and you can never make it up.  Next to grace, time is the most valuable thing God gives us, and we should use it well.  “Attributing to a creature a perfection” etc.  Persons who go to fortune tellers do this.  Fortune tellers are persons who pretend to know what is going to happen in the future.  We know from our religion that only God Himself knows the future.  Neither the angels nor saints, nor even the Blessed Virgin, know the future.  Even they could not tell your fortune unless God revealed it to them.  So when you go to a fortune teller you place the poor sinful person who is doing the devil’s work above the Blessed Virgin and all the saints and angels, and make that wretch equal to God Himself.  Surely this is a sin, even if you do not believe these so-called fortune tellers, but go to them merely through curiosity or with others.  Again, we pay these persons for telling us some foolish nonsense, and thus encourage them to continue their sinful business.  They doubtless laugh at the foolishness of those who go to them or believe what they say and pay them generously.  You might with as much sense stop a man on the street, ask him to tell your fortune, and hand him your money, for he would know as much about it as so-called fortune tellers do.  Rarely these sinful people might tell you something that has happened in your life; but if they do, they merely guess at it or are aided by the devil.  The devil did not lose his intelligence when driven out of Heaven, and he uses it now for doing evil.  He has vast experience, for he is as old as Adam, or older, and has seen and known all the men that have lived in the world.  He can move rapidly through the world and easily know what is visibly taking place, so that, strictly speaking, he could make known to his sinful agents what is present or past, but never the future.  Thus some fortune tellers, clairvoyants, mindreaders, mediums, or whatever else they call themselves, who are truly in league with the devil, may by his power tell you the past of your life to make you believe that they know also the future.  The past and present in your life you already know, and the future they cannot tell; therefore it is useless as well as sinful to go to them.  I say only it is possible for some fortune tellers to employ the assistance of the devil, for all of them, with very rare exception, are clever impostors who take your money for guessing at what they suspect you will be most pleased to hear.

319 Q. Do those who make use of spells and charms, or who believe in dreams, in mediums, spiritists, fortune tellers, and the like, sin against the First Commandment?  A. Those who make use of spells and charms, or who believe in dreams, in mediums, spiritists, fortune tellers, and the like, sin against the First Commandment, because they attribute to creatures perfections which belong to God alone.