Familiars
Mr Kelly's Familiars: Babs Bunny & Blanche Chinchilla
I decided tonight as I was tending to my pets that I should blog about them. In my neck of the woods, we call our pets 'familiars'. If you refer to your dear friend as a 'familiar',then, you know all about this.
I have a bunny rabbit and a chinchilla. The hare is traditionally pictured as the wizard with his 'familiar' hare. So, that is not odd to think of a rabbit as such. However, the chinchilla, you don't hear much of the witch and her chinchilla...lol. Sounds funny, but that's what made me decide to write about them.
I have a very strong bond with them both, as I've had them for a long time, but their energy is very familiar, so they are my 'familiars'.
In early modern English superstition, a familiar spirit, imp, 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 were imagined to serve their owners as domestic servants, farmhands, spies, and companions, in addition to helping bewitch enemies. These spirits were also said to inspire artists and writers (compare Muse).
Familiars are considered an identifying characteristic of early modern English witchcraft, and serve as one feature setting it apart from continental or New World witchcrafts.
The scholarship on the witch's familiar has changed and improved in depth and respectability since it was covered in the demonological contexts of early modern Europe. The study of the witch's familiar has evolved from an obscure topic in folkloric journals to popular books and journals that incorporate a historical discipline with multi-disciplinary approaches like anthropology, study of early modern Europe, and women’s studies. James Sharpe, in his article on the witch’s familiar 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 sparked the imagination of the scholars who would, in the decades to come, write descriptive volumes on witches and their familiars.
One example of the growth and development of familiar scholarship can be found in the scholarly publication Folklore, which has consistently contributed articles on superstition from England and early modern Europe. In the first decades of the 1900s, the witch's familiar was only superficially mentioned as "niggets", which were "creepy-crawly things that witches kept all over them".
Margaret Murray, the mother of familiar scholarship, has taken what was a field comprised, at best, of gossip and hearsay into a legitimate branch of study in early-modern Europe. Her work delved into the variation of the familiar found in witchcraft practices. Many of the sources she relied on were trial records and demonological texts from early to modern England. These include the 1556 Essex Witchcraft Trials of the Witches of Hatfield Perevil, the 1582 Trial of the Witches of St. Osyth, and the 1645 Essex Trials with Matthew Hopkins acting as a Witch-finder. In 1921, Murray published The Witch Cult in Western Europe, a book that was quite remarkable in the depth and analysis of the culture and folklore that surrounded witchcraft and the theories concerning the witch-cult. Its information concerning the witch's familiar comes from the witchcraft trials in Essex in the 1500s and 1600s. Margaret A. Murray made megalithic contributions to the corpus of scholarship on the witch's familiar and has continued to be cited in recent scholarship, a testament to the timelessness of her work.
There has not been a contribution to familiar scholarship in eighty years which has equaled Murray's work.[citation needed] Although recent scholarship has been made multi-disciplinary with integrations of feminist-historian and world-historian approaches. One of the major pieces to come from this Atlantic Trend is Deborah Willis' Malevolent Nurture: Witch-Hunting and Maternal Power in Early Modern England. In her chapter [Un]neighborly Nurture, she links the witch's relationship with the familiar as a bizarre and misplaced corruption of motherhood and maternal power.
Although the concept of the witch's familiar has remained unchanged in eighty years, recent applications of historical methods have definitely improved and contributed to the depth of familiar scholarship.
Here is another definition of 'familiar' I found on-line. This one doesn't include rabbit or chinchilla, but it's irrelevant about which critter you choose, or which chooses you!
A familiar, or an imp, is an attendant subordinate demon in the form of an animal. Such creatures drew nourishment by suckling from devil’s marks, a witch's breasts, or insensitive parts on a witch.
Familiars behaved in ways that no natural pet was believed to. They ran errands, brought messages, and aided in devil worship.
The following are some of the creatures believed to have been used by witches as familiars: cats, dogs, toads, wolves, bees, bats, blackbirds, owls, spiders, flies, chickens.
OK, one more definition of 'familiar' that I found on-line, but I find this one much more enlightening and educational, not so much 'folk lore-y'.
A familiar is a spirit or demonic attendant to a magician, sorcerer or witch that does their master's bidding, usually attracted to a person through magical skill, or incantation. The concept of a familiar is generally considered to be derived from fetishism because many familiars were said to live in rings, lockets, coins, objects worn by a magician or even bottles and lamps (an example of which is the genie in a lamp from the stories of Aladdin from the One Thousand and One Arabian Nights). A familiar usually takes an animal form like that of a cat, a dog or a bird or most common animals, although some familiars take human form. Many famous occultists had familiars, such as the black dog of Cornelius Agrippa, that was thought to be the Devil; Apollonius of Tyana wore a ring that was said to have a familiar; Paracelsus had a spirit in the hilt of his sword that he only took off his body when sleeping and would produce a purse full of gold coins if stuck in the middle of the night and Dr. John Dee was said to have several spirits named Ash, Il, Po and Va attending to his needs. Sometimes familiars are attracted to people without any desire or thought to attract a spirit to them. Such familiars usually annoy the people they are drawn to until they grow tired of playing jokes on them or following their unwitting masters and finally leave or are disposed of through exorcism.
If you have a familiar and wish to comment about the article, please do!
Dear Blog Gods...
I'm currently praying under my breath that this blog will be posted correctly. Sometimes when I'm done, I look the blog over and if it looks cool, I hit 'post', which makes it live.
Several times in the past, including my last blog before this one, I got to view it and it looks crazy!
I mean, nothing like the way it did prior to hitting 'post'...things that are suppose to be centered wll be on the left...words will be crammed into each other...paragraphs ran into one another and just stuff like that.
Anyway, I'm coming up with a 'Prayer to the Blog Gods' and will share with you soon. Plan in progress...watch it unfold, one blog at a time. In the meantime, shall we pray?
When I was searching the internet, I found this when I typed 'Blog God' into the search engine. So, this is what a 'Blog God' actually looks like!
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall...
Oh, I almost forgot...well, no I didn't, but, I did intend to tell you sooner about my new toy. I know I bragged about all my new toys not that long ago, but I got one more...for now.
I got a scrying mirror. Now, this is not the first one I've had. As a matter of fact, I made my first mirror in 1993 while in college. It was off the hook, too. The mirror was genuine black onyx and the base board it was fixed to was triangular in shape and fashioned as instructed such as the Golden Dawn or Crowley would do.
Mirror scrying is an evolved form of water scrying. When it became possible to build mirrors they were regarded as being like water that was fixed into one place.
The early mirrors were made of polished copper, brass, marcasite, tin foil or mercury behind glass, polished silver and obsidian. All types of mirrors may be used for scrying and the size is not important.
Because mirrors are linked to the moon mirrors should be backed with silver. Try and use a round or oval mirror instead of a square mirror.
For the frame try and use a mirror that has a silver frame. Old mirrors also seem to work better than new mirrors.
Most seers prefer to use a black mirror. Because this is difficult to buy you may have to make one.
Just simply take out the glass and paint it black. You may have to give it a few coats of paint though. When you put it back in the frame make sure the glass part is to the front.
The use of black mirrors may be traced back over the centuries. Alchemists Edward Kelley and John Dee used a black mirror of shewstone - a piece of polished obsidian. I personally follow this method of scrying more than any other I've read or heard about. These two guys rock!
John Dee
Edward Kelly
(cool last name...tee hee)
Catoxtromancy is a form of divination by means of looking glasses. In ancient Rome, special diviners known as "blindfolded boys" were known to gaze into mirrors in order to experience visions of the future or of the unknown, and according to the 4th century 'Scriptores Historiae Augustae' the death of Julian the Apostate was accurately predicted by diviners using this method.
When using the black mirror for scrying you do not want to see your reflection. The best is to leave the mirror on a table and look at it from an angle.
Look into the depths of the mirror as though you were looking into a bowl of water. At first it may appear gray than colors will come and go.
With time and practice you will be able to see sacred images like still photographs or moving film images. Spirits may sometimes look at the scryer, talk to the scryer or even touch the scryer. The visions may even exist outside the mirror and surround the scryer on all sides.
We had much luck in college, as my friend, who was female, would actually gaze while I invoked. You don't have to invoke, unless you're advanced and know how to call upon a certain Angel or Demon due to it's attributes that supply your need(s). At the time, with my friends help, this was a do-able project, and succesful.
Now, most foremost authors on the subject will agree that females tend to scry easier than males. Not saying a male cannot see, but as a rule of thumb. In this case, my friend was a better 'seer' than I. Our sessions were always succesful when she gazed.
Now many years later I actually wonder about that mirror? What happened to it? I wonder if she still has it? I think I will try to find out...in the meantime, though, I've got a new scrying mirror. It's very tiny and about palm size. Of course, once I get it mounted on a frame, it will be larger...over all. I've been holding it in the palm of my hand since I got it trying to 'see'. So far, all I've seen was a phoenix rising...but I'm not complaining. It's definately a start, and then of course, I had to go find out all I could about the Phoenix...more than I already knew, as this was a sign of some sort.
The phoenix (Ancient Greek: Φοῖνιξ, phoínix) is a mythical sacred firebird which originated in the Sub-continent of India in ancient mythologies mentioned in the Egyptian and later the Phoenician and the Greek Mythology.
A phoenix is a mythical bird with a tail of beautiful gold and scarlet plumage (or purple and blue, by some sources ). It has a 500 to 1,000 year life-cycle, near the end of which it builds itself a nest of myrrh twigs that then ignites; both nest and bird burn fiercely and are reduced to ashes, from which a new, young phoenix or phoenix egg arises, reborn anew to live again. The new phoenix is destined to live as long as its old self. In some stories, the new phoenix embalms the ashes of its old self in an egg made of myrrh and deposits it in the Egyptian city of Heliopolis (sun city in Greek). The bird was also said to regenerate when hurt or wounded by a foe, thus being almost immortal and invincible — it is also said that it can heal a person with a tear from its eyes and make them temporarily immune to death. The phoenix is a symbol of fire and divinity.
There is plenty of information on line about this if you want to delve into the subject some more...just type 'the Phoenix Rising' into your favorite search engine!
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