Opening Question:
1. Why do we feel like people are drawn to magic, sorcery, divination, etc?
2. How do we feel like the Torah categorizes this type of worship?
3. How do you think about people after they have passed away?
(31) Do not turn to ghosts and do not inquire of familiar spirits, to be defiled by them: I the LORD am your God.
(1) אל תפנו DO NOT TURN [TO THE אבת NOR TO THE ידענים] — This is a warning addressed to the necromancers and the charmers themselves (not to the people who consult these tricksters). The בעל אוב, the controller of the spirit אוב, as the necromancer is called (cf. I Samuel 28:7), is identical with the פיתום (in Greek: πύξωυ); he is one who speaks out of his arm-pit; ידעני is one who puts a bone of an animal the name of which is ידוע into his mouth and the bone speaks (Sanhedrin 65b). (2) אל תבקשו means DO NOT SEEK to busy yourselves with them, for if you busy yourselves with them, you will become defiled in My sight and I shall abhor you. (3) אני ה' אלהיכם I AM THE LORD YOUR GOD — Just think Whom you are changing (by these practices which lead to idolatry) for whom! (Sifra, Kedoshim, Chapter 7 11)
1. What is God's major issue with this type of worship?
1. Why does the crime seem more severe when others are involving in warning that person not to do it? What is the Torah worried about?
The JPS Torah Commentary, Nahum Sarna (p. 136)
The belief in and practice of magic was universal in the ancient world. It was an inevitable by-product of polytheism. The multiplicity of divine forces limited the power of any one of them; and since gods were but the divination of nature's powers and phenomena, gods and humans were thought to share the same world. Like humans, gods were thought to be born, grow old, and die. Hence, within the intellectual system of polytheism, the reality of a realm of existence independent of the gods and ultimately in control of them was a logical inference. The attempt to activate and manipulate to one's advantage the mysterious supernatural forces inherent in this realm constituted the essence of magic. Elaborate techniques were developed to this end, and magic became an indispensable ingredient of religion. Apart from the practical and verbal procedures, and the personnel who specialized in them, there were also individuals who were thought to possess inherent mystical powers capable of exploiting the occult properties of the extramundane realm. Like all productions of the human mind, magic could be put to benevolent or malevolent use. The latter was outlawed in all societies.
Biblical monotheism, with its uncompromising insistence on the absolute omnipotence of one universal, sovereign, creator God, was totally irreconcilable with the underlying postulates of magic. The religion of Israel ruthlessly and relentlessly fought to extirpate such beliefs and practices.
The Gemara relates that Rabbi Ḥiyya and Rabbi Yonatan were walking in a cemetery and the sky-blue string of Rabbi Yonatan’s ritual fringes was cast to the ground and dragging across the graves. Rabbi Ḥiyya said to him: Lift it, so the dead will not say: Tomorrow, when their day comes, they will come to be buried with us, and now they are insulting us. Rabbi Yonatan said to him: Do the dead know so much? Isn’t it stated: “And the dead know nothing” (Ecclesiastes 9:5)? Rabbi Ḥiyya said to him: If you read the verse, you did not read it a second time, and if you read it a second time, you did not read it a third time, and if you read it a third time, they did not explain it to you properly. The meaning of the verse: “For the living know that they will die, and the dead know nothing and have no more reward, for their memory has been forgotten” (Ecclesiastes 9:5)
Excerpted from: https://www.jewitches.com/post/divination-a-jewish-primer
Author: Zo
We find that the conclusion regarding worries about divination are threefold: defiling the dead, abandoning Judaism to practice other religions, and allowing divination to make our futures, rather than acting with free will as we are meant to act.
In all actuality, arguments about divination's halakhic validity did nothing to stop Jews from practicing divination. As we've progressed, experienced oppression, and assimilated, we have lost our methods and come to adopt newer methods as a result of said assimilation. Whether or not you agree that divination is halakhically permissible, it is a deeply Jewish practice.