The Sky Speaks — An Astrologer Reacts to Christians Who Say the Bible is Against Divination

Hey everyone. This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology [https://nightlightastrology.com/].

Today I am going to respond to Christians who say that the Bible is anti divination. I don't think this is actually the case, and I'll explain why in today's episode. This episode, by the way, was prompted by another recent episode I did in which I talked about how you can blend or marry Christian faith alongside of the practice of astrology, even though some Christians adamantly say that you cannot.

In that video, I talked about at length about what I think the ancient, philosophical, spiritual roots of astrology share with the contemplative roots of Christianity. And so if you missed that episode that along with this one may be nice to pair together, you could go back into my Sunday archives and look at that episode. I think it was three or four weeks ago now.

Anyway, today I want to respond to the idea that the Bible is actually anti astrology or anti divination in general. This came up after the last episode, a number of people dropped into the comment section and also sent me DMS on Instagram saying, Yeah, but doesn't the Bible very clearly in a number of instances, anti divination. Doesn't it specifically say you shouldn't consult diviners? What do we say to that?

Really smart. These are good questions and things that we need to think about, especially if we're going to hold meaningful and I think loving exchanges of debate with people from different faith traditions, Christians who don't believe astrology is sanctioned within their faith tradition. And I also want to respect people who may or may not have any kind of faith based approach to astrology whatsoever.

Today is certainly not meant to suggest that you ought to marry the two things together. Rather, I think today is just a way of contextualizing the Bible is anti divination standpoint. So let's go ahead and get into it.

So what I want to say, for starters, is that there is, there are a number, number of verses in the Old Testament, especially, but a number of biblical instances in which it is clear that divination, you're not to go consult a diviner. And so recognizing that that is the case, what is not also, what is not well known, is that there are also many instances of divination in the Bible.

So what do we do with that? What do we do with the fact that there are apparently God sanctioned forms of divination, and then there are forms that are not sanctioned within the faith tradition, whether we're talking about sort of the broadly speaking in the Bible, the Judeo Christian history and background.

So first of all, I said this in I said this in the last talk. I'll say it again in this talk. I think that if you are someone who does not believe that God can be found, seen, experienced, or that God's truth exists outside of the Christian faith, that this video is not really going to make a difference. And that's probably a major limit to you know, how far we can get in understanding one another or even having a meaningful debate about a subject like this.

If people can't find God outside of just one religion, just one tradition, just one culture or people, then I don't know how far we can really get with any meaningful conversation, because this is, at the end of the day, to my mind, an interfaith dialog, kind of kind of conversation.

The other thing is that if people listening to this are biblical literalists, which means that they take every single that there's no context. There's no cultural or historical context that's being read, and the Bible is taking being taken super literally. First of all, I think that's really problematic. But second of all, especially if one adopts that kind of thinking, I don't know how meaningful a debate like this is going to be anyway.

So anyhow, all of that in mind, what I want to get down to here are just the instances in which the Bible says, Don't do divination. Let's cover those first. So for example, in Deuteronomy, in the book of Isaiah, in the book of Samuel, there are instances in which the consulting of mediums or necromancers, getting in touch with the dead or talking to spirits through mediums or diviners, outside of the faith tradition is condemned, seen as idolatrous and unfaithful to God, to be trying to get to truth by consulting spirits and or the spirits of the dead and so forth.

In Exodus, Deuteronomy acts, there are a number of instances in which things like spells, charms, rituals not sanctioned by God within the faith tradition are also condemned as sorcery. In. Yeah, so what becomes really important is that we contextualize these moments and understand them. So we'll get to that in a moment.

Isaiah and Deuteronomy speak against different kinds of omens being read or consulted. The other thing is false prophecy is condemned. So people that offer prophecy that are is not true, or is not God inspired or coming from God that's condemned. Number of instances, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Matthew, any kind of divination for personal gain, the book of Acts, the book of Ezekiel, condemn forms of divination that are essentially being utilized just for the sake of personal gain.

These are just a few of the, what, let's call them, the references that are frequently cited when people say, hey, look, the Bible is anti divination. It's probably coming from one of these, one of these texts, remember the the Bible is, what, 66 different books, if I remember correctly, from, you know, several different languages, several different continents, over a very long period of time.

So in a collection of texts that go through the Judeo, Christian cultural, theological heritage. It's important to understand that all of these different instances of Scripture that we're talking about as anti divination are also spread out across history and time and space and people. That doesn't make them irrelevant. It doesn't mean we can't understand why those things were being said, but it does, to my mind, mean that we have to be careful in just understanding them too narrowly as just anti astrology. I think there's something a little bit deeper going on here.

The important thing to recognize, again, context is everything. What is divination? We have to ask that from the standpoint of what ancient astrologers believe that it was. And when you look there's not just one religious or spiritual group that practices astrology. So different groups had slightly different answers.

But if you're looking at the plateness, the Neo plateness, the Pythagoreans, the hermeticists, the orphics, the yogis, not just a few of them, but many of them said specifically that astrology was about drawing the soul nearer to God. And so again, if you can take seriously the idea that different peoples, different religious groups, different religious and spiritual traditions have found God in different ways, through different mediums, different rituals, different languages, different sacred texts.

If you can be that open minded, then I really don't think there's a huge issue. Because everything that I'm about to say about the Bible's stance on divination and why it might be more open to divination than people think really won't be heard at all if the starting point is Yeah, but God doesn't exist outside of the Christian faith.

So keep that in mind, because there are a number of recurring instances of divination throughout the Bible, as long as we have the appropriate starting point for what divination is in the first place. And primarily, you know if there's there, because there's not just one view of what divination is, or who or what is being consulted through divination from one tradition to the to another across the entire planet, we have to look for some of the perennial philosophy of divination, right?

Mostly divinatory practices come from groups of people who believe that the cosmos is alive, that it is communicative, intelligent, divine, and that it can be communicated with, and it can convey instructions and guidance, and it can speak to human concerns about the past, present or future through signs, omens, dreams, visions, prophecy, intuition, that it can communicate and convey through living presences in nature, through Animals, through patterns in nature. That's broadly speaking divination.

Now, if we take the basic definition of divination as the voice of the Divine speaking through signs, omens and symbols of any kind, not just astrology, but of any kind which that is the basic definition of divination, then I really don't think we have much of an issue when it comes to identifying divination within the biblical tradition. Either, let me give you some examples.

These are all instances of God approved, or let's call it Judeo, Christian approved forms of divination that are basically. Identical to almost all other forms of divination across the planet. May be slightly different, in which forms are prioritized over others, but all coming from the same perspective that this is about communicating with the divine.

In the book of Exodus, the book of Numbers, the book of Samuel, there's a very interesting divinatory, like a tool that's given to the priest by God, Urim and Thummim. And I'm not sure if I'm pronounced that Urim and Thummim, maybe, but these are tools that are part of a priestly ritual procedure that are done to discern Divine Will.

Now, these are thought to be directed by God, not by just willy nilly spirits, right? But that is the same basic belief that most divinatory traditions have, is that within a tradition, the Divine is the one orchestrating the response, whether the Divine is conceptualized as the spirit of the mountain or, as the you know, the oneness of creation, to me, is not so important, because the idea is that there is a higher divine intelligence that speaks through the oracular device.

Well, in the case of the Old Testament, sort of priestly tradition, here are tools used in a sacred breast piece to help discern Divine Will for the priests. That is part of a ritual and sort of mechanical procedure that helps to discern God's will. So it's it's a kind of medium device that's being used, sure it's happening within the cultural and religious sanctioning of the Jewish faith tradition, but nonetheless, that's divination, and most traditions around the planet have very similar kinds of ritual procedures that the priests use to discern divine will.

So that's not to say, well, divination is bad. We have to be very specific. Why are they actually saying that it's bad? And mostly what's actually being said in the Old Testament is that forms of divination from other groups, other traditions, other cultures, other perspectives, are to be excluded or left alone, and you should be focusing on your own faith tradition. Stay, stay home, stay, stay within.

You know, the focus of your own tradition, that is a value by the way, that recurs throughout traditions all over the planet, the instruction not to stray or wander into other traditions, rituals, mediums, approaches, etc. And there are reasons for that, some of which might boil down to just fear and narrow mindedness or power or domination shadows, of course, but there's also something to be said for having a focus of faith.

And even I mentioned this in the last video, but even my own guru in the bhava yoga tradition that I was a part of, talked at length about how when people entered monastic life, there would be prescriptions not to visit astrologers, even though astrologers were sharing in the same faith tradition. And the reason for that is not because astrologers are bad, but because you have to keep your focus like keep the main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing that becomes important for cultures that are trying to stay together, for people that are trying to retain cohesion, religiously and physically in in locations and things like that.

So I think we have to be we have to contextualize a little bit why there are, on the one hand, features, traditional, perennial features of divination within the priestly rites and rituals of a culture that is also saying, don't go and participate in the rituals of another one.

The second instance that's quite common, commonly referred to are the casting of lots. This happens in the book of Joshua. This happens in the book of Samuel. This happens in the book of Acts, where whether it's for land division or choosing a king or choosing an apostle, when another apostle leaves the scene, these are all considered sanctioned mechanisms, sanctioned neutral divinatory mechanisms through which God Himself controls the outcome and shows you what he wants you to do, my friends, that is divination.

That is, that is a common feature of divination all across the planet, for people who are trying to discern the Divine Will in a situation, what is the highest good? What is the best way to go about this? Who is the right leader, and to think that there's only one group of people on the planet that would have virtuous, beautiful rituals that allow, or try to be a medium for God to offer to. Direction is just absurd.

So when we say, Oh, well, the Bible condemns divination on the one hand, yeah, in some instances it does, but almost always, those are considered the condemned forms of divination are considered as any kind of seeking of knowledge from spirits the dead created things, human manipulation, as opposed to God inspired from the god of this people and this group and this tradition, this faith tradition, that focus again, there may be some shadows to that exclusivity, but there's also you can understand why you're you're trying to direct people within a faith tradition to keep the main thing, the main thing.

And it again, like, what's pretty amazing is that there's also all of these very clear instances of divination within the tradition. So the casting of lots, again, another common, recurring form of divination in the Bible, dreams. Now I will tell you that dreams are probably the most common form of divination shared by all people across the planet, from Aboriginal dream time to Sub Saharan Africa to South America to the North American indigenous people, the occurrence of a dream is often seen as direct guidance from a higher divine intelligence, whether that divine intelligence is conceptualized as the voice of the ancestors, who, after they pass on, are thought to be almost like deified, or it's coming from the one, or It's coming from the Great Spirit, or it's coming from the Divine or the gods.

The point is that, all across the planet, for 1000s of years, when a dream comes to a person, it is often thought of as a sign, an omen, a directive, an inspiration from the Divine. And there is, that is, there is no way that you can say otherwise if you have any historical integrity. In my humble opinion, dreams are common forms of divination throughout the entire Bible.

Joseph interprets dreams for the Pharaoh, who's outside of the faith tradition. By the way, Jacob has the dream of the ladder in the book of Genesis. Daniel interprets Nebuchadnezzar dream in the book of Daniel, when sanctioned within the Biblical faith tradition, dreams are explicitly attributed to God's revelation, not human manipulation or other other spirits. The interpreter often will give credit to God, etc. But the point is that God speaks through a dream. God speaks through and what is a dream? Usually it is a sign, an omen, a symbol, and often they appear in the form of very interesting almost like riddles.

There will be this kind of animal that shows up in the dream, where there'll be this symbol that appears in the dream, and it's the symbol is then interpreted by a faithful servant of the Divine who has the ability to understand the sign or symbol that is a diviner. Again, I don't mean to be disrespectful to Christians who wish to keep the main thing, the main thing, by all means, if your faith tradition is disturbed by you know, it's kind of like in astrology too.

It's like if you study too many different schools of astrology, you're going to muddy the water, and that may actually not be very helpful. It's good to develop a really strong base and foundation of ritual and Praxis in most things, music, art, you know, academic disciplines, faith traditions, I don't think are an exception. So I can open my mind to saying I can see why you might tell people, hey, look, just stay focused on the way we do things.

On what is God sanctioned within our faith tradition? Because you have to be careful when you go outside of that you could really get distracted, or you could get sidetracked or misled or led astray. And certainly there are, there are instances, by the way, of corruption within priestly castes, within diviners, within people who have any kind of priestly power, priestess power, in all traditions, all over the planet.

And so I don't think you could say ever with certainty that one tradition is going to be clean and without the potential for someone within your own tradition to lead you astray. There are people that you know work with the wrong forces and listen to the wrong voices in every faith tradition.

Nonetheless, in every faith tradition I've ever studied, there are also dreams. There are also divinatory procedures within the priestly class, or the casting of lots. The next one is visions. So whether it's ezekiels throne vision in the book of Ezekiel, isaiah's vision of the Lord in Isaiah six, Peter's vision. Of the sheet in Acts. These are all visionary experiences where people basically trip out.

I'm kidding, of course, but when people have altered states that lead to visionary experiences, and those visions, as symbols speak, that is divination by definition. Now, the reason that one version of a vision might be sanctioned and another not again, probably unique to, you know, trying to keep the main thing the main thing. Well, this is in our tradition, we have ways of making sure that everything is sort of coming from God, coming from the Divine, coming from this focused path of faith that we're on, and so we might naturally be suspicious of things that could lead us astray away from that, because we see the benefit in walking this path with commitment, but to say that there is no other path of commitment, that there is no other way God can talk, that there are not Other traditions around the planet that the divine speaks through dreams or visions or other oracular mediums is pure ignorance.

All right, going on prophecy. So if the prophets literally Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, New Testament, gift of prophecy, talked about in the book of Corinthians, that the Holy Spirit endows people with so A prophet is one empowered by God to deliver knowledge or understanding of God's will or way or or God's directives or God's plan. Often, by the way, through signs and symbols and riddles and poetry and the prophets, voices are powerful, but not always linear.

That is a feature of diviners from all over the planet, all across the planet. Read the book Black Elk Speaks. If you don't believe me, when you read Black Elk Speaks, you're going to find that it's strikingly similar to Ezekiel. The power of a prophetic voice is one that it's a little bit like a madman or a mad woman, to be honest. And these people have the power to convey something of transcendental meaning, of vision and prophecy of the future, and they're empowered from within, and often will also undergo really intense shamanic ordeals.

By that, I mean, you know, laying on one side for years, laying on the other side for years, or having your bones picked apart in a dream by the crows and being remade in a new body. These prophets are common features of divinatory traditions, and they don't just exist within the Judeo Christian, you know, history or background.

So finally, signs throughout the Old Testament, the sign of gideon's fleece, you know, the you know, is it dry or is it wet hezekiah's shadow? Those are that's in the book of Judges, in the Book of Kings. These are signs that are given. Give me a sign, and then a sign is provided in a specific way. Those are God sanctioned forms of divination in the Bible.

Now someone could quibble and say, no, no, no, no, that's not divination. That's all. That's all just like God talking through Christian stuff, that's okay, and everything else is bad. But really, you know, is that really where we're going to go? And if people want to be super, super, what uh, literal about the Bible? Well, the Bible literally says anything outside of this faith, traditions, divinatory traditions that are sanctioned.

Okay, dreams are sanctioned. Prophecy is sanctioned. The piece of the breastplate that used Divine Will, the casting of lots, dreams, whatever this is, all sanctioned within our faith tradition, and we have to adhere to this because the Bible's word is the word of God, and it's literal. I mean, I'm not the first person to do this, so excuse me for having to do it. But if you're going to be that literal, I mean, nearby Deuteronomy is condemnation of divination.

We also have the fact that a rebellious son can be stoned publicly in the community. We have a bride being found not to be a virgin being stoned publicly in the community, right? If two people have adultery, they can be executed publicly. I don't see Christians so literal about those things anymore, and that's because they pick and choose when to contextualize and when to be relativizing the text through thoughtfulness different time, place and circumstance requires for different understandings of truth.

Truth is truth, and if we're. So dumb that we can't perceive it through the lens of context and time, place and circumstance. If Dharma can't be perceived in different time, places and circumstances, to use the yoga philosophy sense of it, then what are we doing? You know, because look in Exodus, not too far from condemnation of sorcery is that you can have slaves and you can beat them, and if, after beating them, they survive, then the Master isn't punished, or that if you work on the Sabbath, you could be killed, right?

And then we'll conveniently say, Oh, well, you know, Jesus came along and abolished all of this, these Old Testament laws with a New Testament, a new law, right? Yeah, but then we call on anything in the Old Testament if it can be used to condemn something we're uncomfortable with. So Leviticus, not too far from the condemnation of seeking mediums or practicing divination, we have anyone who curses a father or mother being put to death.

Adultery, again punishable by death. Same sex, intercourse punishable by death. I mean, what are we doing? Right? I was taught as a Christian coming up in a faith tradition to understand again, time, place and circumstance. If we're going to say that the Bible condemns divination, but ignore all the instances of divination that look and feel and sound like all other instances of divination across the world, we're going to take these things literally, but then not read the other pieces literally, like, what are we doing? This is fanaticism in the book of Isaiah.

Sure, there's a condemnation of consulting mediums, astrologers, sorcerers, you know, but there is a promise that entire nations will be destroyed, cities leveled, babies dashed to pieces in order to uphold God's will. Genocide. You know what I mean? Come on, guys, we're we're we have to understand some of the extremes of living in a world that was very different from our own, in a faith tradition that was cultural and historical, and, you know, again, just very different than the world we're living in today.

That doesn't mean that the Bible as a sacred text, really a collection of sacred texts, doesn't carry truth in it. Doesn't carry Dharma in it. Of course it does. But we have to be smart readers. You know? We have to be thoughtful readers who can at the core of this, to me, is also just understanding the teachings of Jesus, compassion, love, forgiveness, tolerance, charity, empathy, sensitivity, peacefulness.

Jesus demonstrates enormous capacity for open minded exchange with other beings. And anyway, I'll stop laboring that point. Finally, in the book of Samuel, while Saul's consultation of the Witch of Endor is condemned because he consults a medium which does have its own interesting context that has to be read, by the way, but in the same book, God commands the total destruction of the Amalekites, men, women, children and livestock.

So how much trust in my or faith am I supposed to put in? You know, a God who condemns mediums but supports completely annihilating groups of people, I'm not again, suggesting that there is no truth in these sacred texts, that there's no value in them, or there's no value in the Christian tradition, or faith tradition, or Judeo, Christian cultural, religious heritage. Of course there is.

But to me, if we're going to say that the Bible condemns divination, then we should understand it in context. I think the safest thing we can say is that its condemnation of divination at its worst is extremely hypocritical and suppressive and domineering at its best, it is about staying true and staying focused within a faith tradition, which is also not uncommon among many very beautiful and I think very viable faith traditions across the planet to instruct a faithfulness to certain rituals and procedures at the exclusivity of others is part of a lot of religious and spiritual paths that can be done without hating, without opposing what you're not doing.

Just stay focused, is kind of the message. I can also understand the emphasis on the communication with the divine being pure and true and focused in the right way. And that is an issue within divination. For example, when you're learning divinatory tools and you're trying to approach. Them from, let's call it a God centered point of view.

I think one thing that we all learn is that when you ask a question, say, use the I Ching, you get a beautiful answer that really helps you pause and think about who you are and what the right thing to do is, in a given situation, how to come back to your heart and compassion, love, forgiveness, these instructions, you know, but let's say you get an answer you don't like you don't like that. That's the instruction, you know. It's the good thing, but you don't like it. So you ask again, then in the second reading, you get an answer that really gratifies your ego. Well, now you're starting to talk to the wrong spirit.

Do you see what I mean? So giving some instruction about how to stay straight and pure and narrow and true with even with any divinatory tradition, I suspect it's been an issue for people all across the planet who practice different forms of divination. Interpreting your dreams is not to be done willy nilly, to interpret them as you wish for the gratification of your own ego.

So those are very important facets of learning how the divine speaks to us and how to make sure that it stays pure and true and wholesome. And I can even lend to the biblical tradition that there may be some real concerns that took place in the ancient world within a faith and community and tradition that said, like you got to keep the main thing the main thing, and keep it pure and clean and good.

That makes sense to me. I think we still deal with that today in astrology. It's one of the reasons I talk at length about what forms of astrology are really edifying the community and keeping it focused on the Heart and Soul and Divinity. So all of that makes sense to me. What doesn't make sense to me is the idea that there's something radically different about what's happening in these biblically sanctioned forms of divination and the very same exact types of forms that occur in many beautiful faith traditions all across the planet.

So anyway, that's it. That's my talk on this subject. Hope it was useful. I didn't want to go into, you know, chapter and verse on every instance, but I did provide the books, the references to the books that include the condemnations of or the instances of divination. I hope that that was useful for you guys.

At the end of the day, I don't think that there's any reason that astrology has to be apart from a faithful, beautiful life that's God centered. But again, just to be clear for people listening, I also think that many people can have astrology as a really significant part of their life without having to have anything really clarified in terms of what your faith tradition or path is.

It sort of meets you where you are, and I think leads us anyway. Maybe that's its most beautiful grace and compassion for us somehow. All right, that's it. I hope you're having a good weekend and that this was a fun kind of side path to meditate on today. All right, take it easy. Everyone. Bye.