Home -- Content: Series 7 (Laws) -- Translation: English -- Book: 1 (Tora) -- Part: 2 (Negative) -- Prohibition: 34 -- Text
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The Sharia of Moses in the TORA
Part 2 - The 365 Prohibitions of the Tora
34 - PRACTICING SORCERY
Concerning the commandments relating to sorcery, magic, astrology, etc., Maimonides in his “Mishneh Torah” says: “These practices are all false and deceptive, and were employed by the ancient idolaters to deceive the people of various countries and induce them to become their followers. It is not proper for Israelites, who are highly intelligent, to suffer themselves to be deluded by such inanities, or to imagine that there is anything in them… Whoever believes in these and similar things, and, in his heart, holds them to be true and scientific and only forbidden by the Torah, is nothing but a fool, deficient in understanding, and is on the same level as women and children, whose intellects are immature. Sensible people, however, who possess sound mental faculties, know by clear proofs that all these practices, which the Torah prohibits, have no scientific basis, but are vain and senseless; and that only the ignorant are attracted by these follies and led astray from the ways of truth. The Torah, therefore, in forbidding all these follies, exhorts us: You shall be blameless before the LORD your God. (Deuteronomy 18:13)”*