How Psychics Know Things... And Their SOURCE of Info | Occult to Orthodoxy Series (Part 15) | Ep. 129
Some people come to psychics because they want to know about their futures. Some go for what they think is harmless fun. And some go because of the pain of losing a loved one and needing to know that they were okay.
Whether curiosity, entertainment, or grief brought you here today, this post is for you. We're pulling back the curtain on psychic mediumship: what it is, where it came from, and what the Orthodox Church offers instead.
What Is a Psychic?
A psychic is a person who claims to use heightened intuition to gather information from the spirit world and beyond the normal five senses. They often offer advice, spiritual direction, or predictions about a person's life.
…sort of sounding like the New Age counterfeit of the Orthodox spiritual father.
Psychics often specialize in different ways of perceiving information:
Clairvoyance: The ability to see images, visions, or energy in the "mind's eye."
Clairsentience: The ability to feel or physically sense emotions, energies, and the physical presence of spirits.
Clairaudience: The ability to hear messages or sounds beyond normal human range.
Mediumship: The specific ability to supposedly communicate directly with spirits and the dead.
Methods and Tools
Sometimes psychics operate by having opened themselves up in the spirit realm, but most often they use tools to help them make contact, such as tarot cards, astrological charts, numerology, pendulums, and yes, sometimes crystals and crystal balls.
It's worth noting that many psychics actually refuse to use ouija boards because they believe this particular tool can welcome dark spirits and entities -- and they don't realize that any form of divination does that all the same.
My Story
Way before I even entered New Age spirituality, I was exposed to these ideas all throughout mainstream media. From Disney Channel making light of psychics and witchcraft as harmless fun, to Sylvia Browne on the Montel Williams Show convincing me that ghosts were real and she was indeed contacting them.
I remember the ouija board my mom kept in her apartment after her friend overdosed and died.
From a young age, I knew the spirit world was real and believed it required true spiritual gifting to access it the way these people were.
When I later came into New Age spirituality, I tried to develop my own psychic abilities by fasting and eating cleaner foods, spending time in meditation, using tarot cards, and practicing on psychedelics. What I truly desired was to come into contact with spirits without having to use tools at all. I wanted this so I could better know things about my purpose and my future, and how to help others know the same.
What I didn't know then was that this wasn't a gift at all. It was demons recognizing an open invitation and allowing themselves in to give me the answers I so desperately sought outside of God's will.
The Sylvia Browne Problem
Sylvia Browne is a good example of what that deception can look like at scale. She was a fixture on The Montel Williams Show and Larry King Live for nearly two decades, delivering readings with total confidence to grieving families live on national television. Millions of people watched and believed. I was one of them as a child.
But her track record on verifiable cases told a different story. In 2004, she told Amanda Berry's mother on The Montel Williams Show that her missing daughter was dead. Amanda Berry was found alive in 2013, nearly a decade after her abduction. Her mother had died in 2006 believing her daughter was gone.
That is the real cost of counterfeit comfort. Not a harmless party trick. A mother who died in grief that didn't have to be.
The History of Mediumship
Attempts to communicate with the dead are among the oldest spiritual practices in human history. This is not a modern New Age invention -- it is ancient, cross-cultural, and addressed repeatedly in the Bible.
This universality is not a sign that the practice is harmless or spiritually neutral. It is a sign that human beings have always had a wound around death, and that there has always been a demonic counterfeit ready to exploit it.
In America, modern mediumship traces back to 1848, when two sisters named Kate and Margaret Fox claimed to communicate with a spirit through knocking sounds. Within years, thousands of mediums were practicing across America and Europe. Spiritualism became a formal religion with its own churches and ordained ministers -- the National Spiritualist Association of Churches, founded in 1893, still exists today. The Fox sisters later admitted the whole thing was a hoax, produced by cracking their toe joints. But by then, the movement had a life of its own.
By the late 20th century, mediumship had moved from seance parlors into living rooms through television. Which is how millions of people -- including children like me -- first encountered the idea of communicating with the dead as something real and normal on a daytime talk show.
What the Bible Records
The Bible contains several accounts of individuals practicing what we would today call psychic phenomena. Scripture strictly forbids all of them, attributing their power to demonic sources rather than divine gifts.
The Medium of Endor (1 Samuel 28) -- Desperate to know the outcome of an upcoming battle with the Philistines, King Saul seeks out a spiritist in Endor. Despite his own previous ban on occult practices, he asks her to conjure the spirit of the deceased prophet Samuel. The encounter results in a grim prophecy of Saul's imminent death.
The Slave Girl with a Spirit of Divination (Acts 16) -- The Apostle Paul encounters a slave girl in Philippi who made significant profit for her owners by fortune-telling. The original Greek text notes she had a "spirit of python," associated with the serpent god of Delphi. She followed Paul for days, shouting out accurate information about his ministry. Annoyed, Paul commands the demonic spirit to leave her in the name of Jesus Christ, which instantly strips her of her supernatural abilities.
Simon the Sorcerer (Acts 8) -- A man in Samaria who practiced magic and amazed the local population, leading them to claim he possessed the "Great Power of God." He attempted to buy the power of laying on hands from the Apostles Peter and John after seeing the miracles they performed, leading to Peter rebuking him sharply.
Pharaoh's Magicians (Exodus 7-8) -- When Moses and Aaron went before Pharaoh, his court magicians replicated several of God's miraculous plagues through their occult arts. They were ultimately outmatched by God's sovereign power.
King Manasseh (2 Kings 21:6) -- Known as one of the most wicked kings in the history of Judah, Manasseh actively immersed himself in the occult, practicing divination, witchcraft, and frequently consulting mediums and spiritists.
The overarching biblical stance is highly condemnatory. The texts consistently contrast "diviners" (who draw power from pagan or demonic sources) with biblical Prophets (who relied solely on the Holy Spirit to reveal divine truth).
Why Their Advice Is Sometimes Accurate
People get so easily convinced by psychic readings because the psychic accurately knew things about them that no one else could have known. But to the Orthodox Christian, this is no surprise.
Reality of the Unseen: The Church acknowledges that spiritual entities exist. It attributes the power behind psychic phenomena to fallen angels (demons) rather than God.
The "Angel of Light" Deception: Demons can reveal accurate facts -- past events, secret knowledge -- to gain a person's trust. Scripture tells us Satan disguises himself as an angel of light to lead people away from God, even when the initial message appears helpful.
Spiritual Delusion (Prelest): Orthodoxy strongly warns against seeking out supernatural knowledge. Attempting to bypass God to seek secret knowledge or predict the future opens a person up to spiritual delusion -- what the Church calls prelest.
So yes, you can ask a psychic about your life purpose, your future, or to contact someone from the dead -- but know that you are making contact with and getting messages from demons in doing so.
What God Says About It
This is why God forbids divination. Not because He is a power-hungry rule-maker, but because He knows what sits on the other side of that table and is trying to gain access to your life.
"Let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord." -- Deuteronomy 18:10-12
"Do not turn to mediums or seek out spiritists, for you will be defiled by them. I am the Lord your God." -- Leviticus 19:31
"Defiled" here points to spiritual contamination -- not just rule-breaking, but something that damages the soul.
"When someone tells you to consult mediums and spiritists, who whisper and mutter, should not a people inquire of their God? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living?" -- Isaiah 8:19
"Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world." -- 1 John 4:1
Scripture is clear: spiritual entities exist, they can communicate through human beings, and they are not all what they claim to be. Testing the spirits is not an advanced spiritual discipline -- it is a basic Christian responsibility.
What the Church Fathers Say
St. Basil the Great writes that those who "consult soothsayers and follow heathen customs, or bring persons into their houses to discover remedies and to effect purification, should fall under the canon of six years" of penance -- a year of weeping, a year of hearing, three years of kneeling, and a final year standing with the faithful before being restored to the Eucharist. That is a serious ecclesiastical consequence for what many today treat as casual entertainment.
Fr. Seraphim Rose, in his landmark book Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future, addresses mediumship and spiritism directly. He documents how the spirit realm, when accessed outside of God's order, always produces counterfeit spiritual experiences -- experiences that can feel entirely real, even peaceful and loving, but whose source is demonic. He writes about "Christian mediumism" as one of the most dangerous forms of spiritual deception, precisely because it dresses itself in religious language. If you're coming out of the New Age world, this book belongs in your hands.
"But Isn't Praying to Saints the Same Thing?"
This is one of the most common objections I hear, especially from Protestants or seekers exploring Orthodoxy: "How is asking a saint to pray for you any different from consulting a psychic medium? Aren't you both just trying to communicate with the dead?"
When we ask a Saint to pray for us, we are not consulting the dead. We are asking a living member of the Body of Christ -- one who has entered into closer union with God than any of us still on earth -- to intercede on our behalf before the throne of God. The Saint is not our information source. The Saint is not being summoned or channeled. We are not trying to extract knowledge from them or receive messages through them. We are asking them to pray, the same way you might ask a dear and holy friend to pray for you.
The Saint is not the destination. God is. And the Saint's prayer goes to God, not back to us.
Throughout Orthodox history, there are countless accounts of saints appearing in dreams or moments of prayer to bring comfort, correction, or guidance -- always pointing back to Christ, never drawing attention to themselves. This is never something sought out or engineered. It is a gift, given by God in His timing, to souls who are humble and praying.
The difference between asking a Saint to pray for you and hiring a medium is the difference between asking a holy friend to speak to God for you, and opening a door to a deceiving spirit and inviting it to speak to you. These are not two roads to the same mountain. They lead to entirely different places.
What the Church Offers Instead
Real Communion with the Departed
The Orthodox Church does not teach that after death, connection is severed and the relationship is simply over. It teaches that our souls are eternal.
The Church is the communion of all the faithful -- living and departed -- held together in the Body of Christ. Death does not remove a person from the Church. It changes their mode of existence within it.
If your loved one died in Christ, they are alive in Christ even after departing from their physical bodies.
If they weren't in Christ, the Church still gives us something to do with that grief. We pray for them. We ask for God's mercy on their souls. The Panakhida -- the Orthodox memorial service -- is one of the most tender things the Church offers: the gathered Body of Christ standing before God together, lifting up the name of someone we loved, asking that His light shine upon them wherever they are. It is not a seance. There is no summoning, no channel, no message coming back. It is simply love, offered to God, for someone He also made and loves.
Many saints have prayed fervently for departed loved ones who died outside the faith, trusting in God's boundless mercy and His ability to work beyond what we can see. We don't presume to know the final state of any soul. We simply bring them before Him.
Praying to the Saints
We ask the Saints to intercede for us -- not as spiritual consultants who will channel information back to us, but as holy members of the Body of Christ who stand before God in prayer on our behalf.
The difference between asking a Saint to pray for you and hiring a medium is like asking a holy friend to speak to God for you, versus opening a door to a deceiving spirit and inviting it to speak to you.
Life Guidance
If you want messages about your purpose and future, don't go to demons. Go to God. Read Scripture, pray, have Confession with your spiritual father.
The spiritual father relationship in Orthodoxy is something the New Age world has no real equivalent for. He is not a psychic. He is not guessing at your future or receiving messages on your behalf. He is a man who has given his life to God, who knows the Scriptures and the Tradition of the Church deeply, and who can see your soul with a clarity that comes from years of prayer and his own spiritual formation. He speaks not from a spirit that has been watching your family -- but from the Holy Spirit, who has been working in the Church for two thousand years.
And Scripture itself is the living word of God. Not a fortune cookie and not a horoscope -- but a word that is alive and active, that speaks to your specific situation when you bring your specific heart to it. The Psalms alone have carried more grieving, confused, and desperate people through the darkest nights than any psychic ever could.
The Church's answer to the hunger for purpose, direction, and contact with the beyond is the fullness of a life in God: prayer, sacraments, Scripture, community, and the guidance of a spiritual father who actually knows you and loves you in Christ.
A Final Word
And if you're grieving and haven't found your way to the Church yet -- she has been praying for the departed for two thousand years. She knows how to hold grief. She knows where the dead actually are. And she has a way to stay in real relationship with the people you love -- not by opening a door to deception, but by bringing them before God alongside you, every time you pray.
This post is Part 15 of the Occult to Orthodoxy Series on the Raised & Redeemed podcast. Watch the full episode on YouTube, or listen on Spotify. Next up: Astrology.
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Coming up next: In the next episode, we will be talking about an Orthodox Christian perspective on astrology.
