An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present - Doreen Valiente 2018

Familiars

Witches’ familiars may be of three kinds. The first kind is that of a discarnate human being or, in other words, the spirit of a dead person. The second kind is that of a non-human spirit, an elemental. The third kind is that of an actual material creature, a small animal such as a cat or a ferret, or a reptile such as a toad.

Familiars of the second kind, the elementals, sometimes indwell a particular object; and these serving spirits have been attributed to ceremonial magicians in the past, as well as to witches. The famous occultist Paracelsus, for instance, was said to have a familiar which dwelt in a large precious stone, probably a crystal, which was set in the pommel of his sword. In old books of magic, one often finds rituals for attracting a spirit and binding it to a crystal or a magic mirror, in order to serve a magician. By the agency of such a spirit, visions would be seen in the crystal or mirror.

The idea of a spirit ensouling some object, generally a statue, is also found among the magicians of primitive races. Anthropologists have named such a statue a ’fetish’.

Among witches in Britain, the kind of familiar most frequently met with is the third; that is, a small living creature of some kind, kept as a pet. Witch-hunters usually insisted on describing these familiars as ’imps’, and alleged that the witch fed them on her own blood.

There is a shred of truth in the latter allegation, although misunderstood as usual. The imagination of witch-hunters is often much nastier than that of witches.

What really happened was that the witch gave the creature from time to time a spot of his or her blood, or if the witch were a woman and a nursing mother, a little of her milk. The object of this was to make a psychic link between the witch and the familiar, and to continue that link. Otherwise, the familiar would be fed on whatever food was normal for it to eat.

Many animals have acute psychic perceptions, and by observing their behaviour the presence of unseen visitants, friendly or otherwise, can be divined. The utter refusal of dogs to go into a place which is the scene of a genuine haunting is a fact frequently attested by experience. Cats, on the other hand, seem rather to enjoy ghostly company. (See CATS AS WITCHES’ FAMILIARS.)

The toad is a remarkably intelligent creature, and easily tamed. The natterjack, or walking toad, was the type specially favoured as a witches’ familiar; but all toads make quite good pets, if they are kept in suitable conditions. They must have water available, as they breathe partly through their skin, and if this gets too dry they will die. They feed upon insects; so the cottage garden was an excellent habitat for them and some old-fashioned gardeners kept toads simply for this purpose, to keep down the insects that menaced the plants.

The toad is also generally harmless. He cannot bite, because he has no teeth; and the old story that he spits poison is a libel. What really happens is that the toad, when angry, frightened or excited will exude poison through his skin, from certain glands in the region of his neck. If you do not frighten or injure him, he will remain harmless; and he has the most wonderful, jewel-like eyes of any creature in the reptile kingdom. (As the reader may have gathered, the writer likes toads.)

This substance exuded by the skin of the toad has a milky appearance, and consequently it received the name of toads’ milk. Witches who kept toads as pets had certain ways of obtaining the toads’ milk without injuring or upsetting the toad—a good familiar was too valuable for that. Toads’ milk was used in some of the witches’ secret brews; and modern scientists have discovered that it contains a substance they have named bufotenin, which is an hallucinogenetic drug.

It is also an extremely deadly poison, when used in the wrong way. The writer, therefore, does not feel that it would be in the public interest to disclose too many details on this subject. The present irresponsible attitude towards hallucinogens, unfortunately displayed by many people today, precludes it.

This, however, was one of the reasons for the popularity of the toad as a witch’s familiar. The other reason is that toads, like cats, are very psychic creatures, and will react to ghostly influences.

The animal familiar was used for divination. The method was to set before it within the magical circle a number of objects representing different divinatory meanings, and see which one it selected. The painted pebbles mentioned in the entry on divination would be very suitable for this; or sprigs of different herbs or twigs of trees could be used. Before the divination started, the witch would have to cast the magic circle, and invoke the Gods to send a spirit to possess the familiar and inspire it to give the right answer.

Another way in which the animal familiar was used was to convey a magical influence, for good or ill, to another person. An instance of this is contained in the confession of Margaret and Philippa Flower, who were hanged for witchcraft at Lincoln in 1619.

These two sisters had been employed at Belvoir Castle by the Earl and Countess of Rutland. For some reason, one of them, Margaret, was dismissed. Feeling that she had been unjustly treated, she applied to her mother, Joan Flower, for revenge. Joan Flower was already reputed to be a witch, and she had a familiar, a cat called Rutterkin. Margaret Flower managed to steal a glove belonging to Lord Rosse, the heir of the Earl and Countess; and this glove was used to make the magical link for the ritual of revenge.

The witch-mother, Joan Flower, rubbed the glove upon Rutterkin the cat; and she must have pronounced a curse upon Lord Rosse as she did so. Then the glove was dipped into boiling water—doubtless the cauldron was bubbling nearby. It was taken out again, pricked either with pins or with the magical knife, and finally buried. Lord Rosse became ill and eventually died.

The Flowers continued to practise witchcraft against the family of the Earl and Countess, until rumours got about locally, and they were arrested and taken to Lincoln for examination. The mother, Joan Flower, fell down and died as she was being taken to Lincoln Jail; after which the two sisters confessed and were hanged. What happened to the cat is not recorded; but this case is interesting as one of the rare instances in which we have some actual details of how familiars were really used. The cat evidently acted as a sort of medium for the powers of witchcraft.

Witches acquired well-trained familiars from each other. They might be given at initiation, or passed on between members of a family, or inherited as a legacy. The familiar was given a name, and well cared for. Sometimes the names were curious and fanciful.

Some recorded names of witches’ familiars in Britain are Great Tom Twit and Little Tom Twit (these were two toads); Bunne; Pyewacket; Elimanzer; Newes (a good name for a divining familiar); Elva (which was also the name of a Celtic goddess, sister-in-law to the sun god Lugh); Prickeare; Vinegar Tom; Sack and Sugar; Tyffin; Tissey; Pygine; Jarmara; Lyard (a word meaning ’grey’); Lightfoot; Littleman; Makeshift; Collyn; Fancie; Sathan; Grissell and Greedigut. From the Continent come names like Verdelet, Minette, Carabin, Volan, Piquemouche, and so on. Cornelius Agrippa, a famous writer on occult philosophy and magic, was supposed to keep a familiar in the shape of a little black dog called Monsieur.

A curious sidelight on the belief in the efficacy of animal familiars is the fact that, during the Civil War in England, the supporters of Cromwell quite seriously accused the Royalist Prince Rupert of having a familiar. Apparently the Prince had a little white dog called Boye; and the Puritans’ accusations were ridiculed in contemporary Royalist pamphlets, which improved on the original story by suggesting that Boye was really a beautiful Lapland witch, who had changed herself into a dog in order to keep the gallant Cavalier company.

But to the Puritans, witchcraft was no subject for jest. It was during the Civil War that the notorious Witch-Finder General, Matthew Hopkins, carried on his reign of terror in East Anglia. Many elderly people were bullied and tormented into ’confessions’, and ultimately hanged, for no other crime than keeping a pet animal or bird that their persecutors had decided was a familiar.

At the present day, there are some extreme Protestant congregations which forbid their members to keep pets. This may be an unacknowledged survival of the old fear of witchcraft and the familiar.

The word ’familiar’ comes from the Latin famulus, meaning an attendant. The most detailed story from the British Isles of such an attendant in the form of a human spirit is that of the Scottish witch Bessie Dunlop of Ayrshire, who was condemned and executed in 1576. Her familiar was the ghost of a man called Thome Reid, who had been killed at the Battle of Pinkie in 1547.

She described his appearance as that of “a respectable elderly-looking man, grey-bearded, and wearing a grey coat, with Lombard sleeves, of the auld fashion. A pair of grey breeches, and white stockings gartered above the knee, a black bonnet on his head, close behind and plain before, with silken laces drawn through the lips thereof, and a white wand in his hand, completed the description of what we may suppose a respectable-looking man of the province and period.” So says Sir Walter Scott, who, in his Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft (London, John Murray, 1830), gives full particulars of this case.

Thome Reid was evidently no mere dubious wraithlike phantom. Furthermore, he gave proof of his identity:

More minutely pressed upon the subject of her familiar, she said she had never known him while among the living, but was aware that the person so calling himself was one who had, in his lifetime, actually been known in middle earth as Thome Reid, officer to the Laird of Blair, and who died at Pinkie. Of this she was made certain, because he sent her on errands to his son, who had succeeded in his office, and to others his relatives, whom he named, and commanded them to amend certain trespasses which he had done while alive, furnishing her with sure tokens by which they should know that it was he who had sent her.

Thome Reid advised Bessie upon how to treat the sick, both humans and cattle, and her treatments were generally successful. He also helped her to divine the whereabouts of stolen property. On one occasion, she said, perhaps too bluntly, that the reason some stolen plough-irons had not been recovered was that a certain sheriff’s officer had accepted a bribe not to find them. This cannot have been pleasing to the authorities concerned; and one wonders whether this was why she fell foul of the law, as she was never alleged to have done harm to anyone. Nevertheless, as Sir Walter Scott says, “The sad words on the margin of the record ’Convict and burnt’ sufficiently express the tragic conclusion of a curious tale.”

It is notable that Spiritualist mediums of the present day claim to be aided by spirits whom they call ’Guides’; that is, spirits who particularly attach themselves to a medium for the purpose of assisting in the production of phenomena, and of advising the medium. Without wishing in any way to give offence to Spiritualists, this is exactly what the human familiar of the witches did and still does.

One of the objects of present-day witches’ rites is to contact the spirits of those who have been witches in their past lives on earth, and who have thus acquired wisdom both on earth and in the Beyond. The witches’ procedure, while not precisely the same as that of Spiritualists, is nevertheless very similar in many respects. The Spiritualists’ practice of sitting in a circle, and of having men and women seated alternately, is precisely the same as that of witchcraft; as is their belief that power is latent in the human body, and that under the right conditions this power can be externalised and used by discarnate entities to manifest.

Witches also believe, in common with Spiritualists, that a person of the right temperament can enter into a state of trance, during which a spirit can make use of that person’s mind and body in order to speak, write, or perform actions; in other words, they believe in mediumship. This may be one reason for some Churchmen’s implacable opposition to Spiritualism—that they recognise in it many of the beliefs and phenomena of witchcraft.

The witch maintains, however, as does the Spiritualist, that these powers and phenomena are perfectly natural ones; that they are within the framework of natural laws, even though the materialist may not understand the working of such laws; and that it is the way in which these powers are used that makes them good or evil, and not the essential nature of the powers themselves.

With regard to the witch’s familiar which is a non-human discarnate entity, a nature-spirit, this is a belief not confined to witches. It can be found in the East also, where many fakirs and magicians claim to produce marvellous phenomena by means of their alliance with the spirits of the elements. (See ELEMENTS, SPIRITS OF THE.)

In the West such nature-spirits were accepted by people of all races. The Greeks and Romans felt the presence of the nymphs of river and mountain, the tree-nymphs and the goat-footed fauns of the forest; and to them they raised altars in lonely places of the wild. Such an altar, inscribed Diis campestribus, is described by Sir Walter Scott as being preserved in the Advocates’ Library in Scotland. It was discovered near Roxburgh Castle; and the old gentleman in charge of the library used to translate its inscription as “The Fairies, ye ken.”

After the coming of Christianity, all these nature-spirits were regarded as belonging to the world of Faerie, of which Diana, the goddess of the woodlands and of the moon, was queen. They were “The Secret Commonwealth”, as old Robert Kirk of Aberfoyle described them in 1691; and association with them was banned by the Church as a thing of witchcraft. Even today, some of the more severe Irish clergy tell their flock that the little leprechauns are ’divils’.

Respect for the fairies, however, has by no means died out, especially in the more Celtic parts of the British Isles. In the Isle of Man, for instance, it is usual for people to salute the Good Folk when they pass by the Fairies’ Bridge; and this custom was observed even by Royalty, on a visit to the island in recent years. To many, it is simply a colourful piece of local folklore; but frequent also are the tales of people who have treated the fairies with discourtesy, and have experienced inexplicable breakdowns of their cars, or other misfortunes thereafter.

However, any intimate friendship between mortals and the fairies was regarded, generally rightly, as a sign of witchcraft in bygone days. The records of this are so extensive and curious that they require an entry to themselves. (See FAIRIES AND WITCHES.)

Belief in the fairy familiar is still sufficiently alive to have been perpetuated by Hollywood. That very funny film Harvey, starring James Stewart, was actually about a familiar of this kind; and it stuck very close to tradition in the way it described ’Harvey’, the pooka or fairy spirit in animal form, and his prankish powers.