Necromancy, a story of the living and the dead

Sometimes all it takes is a silence that lasts too long, an unresolved bereavement, or an unanswered question for the idea to take root. What if the dead could still speak to us? What would they say if we knew how to listen at the right moment, in the right place? Necromancy, a word repeatedly reused and distorted, refers to this ultimately very simple human desire: to establish a connection with those who are no longer here. Before becoming a subject of fiction or esotericism, it speaks to a universal need linked to our relationship with death, memory, and transmission. What follows is not a collection of practices or rituals, but a journey through its history. An exploration.

1. What is necromancy?

Necromancy refers to all the practices through which the living seek to contact the dead - not to bring them back to life, but to question them.

It is not about bringing the dead back to life, as some modern fiction would have us believe, but about establishing a connection with their memory, spirit, or voice. This search may involve rituals, words, objects, or altered states of consciousness. Behind these gestures lies an ancient and widespread belief: the dead do not disappear completely, and under certain conditions, they may still answer.

2. The ancient origins of dialogue with the dead

Long before the Christian era, traces of necromantic practices appear in numerous civilizations. Historians believe that summoning the spirits of the dead was widespread in antiquity and dates back to prehistoric times. The Greek historian Strabo (1st century BCE), for example, reports that necromancy was the main form of divination among the Persians. It was also practiced in Mesopotamia, among the Chaldeans and in Babylonia: in the latter, necromancers, called Manzazuu or Sha’etemmu, invoked spirits known as Etemmu. Likewise, the ancient Etruscans (a pre-Roman Italian people) are said to have practiced rites to question the dead. Far from being an isolated phenomenon, it was integrated into the religious beliefs of the time.

In ancient Egypt, closeness to the dead was part of everyday spiritual life. The Egyptians firmly believed in the survival of the soul and maintained a close bond with their deceased ancestors. A particular practice, known as “letters to the dead,” illustrates this relationship: messages were written on pottery or papyrus, addressed to a deceased relative, and then placed in the tomb with offerings of food and drink. The aim was for the deceased’s spirit to read the letter and intervene on behalf of the living - to resolve a family conflict or heal an illness. These letters to the dead, attested as early as Egypt’s Old Kingdom (more than 2,500 years BCE), show that seeking help from the departed was a natural and legitimate act in Egyptian religion. Communicating with the dead was not considered black magic here; it was an extension of family piety, a way of maintaining dialogue within the community beyond the grave.

Nécromantéion sanctuary, Greece. Source: Wikipedia

Among the ancient Greeks, necromancy took on both a mythological and institutionalized dimension. In Homer’s Odyssey (8th century BCE), the hero Odysseus performs a ritual under the guidance of the sorceress Circe in order to speak with the shades of the dead: he sacrifices animals and pours their blood into a pit to attract the souls, to whom he also offers milk and honey. Only the shade of the seer Tiresias can reveal the route home to him. This passage, known as the Nékya, reflects the ancient Greek belief that the dead could deliver messages to the living, provided certain bloody offerings briefly revitalized them. Later, the Greeks established actual sanctuaries dedicated to these practices: the famous Nécromantéion of Acheron, in Epirus, was an oracle of the dead where priests guided pilgrims through rites intended to make the souls of their departed appear (the Acheron was considered a branch of the Styx). It was believed that, freed from the body, a soul retained its identity and could answer the living’s questions from the realm of the dead, particularly questions about the future. Ritual sacrifices - involving grain, honey, milk, wine, and animal blood - were offered to attract the shades, while the consultant underwent rigorous preparation (fasting, purification, and sometimes the use of hallucinogenic fumigations) in order to make contact with the Beyond. These necromantic oracles, where people came to converse with the souls of the departed, were regarded as sacred places just as worthy of respect as the oracles of Apollo - although their atmosphere was far darker and more mysterious.

The Romans, for their part, largely inherited Greek conceptions. They too imagined that a deceased person did not automatically gain total omniscience. In the Greco-Roman view, the dead “know” only what they knew while alive, plus perhaps what they might learn from other souls in the afterlife. Their divinatory usefulness was therefore limited to personal or family revelations. The poet Ovid, in the 1st century CE, poetically describes a marketplace of news in the Underworld, where souls exchange gossip and information, suggesting that the dead could learn from one another what was happening among the living. Other cultures of the ancient world, by contrast, attributed unlimited knowledge to the spirits of the dead once they had entered the other world, making ancestors sources of supreme wisdom. These differences show how differently each civilization imagined the power of the dead: for some, mere shadows barely conscious; for others, enlightened spirits capable of guiding destinies.

King Saul with the witch of Endor. Source: Méditerrannées

Alongside Greco-Roman traditions, accounts of necromancy also existed in the Near East and pagan northern Europe. The Hebrew Bible firmly condemns any attempt to consult the dead: Deuteronomy (which restates, supplements, and reinterprets the laws previously given, particularly in Exodus and Leviticus) forbids the Israelites from practicing necromantic divination, described as an “abomination.” Yet even the Bible contains a famous episode of necromancy tolerated by God: the First Book of Samuel recounts how King Saul, desperate because he no longer received a divine message, visits the witch of Endor at night so that she may summon the spirit of the prophet Samuel. Samuel’s specter does appear and announces Saul’s imminent defeat, which occurs shortly afterward. This account illustrates the constant temptation of human beings, even the devout, to defy the prohibition in order to hear the voice of a revered dead person. Jewish religious authorities viewed these practices with great disapproval: necromancers are called ôvoth, or “bone conjurers,” a derogatory term marking the impurity associated with anyone who manipulates the remains of the dead. Later, Christian theologians of the early centuries adopted an even more emphatic position: according to them, it is impossible to call back a soul without God’s permission, so any spirit that answers a necromancer’s summons can only be a demon in disguise. This interpretation thus equated necromancy with a form of demonology, imposing an absolute prohibition on communication with the dead.

In Norse mythology, by contrast, necromantic practice is presented without explicit moral condemnation, reflecting a different cultural approach. Scandinavian sagas and the Poetic Edda contain striking scenes of dialogue with the dead. The god Odin himself, eager for knowledge, descends to the Underworld to awaken a deceased prophetess and question her about the fate of the world - an episode recounted in the poem Völuspá, where the resurrected seer reveals the secrets of the future to Odin. Other Viking heroes do not hesitate to seek the help of deceased loved ones: the young Svipdag, for example, conjures the spirit of his mother Gróa, a dead sorceress, so that she may cast protective spells for him from beyond the grave. Some female figures are even regarded as invincible necromancers: the saga of Hrólf Kraki tells that Princess Skuld, skilled in occult arts, revived fallen warriors so that they could resume fighting in her name. These stories reflect the Norse belief in a very real spirit world, where the boundaries between life and death could be crossed through magic. Here, there was no demonic pact: raising the dead was a matter of the sorcerer’s skill and the power of the runes, without a satanic moral connotation. Necromancy formed part of a shamanic worldview in which the ability to communicate with the dead was an occult gift that could serve heroic or evil purposes depending on who wielded it.

3. Necromancy, forbidden and diabolical

With the advent of Christianity in Europe, necromancy moved into the dark and clandestine realm. Because of biblical prohibitions, any attempt to converse with the dead was officially forbidden by the Church. In the Middle Ages, invoking the dead became synonymous with satanic witchcraft - a grave sin equated with idolatry or demonic magic. Medieval theologians asserted that resurrecting the dead was God’s prerogative alone, and that attempting to do so through occult means amounted to making a pact with the devil. The spirits summoned during necromantic rites were therefore interpreted not as the actual dead, but as deceptive demons sent to lead humans astray. Under the influence of Saint Augustine and various councils, necromancy was condemned without reservation: anyone who practiced it, in thought or deed, risked excommunication, or even being burned at the stake if caught in the act of forbidden arts.

Despite this religious repression, chronicles and legal documents hint at the existence of necromancy practitioners within medieval society itself. Notably, those accused of such practices were not simple peasants, but often educated individuals - members of the clergy or literate nobles. The reason is simple: medieval necromancy required access to esoteric texts in Latin or Hebrew, knowledge of specific prayers, and a codified occult learning that was largely inaccessible to ordinary people. In the 13th century in particular, rumors circulated about monks who possessed grimoires capable of making the dead speak. Some Inquisition trials mention defrocked priests caught drawing magic circles and invoking spirits in the back rooms of churches. If these sources are to be believed (often biased by torture and the inquisitors’ imagination), necromancy survived in the shadows, practiced by a minority of scholars fascinated by the forbidden. Indeed, some historians suggest that the very same clerics who publicly condemned necromancy from the pulpit sometimes practiced it in secret, hoping to penetrate divine mysteries!

Summoning of Apollonius by Constant. Source: Wikisource

The rare accounts of actual medieval necromantic practice describe extremely complex rituals combining adapted Christian prayers with high-magic formulas. A medieval necromancer generally worked at night, in isolated places (ruins, cemeteries, crypts) conducive to contemplation and sacred fear. He drew a protective circle on the ground in Latin and inscribed esoteric symbols within it. Dressed in dark robes (sometimes those of a deceased person, according to certain recipes) and equipped with ritual objects - a sword, wand, skull, or bones - he recited lengthy litanies. Interestingly, these incantations were modeled on Christian liturgy: God and the angels were invoked, not to ask them for a miracle, but to call them as witnesses and compel reluctant spirits to appear. In other words, the medieval necromancer claimed not to act through his own power or that of the devil: he presented himself as a conjurer who, in God’s name, ordered the dead or demons to appear and speak. This subtle distinction was intended to legitimize the rite - at least in the practitioner’s eyes - by avoiding the blasphemy of an explicit pact with Satan.

The aims pursued by necromancy in the Middle Ages seem relatively pragmatic. The point was not so much to reanimate a corpse for the sake of morbidity, but to obtain information or services through invisible spirits. Texts from the period - such as the Munich Manual, an anonymous 15th-century grimoire - compile necromantic spells for finding a stolen object, discovering hidden treasure, winning someone’s affection, or even becoming invisible. Many of these rituals involved illusion: creating the appearance of a sumptuous banquet to impress one’s peers, for example, or making an enemy believe that demons were tormenting them. This sometimes approached psychological prestidigitation. Other, more dangerous spells aimed to summon the shadow of a dead person in order to question it about a mystery: an unsolved crime, the outcome of a battle, or the future of a kingdom. In such cases, the necromancer hoped that the spirit, freed from worldly constraints, would know the truth and reveal it. But since only inferior or demonic spirits were assumed to answer, the responses obtained were considered deceptive or ambiguous, making necromancy hazardous. Thus, despite the hopes placed in it, medieval necromancy remained confined to the margins. It was feared by the people (who viewed necromancers as black sorcerers) and persecuted by the Inquisition, while continuing to fuel a certain fascination - that of a “forbidden science” promising occult access to the knowledge of the dead.

4. A revival between occult fascination and rationalist enlightenment

At the end of the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance, Europe’s relationship with magic and necromancy began to change. On the one hand, the persecution of witches and necromancers intensified during the era of the great witch trials (15th-17th centuries); on the other, a new intellectual interest in the occult arts emerged, colored by humanism and scientific curiosity. The Renaissance (16th century) rediscovered ancient texts, including esoteric ones, and scholars such as Marsilio Ficino and Cornelius Agrippa attempted to rehabilitate a magia naturalis (natural magic) distinct from demonic goetia. In this context, however, necromancy remained a dangerous practice. It became a striking literary motif, symbolizing the thirst for forbidden knowledge. At the beginning of the 14th century, the Italian poet Dante Alighieri portrayed the ancient sorceress Erichtho - already present in Roman sources - in his Divine Comedy, bringing a corpse to life to predict the outcome of a battle. Later, the English playwright Christopher Marlowe told the tragic story of Doctor Faustus (1592), a German scholar who studies necromancy and makes a pact with the devil to summon the dead and spirits before being damned. This famous legend of Faust, later taken up by Goethe in the 19th century, popularized the image of the necromancer thirsting for knowledge, willing to risk his soul to question the dead. Through these works, necromancy is depicted ambivalently: both as a source of extraordinary knowledge and as the ultimate transgression of the divine order.

In practical terms, as the modern era progressed, reports of necromantic practices became rarer in Europe. The Age of Enlightenment (18th century) valued reason and relegated occult beliefs to the realm of superstition. Scholars turned away from alchemy and ceremonial magic, and with them the figure of the learned necromancer inherited from the Middle Ages disappeared. Yet fascination with communication with the dead did not vanish: it simply changed its appearance. While enlightened philosophers turned the page on traditional occultism, ordinary people and certain elites continued to take an interest in paranormal phenomena. At the end of the 18th century, and especially in the 19th, there was a renewed enthusiasm for spirit apparitions and prophecies from beyond the grave - but this time presented in a more “scientific,” or at least socially acceptable, form.

5. The spiritualist revival from Victorian parlors to spiritist circles

The 19th century did indeed mark a turning point with the rise of modern spiritualism. From the 1840s and 1850s onward, in Europe and America, it became almost fashionable to organize séances in bourgeois parlors. Mediums - often women - claimed to serve as intermediaries between the living and the souls of the dead, transmitting messages and prophecies. Turning tables, knocks on the wall, automatic writing, Ouija board: a whole array of mysterious phenomena was staged to convince the assembly that spirits were truly present. This spiritist movement, popularized by figures such as Allan Kardec in France and the Fox sisters in the United States, gave new legitimacy to what would once have been labeled necromancy. Speaking with the dead now became a fashionable pastime, or even an object of study. Experimental séances were organized, spiritist societies founded, and attempts made to photograph ghosts. The stated aim was no longer to practice magic, but to explore, in a (pseudo)scientific manner, the survival of the soul after death and the possibility of contacting it.

Apparition of Mary Stuart in a divination parlor. Source: Wikisource

Despite this modern veneer, the traditional churches were not fooled: for many religious figures in the 19th century, spiritualism was nothing more than reinvented necromancy. The Vatican and Protestant pastors condemned these mediumistic practices, recalling the biblical prohibition against consulting the spirits of the dead. Some Christian groups denounced the dangers of illusion and fraud; others saw the work of the Evil One, pretending to be the souls of the dead - a direct echo of medieval doctrine. Articles of the period thus described mediums as “parlor necromancers,” emphasizing that beneath the apparently harmless entertainment lay, in their view, the same ancient principle: questioning the dead to learn the future or hidden secrets. It is interesting to note, however, that this revival of necromancy in the form of spiritualism far exceeded the circle of secluded occult societies. By the middle of the 19th century, millions of people in the United States and Europe are estimated to have regularly attended spiritist séances, in a curious mixture of credulity, fervor, and amused skepticism. In a sense, the taboo had partially lifted: where, a few centuries earlier, one risked one’s life trying to speak with the dead, one could now do so socially without fearing anything worse than the mockery of rationalist minds. The popularity of spiritualism left a lasting mark: even today, the image of a medium communicating with a deceased person in a candlelit room remains a widespread stereotype of necromancy, even though the term “necromancy” itself is rarely used in this context. The 19th century thus saw necromancy become partly democratized and secularized, paving the way for further developments in the 20th century.

6. Necromancy today

In the contemporary era, necromancy in the strict sense - understood as a magical ritual for communicating with the dead - has become rare in the Western world, except through the lens of spiritualism or marginal esoteric practices. However, it would be mistaken to think that ritual bonds with the dead have disappeared. On the one hand, many non-Western cultures have preserved ancestral traditions of communication with the afterlife to this day. On the other, the collective imagination continues to keep the figure of the necromancer alive, particularly through literature and cinema.

In non-Western societies, what the medieval European once called “necromancy” is an integrated and respected component of local religion or culture. In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, most traditional religions give a central place to deceased ancestors. Ancestor veneration is practiced by offering prayers and food, tending graves, and seeking their guidance in the affairs of the living. The aim is not to predict the future spectacularly, but to ensure harmony between the visible and invisible worlds. Ancestors are seen as protectors who can intervene for the good of the family or community. In these cultures, communicating with the dead is a pious and customary act performed by the head of the family, shaman, or village diviner. A medium might be consulted, for example, to enter a trance and transmit the spirits’ messages about a particular problem (a poor harvest, an unexplained illness, or a decision to be made). Far from being stigmatized, this interaction with ancestral spirits is socially valued because it strengthens group identity and continuity between generations. This is indeed a form of necromancy - in the sense of communication with the dead - but without the malevolent connotation it acquired in Europe. On the contrary, it is a pillar of community spirituality, ensuring the benevolence of the elders toward their descendants.

In the Americas and the Caribbean, religions born from syncretism between African traditions and Christianity have also preserved and transformed the necromantic heritage. The case of Haitian Vodou is particularly telling. Born during the colonial era from the encounter between West African slaves and Catholicism imposed by French colonists, Vodou (or vodou) is a religion in which communication with spirits is omnipresent. Practitioners honor the lwa, intermediary spirits identified with deified ancestors or forces of nature. During Vodou ceremonies, these spirits commonly possess a devotee (usually a dancer or the houngan priest himself) so that they may speak through the person’s mouth and advise the assembly. The spirits are asked for advice, healing for the sick, and protection from evil; the spirit embodied in the medium delivers prophecies, recommendations, or warnings. As we can see, the divinatory and consultative function is entirely comparable to that of ancient necromancy - except that here it is integrated into a structured religious framework. Other Afro-Caribbean or African-American religions display similar features. Cuban Santería (arising from the blending of African Yoruba traditions and Catholicism) calls upon the spirits of the dead and the saints; in Brazil, the quimbanda tradition is renowned for its mediums communicating with the spirits of the deceased and Exu (spiritual entities). These living practices show that the art of seeking the dead has not disappeared; it has simply taken on the varied forms of syncretic cultures. Of course, followers of these religions would not describe themselves as practicing “necromancy,” since the word is pejorative; rather, they see it as a form of prayer to the saints, ancestral intercession, or sacred mediumship. The boundary is tenuous and sometimes controversial - some evangelical Christian movements in Africa still accuse these practices of being necromancy in disguise, in keeping with the biblical prohibition. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that in large parts of the world, ritual communication with the dead remains an accepted cultural reality inherited from a long history.

As for the modern imagination, it continues to take hold of the theme of necromancy with a mixture of fear and fascination. Fantasy literature, video games, and cinema have popularized a highly spectacular and macabre image of the necromancer, very different from historical practices. Today, the term spontaneously evokes the evil mage surrounded by obedient skeletons and zombies. This stereotype draws on two sources: it combines the figure of the medieval sorcerer commanding the dead (as imagined since Faust) with elements borrowed from Caribbean zombie folklore. Indeed, in 20th-century Western popular culture, the zombie - a corpse brought back to a semblance of life through magic - became emblematic of evil necromancy. Authors such as H. P. Lovecraft, followed by the entire horror film industry, cemented the idea that the necromancer could awaken armies of the undead to serve his purposes. While this imagery is undeniably striking, it departs radically from historical reality. In fact, actual necromancers, whether ancient, medieval, or tribal, far more often sought to converse with a spirit than to resurrect a body. Necromancy was a matter of words, visions, and oracles - rarely a matter of walking corpses. The few cases of “zombies” in history (particularly in Haiti, where accounts describe the dead being reanimated by sorcerers, probably through neurotoxic poisons) belong more to folklore than to divinatory necromancy. It is therefore important to distinguish the myth of the corpse-eating necromancer in works of fiction from the real, discreet, and highly symbolic practice of communicating with spirits.

Finally, our contemporary age sees a scientific perspective - which explains mediumship and apparitions through psychology or fraud - coexist with the persistent human need to believe in an accessible afterlife. Modern mediums and ghost hunters, television programs about contact with spirits, or simply commemorations such as the Day of the Dead (when the souls of ancestors are symbolically invited to return among us for the duration of a celebration) all bear witness to the survival of necromancy in our societies in softened forms. “Pure,” ritualized necromancy has become rare, but the aspiration it reflects - to build a bridge with the departed - remains deeply rooted. Today, a grieving person may consult a spiritist medium in the hope of receiving a message from a deceased loved one, reproducing in modern terms the ancient gesture of the necromancer who once drew a magic circle. The setting changes, but the intention remains.

The pursuit of knowledge, the need for consolation, or the thirst for power - motivations vary, but the hope remains the same. As a modern author wrote, necromancy is “the ancestral practice of finding a way to make those who were not meant to speak again speak: the dead.” Throughout the ages, human beings have refused to believe that death could reduce their loved ones to absolute silence. Thus rituals, myths, and prayers were born to give a voice back to those who were absent. Serious and solemn for some, feared and forbidden by others, necromancy, in its many guises, bears witness to the eternal dialogue humanity attempts to establish with the unknown beyond the grave. And if the dead speak to us, it is clear that since the dawn of time, we have always tried to listen to them.