Some simple questions. Can a person know an event before it happens? The answer is no, because God withheld this vision from humans, and before it existed, it did not exist. It exists in the freedom of those who have the ability to have it, and it may not be in their design to pass from their brains to us. Nothing exists before it exists.

According to this principle, ruqyah (raqwa in colloquial terms) is a form of divination. The soothsayer is the astrologer who claims knowledge of the unseen that God has controlled. This is similar to reading a cup of coffee, as if the threads or drawings on the cup resulting from the movement of the lips on the cup indicate something. The Bible called divination a sin in 1 Samuel 15:23, and Jeremiah in 14:14 made it synonymous with false vision, as did Ezekiel. It was stated in the Acts of the Apostles that Paul cast out a demon by a witch (16:16-18).

Also, reading the horoscopes that are widespread in newspapers and publications sets a certain tone for you and predicts events related to the day and time of your birth and a specific astrological situation. The stars may have some effect on your character, but you are a free human being and no destiny dictates how you should be. There are those who tried in France, in the Sorbonne, to make astrology a science, but our religious belief is that you are not a machine, that nothing is imposed on you, and that you have “the freedom of the children of God,” as the Apostle Paul says. Reading palm lines is like this. Your age is a result of the health condition you are in. This may be recorded in your genetics or genetics, and it is what predicts your predisposition to this or that disease, especially cancer. There is intervention in heaven, a science that has become developed in recent years. You are born with a genetic program and none of this is engraved on your palm.

As for reading your character from your handwriting, it is possible because if you are classified as this or that character, it may affect your writing of letters and words, but this does not reveal knowledge of the future. I do not think that anyone who examines your writing will think anything else.

In the same vein, communing with spirits is absolutely forbidden by the Church. With us, you address the saints in prayer, and you do not control anyone’s spirit, and you do not have authority over a spirit, as spirits are in the authority of God alone. In addition to this, the use of this matter has made it, in a country like Brazil, a self-contained religion and has turned it here and there into a kind of intoxication or anesthesia. Conversing with spirits is a form of magic, because magic is essentially ascribing to yourself an ability that God controls. It is stated in the Book of God: “There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or daughter in the fire, nor one who practices divination, nor an astrologer, nor a soothsayer, nor a sorcerer, nor one who performs sorcery, nor one who conjures ghosts or spirits, nor one who consults the dead, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord.” (Deuteronomy 18:10-12). The New Testament supports this, as the Book of Revelation equates murderers with sorcerers and idolaters (12:8).

The basic idea in the New Testament is that magic is the belief that if you say some words and make some movements, what you want to happen will automatically happen. This contradicts our belief that the Lord alone, through His word, changes what is in nature. Prayer differs from magic because it is hope and it cannot accomplish anything except by the grace of God. Nothing is sanctified for us simply because the priest recited a prayer or read a passage from the Bible. He invokes the Holy Spirit on the bread and wine, and they are transformed into the body and blood of the Lord by the grace of the Spirit and not by mere recitation. This is the basic difference between magic and religion.

In this logic, no envious eye is capable of harming you, and therefore it is a violation of faith to hang a blue bead around your neck or to place a horse’s calf on the door of your house, because such things do not protect you from harm. If you wear a cross around your neck, this is a testimony that you belong to Jesus. It does not have an automatic action in itself, because the sign of the cross must be coupled with prayer. There is no miracle except through your faith in the Lord Jesus.

There is something else that is not magic or sorcery, which is telepathy, which is the transmission of thoughts, emotions, or images from one mind to another at a distance. An example of this is that a British woman saw, or as if she saw, that her husband, an officer in India, was stabbed in the back by an Indian with a dagger, and a few days later the military command informed her of this happening at the time when she felt this matter. These are natural forces similar to television broadcasts. Some people have the ability to take pictures from afar. There is also the ability of some people to drop a bunch of grapes just by looking at it. This is not a miracle. Other than this telepathy, every movement like this that we described previously is magic, sorcery, or a lie, and all of it is spiritual harm.

Metropolitan George Khader
About my parish bulletin
Sunday, January 18, 2004