeking knowledge of future events or hidden (occult) things from supernatural sources. Divination differs from prayer in that it goes outside the established ways through which God reveals His divine truth and will to us. It seeks to circumvent God's plan and obtain answers to our questions by consulting spirits, which are in fact demonic and sinister spirits hell-bent on deceiving and harming us.
The practice of divination can be traced back to ancient times, yet there are many popular methods still in use today: ouija boards, séances, palm reading, numerology, tarot card reading, fortune telling, psychics, palm reading, tea leaf reading, crystal gazing, witchcraft, magical incantations, sorcery, and astrological horoscopes. Each of these activities seeks to acquire either information about the future, knowledge beyond a person's natural abilities or power outside of God's providence.
The sinful practice of divination is roundly condemned in the Bible:
“There shall not be found among you any one who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, any one who practices divination, a soothsayer, or an augur, or a sorcerer, or a charmer, or a medium, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord” (Deut. 18:10-12).
The Bible strictly forbids divination because it involves lusting for secret knowledge that God has not chosen to reveal. Moses made an important distinction when he declared to the people of Israel, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law” (Deut. 29:29).
This desire for forbidden knowledge has it roots in man’s first sin. The serpent seduced our first parents with these words: “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil" (Gen. 3:5). He tempted Eve with a desire to know what God had not chosen to reveal and thus transgress the boundary clearly established by Him: "And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, 'You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.'" (Gen. 2:16-17). Tragically, Eve succumbed to this diabolical temptation and her husband after her (Gen. 3:6).
In essence, divination is a sin against the first commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me” (Ex. 20:3). When we seek to gain forbidden knowledge or power through the use of ouija boards or any other form of divination, we are essentially engaging in idolatry. The Catechism explains:
All forms of divination are to be rejected: recourse to Satan or demons, conjuring up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to "unveil" the future. Consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers. They contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone (CCC 2116).
As the movie tagline suggests, we should not delude ourselves into thinking the ouija board to be a mere game or form of harmless entertainment. It is rather dangerous portal and gateway to the demonic, which should be avoided at all costs.
