The Witch of Endor takes up very little space in the Bible, but she’s an important character to some because she’s the only witch specifically mentioned in this text. She appears in the Book of Samuel, but only briefly. The Bible never mentions the witch by name. It doesn’t describe her in detail. Due to her biblical origins, however, she’s become one of the most famous witches in history.
First Samuel, chapter 28, is where you’ll find the Witch of Endor in the Bible. In this section, King Saul leads Israel in a conflict against the Philistines, and they aren’t doing too well. He’s in a predicament, and he needs to know how the ordeal will turn out. He needs a mystical guide.
He prays to his god, but the deity won’t answer. So he seeks mystical help from outside his pantheon. Unfortunately for Saul, he’d already banished all the mediums and sorcerers from his kingdom.
Saul’s closest attendants have some good news, though: There’s a witch in Endor who can divine the answers he seeks. What the witch shows Saul, however, is news the king never wanted to know.
The Witch Breaks the Bad News
Since Saul had so admittedly rejected non-Christian mysticism, he couldn’t openly go looking for it out of desperation. Instead, the king dons a disguise and sneaks out to consult the witch like a thief in the night.
When he finds the Witch of Endor, she refuses to identify as a medium until after Saul gives his word that the king won’t prosecute her for using her powers. (Remember, Saul is in disguise, and the witch won’t know his identity until she helps him.) Then, she summons the spirit of Samuel to answer the king’s questions.
The summoned spirit first chastises Saul for not fulfilling God’s orders, then informs the king that his deity has turned his back on him. Now, Israel would fall the following day and the Philistines would kill Saul and his sons as punishment.
Saul leaves the witch in dejection. And that ends the story of this witch. Well, that’s where her story ends in the Bible, anyhow. The Witch of Endor is the most famous witch in biblical literature. As such, she continues to live on in fictional and artistic works.
The Witch of Endor Lives On
The Witch of Endor has since been mentioned in several works, many of them modern. The identity is recycled as the name of a spaceship in the sci-fi work The Expanse. This character has also been the subject of plays, fiction, and poems dating back as far as the 1630s. Some of her most notable appearances include the TV drama Of Kings and Prophets and the song “Love, Leaver” by Greta Van Fleet.
You can also find the Witch of Endor in the Smithsonian American Art Museum. A famous oil painting by artist William Sidney Mount depicts the haggard witch summoning the spirit of Samuel for a floored Saul.
More often than not, Christian scholars are the ones mentioning the witch these days. Churches and Sunday schools teach her story as a warning about witchcraft in the modern day. Usually, this figure is framed as a trickster who used Satanic powers to conjure a false spirit, showing how witchcraft is an evil and deceptive thing. Of course, you’d have to believe in witches for that to be applicable.
