Also called silent supper, dummy supper, backwards supper
A meal prepared and eaten in total silence, often backwards, at midnight. In Appalachia and the Ozarks young women set it to see the spirit of their future husband walk in; modern Pagans keep it at Samhain as a quiet supper for the dead.
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Take care: Keep candles away from tablecloths and do not let anyone cook or walk backwards around a hot stove or stairs. Agree on a hand signal to break silence in an emergency.
Randolph's survey of Ozark belief includes the dumb supper among courtship customs. Girls cooked and set the table in silence and often backwards, opened the door at midnight, and expected the spirit of the man they would marry to come in and sit by them. A coffin or a sinister figure instead warned of death before marriage.
Instead of a meal, girls kneaded a small cake in silence, pricked their initials on it and baked it by the fire, waiting for the future husband to appear and turn it. Kelley wrote that the dumb cake originated on the Isle of Lewis. See the soulmate dream spell for a safe version.
Uses: meal, salt, water
Many Pagans now hold a silent or 'dumb' supper on Samhain or Halloween with a place laid for the beloved dead. It keeps the silence and empty chair but turns the rite toward remembrance rather than love divination.
Uses: ancestor photos, candle
Folklorists trace the dumb supper to English love divination carried to America by settlers. The folklorist Wayland Hand noted how consistently it was performed from Oxfordshire to Ozark County: strict silence, actions done backwards, the meal set at midnight, and the hope that a husband-to-be, in body or in spirit, would come through the door. It was mostly a young women's custom, held on Halloween, Midsummer or other charged nights, and it could frighten as much as delight.
Vance Randolph (1892 to 1980), who spent decades recording Ozark beliefs, included dummy suppers among the courtship customs in 'Ozark Superstitions' (Columbia University Press, 1947), later reissued as 'Ozark Magic and Folklore' (1964). Newspapers across the 19th-century United States reported dumb suppers as parlour thrills. Its modern life as an ancestor supper comes from 20th-century Pagan revival, a respectful change of purpose.
Peel an apple in one unbroken strip, throw it over your shoulder, and read the letter it makes on the floor as the initial of a future partner.
An old Scottish and English way to dream of a future partner: eat a small salty oatcake or 'dumb cake' in silence before bed, drink nothing, and see who brings you water in your dream. It was done on Halloween, Shrove Tuesday, St Agnes' Eve and Midsummer.
On the night of 20 January, a person goes to bed without supper after a small rite with pins and a prayer, hoping to see a future sweetheart in a dream.
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