The Dumb Supper: Your Guide to Dining with the Dead

If you’re looking to make contact with the spirit world, there’s really no better way than hosting a Dumb Supper.

In this case, “dumb” isn’t being used in the modern, pejorative sense of the word. It means “silent.” Just so we’re clear, I’m not telling you to host a “stupid dinner.”

The Dumb Supper is a meal that you can share with someone who has passed away. It can be a friend, relative, mentor, or even a historical figure. As you dine together, you may feel their presence, receive messages, or even have a conversation… despite the fact that no words are actually being spoken. You can do this at any time of year, but it typically works best around Samhain when the veil is thinner than usual.

Want to find out more? Read on!

History and Folk Beliefs

Some people will claim that Dumb Suppers are ancient. I’m not willing to make that statement. There are other theories that these types of rituals trace back to either 19th-century Appalachian folk practice or “love divination” events in 17th-century England where young women would divine the name of the person they would marry.

Since we’re dealing with quite a mixed bag of beliefs and superstitions across multiple continents, there’s a varied assortment of customs that come with it. If you ask 10 different witches how to properly perform a Dumb Supper, you might just get 11 different sets of instructions, some of which include things like:

• Serving the meal backwards
• Eating at precisely midnight
• Preparing food without salt
• Adhering to a strict vegetarian diet for weeks before the ritual
• Hosting the ritual on Oct 31 or Nov 1

I’m going to give you one version of how to do things, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right way or the only way. Although the Dumb Supper might not be particularly ancient, it is a form of Necromancy, which is a practice that definitely goes back to ancient times. We’ll talk more about that later. First, let’s take a look at what type of supplies you’ll need.

Needed Supplies

Like most magickal rituals, you’re going to need to prepare a few things ahead of time.

• A dining table
• Two full place settings (plates, utensils, cups, etc)
• Candles
• Picture of your loved one and/or something that belonged to them
• Preferred divination methods
• A meal – something your dearly departed would have enjoyed while living

The most time-consuming part of this process is actually doing the cooking. You want to treat the deceased as an honored guest as if they were dining with you in the flesh. It’s usually advised to prepare a meal that they would have enjoyed while alive. I think this sort of thing helps make the connection.

If you don’t know what type of food they might have liked, just use your best judgment! I don’t have a lot of memories with my grandfather, for instance, and I certainly don’t know what type of foods were his favorites, but I’ve got a couple spotty pictures in my head of going out to a Chinese restaurant with him when I was really young. When I’ve invited him to Dumb Suppers in the past, I’ve picked up some cheap Chinese takeout… and that was more than sufficient to form the mental connections required.

Once you’re dining together, you can always ask, “What do you think about the food?” Obviously you won’t be asking that question out loud — it’ll be through divination, but you should still be able to get a reasonable answer.

You’ll want to set up your table so that there are two places facing each other. One is for you and one is for the dead you are inviting. Both should have a full table setting — plates, glasses, utensils, napkins, etc — everything you would need to actually enjoy the meal. Place a candle between the two.

I think decoration is a pretty key aspect of creating this type of sacred space. It helps set the tone for something that is different from the way you usually eat. As such, you might want to deck your table in black or in white tablecloths. And drape a white or black cloth over the chair that is set for your dearly departed.

If you like, you might also prepare by writing a letter. Maybe you have a lot to say. This will definitely be the time to say it!

Oh and by the way, although it might seem like a good idea to invite all of your deceased loved ones, it’s best to focus on just one per ritual.

An Outline of the Process

Since you are essentially inviting spirits to hang out with you, it’s important to create sacred space so that you are properly protected. You don’t have to do a full ritual, but I believe it helps. You can do this any way that feels appropriate to you.

If you have a ritual framework that you usually use, you can juse use it as per usual and put the “eating” part of the Dumb Supper right in the middle. Bonus points if it’s already a Samhain or similarly-themed ritual. It’s okay to speak while you are creating the space, but once you have started the dining portion, you’ll need to remain silent until you are ready to close the ritual. Uttering even a single word will shift the energy dynamic.

Turn off cell phones and electronic devices. Light your candles. And begin!

The main altar for a Dumb Supper ritual that Selene and I performed

Wait, but seriously. Turn off your cell phone. Or better yet, leave it in another room. I’m not the type of person to always ban electronics from a ritual space, but Dumb Suppers are delicate energetic procedures.

Anyway, here’s a rough outline of the steps:

1. Give your space a good cleaning — physically and energetically
2. Consecrate the elements (water, salt, fire, incense)
3. Cast circle. Physically walk the perimeter.
4. Asperge and cense all participants
5. Call the quarters
6. Call deity
7. Invite ancestors and loved ones to join
8. Serve the meal. Eat in silence. Do divination.
9. Cakes and wine
10. Thank your ancestors and say goodbye
11. Thank deity and say goodbye
12. Dismiss the quarters
13. Close circle. Physically walk the perimeter.

Once you’re finished with everything, I find it totally acceptable to just dispose of any leftover food as you would for a regular meal — throw it in the trash. If that feels sacrilegious to you for some reason, you can libate it.

Appropriate Deities

If you’re following the above outline, you’ll notice it says to “call deity” without specifying exactly who to call. That’s a choice that I’ll ultimately leave up to you; however, if you’re looking for inspiration, let me give you a quick list off the top of my head:

• Hades
• Persephone
• Hecate
• Osiris
• Anubis
• Mercury

I’d personally be looking for a deity with underworld, death, or communication associations… and I’d be specifically requesting that they open the door between worlds.

Calling the Ancestors

Oh right, I kind of wrote a song for this purpose. It’s short and sweet. You’re more than welcome to use it (and if you do, I’d love to hear about it).

It goes like this:

I call to the ancestors
Spirits of old
We welcome you now
And we seek to behold
Your wisdom and guidance
And messages too
We open the door
And invite you through

And if you like, you can listen to it.

Suggested Divination Methods

It’s extremely important to have some divination methods ready so that you can receive messages from your dearly departed.

• Automatic Writing – Even if you’ve never tried it before, a Dumb Supper is a great place for automatic writing. You can get into a flow and have a full on conversation.
• Tarot – Draw some cards and see what the dead have to tell you.
• Pendulum – If you’re only planning on asking simple yes/no questions, a pendulum can be an efficient way to obtain the answers.

The above are merely suggestions. If you’ve got a preferred way of performing divination, you should absolutely use it here!

Also, I have found that just closing my eyes and dropping into a trance state allows for some pretty wild experiences. I couldn’t even begin to tell you the weird places I’ve journeyed to that way.

Odysseus, Eliphas Levi, and Necromancy

I’ve explained this before, but necromancy isn’t all about reanimating corpses. It just means that you’ve received communication from the dead or engaged in divination with the dead. On the whole, it’s an ancient practice.

One of the first written accounts of necromancy comes from Book XI of the Odyssey, circa 750 BCE to 650 BCE, where Odysseus leaves offerings (of water, wine, and honey), makes a blood sacrifice, and interviews ghosts.

"When I had prayed sufficiently to the dead, I cut the throats of the two sheep and let the blood run into the trench, whereon the ghosts [psukhai] came trooping up from Erebus - brides, young bachelors, old men worn out with toil, maids who had been crossed in love, and brave men who had been killed in battle, with their armor still smirched with blood; they came from every quarter and flitted round the trench with a strange kind of screaming sound that made me turn pale with fear."

-The Odyssey, Book XI (read it here)

Necromancy is also discussed in the Bible, specifically the Old Testament book of 1 Samuel. A story usually referred to as “The Witch of Endor” or “Saul and the Witch” can be found in Chapter 28 if you’d like to read it yourself, but I’m going to give you the highlights.

According to the tale, Saul was looking for reassurance of victory in an upcoming military battle. He was terrified of being defeated by an opposing army. He prayed to God for a sign, but God never answered him. Desperate for an answer, he tried to find a witch. The only problem was that he had recently driven all of the mediums and sorcerers out of the land. Some people told him to go to this place called Endor, where they heard a witch lived (not Ewoks, surprisingly), so he went and found her… which, by the way, made him a huge hypocrite. He asked her to summon the ghost of the prophet Samuel, which she successfully did, and the ghost basically said “you’re an idiot and now you’re screwed.” And nobody lived happily ever after.

If you’d like to put a date on the Biblical account, it could have been written around 550 BCE.

These guys didn’t come to eat…

And of course, in the year 3019 of the Third Age of Middle Earth, Aragorn summons The Army of the Dead to fight in the War of the Ring against Sauron, thereby fulfilling their oath and allowing them to be free. (Sorry if I’m getting that date wrong, but the Middle Earth calendar confuses me).

What do all three of the above accounts have in common? They’re entirely [read: probably, mostly, almost definitely] fictional. They might not be true accounts, but they do reflect a true practice.

So let’s turn to another source — one which I often quote and one which is meant to read more as an instructional manual: The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic by Eliphas Levi.

"You will invoke God according to the formulas of the religion to which the deceased person belonged and according to the ideas she herself had of God. You must, when saying this prayer, identify yourself with the evoked person, speak as she would speak, believe in a certain manner in what she believed; then, after a quarter house of silence, talk to her as though she were present, with affection and faith, while praying to her to show herself to you; renew this prayer mentally while covering your face with both hands, then call out to the person three times in a loud voice; wait while kneeling and with eyes closed or covered for a few minutes while speaking to her mentally; then call out three times to her again in a soft and affectionate voice and slowly open your eyes."

-The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magick, Eliphas Levi

Levi’s work was incredibly influential to what we think of today as modern witchcraft. He wrote about magick in a complicated, fanciful, and often completely exaggerated way, almost as if to say “I could tell you exactly how to do it, but you wouldn’t understand me anyway.” He would probably also tell you that magick was only a tool for the wealthy or affluent… because otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to afford the ridiculous litany of supplies that he says are necessary. In spite of this, I find his accounts fascinating, particularly the part where you must honor the religious beliefs of your deceased and pray to the deity that they would have prayed to. That begs a question: why?

What are we really interacting with?

There are several viewpoints for exactly what type of energy you’re interacting with while communing with spirits during a Dumb Supper. Some folks say that you can only successfully make contact with someone who is deceased, but who has not yet reincarnated into another body — that is, they’re still in the “Summerlands.” Others will tell you that you’re only dealing with the energetic imprint that a person left while living and not their actual spirit (which has moved on and is unreachable).

In the case of the imprint, I guess Levi’s guidelines to observe the dead’s religious views make quite a bit of sense. After all, you want them to be as comfortable as possible. If you lived your life as a devout Christian, wouldn’t it be a little jarring to suddenly be summoned into a Wiccan circle with pagan deities?

The Last Judgment painting by Jan van Eyck, circa 1440. Public Domain. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

Actually, that particular perplexity had me vigorously vexed for a very long time. All of my relatives, you see, are devout Christians. And I thought it might be offensive to include them in something they might have found perverse or even, dare I say it, “evil,” if they had seen it while living.

My personal experience with “the great beyond,” however, has lead me to some very different conclusions. First of all, religion doesn’t really have much use once you cross the veil. Unless you’re dealing with dead who have a lot of unfinished business, those biases, prejudices, and preconceptions fall away. Secondly, time isn’t linear. Every moment is happening simultaneously, so it’s always possible to interact with a person’s spirit regardless of whether or not they have reincarnated.

Of course, that’s all just my opinion. And I could be wrong. But what’s really going to bake your noodle later on is wondering if it’s possible to invite your own past or future lives into a Dumb Supper.

Further Reading

If you’re looking for some overly complicated explanations of necromancy, or just magick in general, look no further than Eliphas Levi. If you’d like an incredibly comprehensive account of the dead and how different cultures around the world have treated them, then I’d highly recommend The Mighty Dead by Christopher Penczak.

Conclusions

I think I’ve given you enough info to get started, but we’re not dealing with an exact science here. The only real way to fully understand this type of ritual is to experience it for yourself — and that’s something you can do on your own or with a group of like-minded people.

Have you ever attended a Dumb Supper? Who did you invite? What was your experience like? Tell me all about it in the comments.

Wait, wait, before you go… I’m receiving a message from the great beyond. Yes… it’s all becoming clearer and clearer now. The message is from someone named “Amazon.” Does that name sound familiar to you? Right, of course it does. They want you to know that there are affiliate links on this page. If you use one of those links to make a purchase, they will pay me a tiny commission.