Necromancy

Origin

The most famous biblical episode of necromancy is recorded in 1 Samuel 28: King Saul, refused divine response on the eve of his last battle, disguises himself and visits the Witch of Endor (Hebrew *ba'alat ov*, mistress of the *ov*). She summons the spirit of the prophet Samuel, who prophesies Saul's defeat and death. The episode condemns necromancy in principle (Saul had himself banished such practitioners) while testifying to its presence and presumed efficacy. The Hebrew Bible repeatedly prohibits necromancy (Leviticus 19:31, Deuteronomy 18:11, Isaiah 8:19), evidence that the practice was widespread enough to require systematic prohibition.

Greek and Roman literature describe necromantic episodes vividly. Book XI of Homer's *Odyssey*, the *Nekyia*, narrates Odysseus's consultation of the dead at the entrance to the underworld, where he speaks with the seer Tiresias, his mother, Achilles, Ajax, and others. The Roman poet Lucan in *Pharsalia* Book VI describes the witch Erichtho reanimating a corpse to prophesy to the young Sextus Pompey. Apuleius, Heliodorus, and other late-antique authors include necromantic scenes. The Greek *nekyomanteia* (oracles of the dead) at Heraclea Pontica, Tainaron, Avernus, and Ephyra were temple-cave complexes where the dead could be consulted; archaeology at Ephyra (in Epirus) has identified the probable site.

Method

Ancient necromantic procedure typically involved a sequence of preparations: ritual purification (sometimes by bathing in specific waters, sometimes by fasting), nocturnal location near tombs or in chthonic sanctuaries, offerings of black animal blood and libations of milk, honey, and wine, and the invocation of underworld deities (Hades, Persephone, Hecate, Hermes Chthonios). The dead spirit was summoned by name, addressed by ritual formula, and questioned. Procedures varied widely; the *Papyri Graecae Magicae* (a corpus of Greek-Egyptian magical papyri from the second to fifth centuries CE) preserve extensive necromantic rituals with detailed instructions.

Medieval European necromancy combined late-antique magical inheritance with Christian elements. The fifteenth-century *Munich Manual of Demonic Magic* (Codex Latinus Monacensis 849) is a major surviving source: a Latin handbook of necromantic procedures for the conjuration of spirits, including the summoning of the dead. The grimoires of the early modern period (*Lemegeton*, *Key of Solomon*, *Heptameron*) treat related material. Modern *spiritism*, beginning with the Fox sisters in 1848 and systematised by Allan Kardec in *Le Livre des Esprits* (1857), is a rationalised descendant of necromancy that uses mediums and ritualised séance procedures. See also divination.

In practice

Contemporary practice rarely takes the elaborate ritual form of medieval grimoire necromancy. The mainstream survival is the spiritist séance, in which a group sits at a table around a medium, sometimes with a planchette or talking-board, and attempts to communicate with departed family members. Ritual procedure: a quiet darkened room, a single candle, a circle of participants holding hands, an invocation, a period of silence, and the reading of any communications that come through speech, automatic writing, or movement of an indicator. The form is more therapeutic than divinatory in modern usage.

A simpler personal practice: at a chosen moment of stillness, address a deceased family member or teacher by name, ask one clear question, and listen for whatever response comes through inner voice, dream, or omen in the following days. This is not strictly necromancy in the technical sense but the same impulse, refined and made domestic. Combine with oneiromantic attention to dreams, with pendulum work for binary responses, or with tarot for fuller readings. See also sibyl.

Symbolic depth

Necromancy is the most metaphysically charged of the divinatory arts. It presupposes that the dead persist in some form and can be addressed; this is the strongest of all divinatory commitments, and the one most directly at odds with the modern secular worldview. The persistence of necromantic practice across two and a half millennia of prohibition testifies to a deep human refusal to accept the silence of the dead. The Witch of Endor episode encapsulates the moral structure: necromancy is condemned, performed in extremity, and granted a partial efficacy that makes the condemnation more rather than less serious.

Read psychologically rather than metaphysically, necromancy speaks to the work of mourning. To address the dead, to listen for their response, is to keep them present in one's inner life, to refuse the amputation of relationship that death imposes. Whether the response one hears comes from the dead themselves, or from the part of oneself that has internalised them, is a question whose answer depends on one's metaphysical commitments. Continue with sibyl, oneiromancy, divination, and the Oracle of Delphi. The full glossary offers further paths.

Also known as

• Nigromancy
• Sciomancy
• Spiritism
• Goetia
• Mediumship