In the Hebrew Bible there is only one detailed account of the summoning of a dead person, and it is one of the most intense in the whole text. It is found in First Samuel, chapter 28. King Saul, abandoned and desperate on the eve of a decisive battle, goes by night to a woman who can bring up the dead, at Endor. The scene is short and dramatic, and it has stirred debate among readers and interpreters for more than two thousand years.
The context
The story opens with two essential pieces of information. First: the prophet Samuel has died and been buried at Ramah. Second: Saul had removed from the land the necromancers and the diviners. The king himself, then, had enforced the ban on these practices.
Then the situation comes to a head. The Philistines gather at Shunem, Saul encamps on Mount Gilboa, sees the enemy army and is seized with terror. He inquires of the Lord, but receives no answer, neither through dreams, nor through the Urim, nor through the prophets. Every legitimate path of communication with the divine is closed.
The night at Endor
Saul asks his servants to find him a woman who practises the summoning of the dead. They point him to a woman at Endor. The king disguises himself and goes there by night with two men. The main scenes are these:
- The request: Saul asks the woman to bring up for him the spirit of whomever he names.
- The woman's fear: she reminds him that the king has cut off the necromancers from the land and fears a trap.
- The oath: Saul swears to her by the name of the Lord that no harm will come to her.
- The apparition: the woman sees Samuel and cries out, recognising at the same moment that the man before her is Saul.
- The description: she says she sees a divine being (ʾĕlōhîm) coming up from the earth, an old man wrapped in a robe.
- Samuel's words: the prophet rebukes Saul and announces that the next day he and his sons will be with him, that is, dead.
Saul falls to the ground, drained of strength. The woman, in a gesture of surprising humanity, insists that he eat: she slaughters a calf, bakes bread and serves it to the king and his servants before they set off again into the night.
The vocabulary of necromancy
The story uses technical terms that also appear in the laws of the Torah:
| Hebrew term | Traditional meaning |
|---|---|
| ʾōb | the summoned spirit or the technique of summoning |
| yiddĕʿōnî | «the one who knows», another kind of summoner or spirit |
| baʿălat ʾōb | «mistress of the ʾōb», the woman of Endor |
| dōrēš ʾel-hammētîm | «one who inquires of the dead» |
The Book of Deuteronomy (chapter 18) lists these figures among the practices forbidden to Israel, together with divination, sorcery and spell-casting. The Endor story shows, however, that despite the prohibitions consulting the dead was known and practised in the Israelite world.
The Greek translation
The Greek translation of the Bible, the Septuagint, renders the woman's role with the term engastrímythos, literally «one who speaks from the belly». From this derives the tradition, widespread in Europe for centuries, of calling her «the ventriloquist of Endor». The idea was that the dead man's voice came out of the woman's body.
The interpreters' debate
Since antiquity readers have asked: was it really Samuel? The answers have varied.
- Some Church Fathers, such as Origen, held that it was truly the prophet's soul.
- Others, such as Eustathius of Antioch in a treatise devoted to this very episode, argued that it was a deception or a demonic apparition.
- In Jewish tradition the view developed that the woman had indeed brought up Samuel, but that this happened only by divine will.
The biblical text, for its part, does not settle the question: it simply lets Samuel speak with his own voice and in his prophetic style.
A symbolic reading
The story of Endor is the portrait of a man who, having lost every legitimate path to the sacred, looks for a side door in the night. From the perspective of the Hermetic Workshop it teaches that contact with the invisible cannot replace inner integrity: Saul obtains an answer, but it is the same one he could have heard in his own conscience.
In short
- The medium of Endor appears in First Samuel, chapter 28.
- Saul, with no answer from dreams, Urim or prophets, disguises himself and consults her by night.
- The woman sees Samuel rising from the earth, and the prophet announces the king's death.
- The story uses technical terms for the necromancy forbidden in Deuteronomy.
- Ancient interpreters long debated whether the apparition was truly Samuel.
