Divination is a universal cultural phenomenon which anthropologists have observed as being present in many religions and cultures in all ages up to the present day.
Strictly speaking, divination assumes the influence of some supernatural force or fate, whereas scientific predictions are made from an essentially mechanical, impersonal world-view and rely on empirical laws of nature.
By far one of the most popular methods of divination is Astrology, typically categorized as Vedic Astrology (Jyotish), Western Astrology, and ChineseAstrology, though besides these main three branches many other cultures also have or have had their own forms of Astrology in the past.
From a theological standpoint divination supposes the existence of devils who have great natural powers and who, actuated by jealousy of man and hatred of God, ever seek to lessen his glory and to draw man into perdition, or at least to injure him bodily, mentally, and spiritually.
Divination is not, as we have seen, foretelling what comes from necessity or what generally happens, or foretelling what God reveals or what can be discovered by human effort, but it is the usurpation of knowledge of the future, i.e.
In divination, apart from the fraud of the Father of Lies, there was much merely human fraud and endless deception the predictions were generally as vague and as worthless as modern fortune-telling, and the general result then as now favoured vice and injured virtue.
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