What Is a Psychic? A Complete Guide to Psychic Abilities

What is a psychic, really — someone with a genuine sixth sense, a skilled performer reading slight signals, or a bit of both? The term gets thrown around constantly in pop culture, from nighttime hotlines to true-crime documentaries. Yet, most people would find it hard to define it precisely if asked.

The article below breaks down what a psychic actually is, where the concept came from, the different types of psychic ability people claim to have, how a psychic differs from a medium, and what science has found after more than a century of formal investigation.

Summary

What Is a Psychic?

A psychic is a person who claims to perceive information that lies beyond the reach of the ordinary five senses — through abilities such as telepathy (sensing another person’s thoughts), clairvoyance (perceiving distant or hidden events), precognition (sensing future events), or psychometry (reading impressions from objects).

The word functions both as a noun (“she is a psychic”) and an adjective (“psychic powers,” “psychic pain”), and it derives from the Greek psychikos, meaning “of the mind or soul.”

In practice, “psychic” is an umbrella term that covers several overlapping roles:

Professional readers who offer paid consultations on love, career, or life decisions, often using tools like tarot cards, astrology charts, or crystal balls.
Stage performers and mentalists who create the appearance of mind-reading or prediction for entertainment, typically using observation, psychology, and showmanship rather than any claimed supernatural power.
Everyday people who describe having occasional intuitive “hits” — a strong hunch, a clear dream that appeared to come true, or a feeling about a person that turned out to be accurate.

Scientifically, psychic ability has not been demonstrated to exist. Major scientific bodies, including the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, have reviewed decades of parapsychological research and found no reliable evidence supporting claims of extrasensory perception, and mainstream science classifies psychic practice as pseudoscience.

Where Does the Word “Psychic” Come From?

The word “psychic” has a layered linguistic foundation that traces back more than two thousand years before it ever referred to a fortune-teller. Its ultimate source is the ancient Greek noun psȳchḗ (ψυχή), which literally meant “breath” and derives from the verb psȳ́chein, “to breathe” or “to blow” — a reflection of the ancient idea that breath and life were inseparable.

Over time, psychē came to mean “life,” “spirit,” or “soul,” since breath was seen as the animating force that separated the living from the dead. From the root came the adjective psychikos (ψυχικός), meaning “of the mind” or “of the soul,” which is the direct ancestor of the modern English word “psychic.”

The Greek word psychē also carries mythological weight. In Greek mythology, Psyche was a mortal woman of extraordinary beauty who became the personification, or deification, of the human soul after a long trial of hardships imposed by the goddess Aphrodite; she was eventually granted immortality and united with Eros (Cupid). The myth cemented psychē in Western thought as shorthand for the soul or the inner self, a meaning it carries in English words such as “psychology” (the study of the mind or soul) and “psychiatry.”

The specific noun “psychic,” used to describe a person, is a much more recent invention. The French astronomer, science-fiction author, and spiritualist Camille Flammarion is generally credited with coining the modern usage of the term. It crossed into English in the 1870s through the writings of Edward William Cox, an English lawyer and amateur scientist who was profoundly interested in psychical research and helped found the Psychological Society of Great Britain.

Before “psychic” entered common usage, English speakers relied on older vocabulary to describe people who claimed extraordinary insight — terms such as “seer,” “oracle,” “prophet,” “fortune-teller,” and later “clairvoyant” (from the French clair + voyant, literally “clear-seeing”), a term that gained popularity in the 19th century alongside the rise of Spiritualism.

It’s also worth noting that “psychic” and “medium” have never been fully synonymous linguistically. As an adjective, “psychic” broadly describes anything relating to the mind rather than the body (as in “psychic pain” or “psychic energy”).

At the same time, “medium,” in its supernatural sense, specifically denotes a person acting as an intermediary — a “middle” channel — between the world of the living and the spirits of the dead.

A Brief History of Psychics and Fortune-Telling

Claims of extraordinary insight into the future or hidden knowledge are ancient and appear across nearly every early civilization, evolving over thousands of years from temple prophecy into a modern global industry.

The Ancient World: Seers, Oracles, and Priest-Prophets

Astrology was one of the earliest and most widespread systems used to interpret the future, based on the belief that the positions of astral bodies influenced human affairs. Separately, individual seers and prophets served as advisors, priests, and judges in many ancient societies.

In ancient Egypt, priests of the sun god Ra were believed to act as seers, while in ancient Assyria, seers were called nabu, a word meaning “to call” or “announce.” The Hebrew Bible’s Book of 1 Samuel describes the prophet Samuel being consulted for guidance on everyday matters like locating a herd of lost donkeys, showing how seers filled a practical, everyday advisory role in early society, not only a mystical one.

The single most famous oracle of the ancient world was the Pythia at the Temple of Apollo in Delphi, Greece — a position held by a succession of priestesses who delivered prophecies believed to channel the god Apollo himself. Ancient sources disagree on exactly how the Pythia operated. Some accounts describe her speaking in an incoherent, trance-like frenzy that priests then reshaped into verse. At the same time, other records suggest she spoke intelligibly in her own voice.

Modern geological research has raised the possibility that ethylene gas seeping up through fissures in the temple’s bedrock may have induced her altered state. The oracle operated for roughly a thousand years, and its last recorded prophecy was delivered in 393 AD, the year the Roman emperor Theodosius I ordered all pagan temples closed.

The Middle Ages Through the Renaissance

Belief in prophecy and hidden knowledge persisted throughout the medieval and early modern periods, often blending with astrology, alchemy, and folk healing.

The most long-lasting figure from this era is the French physician and astrologer Michel de Nostredame — Latinized to Nostradamus (1503–1566) — whose collections of short, cryptic verses called quatrains have been reinterpreted by readers for nearly 500 years as predictions of everything from the French Revolution to modern wars.

During the same broad period, widespread fear of witchcraft across Europe and colonial America (including the Salem witch trials of 1692–93) shows how claims of supernatural insight might just as easily lead to persecution as to fame, particularly for women.

The Birth of Modern Spiritualism: The Fox Sisters (1848)

Modern commercial mediumship traces its origin to a specific, well-documented event. In March 1848, two young sisters, Margaretta (“Maggie”) and Catherine (“Kate”) Fox, aged around 14 and 11, told their family in Hydesville, New York, that they could communicate with the spirit of a murdered peddler through a code of mysterious rapping sounds. News traveled fast, and their older sister Leah began managing public demonstrations.

On November 14, 1849, the sisters held the first paid public séance in history at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York, before an audience of hundreds. Their fame launched the Spiritualist movement, which held that the dead might and did communicate with the living. It spread rapidly across the United States and Europe, attracting prominent public figures such as the newspaper publisher Horace Greeley.

The story took a strange turn decades later: in 1888, Margaretta publicly confessed that the “spirit rappings” were a hoax, produced by cracking the joints of her toes and knees, and she even demonstrated the technique on stage. She then recanted her confession a year later, claiming she had been pressured into making it.

Both Fox sisters died in poverty in the early 1890s. Still, the Spiritualist movement they had unintentionally launched continued to grow and gave rise to the National Spiritualist Association, which still exists today as the National Spiritualist Association of Churches.

Victorian-Era Mediums and Investigators

The success of the Fox sisters inspired a wave of professional mediums throughout the second half of the 19th century. Scottish-born medium Daniel Dunglas Home became one of the most celebrated — and most scientifically scrutinized — figures of the era, reportedly showing levitation and table movement in séances attended by European royalty and prominent scientists; unlike many contemporaries, he was never definitively caught in fraud, and unusually for the time, he never charged money for his sittings.

Other media fared worse under investigation: the English-medium Florence Cook claimed to materialize the spirit of “Katie King,” and while physicist Sir William Crookes initially reported her abilities as genuine in 1874, most later investigators concluded the phenomena were staged. The famous Scottish medium Helen Duncan was likewise investigated and found to have produced fake “ectoplasm” from cheesecloth and paper.

The tension between believers and debunkers defined the entire Spiritualist era. It helped give rise to organized skepticism, including investigations by magicians who recognized stage techniques being passed off as genuine supernatural power.

The Early-to-Mid 20th Century: Trance Mediums and Media Prophets

The 20th century produced some of the best-known names in psychic history. Edgar Cayce (1877–1945), nicknamed the “Sleeping Prophet,” was an American who claimed to enter a self-induced trance to deliver readings on health diagnoses, reincarnation, and future events; he gave an estimated 14,000 documented readings over his lifetime and is regarded as one of the founding influences on the modern New Age movement, despite considering himself a devout Christian rather than a spiritualist.

Helena Blavatsky, a Russian-born occultist, co-founded the Theosophical Society in 1875, blending spiritualist ideas with Eastern mysticism in a movement that influenced New Age thought well into the 20th century.

Later in the century, Jeane Dixon became one of America’s most recognized media psychics through a syndicated newspaper column, gaining particular fame for a prediction associated with the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Dixon’s career also gave rise to a term now used in skeptical circles: the “Jeane Dixon effect,” proposed by mathematician John Allen Paulos to describe the media’s tendency to loudly publicize a psychic’s rare correct predictions while quietly ignoring the far larger number of incorrect ones — among Dixon’s own missed predictions were forecasts that World War III would begin in 1958 and that Richard Nixon would win the 1960 presidential election.

Bizarre and Notable 20th-Century Cases

Several strange episodes from the 20th century illustrate both the appeal and the controversy surrounding claimed psychic powers.

Israeli performer Uri Geller became internationally famous in the 1970s for claims of psychokinetically bending spoons and stopping watches through willpower alone; his powers were investigated by physicists Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff, whose supportive 1974 paper in the journal Nature drew heavy criticism, while stage magicians replicated his effects using ordinary sleight of hand.

Around the same period, the CIA funded a classified program known as “Stargate,” a roughly 20-year, $20 million research effort into “remote viewing” and psychic espionage; when the program was declassified and formally reviewed in the 1990s, independent evaluators found that although some statistical deviations had been observed, they fell far short of strong evidence for genuine psychic functioning.

In the 1980s, televangelist Peter Popoff was revealed to be receiving information about audience members via a hidden wireless earpiece, which he then presented as messages from paranormal or divine sources — one of the more thoroughly documented cases of “hot reading” fraud in modern history.

From the 1960s to Today: A Commercial Industry

Commercial psychic services in the form recognizable today — paid readings offered by phone, in person, at psychic fairs, and more recently online and via app or video call — became widespread starting in the 1960s and have grown into a large and long-lasting industry ever since.

Television further popularized the field through media psychics and famous mediums such as John Edward and Sylvia Browne, who built audiences through televised readings. At the same time, the entertainment side of the industry has continued through mentalists and psychic-themed performers.

Today, belief in psychic ability remains a significant, if declining and contested, part of public life, coexisting with a highly organized skeptical movement and academic parapsychological research.

Types of Psychic Abilities

People who describe themselves as psychic typically point to one or more specific abilities, often nicknamed the “clairs” (from the French clair, meaning “clear”).

Practitioners generally describe these as different channels or “frequencies” through which intuitive information is received, and most people who identify as psychic say they have one dominant clair, with the others present to a lesser degree. The four most commonly referenced are described in more depth below.

Clairvoyance (“clear seeing”) is the ability most people associate with the word “psychic”: perceiving images, symbols, scenes, or visions in the mind’s eye about people, places, or events that are not physically present. Practitioners describe clairvoyant impressions as arriving less like a photograph and more like a brief mental movie or a symbolic picture that needs interpretation — for example, “seeing” a bridge might be understood as a symbol of transition rather than a literal structure. Clairvoyance is historically the oldest and most widely referenced psychic term, dating back to 19th-century Spiritualism, and it is the ability most often attributed to mediums who report visually perceiving spirits.

Clairaudience (“clear hearing”) is the perception of sounds, words, phrases, or full messages that are not audible to the physical ear. People who describe this ability say the experience is usually internal — more like a thought that arrives in the form of a specific voice or phrase rather than an external sound — though some practitioners report also hearing sounds externally, such as a ringing in the ears or a voice as if someone were speaking nearby. Clairaudience is often the ability mediums describe using when they say they are “hearing” from a spirit rather than seeing one. It is also the sense most closely tied to reports of hearing meaningful song lyrics or overheard conversations at exactly the right moment.

Clairsentience (“clear feeling”) is the most commonly reported of the four clairs and is closely related to empathy. It involves sensing emotions, physical sensations, or energy connected to a person, object, or location — for example, a sudden unexplained wave of sadness, a physical chill, or a gut feeling as if something is wrong before any evidence is available. Clairsentience has both an internal component (feeling someone else’s emotion as if it were your own) and an external component (a physical sensation such as goosebumps, often associated in mediumship with the sense that a spirit is present). Because the ability overlaps heavily with ordinary compassion and emotional intuition, it is the clair most frequently reported by people who don’t otherwise identify as psychic.

Claircognizance (“clear knowing”) is described as the most difficult of the four to explain, because it involves no image, sound, or feeling at all — simply a sudden, confident certainty about a fact or situation with no identifiable source. Practitioners describe claircognizant information as arriving fully formed, as though the knowledge had always been there and simply surfaced at the right moment. It is often compared to a “download” of information. It is the ability most associated with sudden creative ideas, unexplained hunches, or “just knowing” that something is true or about to happen.

Beyond these four core abilities, the psychic and intuitive-reading community references several additional, less common “clairs” and related abilities:

Clairgustance — perceiving taste without anything physically in the mouth, sometimes linked to memories of a specific person or event.
Clairalience (also called clairescence) — perceiving smells with no physical source, such as the scent of a deceased loved one’s perfume.
Telepathy — the direct, mind-to-mind transfer of thoughts or feelings between two people, without using speech, writing, or any of the standard five senses.
Precognition — sensing or foreseeing future events before they happen, often reported in the form of vivid or frequent dreams.
Retrocognition — the reported ability to perceive past events or past lives that happened before the person’s own lifetime or direct experience.
Psychometry (also called clairtangency) — claiming to gather impressions or information about a person or event by physically touching an object associated with them, such as a piece of jewelry or an article of clothing.

How Psychic Readings Work

A typical psychic reading is a paid or informal consultation in which the psychic offers insight, guidance, or predictions about the client’s life.

Methods vary widely from one practitioner to another. Some rely purely on stated intuition and the “clairs” described above. Others use divination tools as aids, including tarot cards, astrological charts, palmistry, runes, pendulums, or numerology. Readings can take place in person, over the phone, through chat or video, or at public events such as psychic fairs.

Skeptics and researchers point to a well-documented psychological explanation for why many readings feel personally accurate even without any genuine ability at work: cold reading and the closely related Barnum effect (also called the Forer effect).

Cold reading is a set of techniques — including making broad, high-probability statements, watching a subject’s reactions closely, and quickly moving past guesses that miss while strengthening ones that land — that can create a strong impression of insider knowledge.

The Barnum effect explains people’s tendency to rate vague, general personality statements (“you sometimes doubt a big decision you’ve made”) as uniquely accurate descriptions of themselves.

In a classic 1948 experiment by psychologist Bertram Forer, a group of students were all given the identical personality description and asked to rate its accuracy for themselves individually; the average rating was 4.3 out of 5, even though every student had received the same generic text.

Distinct from cold reading is “hot reading,” where a performer has secretly obtained real information about a subject in advance, and “warm reading,” which relies specifically on statements that apply to most people.

Psychic vs. Medium: What’s the Difference?

The terms “psychic” and “medium” are often used interchangeably, but they describe distinct — if overlapping — practices. A psychic is generally described as someone who reads the energy, circumstances, or intuitive impressions connected to a living person, focusing on things like relationships, career, and upcoming possibilities.

A medium, by contrast, is specifically someone who claims to communicate with the spirits of people who have died, acting as a go-between for the living and those “on the other side.” Because mediumship is considered a specialized form of psychic ability, it’s commonly said that all mediums are psychics, but not all psychics are mediums.

	Psychic	Medium
Focus	The living person’s energy, circumstances, and potential future	Communication with spirits of the deceased
Purpose	Guidance on relationships, career, and life decisions	Comfort, closure, and connection after a loss
Time orientation	Past, present, and especially future	Primarily the afterlife and past memories shared through spirit
Tools	Tarot cards, astrology, runes, pendulums, or pure intuition	Meditation, séances, or “mental mediumship” (receiving impressions telepathically)
Source of information	The client’s own energy field or aura	Spirits, spirit guides, or “the other side”
Overlap	Not necessarily a medium	Always considered to also be psychic

What Does Science Say About Psychic Abilities?

The scientific study of claimed psychic phenomena is the field of parapsychology. This field uses standard experimental and statistical methods to test claims such as telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition. Despite operating within the framework of mainstream science for decades, parapsychology has not produced findings that the general scientific community accepts as evidence of real psychic ability.

In 1988, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences published a report concluding that 130 years of research had produced no scientific justification for the existence of parapsychological phenomena. A separate 1990 survey of National Academy of Sciences members found that only 2% believed extrasensory perception had been scientifically demonstrated, with another 2% believing it happened only occasionally; neuroscientists were the most skeptical group surveyed.

More recent efforts have fared no better: a widely publicized 2011 study claiming evidence for precognition could not be reliably reproduced when other researchers attempted to repeat it, and a 2012 replication attempt of related memory experiments also failed to find a significant effect.

Some researchers carry on active work in the field at institutions such as the Rhine Research Center at Duke University and the University of Edinburgh, and advocates maintain that small statistical effects appear consistently across large pooled datasets.

Critics counter that these effects are more plausibly explained by methodological weaknesses, selective publication of positive results (sometimes called the “file drawer effect”), and unconscious cues passing between experimenter and subject. To date, no psychic phenomenon has been demonstrated with enough reliability and consistency for the wider scientific community to accept it as real.

How Many People Believe in Psychics?

Despite the lack of scientific support, belief in psychic phenomena remains common. A May 2025 Gallup poll found that no single paranormal belief was held by a majority of U.S. adults, and about two-thirds of Americans were classified as generally skeptical, typically endorsing at most one paranormal idea — most often psychic or spiritual healing.

Earlier Gallup surveys found higher numbers: a 2005 poll recorded that 41% of Americans believed in extrasensory perception and 26% believed in clairvoyance specifically. A 2002 CBS News poll found that 57% of Americans believed in psychic phenomena broadly, down from 64% in a 1989 poll by the same organization.

More recent consumer surveys suggest a meaningful share of people believe they personally have some psychic ability. A 2026 Talker Research poll of 2,000 U.S. adults found that 19% considered themselves psychic, 71% said they rely on intuition at least some of the time, and 11% dismissed the idea of psychic ability entirely.

Separately, a YouGov survey found that about one in five U.S. adults (22%) had consulted a psychic or medium at some point. In contrast, nearly half (47%) said they believe most people who advertise themselves as psychics or mediums are frauds — skepticism that was a lot higher among adults over 55.

What Does the Bible Say About Psychics?

The Bible addresses psychic-type practices directly and repeatedly, almost always in the form of a prohibition.

The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) utilizes specific terms — most often translated as “mediums,” “spiritists,” “wizards,” “necromancers,” “diviners,” and “those who have familiar spirits” — to describe people who claimed to contact the dead or foretell the future outside of God’s prophets. Below are the key passages, quoted from the King James Version (KJV), a public-domain English translation.

Leviticus 19:31 delivers a direct command against consulting such practitioners:

“Regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards, to be defiled by them: I am the LORD your God.”

Leviticus 20:27 goes further, prescribing capital punishment under the Mosaic Law for those who practiced mediumship within ancient Israel:

“A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones: their blood shall be upon them.”

Deuteronomy 18:10–12 groups mediums and spiritists together with sorcerers, fortune-tellers, and those who “call up the dead,” listing them among practices that led God to drive other nations out of the land:

“There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD.”

1 Samuel 28 contains the Bible’s most detailed narrative involving a medium: the story of Saul and the “witch of Endor.” Facing a Philistine army and unable to get guidance from God through prophets or dreams, King Saul — who had earlier expelled all mediums from Israel in obedience to the Law — disguised himself and sought out a medium at Endor to summon the spirit of the deceased prophet Samuel. The text describes the encounter:

“Then said the woman, Whom shall I bring up unto thee? And he said, Bring me up Samuel… And Samuel said to Saul, Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up?”

Samuel’s spirit then delivered a prophecy that Saul and his sons would die in battle the next day, which the narrative reports came true in 1 Samuel 31. Bible commentators have long debated whether the account depicts a genuine (if forbidden and divinely permitted) encounter with Samuel or a deceptive spirit impersonating him. Still, nearly all agree the episode is presented as the tragic capstone of Saul’s disobedience.

Isaiah 8:19 frames the prohibition as a matter of trust, arguing that God’s people should seek answers from God rather than from occult practitioners:

“And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead?”

In the New Testament, Acts 16:16–18 recounts an episode involving the apostle Paul in the city of Philippi:

“And it came to pass, as we went to prayer, a certain damsel possessed with a spirit of divination met us, which brought her masters much gain by soothsaying… But Paul, being grieved, turned and said to the spirit, I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And he came out the same hour.”

The passage describes an enslaved girl whose owners profited from her fortune-telling ability, which the text attributes to a “spirit of divination”; Paul’s act of casting out the spirit ends her ability to predict the future and leads to his arrest by the enraged owners, who have lost their income.

Taken together, these passages form the basis for the traditional Christian position that psychic and mediumship practices are spiritually forbidden, generally because they either involve deception or, according to many theologians, that any real information obtained through them comes from a source other than God.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is being psychic real?

There is no scientific proof that psychic abilities exist. Major reviews, including a 1988 U.S. National Academy of Sciences report, concluded that more than a century of research had not produced credible evidence for phenomena similar to telepathy or clairvoyance, and the scientific consensus treats psychic claims as pseudoscience. That said, belief in psychic ability remains widespread among the general public, and many people report personal experiences they interpret as psychic.

What is the difference between a psychic and a fortune teller?

A fortune teller is specifically focused on predicting future events, often using methods such as tarot, palmistry, or a crystal ball. “Psychic” is a more general term that can include future prediction but also covers reading a person’s current energy, emotions, or circumstances without necessarily forecasting what comes next.

Are all mediums psychics?

Yes. Because communicating with spirits is considered a specific and advanced form of psychic ability, mediums are generally described as a subset of psychics. However, the reverse isn’t true — most psychics do not claim to communicate with the dead, so not all psychics are mediums.

How do skeptics explain accurate-feeling psychic readings?

Skeptics claim to cold reading and the Barnum (or Forer) effect. Cold reading involves making broad, high-probability statements and adjusting them based on a client’s verbal and physical reactions. At the same time, the Barnum effect explains people’s inclination to see vague, general statements as personally and uniquely accurate. Psychologist Bertram Forer demonstrated this in a well-known 1948 experiment in which a whole class of students rated an identical, generic personality description as highly accurate for themselves individually.

Can psychic ability be developed, or is it inherited?

Within the psychic community, both ideas are commonly claimed: some believe psychic sensitivity is hereditary and transmitted through families. In contrast, others believe that anyone can strengthen their intuitive abilities through practices such as meditation. Neither claim has scientific validation, since psychic ability itself has not been demonstrated to exist under supervised conditions.

How many people believe in psychic phenomena?

Belief levels vary depending on how the question is asked and which specific phenomenon is named. A 2025 Gallup poll found that no single paranormal belief was held by a majority of Americans, while earlier Gallup data from 2005 found that 41% believed in ESP and 26% specifically in clairvoyance. A 2026 consumer survey found that about 19% of U.S. adults considered themselves personally psychic.

Is channeling the same thing as mediumship?

Not exactly. Channeling generally refers to allowing a spirit or non-physical entity to temporarily communicate through a person, sometimes described as taking control of their body during a trance. Mediumship more broadly covers any claimed communication with the deceased. It can occur through several different methods, of which channeling is just one specific form.

Does the Bible say psychics are real?

The Bible doesn’t argue that psychic or mediumship abilities are fake; instead, it repeatedly forbids consulting them, treating practices like mediumship, divination, and sorcery as real but spiritually prohibited. Passages such as Leviticus 19:31, Deuteronomy 18:10–12, and the story of Saul consulting a medium in 1 Samuel 28 instruct followers to look for guidance from God rather than from mediums, spiritists, or those who claim to contact the dead.