Astrology, premonitions, etc

[Larry1700]

Unbeknownst to us, a couple of days ago my daughter ordered a one-year subscription to have her horoscope provided via email. The cost was $60, and it was from some place called “Atoll Astrologie Le Tourne Fra” as provided on our Mastercard statement. After she placed the order, she realized she shouldn’t have done so, and told us. We can’t contact the merchant, and are working through Citicards to get our money back.

Anyway, I discussed the wrongs of astrology with our daughter, showed her CCC 2116, and she asked an interesting question:
“What about premonitions?”

Any ideas for an answer? What’s the Church’s doctrine about premonitions? If you are one who has premonitions (my wife’s mother supposedly does), is it okay to use that knowledge? If you have a premonition that something bad will/might happen soon, should you use that knowledge to prevent someone from getting into that situation?

 

[Reepicheep]

What do you mean by premonitions?
Do you mean “having a feeling” something is going to happen?

Or do you mean the belief that some supernatural power is giving you information?

A “feeling” might be no more than intuition, nothing supernatural about it.
But if you attribute it to supernatural powers, then I would say don’t listen. Don’t give credence to anything that claims to allow you supernatural knowledge, and that is not explicitely from God or approved by the Church.

 

[Larry1700]

What do you mean by premonitions?
Do you mean “having a feeling” something is going to happen?

Having never experienced it myself, I have to say that it’s “having a feeling something is going to happen.” For example, my mother-in-law can sometimes tell that out-of-town visitors are coming for a surprise visit before they show up. I’ve heard of mothers telling their kids not to go on an airplane trip because the plane would crash. They didn’t…it did.

 

[LittleDeb]

Some people have the gift of prophecy. This is a gift of The Holy Spirit. The most important part I understand in dealing with the gift of prophecy is knowing that any message MUST be from The Holy Spirit.

Angels are the messengers. That is their job description. Sadly there are fallen angels. They are still messengers. Their messages just are not from God. The messages demons bring might be accurate, but they contain information we are not supposed to know, ie like a previous poster said, seemingly supernatural, or God-like knowledge.

The example of the plane crash. Did God want this person to know that information? I don’t know. I wasn’t there. One side could say a resounding yes. God gave the person knowledge to prevent a tragedy. On the other side it still could have been of evil. It could have been that Satan was trying to control this person’s actions by making her feel like she had some sort of power of her own. Satan could have given her that information and then worked very hard to influence the plane crashing. I don’t know.

I do know this. Angels are real. Demons are real. The important part to understand is that we have no special power of our own. All glory is to God. (AMDG) I was taught to have any messenger praise the name of Jesus. If I wasn’t totally sure the message was from God, I would discount it.