Familiar Spirit
Familiar Spirit
A familiar spirit or familiar (from Middle English familiar, related to family) is an animal-shaped spirit who serves for witchery, a demon, or other magician-related subjects.
Familiars serve their owners as domestic servants, farmhands, spies, and companions, and may help bewitch enemies. Familiars are also said to inspire artists and writers (see Tutelary spirit, Power Animal and compare Muse).
Familiars are considered an identifying characteristic of early modern English witchcraft, and serve as one feature setting it apart from European witchcraft; although we find legends of “Familiar creatures” in other parts of the world.
Familiars in European mythology
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:
* human familiars, throughout Western Europe
* divinatory animals, Great Britain and France
* maleficent animals, only in Greece
Historiography on the Witch’s Familiar
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, women’s studies 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.”
In the 1800s, folklorists
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