Ba'al Ov

Sources

one who casts spells, or one who consults ghosts or familiar spirits, or one who inquires of the dead.

Deuteronomy 18:11

Do not turn to ghosts and do not inquire of familiar spirits, to be defiled by them: I יהוה am your God.

Leviticus 19:31

A man or a woman who has a ghost or a familiar spirit shall be put to death; they shall be pelted with stones—and they shall retain the bloodguilt.

Leviticus 20:27

And if any person turns to ghosts and familiar spirits and goes astray after them, I will set My face against that person, whom I will cut off from among the people.

Anyone who willingly, as a conscious act of defiance, performs the deeds associated with an ov or a yid'oni is liable for karet. If witnesses were present and warned him, he should be stoned to death. If he performed these actions inadvertently, he must bring a fixed sin offering.
What do the deeds associated with an ov involve? A person stands up and offers an incense offering of known content. He holds a wand of myrtle in his hand and waves it while whispering a known incantation in a hushed tone…

Mishneh Torah, Foreign Worship and Customs of the Nations 6:1

MISHNA: The list of those liable to be executed by stoning includes those who practice various types of sorcery. The mishna describes them: A necromancer is a pitom from whose armpit the voice of the dead appears to speak. And a sorcerer is one from whose mouth the dead appears to speak. These, the necromancer and the sorcerer, are executed by stoning, and one who inquires about the future through them is in violation of a prohibition.…

Sanhedrin 65a:1-65b:10

אל תפנו DO NOT TURN [TO THE אבת NOR TO THE ידענים] — This is a warning addressed to the necromancers and the charmers themselves (not to the people who consult these tricksters). The בעל אוב, the controller of the spirit אוב, as the necromancer is called (cf. I Samuel 28:7), is identical with the פיתום (in Greek: πύξωυ); he is one who speaks out of his arm-pit; ידעני is one who puts a bone of an animal the name of which is ידוע into his mouth and the bone speaks (Sanhedrin 65b). אל תבקשו means DO NOT SEEK to busy yourselves with them, for if you busy yourselves with them…

Rashi on Leviticus 19:31:1-2

אל תפנו אל האובות ואל הידעונים . "Do not turn to ghosts and do not inquire of familiar spirits." The reason is that such ghosts are apt to turn you away from having faith in G–d who is the Creator of all. The method employed by people who are experts in communicating with the dead involve manipulating the powers of impurity. When these "dead" spirits make predictions of the future some will come true, others will not. The reason the Torah calls these ghosts אבות, "fathers," is that they are the "patriarchs" of all the forces of impurity…

Shenei Luchot HaBerit, Torah Shebikhtav, Sefer Vayikra, Derekh Chayim, Kedoshim 43

The second premise is, that granted that kessem, enchantment is as far from real prophecy as right is from left, it still shares a common denominator with prophecy in that it is an attempt to divine events in the future. It had served such men as Bileam as a stepping stone towards reading the future. (Numbers 22,7, and other examples) The Torah testifies that after Bileam had employed these devices a number of times, he eventually dispensed with them, being confident that he was already on the right wave length without having to employ these gadgets as "tuning dials…

Akeidat Yitzchak 65:1:23

Go not astray after those who inquire of impostors, or bring up the dead, or interrogate the bone of Jeddua: neither be ye inquirers with them, to pollute yourselves thereby I am the Lord your God.

Targum Jonathan on Leviticus 19:31

or make (magical) knots and bindings of serpents and scorpions or any kind of reptile, or who consult the oba, the bones of the dead or the bone Jadua, or who inquire of the manes.

Targum Jonathan on Deuteronomy 18:11

Saul disguised himself; he put on different clothes and set out with two men. They came to the woman by night, and he said, “Please divine for me by a ghost. Bring up for me the one I shall name to you.”

Rabbi Eliezer said: Know thou the power of charity. Come and see from (the instance of) Saul, the son of Kish, who removed the witches and the necromancers from off the earth, and once again he loved that which he had hated. He went to En Dor, to the wife of Zephaniah, the mother of Abner, and he inquired of her for himself by the familiar spirit, and she brought for him Samuel the prophet, and the dead saw Samuel ascending, and they ascended with him, thinking that the resurrection of the dead had come, and the woman beheld, and she became very much confused, as it is said…

Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer 33:10

That which we have written on the prohibition of the diviner and the soothsayer (Sefer HaChinukh 249, 250) is from the roots of this commandment. And [it is] since all of these nullities cause a person to leave the true fundamental religion and faith in God, may He be blessed; and to turn to emptiness and think that everything that happens to him, happens by way of circumstance; and that it is in his hand to better himself and remove all injury from him with those questions and nullities that he will do…

Sefer HaChinukh 255:2

The text appears to agree with both the opinions expressed in Chagigah and those expressed by these gaonim as well as by what our intelligence dictates, i.e. that Samuel was alive while he spoke to Shaul and that the woman had not brought him to life, seeing that it is not within the power of any ordinary human being to perform such an act. Only G’d Himself, or a prophet especially granted such a power can do this. Rabbi Avraham Ibn Ezra also agrees with this view. There is still another view held by a few of the scholars of the Talmud according to which necromancers are indeed able to bring…

Rabbeinu Bahya, Devarim 18:10:7-8

The divine inspiration which we said was necessary in order that we may know through it what things are acceptable to God and what things are not, man can not acquire by himself without divine consent. For it is not natural that the spirit of an intellect devoid of matter should rest upon a material thing. For this reason all the ancients thought it impossible that the divine spirit should rest upon man, and that the latter should prophesy by means of a supernatural power and foretell the future…

Sefer HaIkkarim, Maamar 3 8:1

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