The Silent Feast of the Ancestors- Soddag Valloo and the Manx Witch’s Supper of Spirits
- Maggie Moon
- Nov 4
- 5 min read
The Silent Feast of the Ancestors
Soddag Valloo and the Manx Witch’s Supper of Spirits
When autumn lowers her voice
and summer exhales her last warm breath into the hedgerows,
the Isle of Man shifts into dreaming.
Mist gathers along the gorse-crowned lanes,
the sea feels older, darker, wise as a mother of storms,
and the air tastes of slate, salt, and old footsteps.
This is the remembering season.
The tide runs inward through bone and breath,
and the dead walk closely beside the living.
Among the island’s most sacred rites moves the Soddag Valloo,
the Silent Cake,
and the Shibber Vallo,
the Silent Supper of the Dead.
A feast of stillness, reverence, and ancestral breath,
held in hush and candle-glow.
🌒 The Witch’s Night in Mannin
Hop-tu-Naa, the island’s threshold night, rises now on the thirty-first of October,
yet in the old calendar it breathed on November eleventh,
winter’s first true breath,
the ancient Manx New Year.
Both nights open spirit-roads.
A witch listens for which hour stirs the marrow most deeply,
and walks that path.
Children still wander with carved turnips glowing like spirit-lanterns,
echoes of the old witch lights that greeted wandering dead.
In song and doorstep rhyme lives Jinny the Witch,
a remembered figure of storm-flight and spell-stick,
half feared, half revered,
a ghost of the craft that never died here.
The isle remembers her witches.
It remembers Manannán mac Lir upon the waves,
keeper of mists and keys to the Otherworld.
It remembers silent kitchens, reversed garments,
and cakes shaped in hush to welcome two souls at once,
the living and the beloved returned.
🍞 Bread of Silence, Breath of the Ancestors
The soddag takes form by hand and breath:
flour, salt, egg and finely crushed shell,
a pinch of sacred ash from a tended flame
as recorded in Moore, Folk-Lore of the Isle of Man (1891)
and echoed through Morrison (1911) and Cumming (1848),
rites folded quietly into cottage walls and winter wind.
Simple food, yet potent.
Eggshell opens the veil,
salt steadies,
ash calls memory upward from deep places,
and silence becomes doorway.
Twilight or moonrise,
the table becomes a threshold.
Garments are worn inside-out,
movements are all done widdershins,
for the Otherworld listens in mirror logic
and meets the witch where symbols speak.
A name is breathed into the North,
land of winter and bone and ancestral return.
A bell rings slow and steady,
each chime a lantern-step for the shade,
guiding the beloved along unseen paths.
Then hush descends
full as tide before breaking,
warm as wool around the shoulders.
Bread divides,
milk or wine touches both cups,
and candle-light holds open the seam between worlds.
Dream-Road and Dawn
When the meal completes,
the witch rises with candle in hand,
walking backward into dream’s threshold,
guiding the spirit gently toward rest.
Dreams come rich as wool and salt-wind,
voices woven in symbol,
presence soft as shawl upon shoulders.
Dawn brings hush like dew on the soul.
This feast breathes kinship, devotion, and return,
a way for love and lineage to walk together across worlds.
A Modern Witch’s Keeping
A hearth on Mannin is a blessing,
yet every land hears the ancestors when devotion calls.
Wherever your feet rest, the road opens,
and the breath of remembrance carries true.
I keep this rite in Canada, across ocean
guided by the whisper of my great-grandmother Ada,
whose journey from the Isle of Man lives still in my blood and bone.
Through me she rises,
and through this supper her footsteps return to starlight and bread.
The ancestral road crosses oceans,
and devotion rises wherever breath turns reverent.
Prepare the table.
Shape the cake.
Call the beloved.
Sit in silence.
Walk backward into dream.
Where remembrance rises,
the old road opens.
Rite of the Manx Silent Supper
Soddag Valloo & Shibber Vallo
Timing
• Hop-tu-Naa: October thirty-first
• Old Manx tide: November eleventh
• Twilight or moonrise
Choose the night that glimmers in the marrow.
You will need
Flour • Egg & shell • Salt • Blessed ash
Milk or wine • Two plates & cups • White cloth
Candle • Bell • Stillness
Preparing the Soddag Valloo
Historical Spirit Cake (offering only)
from Manx folklore sources (Moore 1891; Morrison 1911):
• Flour
• Egg & finely crushed shell
• Pinch sea salt
• Pinch clean ash from sacred flame
Shape in silence, cook on warm griddle,
place on the ancestor plate with reverence.
Modern Edible Cake for the Living
• Flour
• Egg
• Pinch sea salt
• Butter or oil
• Milk or water
• Optional honey or rosemary
Warm, gentle, nourishing
bread of blessing for the living.
Consecration
Whisper:
Flour of earth and stone
Egg of life and crossing
Salt of memory, ash of line
Awaken, and sit in sacred company
Laying the Table
White cloth spread like moon-light
Two mirrored settings
Candle between
Bell to the North
Milk or wine poured
Cakes placed
Calling
Garment reversed.
Breath steady.
Heart open.
Say: Beloved one
Bread and breath between us
Seat beside me
Ring bell thrice
Light candle
Silent Feast
Sit.
Eat slowly.
Offer crumb and sip.
Feel presence gather like wool and winter light.
Closing
Rise.
Carry candle backward three steps.
Say:
Rest in blessing
Walk in peace
Return in love
Snuff flame.
Ring once.
Sleep and dream.
Dawn Offering
Pour the spirit cup to earth.
Place crumb beneath roots.
Carry quiet into morning.
