Halloween’s forgotten fortune-telling rituals weren’t what I expected
Grab a candle, an apple, and a mirror to glimpse your future
I love discovering long forgotten fortune-telling traditions. Research long enough and I promise you’ll stumble upon strange and wonderful rituals, games and superstitions dating back centuries, tucked away in every corner of the globe. But what I learned about Halloween was surprising.
When I first looked up Halloween fortune-telling traditions, I expected to find eerie or spooky stories. You know the stuff I mean. How to summon ghostly apparitions that might reveal how you’ll die in the form of a riddle, spells that’ll change the course of your future that need bits of bat and a bubbling cauldron to work their magic, an ancient fortune-telling practice that relies on just a smidgen of blood, maybe?
Nothing we’d be able to try ourselves, but practices that might prompt a character in a creepy folk horror movie to say: “there’s something a bit off about the villagers, don’t you think?”
While you can indeed find plenty of gruesome examples of future-gazing all-year-round – look up ‘haruspicy’ if gross stuff is your vibe – I was surprised by the unexpected focus that Halloween fortune-telling rituals had on love. And not even the spicy, Anne Rice, blood lust sort of love. Many of them revolved around who you were going to marry.
I know what you’re thinking. Way more boring in comparison, right? At first I agreed. But the more I read about these fortune-telling games, these romantic rituals, the more I found them fascinating.
That on this special night believed to be a liminal time, when the boundary between the spirit world – or the Otherworld in Celtic myth – was at its thinnest, people would use this opportunity to convene with the supernatural to learn more about their future spouse above anything else.
As a fortune-telling history nerd, I’ve often wondered why so many of these practices are centred on love wherever in the world you happen to look, from reaching backwards out of a door on Christmas Eve to try and grab the hair of your future beloved in Germany to eating 12 grapes as the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve in Spain. It’s easy to chalk it up to our collective need for connection, desire, intimacy, love and sex. But in a historical context, many of these traditions also point to a need to ease anxieties around finding a partner – a task that was often both culturally essential and incredibly uncertain.
Divination provided a way to cope with that uncertainty, offering reassurance. Plus, anyone superstitious wouldn’t want to miss the opportunity to carry out some of these rituals, just in case they were as much about influencing the future as they were about seeing it.
They were also a bit of light-hearted fun. Because many of the Halloween future-gazing games were meant to be carried out in groups, amongst friends and potential partners. In the book Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night, author Nicholas Rogers writes that these games were “part of the mating process.” He explains that men and women often didn’t mingle much, especially during the day or outside special events. “It was in the larger festive settings that young men and women contemplated their marriage prospects and in public view consolidated or called off courtships,” he writes.
So, if you’re wondering what happened at Halloween parties in the past, or dating apps are wearing you down and you’d like to know whether you’ll ever find Your Person, arm yourself with a few apples and a handful of nuts, and read on.
[As a quick note, it’s pretty hard to accurately date any of these or say exactly where they originated from. They were most likely from rural areas in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. But many were carried over to the US and, from the looks of it, other countries in Europe too.]
Try apple bobbing
One of the few games that still exists today, but the reason for it has shifted. People once marked each apple with a name or symbol of a potential lover – maybe someone else at the party – before they were all thrown in a big bucket or tub of water. Then, whoever bit into the apple would end up with the person foretold by the apple.
Dip your hand in water
Many of these Halloween-y games are written in history books, but some of what we know also comes from Scottish poet Robert Burns’ 1785 poem, ‘Halloween’, particularly its footnotes, which go into detail about the way some of these traditions were carried out.
One involves taking three dishes. In one, put clean water, in one dirty water and then leave the third empty. You’d then blindfold your pal and lead them to where the dishes are all lined up. They’d then dip their left hand into one of the dishes. If they went with the clean bowl, that foretold they’d marry someone soon. If it was the dirty bowl, they’d marry someone who was widowed. If it was the empty bowl, they wouldn’t marry at all. The bowls were then shifted around for the next person to dip their hand in.
Throw a ball of wool out of a window
This next one is detailed in a few different locations, but in Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night, Rogers writes this was a favourite fortune-telling game for the women of Worcestershire. They would throw a ball of wool – I’ve seen other sources say yarn also works – out of their open window at midnight. Then, whoever picked up the wool would whisper his name and that would be her future husband. If you’re thinking there’s a lot of opportunity to play tricks on those who play these games, then you’d be right. The pranking potential here is high.
Peel an apple
In another ritual, popular in Ireland and Scotland, you’d have to peel an apple in a single strip. You’d then throw the peel over your shoulder and see if it formed a shape that looked like a letter. This letter would be… go on, have a guess… Yep, you’re right. It would look like the first letter in your future spouse’s name – this one maybe took some creative interpretation.
Look into a mirror with a candle and eat an apple
You’ll find examples of catoptromancy – using mirrors to see the future – throughout history and all over the world, dating back to at least Ancient Egypt. But this particular practice needed a few more ingredients, including an apple and a candle. You’d need to stare into a mirror and eat the apple while you’re illuminated by a candle. In the footnotes of ‘Halloween’, Burns writes what you’d expect to happen next: “The face of your conjugal companion, to be, will be seen in the glass, as if peeping over your shoulder.” I take back what I said about none of these being creepy, this one has the potential to get very scary, very quickly.
Crack an egg
Over on the Weird Christmas blog, a collection of historical postcards, there’s evidence that cracking an egg on Halloween and searching the whites for the initials of your future partner was a fun game you could play while cooking. If that sounds impossible – not to mention a little messy – look up the practice of oomancy, divining the future with eggs, where there are countless different patterns, shapes, lines and consistencies to look out for.
Burn some nuts
I found lots of games involving nuts taking place around Halloween, all with slightly different variations. Burns writes about one tradition to test the future fidelity of a relationship. A couple would name two nuts and lay them in a fire. Then however they burned, whether not at all, slow and steady or in a dramatic rage, would mirror “the course and issue of the courtship.” The Halloween Encyclopedia explains that, sometimes during this process, a little mantra would be repeated: “If you hate me spit and fly; If you love me burn away.”
You might think these are all long lost practices. Nowadays, people would ask Reddit or consult the group chat if they wanted to know if someone was a walking red flag or not.
Then again, I’ve been surprised at how many people still seem to enjoy having fun with love divination, sharing their games and advice on social media – hundreds, if not thousands, of people ate grapes on TikTok to ring in the New Year, rebranding the tradition as Grape Theory, as just one example.
Will we see the same resurgence in romantic apple bobbing? Are you ready to test your relationship with a pair of burning nuts? Just promise me if you do the mirror ritual you tell me who – or what – appeared over your shoulder.
Image credits: New York Public Library Flickr