Familiar
In European
When they served witches, they were often thought to be
Since the 20th century some magical practitioners, including adherents of the
Definitions
Pierre A. Riffard proposed this definition and quotations[5]
A familiar spirit – (alter ego, doppelgänger, personal demon, personal totem, spirit companion) is the double, the alter ego, of an individual. It does not look like the individual concerned. Even though it may have an independent life of its own, it remains closely linked to the individual. The familiar spirit can be an animal (animal companion).
The French poet Charles Baudelaire, a cat fancier, believed in familiar spirits.[6]
It is the familiar spirit of the place;
It judges, presides, inspires Everything in its empire; It is perhaps a fairy or a god? When my eyes, drawn like a magnet
To this cat that I love...
A usual method, or explanation, is that the medicine man sends his familiar spirit (his assistant totem, spirit-dog, spirit-child or whatever the form may be) to gather the information. While this is occurring, the man himself is in a state of receptivity, in sleep or trance. In modern phraseology [spiritism], his familiar spirit would be the control [control spirit].[7]
The Goldi [Nanai people in Siberia] clearly distinguish between the tutelary spirit (ayami), which chooses the shaman, and the helping spirits (syven), which are subordinate to it and are granted to the shaman by the ayami itself. According to Sternberg the Goldi explain the relations between the shaman and his ayami by a complex sexual emotion. Here is the report of a Goldi shaman. "Once I was asleep on my sick-bed, when a spirit approached me. It was a very beautiful woman. Her figure was very slight, she was no more than half an arshin (71 cm) tall. Her face and attire were quite as those of one of our Gold women... She said: 'I am the ayami of your ancestors, the Shamans. I taught them shamaning. Now I am going to teach you... I love you, I have no husband now, you will be my husband and I shall be a wife unto you. I shall give you assistant spirits. You are to heal with their aid, and I shall teach and help you myself...' Sometimes she comes under the aspect of an old woman, and sometimes under that of a wolf, so she is terrible to look at. Sometimes she comes as a winged tiger... She has given me three assistants—the jarga (the panther), the doonto (the bear) and the amba (the tiger). They come to me in my dreams, and appear whenever I summon them while shamaning. If one of them refuses to come, the ayami makes them obey, but, they say, there are some who do not obey even the ayami. When I am shamaning, the ayami and the assistant spirits are possessing me; whether big or small, they penetrate me, as smoke or vapour would. When the ayami is within me, it is she who speaks through my mouth, and she does everything herself."[8]
Descriptions
Among those accused witches and cunning-folk who described their familiar spirits, there were commonly certain unifying features. The historian Emma Wilby noted how the accounts of such familiars were striking for their "ordinariness" and "naturalism", despite the fact that they were dealing with supernatural entities.[9]
Familiar spirits were most commonly small animals, such as cats, rats, dogs, ferrets, birds, frogs, toads, and hares. There were also cases of wasps and butterflies, as well as pigs, sheep, and horses. Familiar spirits were usually kept in pots or baskets lined with sheep's wool and fed a variety of things including, milk, bread, meat, and blood.[10]
Familiar spirits usually had names and "were often given down-to-earth, and frequently affectionate, nicknames."
An agathion is a familiar spirit which appears in the shape of a human or an animal, or even within a
Relationship with sorcerers
Using her studies into the role of witchcraft and magic in Britain during the Early Modern period as a starting point, the historian Emma Wilby examined the relationship that familiar spirits allegedly had with the witches and cunning-folk in this period.
Meeting
In the British accounts from the early modern period at least, there were three main types of encounter narrative related to how a witch or cunning person first met their familiar. The first of these was that the spirit spontaneously appeared in front of the individual while they were going about their daily activities, either in their home or outdoors somewhere. Various examples for this are attested in the sources of the time, for instance, Joan Prentice from Essex, England, gave an account when she was interrogated for witchcraft in 1589 claiming that she was "alone in her chamber, and sitting upon a low stool preparing herself to bedward" when her familiar first appeared to her, while the Cornish cunning-woman Anne Jeffries related in 1645 that hers first appeared to her when she was "knitting in an arbour in our garden".[14]
The second manner in which the familiar spirit commonly appeared to magical practitioners in Britain was that they would be given to a person by a pre-existing individual, who was sometimes a family member and at other times a more powerful spirit. For instance, the alleged witch Margaret Ley from Liverpool claimed, in 1667, that she had been given her familiar spirit by her mother when she died, while the Leicestershire cunning-woman Joan Willimot related, in 1618, that a mysterious figure whom she only referred to as her "master", "willed her to open her mouth and he would blow into her a fairy which should do her good. And that she open her mouth, and that presently after blowing, there came out of her mouth a spirit which stood upon the ground in the shape and form of a woman."[15]
In a number of accounts, the cunning person or witch was experiencing difficulty prior to the appearance of the familiar, who offered to aid them. As historian Emma Wilby noted, "their problems... were primarily rooted in the struggle for physical survival—the lack of food or money, bereavement, sickness, loss of livelihood and so on", and the familiar offered them a way out of this by giving them magical powers.[16]
Working
In some cases, the magical practitioner then made an agreement or entered a pact with their familiar spirit. The length of time that the witch or cunning person worked with their familiar spirit varied between a few weeks through to a number of decades.
Types
Familiars are most common in western European mythology, with some scholars arguing that familiars are only present in the traditions of Great Britain and France. In these areas, three categories of familiars are believed to exist:[19]
- familiar spirits manifesting as humans and humanoids, throughout Western Europe
- divinatoryspirits manifesting as animals, Great Britain and France
- malevolent spirits manifesting as animals, only in Greece
Prince Rupert's dog
During the
Witch trials
Most data regarding familiars comes from the transcripts of English and Scottish witch trials held during the 16th–17th centuries. The court system that labeled and tried witches was known as the
The English court cases reflect a strong relationship between State's accusations of witchcraft against those who practiced ancient indigenous traditions, including the familiar animal or spirit.
In some cases familiars replace children in the favour of their mothers. (See
In colonial America animal familiars can be seen in the witch hunts that took place in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. Familiar spirits often appear in the visions of the afflicted girls. Although the 1648 law that defined a witch as one who "hath or consulteth with a familiar spirit" had been suspended ten years earlier, association with a familiar spirit was used in the
The
Legacy
Historiography
Recent scholarship on familiars exhibits the depth and respectability absent from earlier demonological approaches. The study of familiars has grown from an academic topic in folkloric journals to a general topic in popular books and journals incorporating anthropology, history and other disciplines. James Sharpe, in The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: the Western Tradition, states: "Folklorists began their investigations in the 19th Century [and] found that familiars figured prominently in ideas about witchcraft."[25]
In the first decades of the 20th century, familiars are identified as "niggets", which are "creepy-crawly things that witches kept all over them".[26]
See also
- Alebrije
- Barang (magic)
- Black cat
- Boye (dog)
- Daemon (mythology)
- Genius (mythology)
- Household deity
- Imp
- İye
- Kuladevata
- Nagual
- Pelesit
- Pillan
- Power animal
- Púca, Irish folklore
- Qareen
- Shikigami
- Spiriduş
- Tomte
- Torngarsuk
- Toyol
- Tulpa
- Tutelary deity
- Wayob
- Wekufe
- Yekyua
References
Citations
- ^ Wilby 2005, pp. 59–61.
- ^ Wilby 2005, p. 61.
- ^ Wilby 2005, pp. 74–76.
- ISBN 978-1938257667.
- ^ Pierre A. Riffard, Dictionnaire de l’ésotérisme, Paris: Payot, 1983, p. 132; Nouveau dictionnaire de l’ésotérisme, Paris: Payot, 2008, pp. 114–115.
- ^ Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil (1857), "The cat", 2.
- ^ A. P. Elkin, Aboriginal men of high degree. Initiation and Sorcery in the World's Oldest Tradition, 1945, 48. A spiritist medium allegedly loses consciousness and passes under control of some external force (called a "control spirit"), for the supposed transmission of communications from the dead, or messages for an individual or a group.
- ^ Mircea Eliade, Shamanism. Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (1968), Princeton University Press, 2004, 72, quoting Leo Sternberg, Divine Election in Primitive Religion, Congrès International des Américanistes,1924, 476 ff.
- ^ Wilby 2005, p. 62.
- ^ Willis, Deborah (1995). Malevolent Nurture. New York: Cornell University Press. pp. 32, 52.
- ^ Wilby 2005, p. 63.
- ^ Wilby 2005, pp. 60–63.
- ISBN 978-0-7864-8894-0.
- ^ Wilby 2005, p. 60.
- ^ Wilby 2005, pp. 60–61.
- ^ Wilby 2005, pp. 66–67, 70–71.
- ^ Wilby 2005, p. 77.
- ^ Wilby 2005, pp. 77–78.
- ^ M. A. Murray, Divination by Witches' Familiars. Man. Vol. 18 June 1918. pp. 1–3.
- ^ William Morgan, Superstition in Medieval and Early Modern Society, Chapter 3.
- ^ M. A. Murray, Witches familiars in England. Man, Vol. 18 July 1918, pp. 1–3.
- ^ Norton, Mary Beth (2002). In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692. New York: Vintage Books. pp. 26, 28, 48.
- ^ "Wiccan and Paganism: Do You Have a Magical Animal Familiar?". Learn Religions. Retrieved 10 December 2020.
- ^ Norton, Mary Beth (2002). In the Devil's Snare. New York: Vintage Books. p. 48.
- ^ Sharpe, James; Rickard M Golden (2006). Familiars in the Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: the Western Tradition. ABC-CLIO.
- ^ Times, The (1916). "Superstition in Essex: A Witch and Her Niggets". Folklore. 27: 3.
Bibliography
- Davies, Owen (2003). Cunning-Folk: Popular Magic in English History. London: Hambledon Continuum. ISBN 1-85285-297-6.
- Maple, Eric (December 1960). "The Witches of Canewdon". Folklore. Vol. 71, no. 4.
- Thomas, Keith (1973). Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England. London: Penguin.
- Wilby, Emma (2005). Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press. ISBN 1-84519-078-5.
- Norton, Mary Beth (2002). In the Devil's Snare. New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 0375706909.
- Murray, Margaret (1921). The Witch-Cult in Western Europe. London: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9781594623479.
- Briggs, Robin (1996). Witches and Neighbors. New York: Penguin.