“Divination and sorcery”
Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, practices divination or conjury, interprets omens, practices sorcery, (Deuteronomy 18:10 BSB)
What it sounds like today
A general condemnation of magic and superstition.
The cultural key
This is not a vague warning against 'magic' but a precise list of the actual divinatory professions of the ancient Near East, each a recognized craft. It names child sacrifice (passing children 'through the fire' to a god like Molech); divination (seeking hidden knowledge by ritual, such as casting lots or reading patterns); interpreting omens (reading signs in nature, the flight of birds, or the liver of a sacrificed animal); sorcery and spell-casting; and, in the next verse, consulting mediums, spiritists, and the dead (necromancy). These were the standard ways the surrounding nations tried to learn and control the future and manipulate the unseen world. Israel was categorically forbidden all of them, not because the future does not matter, but because God's people were to seek His will through His appointed prophets (the very next verses promise 'a prophet like Moses'), trusting God rather than trying to force the hand of fate by technique. A modern reader sees an anti-superstition rule; the first hearers heard the whole toolkit of pagan spirituality named and banned.
Recovered meaning
The verse lists the actual occult professions of the ancient world, child sacrifice, divination, omen-reading, sorcery, and consulting the dead, all forbidden because Israel was to seek God through His prophets, not manipulate the future by pagan technique.