The Witch’s Familiar
Familiars are best known as a witch’s pet or animal companion, but a familiar is technically a spirit, not an animal. Familiars traditionally took the shape of animals (which led to many hapless animals getting slaughtered as alleged familiars during the witch hunts), but familiars themselves are spirits. In folklore, they are minor demons or imps, granted to the witch by the Devil himself to act as the witch’s minions. The witch feeds the familiars with drops of her own blood. Sometimes, the “witch’s mark” was understood to be a sort of extra nipple on which the familiar could suckle blood (hence Shadwell’s eternal question, “How many nipples have ye got?”). The witch can send the familiar out into the world to do her evil bidding.
According to anthropologist Ronald Hutton, familiars were specifically a feature of British witchlore, and then eventually American witchlore by way of English settlers. The origins of familiars are unclear. He says that there is no real scholarly consensus on the origins of familiars, but that there are a few prevailing ideas:
One is that the animal familiar developed from the learned tradition of ceremonial magic, and its fondness, attested since its first appearance in Ancient Egypt, for summoning spirits to serve the magician. Another is that it grew out of the fairy tradition, especially from the figure of the household helper spirit, and from claims often made by service magicians [i.e. cunning folk] to have been taught their skills by the fairy folk. […] Another was that the animal familiar should be related to a whole broad range of folkloric phenomena, from Wilby’s shamanistic helper spirits to the animal mascots of pagan deities and followers of saints. All of these phenomena needed instead to be put under the general, and very widespread, folk motif of the “grateful animal,” of which the familiar was one aspect. It was also argued, in riposte to the derivation from fairy lore, that the animal familiar belonged instead firmly in a demonic framework, being derived from the satanic imps of the Middle Ages.
— Ronald Hutton, The Witch
Hutton describes several examples in European folklore in which the Devil appears to witches in the form of various black animals (a cat, a bull, a bear, a goat, a fly, etc.), and demons in animal form that transport witches to the Sabbath. So apparently, the demonic attendant was just a natural next step from these existing motifs, attaching demonological lore to pets.
Regardless of where they came from, familiars very quickly became ubiquitous in British witchlore. Familiars appear in Renaissance-era British plays about witches. In Macbeth, the three witches have familiars named Grimalkin (a cat), Paddock (a toad), and Harpier (an owl). In The Witch of Edmonton, the witch’s familiar, a dog called Tom, is quite literally the Devil.
This is a scene from a production of The Witch of Edmonton. I really like this image because it highlights the strange nature of this relationship. It looks almost like a BDSM scene! Obviously the dog has to be portrayed by a human actor, but the way this is portrayed, that’s clearly not a dog — that’s the Devil, briefly acting the part of a naked and degraded animal. The witch holds him on a leash and he serves her, but because he’s the Devil, he’s really her master. There’s a disturbing implication of a sexual relationship between “Tom” and the witch:
MOTHER SAWYER
I am dried up
With cursing and with madness, and have yet
No blood to moisten these sweet lips of thine.
Stand on thy hind-legs up — kiss me, my Tommy,
And rub away some wrinkles on my brow
By making my old ribs to shrug for joy
Of thy fine tricks. What hast thou done? let’s tickle.
Hast thou struck the horse lame as I bid thee?DOG Yes;
And nipped the sucking child.MOTHER SAWYER
Ho, ho, my dainty,
My little pearl! no lady loves her hound,
Monkey, or paroquet, as I do thee.
This alludes to the motif I just described, of the familiar suckling blood from the witch. But the witch demands that Tom kiss her, and “let’s tickle” may very well be double entendre. I remember being put off when I saw this section for the first time, but since the Devil is already established as having sexual relationships with witches in folklore, this isn’t too surprising.
For a more modern example, that is still very much period-accurate, in The VVitch, the Devil appears as a goat called Black Phillip. Of course, he’s not really a goat:
Lucky for us, the idea of a “familiar” doesn’t really need to be reclaimed from this Satanic origin. In pop culture, familiars are now the animal companions of magical people, not devilish spirits that disguise themselves as animals. I remember a book series called The Familiars that I loved as a kid, about three familiars (a cat, a blue jay, and a tree frog) that have to save the world. A different understanding of the concept appears in His Dark Materials, in which each person has a “daemon,” their soul, which manifests externally in the form of an animal. The most unique take I’ve seen so far has got to be Palismans from The Owl House, which are staff toppers carved from wood that can come to life, being both tools and companions.
For modern witches, familiars are somewhere in between. A lot of witches will describe their pets as their familiars, especially if their pets have magical skills and/or the witch has a spiritual connection to their pets. (I have a very witchy-looking black cat, but he has no unique magical skills, so I don’t call him a familiar.) Other witches will use the word “familiar” to describe a companion spirit, usually a helpful lesser entity (i.e. not a god, angel, or archdemon) that they have a close personal relationship with:
The primary function of a familiar spirit is that of a magical assistant to the Witch. The word familiar itself derives from the Latin familiaris, which can variously refer to a servant or an intimate acquaintance. At times the relationship between a Witch and their familiar will manifest in the capacity of master and servant, wherein the familiar will unwaveringly perform a Witch’s every request. But more often than not, the bond between Witch and familiar is closer to friendship or at least an equal partnership. There is a symbiotic nature at the heart of the relationship, in that the Witch will exchange an offering of some type for the familiar’s aid.
— Kelden, The Crooked Path.
I realized from reading this that the closest thing to a familiar that I have is a spirit companion called Astor, whom I have a very close relationship with. He appears human, and he assists, comforts, and cares for me. I can’t quite call Astor a familiar, though. He is not an external spirit that I have a partnership with, he’s an internal spirit that represents part of myself. I interpret him as my Shadow, a personification of the dark and repressed side of my personality. I often invoke him, and I mentally adopt his appearance while meditating. He may be a tulpa that I have created, or an independent entity that is somehow attached to or twinned with me. Or some degree of both.
This is all to say that witches may have close relationships with spirits that aren’t familiars, per se. I don’t think it’s appropriate to call Astor a familiar because he is part of myself. Patron deities are also not familiars, no matter how close to them you may be. I’ve known other witches who have other kinds of companion spirits, such as their Holy Guardian Angel, or incubi/succubi lovers. I guess whatever the nature of your relationship is, it’s between you and the spirit.
Familiars are distinct from servitors, which are another kind of spirit that witches might have as servants or aids. Servitors are made from thoughtforms, projections of your own thoughts that have been charged with intention. Familiars are not thoughtforms, because they are independent spirits. Servitors are different from familiars in that you create them, usually to perform a specific task. They’re composed entirely of your own energy. They also don’t have nearly as much autonomy and personality as something like Astor, and you don’t develop a close personal relationship with them. They’re more like the magical equivalent of robots. Servitors are more comparable to what Kelden calls a “fetch” — an extension of yourself, that may take the form of an animal — that you send out into the world to do your bidding. Servitors are a very convenient means of creating magical “servants” to carry out your will the way familiars sometimes do in folklore.
As for how to get a familiar, if you want one, Kelden provides some great advice on the matter that’s inspired by folklore and confessions:
Where do Witches find familiars? Through the examination of folkloric accounts, it becomes evident that there are three chief methods by which one might obtain a familiar spirit. First off, a Witch can be gifted their familiar by the Witch Father, typically after undergoing an initiatory experience. Mother Lakeland, an Ipswich woman accused of Witchcraft in 1645, confessed that after she had signed the Devil’s book, he had given her three familiar spirits (two little dogs and a mole). Joane Wallis, who was tried for Witchcraft a year later, told her persecutors that the Man in Black had sent her two familiars named Grissel and Greedigut who came in the likeness of dogs. The second method of receiving a familiar spirit involves a Witch inheriting it from another individual, such as a family member. Elizabeth Francis, a suspected Witch from Chelmsford, was said to have received a familiar — a white spotted cat named Sathan — from her grandmother. In fact, according to some legends, a Witch had to first successfully pass on their familiar before they could die in peace. If the familiar spirit could not be given away properly, they reportedly hid in hedgerows waiting for a passing Witch to come along and hopefully adopt them.
Finally, there are those cases in which familiars appeared to a Witch out of the blue. Accused Essex woman Joan Prentice claimed that she was simply preparing herself for bed when her familiar, in the shape of a ferret named Bid, first spontaneously showed up. Many times, under these circumstances, familiar spirits would first make themselves known when the Witch was in distress. When Tom Reid came to Bessie Dunlop, she had been weeping over the loss of a cow and for the fact that her husband and child were gravely ill. A Cunning Man in the seventeenth century explained that he met his familiar when walking home from work, feeling heavy with sad thoughts concerning his family’s welfare. Regardless of the specific method for procuring one, it is typically the familiar that finds the Witch and not the other way around.
— Kelden, The Crooked Path
As a first step, I recommend asking whatever more powerful entities you work with for a daemon or other lesser spirit to assist you. If you’re interested in demonolatry, the Ars Goetia lists several demon lords that are known to “give good familiars,” meaning that you can evoke them and ask them to send you a familiar. Or you could go adventuring in the Otherworld and see if you come across one. Or set up a ritual and call one to you, giving a job interview to whichever spirit shows up. From there, make friends with the spirit the way you would a person. I highly recommend having spirit friends.
