Familiars

What our peoples thoughts on familiars? Do they exist, do you have one, and how did you know? I believe I have a familiar and need this information to better understand and function.

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This has been debated back and forth dozens of times in the forums. Just type familiars in the search bar and you'll see a lot of different answers.

This thread has been moved to Spiritual Creatures from Comments.

The idea that a pet is the same as a familiar came from the centuries when poor women who had only a pet for company were often accused of being Witches.. It has continued in modern times because of the crop of poorly researched books on the market these days. But the fact of the matter is that our beloved pets and a Witch's familiar are very, very different things.

A Witch's familiar is an animal spirit or a magical construct created by the Witch or the Magician as an adjunct to their magical workings, as a repository for power, and if needed as a defense against magical attack from another magic user. A Witch or a magician can draw upon the energies of the familiar when they need an extra boost of energy in a magical working. Conceivably if the spell is important enough, the Witch could completely drain the familiar of energy causing it to "die" or cease to exist. And in the case of a magical attack, the attack could be diverted to the familiar so that it would be the familiar which is destroyed rather than the magic user. None of these are things that I think any of us would want to do with our pets.

There is an excellent article on familars here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Familiar_spirit

Animals are very sensitive to the energies around them and they may be drawn to us when we are working magic because they can sense the energy. They also want to be around their people, which again will make them want to be where we are..and that may be where we are doing magic. Neither of these things makes the animal a familiar or inherently magical in and of itself.

^I agree with what Lark said above, but I will also add that a familiar can also be an entity sent to you by your patron to act as an assistant and at times even a teacher.

Whether you treat it as a pet, slave, henchman, friend, teacher, is entirely up to you, and the nature of the entity. Much like humans can make both egregores and servitors the same applies to entities.

So...in essence the familiar is a spiritual assistan t in your work.