THE TWO DESIRES
There are two things human beings have always wanted and never been able to have. The first is to know what the future holds. The second is to control it. And around those two desires — or anxieties — an entire industry was built, from antiquity onward: charlatans who claimed they could see the future, and others who sold solutions that supposedly could change it.
Our Parasha deals with both. And it does so with a list. The Torah does not settle for a general warning: it enumerates one practice after another. “There shall not be found among you anyone who passes his son or his daughter through the fire, or who practices divination, a soothsayer, a reader of omens, a sorcerer, an enchanter, one who consults spirits, a medium, or one who inquires of the dead” (Debarim 18:10–11). The first item on the list is surprising: passing a child through fire does not seem to be an act of divination. What is it doing at the head of a list of diviners and sorcerers? Maimonides explains it in the Guide for the Perplexed (III:37), and his explanation is an X-ray of how this mechanism worked. The promoters of this cult spread a terrifying threat: if a father did not pass his son through the fire, that son would die! It was religious corruption in its most brutal form: manufacture the fear, then present yourself as the owner of the solution. A father did not subject his child to that ritual out of pagan fanaticism. He did it out of fear, to save him. The most monstrous practice on the entire list was born not from the desire to know the future but from the other desire: to control it. It was the extreme case of the amulet. The sorcerers of Baal had discovered that a parent’s fear for his child’s future is one of the easiest forces to exploit. And the logic that follows repeats itself again and again: identify a person’s fear, and sell him a solution no one can verify.
IT IS DANGEROUS BECAUSE IT IS A LIE
Many people assume these practices were forbidden because they were considered “dangerous.” That this was black magic, that it worked, that it had real power, and that this power came from a dark place best kept at a distance. Maimonides says exactly the opposite, and he says it with no diplomacy whatsoever. In the Mishne Torah, in the laws of Aboda Zara (chapter 11), after describing each of these practices one by one, he writes that “all these practices are lies and falsehood.” And he adds that whoever believes in them, thinking they are true and wise but that the Torah forbade them anyway, “is nothing but a fool, lacking understanding.”
For Maimonides, the pagan diviner was not a spiritual enemy with dark powers. There was no power coming from the wrong side: there was no power at all. And once you understand that, the subject stops being supernatural and becomes deeply human. The diviner was a swindler of the worst kind, because he preyed precisely on people at their most vulnerable: a frightening diagnosis, a marriage falling apart, a business going under, a child who has lost his way. He showed up exactly when someone was ready to believe anything and pay any price to recover hope. What he sold was not information about the future. He sold false hope to someone who desperately needed real hope.
HOW THE TRICK WAS DONE
It is worth understanding where the impression that the diviner “got it right” came from. Some people have an enormous natural talent for reading another person: watching a face, catching a gesture that lasts a fraction of a second, noticing where someone’s breath catches, hearing how the tone of voice changes when a certain subject comes up. That ability exists and it is real, but there is nothing supernatural about it. Good salesmen have it too, and so do good poker players. And on top of that comes suggestion. The one who read palms, or cards, or the bottom of a cup did not need to say anything precise. Broad statements were enough — statements that could apply to almost anyone: “I see a problem with someone close to you.” “There is something from the past that was never resolved.” “I see a big change coming.” The listener filled in the blanks with his own life. Afterward he remembered the diviner’s “hits” and forgot everything he had missed. The work was done by the victim, not by the diviner.
In 1949, the psychologist Bertram Forer demonstrated something very similar experimentally. Thirty-nine students were each given a supposedly personalized analysis of their personality. In reality, they all received exactly the same text, composed mostly of sentences taken from an astrology book: statements general enough that almost anyone could recognize himself in them. The students were impressed by the supposed accuracy of the analysis. Only later did Forer inform them that everyone had received the same result. This phenomenon is known today as the Forer effect, or the Barnum effect: our tendency to interpret vague, general statements as if they described our own life specifically. For a fortune teller, that human tendency is pure gold!
AMULETS
The second desire, controlling the future, had its own market: amulets, objects with “powers,” metaphysical remedies. And here Maimonides is even harsher, because he is no longer talking about the pagans of Canaan. He is talking about a practice that once existed among Yehudim and that, B”H, has disappeared: in those days, certain charlatans would write on the parchment of the mezuza the names of angels and supposedly sacred names, to reinforce the “protection” of the home. Maimonides says that such people are among those who have no share in the World to Come. And he explains why: “It is not enough for them that they have nullified the mitzva [the mezuza becomes pesula, invalid, if other texts are written within its text ]; these individuals turn a great mitzva — which expresses the unity of the Name of the Holy One, blessed be He, the love of Him and His service — into an amulet for their own benefit, because in their foolishness they think this will help them with the vanities of this world.”
In the same chapter 11 of Aboda Zara, he says something similar about using verses of the Torah to heal the body: whoever does this is among those who deny the Torah, because he turns the words of the Torah into a remedy for the body, when they are a remedy for the soul. Maimonides’ logic is always the same. The mezuzah is a constant reminder of God’s existence and unity, not an insurance policy against burglars. And the moment a mitzva becomes a “device” for obtaining something, it stops being a mitzva and turns into a pagan amulet.”