The notion of familiars within Wicca is one of those things that certain people seem to think make them look more Wiccan without the vaguest concept of what a familiar is. Some Wiccans refer to any pet as a familiar. Others use the term for a pet that appears particularly intelligent or seems to have some sort of empathic bond with its owner. That's not what a familiar is. It's a straight up, radical redefinition of a word.
It is true that historical witches were often accused of keeping familiars, and that the familiar in question was often a common household animal such as a cat. These creatures, as they were understood, however, were not pets. They were not even mortal. Familiars were (theoretically) demonic spirits serving the witch. Such entities commonly took the form of a common animal as a disguise and they fed on the blood of the witch.
Are you so sure you want a familiar now?
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I do. But can't a case be made that you can make a non-demonic familiar of an animal through ritual? You can "charge" a cat with protection spells for example.
There's also rituals to make "familiars" out of plants, I think there is an example of this in Paul Huson's Mastering Witchcraft.
Do you think familiars must be Demonic? What about spirits in general? I agree with you that the most traditional (and in my opinion effective) familiar is a spirit you bind in some way, but I've always assumed any old spirit would do.
Or am I over thinking this?
Love your blog by the way
If you cast a protection spell on a cat, you still have nothing more than a protected cat. It doesn't suddenly become something that isn't a cat.
I'm not familiar with Huson's work, and without seeing it I'm having an awful hard time imagining how a plant could be a familiar.
I certainly do not think spirits need to be demonic. Whether a familiar is specifically demonic might be a question of semantics. But calling your pet cat a familiar makes no sense.
Trust me, the people who are making these claims (that I've heard) are not in the business of binding spirits. They think kitty cats are familiars.
With the cat what I mean is a person can use some pets for magical work, as a "helper" if not a familiar. I agree that it would be nice if the occult movement was still ... well and occult movement with people who didn't play fast and loose with terms but I think familiar means too many thing.
As for the plants, it was all very 70s if you know what I mean. The idea was to take a plant (like a mandrake though those were hard to get as you can imagine) then through a series of rituals that would make today's Wiccans cry imbue it with a spirit of your own creation that would then assist you in magical work. So it's not a familiar in the technical sense but it is sort of a familiar, (and it's even fed blood and other fluids)that witches would keep.
By extension this not-technically-a-familiar familiar ritual could be used on animals couldn't it? Sorry to bore you but technical discussions like this, theorizing about how magic works, is what I consider fun.
I'm not sure about familiars. As a solitary eclectic, I only know what I've discovered.
But, 2 of my pets seem to have an intuitive intelligence. The third is just a dumb dog.
I've seen cats kind of "blend in" with a ritual, and i had one who sat by me when ever I worked at the altar. I don't consider that late cat a familiar in the traditional sense, but I guess that's my question. Is there a alternative word for a pet that is involved in your rituals?
My understanding of familiars was that they could be a demonic spirit or they could be the magical construct of the Witch or magic user. As a magical construct they could be used to store power that could later be drawn upon by the magician at need. In addition, in case of magical attack the familiar would be offered as the object of attack rather than the magic user. In both the case of drawing energy from the familiar and in using it to divert a magical attack from the owner it was expected that the familiar could or would be destroyed in the process.
Somehow I don't think most people would like to see their darling Fluffy go up in a puff of black smoke