Fortune-Telling and Divination at Samhain
There has always been something about divination that pulls at me — not for the thrill of guessing, but for the mystery of listening. I’ve read tarot for half my life, never as a parlor trick, but as a quiet conversation with symbols that seem to remember more than we do. And perhaps that’s why, of all nights in the year, Samhain has always felt closest to my craft — a night when the veil thins and people once dared to ask the dark for answers.
1. Seeing Beyond the Firelight
Long before tarot decks or crystal balls, the people of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales sought visions in simpler ways. They stared into bowls of water or candle flames, hoping to glimpse a face — often that of a future lover or one long gone. Bonfire ashes were cast into the wind to divine omens for the coming year.1 These were not games to them, but solemn acts of hope and dread.
In some Scottish glens, a girl might eat an apple before midnight and then brush her hair before a mirror by candlelight, waiting to see the reflection of the man she would marry. Others dropped molten lead into cold water, the hardened shapes revealing initials or symbols of fate.2 The fire, the fruit, the mirror — all were instruments for reaching through the veil.
2. The Spirits Who Whisper Back
At Samhain, communication with the dead was not rare or feared. It was expected. The hearth fire was left burning for ancestral spirits; a chair at the table might remain empty but set with bread and ale. When people cast nuts into the fire to see if lovers’ flames burned together or apart, they did so knowing the dead were listening.3
It was believed that spirits might answer in dreams — or through the flicker of a candle. In certain Irish tales, a woman who sought truth would sit alone in the dark with three candles, turning a mirror toward the door to see what might walk through.4 Those who feared what they might see often prayed as they watched — the balance of belief and terror that defines Halloween itself.
3. The Seers, the Gypsies, and the Wise Women
By the Middle Ages, itinerant wise women, cunning men, and Romani seers became woven into Samhain and All Hallows customs. They read palms, cast lots, and read the smoke of burning herbs. In England and Ireland, such people were both sought and shunned — visited by villagers in secret to ask about love or death, but publicly condemned for their “heathen arts.”5
One account from 17th-century Lancashire tells of a “black-eyed woman” who wandered from fair to fair, reading fortunes from a polished obsidian stone. Those who saw her swore her predictions of illness or fortune came true, though she vanished as suddenly as she appeared.6 In rural France, the gypsy Esmerée was said to read fortunes by candlelight beneath a willow, her prophecies recorded by clergy as “of remarkable accuracy.”7
4. Tools of the Trade
Every culture shaped its own method. The Celts used hazelnuts and apple seeds; the Romans used animal entrails and stars; medieval charmers cast dice or interpreted wax drippings in water. Later came cards — first the Italian Trionfi, then the full tarot deck we know today, whose mystical uses evolved over centuries from game to oracle.8
The pendulum, the crystal, the mirror, the flame — all served the same human longing: to understand what lies just beyond sight. For me, it’s always been less about seeing the future than recognizing the patterns already at work in the present.
5. A Glimpse Toward the Future: The Victorians and Beyond
As centuries turned, fortune telling followed candlelight into parlors and séances. The Victorians, obsessed with death and spirit communication, made it fashionable. Tarot and tea leaves joined spirit boards and table-rapping. What had once been rural ritual became drawing-room recreation — though the mystery, the candlelight, and the sense of something watching remained.9
This fascination never left. From Samhain’s apple peels to modern tarot spreads, each act of divination carries the same question — not what will happen, but what is already written in the dark. The answers, perhaps, still flicker in the candlelight for those who dare to look.
Closing: The Veil Between
For now, we close this circle of Halloween. Yet as the candles burn low, it’s easy to imagine those who once scryed in bowls or watched their shadows in firelight. In their trembling reflections, we see not superstition, but continuity — the same longing to understand our place between the living and the dead. In time, we’ll return to these arts — to cards, crystal, and mirror — and walk deeper into the world where intuition meets the unseen.
Footnotes
- Ronald Hutton, The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain (Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 369. ↩︎
- John Brand, Observations on Popular Antiquities (1777), p. 240. ↩︎
- Alexander Carmichael, Carmina Gadelica (1900), Vol. II, p. 87. ↩︎
- Patrick Kennedy, Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts (1866), p. 212. ↩︎
- “Halloween,” Notes and Queries, 7th Series, Vol. X (1890), p. 463. ↩︎
- York Minster Sermon MS 243, “De Festis Sanctorum,” c. 1450. ↩︎
- “The Devil Mask Tepwanu of Chuuk,” Moon Mausoleum (2023). ↩︎
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