Leviticus 19:26

26. Neither… use enchantment Literally, Ye shall not whisper, hence, divine, or give oracles. The magical practices against which the Hebrews are here warned were borrowed from the nations around, for they had no magic of their own. Yet from the conquest of Canaan until the destruction of Jerusalem we have constant glimpses of magic practised in secret, not only by the ignoble, but by the great. Whether or not there is any reality in the art, it is clearly incompatible with a calm and firm trust in God alone to order future events for our good. “Israel is directed to the word of revelation (Deuteronomy 18:9-22) in contrast to all heathen mantic, which has searched through heaven and earth to find signs of the divine counsel, but finding no help, falls into dissolution. The exorcism of the dead, and other forms of mantic, are a horror, and astrology is a folly. Isaiah 47:13.” Oehler.

Nor observe times Practise soothsaying by regarding the aspect of the clouds. Jeremiah (Jeremiah 10:2) exhorts the people not to be “dismayed at the signs of heaven,” at which the heathen are “dismayed.” The practice of regarding some days as lucky and others as unlucky, and of foretelling the future by seeing the new moon over the right or left shoulder, are relics of this species of divination. Keil, with certain rabbins, derives the Hebrew term from ayin an eye; hence, literally, “to ogle, to bewitch with an evil eye.”