In European folklore and folk beliefs of the Middle Ages and Early Modern periods, familiar spirits (sometimes referred to simply as " familiars " or " animal guides ") is believed to be a supernatural entity that will help wizards and sly people in their magical practice. According to the record of time, they will appear in various guises, often as animals, but also sometimes as human or humanoid figures, and are described as "clear, three-dimensional shapes..., life with color and animation with movement and sound" by people who claim to have come into contact with them, unlike the next ghost description with their "smoky and undefined form [s]".
When they serve magicians, they are often considered evil, while while working for cunning people they are often regarded as kind-hearted (although there are some ambiguities in both cases). The first is often categorized as a demon, while the latter is more often considered and described as a fairy. The ultimate goal of familiars is to serve young magicians or magicians, providing them with protection as they enter their new powers.
Since the 20th century a number of magical practitioners, including Neopagan believers from Wicca, have begun to use the familiar concept, because of their relationship to older forms of magic. These contemporary practitioners use pets, wildlife, or believe that invisible spirit versions of the familiar act as miraculous tools.
Video Familiar spirit
Definition
Pierre A. Riffard proposes these definitions and quotes
The known soul (alter ego, doppelgÃÆ'¤nger, personal devil, personal totem, spirit companion) is a double, alter ego, of an individual. It does not look like the person in question. Although it may have an independent life, it remains closely related to the individual. The familiar soul can be an animal (animal companion).
French poet, Charles Baudelaire, a cat fan, believes in the spirits he knows.
It is a familiar place spirit;
It judged, led, inspired Everything within his empire; That might be a fairy or a god? When my eyes are, pulled like a magnet For this cat that I love...
A. P. Elkin studied the beliefs in spirits known among the Aboriginal Australians:
The usual method, or explanation, is that the drug man sends his familiar spirit (his assistant totem, spirit-dog, spirit child or whatever his form) to gather information. When this happens, the man himself is in a state of acceptance, in sleep or possessed. In the modern phraseology [spiritism], the spirits he knows will become control [spirit of control].
Mircea Eliade:
The Goldi [Nanai people in Siberia] clearly distinguish between guardian spirits ( ayami ), who choose shamans, and auxiliary spirits ( syven ), which are lower than those given to shameless by ayami himself. According to Sternberg the Goldi explains the relationship between shamans and ayami with complex sexual emotions. This is a Goldi dukun report.
"As soon as I fell asleep on my sick bed, as the spirit approached me, it was a very beautiful woman, her body very small, she was no more than half the height of arsenic (71 cm.) Her face and clothes were the same as one of our Golden ladies... He said: "I am ayami of your ancestors, the Shamans. I teach them to dress up. Now I will teach you... I love you, I do not have a husband now, you will become my husband and I will be your wife. I will give you a spirit assistant. You have to heal with their help, and I will teach and help you yourself... 'Sometimes he comes under the aspect of an elderly woman, and sometimes under a wolf, so he's terrible to look at. Sometimes he comes as a winged tiger... He has given me three assistants-the jarga (panther), doonto (bear) and amba (tiger). They come to me in my dreams, and appear every time I call them while dressing up, if one of them refuses to come, ayami makes them obedient, but, they say, there are some who disobey even ayami . When I dress up, ayami and the spirit of the assistant has me; whether large or small, they penetrate me, like smoke or steam. When ayami is within me, it is he who speaks through my mouth, and he does it all by himself. "
Maps Familiar spirit
Description
Among the accused witches and sly people who portray their familiar spirits, there are usually certain unifying features. Historian Emma Wilby notes how such familial stories are striking for their "simplicity" and "naturalism", despite the fact that they are dealing with supernatural entities.
The common souls are the smallest animals, such as cats, rats, dogs, weasels, birds, frogs, frogs, and rabbits. There are also cases of wasps and butterflies, such as pigs, sheep, and horses. The common soul is usually kept in pots or baskets coated with sheep's wool and fed various things including, milk, bread, meat, and blood.
The common soul usually has a name and is "often given a nickname, and often gives love, a nickname." One example is Tom Reid, who is familiar with cunning women and accuses the wizard Bessie Dunlop, while other examples include Grizell and Gridigut, who are familiar to the 17th-century wizard, Hunterdonshire, Jane Wallis.
A Agathion is a familiar spirit that appears in human or animal form, or even in a talisman, bottle or magic ring. It's most powerful in the middle of the day.
Familiar can also hold a human form, live life as a human in the physical world. These intimate people often have children-like personalities, usually very close to fairy-tale fairies, forest fairies, trolls, elves, butterflies, birds and little cats. This familiar form stores a large amount of purity, a kind of metaphysical energy and power that is directly connected to their content. This familiar form serves as a battery or spiritual booster for their cargo, often to help them concentrate or utilize their spiritual energy. These familiar people are usually very close to their responsibilities, often never wanting to separate. Sometimes they feel pain or dry physically when separated.
Relationship between magic and familiar practitioners
Using his studies into the role of magic and witchcraft in Britain during the Early Modern period as a starting point, historian Emma Wilby examines the relationships known to spirits known to magicians and sly people during this period.
Meeting
In English accounts from the Early Modern period at least, there are three main types of narrative encounters pertaining to how a wizard or sly person first meets their familiar. The first is that spontaneous spirits appear in front of individuals while they go about their daily activities, whether at home or out of the house somewhere. Various examples for this are evidenced in the sources of time, for example, Joan Prentice of Essex, England, giving a report when he was interrogated for magic in 1589 claiming that he was "alone in his room, and sitting on a low bench preparing himself into bed" when his familiar who first appeared to her, while Cornish's cunning woman, Anne Jeffries, told in 1645 that she first appeared when she "knit on an arbor in our garden".
The second way in which the familiar spirits that normally appear for the magic practitioners in England is that they will be given to someone by a pre-existing individual, who is sometimes a member of the family and at other times a stronger spirit. For example, the wizard allegedly Margaret Ley of Liverpool claimed, in 1667, that she had been given her spirit that was familiar to her mother when she died, while the beautiful Leicestershire woman Joan Willimot hooked, in 1618, that a mysterious figure whom she simply referred to as "master" "he wants to open his mouth and he will blow into him the fairy who has to do his good, and that he opens his mouth, and which is now after blowing, there comes out of his mouth a spirit that stands on the ground in the shape and shape of a woman. "
In some accounts, cunning people or wizards have difficulty before the advent of the familiar, offering to help them. As historian Emma Wilby writes, "their problems... Are primarily rooted in the struggle for physical survival - lack of food or money, grief, disease, loss of livelihood and so on", and a close family offers an outlet to them. this by giving them supernatural powers.
Working relationship
In some cases, magic practitioners then make a deal or sign an agreement with the spirits they know. The length of time a wizard or a cunning person works with a passion that they know varies between several weeks to several decades. In most cases, magic practitioners will conjure up their familiar spirits when they need their help, though there are many different ways they do this: Essex wizard Joan Cunny claimed, in 1589, that he had to kneel in a circle and pray Satan for his familiar when wily Wiltshire woman Anne Bodenham described, in 1653, that she bewitched her readers by reading a book. In some of the more rare cases there are accounts where the familiar will appear at times when they are unwanted and not called, for example Huntingdon's witch Elizabeth Chandler notes, in 1646, that she could not control when her two familiar, Beelzebub and Trullibub, appeared to him, and had prayed for the god to "liberate him from there".
Trip to Fairyland or Sabbath
Familiars are most common in Western European mythology, with some scholars arguing that familiar is only present in English and French traditions. In this area there are three familiar categories that are believed to exist:
- familiar humans, throughout Western Europe
- forecasters, Great Britain and France
- bad animals, only in Greece
Prince Rupert dog
During the British Civil War, General Royalist Prince Rupert had the habit of carrying his large poodle named Boye into combat with him. Throughout the war the dog was greatly feared among the parliamentary forces and credited with supernatural powers. As noted by Morgan, the dog is apparently considered a kind of familiar. At the end of the war, the dog was shot, allegedly with a silver bullet.
Witch trial
Most of the data on the familiar comes from transcripts of English and Scottish witch trials held during the 16th-17th centuries. The court system labeled and tried wizards is known as Essex. The Essex Trial of Agnes Sampson of Nether Keith, East Lothian in Scotland in 1590, presents testimony to the prosecution of a divinatory familiar. The case was essentially political, tried Sampson for high treason, and accused Sampson of using magic against King James VI. The prosecution confirms that Sampson summoned the familiar spirits and resolved the questionable matter. Another trial of Essex was Hellen Clark, which was attempted in 1645, in which Hellen was forced to declare that Satan appears as "familier" in the form of a dog.
The English court case reflects a strong connection between alleged blackmail of the state against those who practice ancient indigenous traditions, including animals or spirits that he knows.
In some cases, people familiarly replace children for the sake of their mothers. (See witchcraft and children.)
In the colonial American familiar animals can be seen in the witch hunt that took place in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. The soul often appears in the visions of the suffering girls. Although the law of 1648 that defines a witch as someone who "owns or consults with an intimate spirit" has been suspended ten years earlier, a familiar spirit relationship is used in a Salem trial as a proof to punish a wizard suspect. Sarah Good is said to have a yellow bird sucked between her fingers. Ann Putnam in particular often sees a yellow bird in her misery. Tituba is known to have seen strange animals that urged him to harm children, including, pigs, black dogs, red cats, and black cats.
The sign of the witch adds a sexual component to the familiar spirit and is often found in court records as a way to punish the wizard's suspects. The sign is most often an extra pacifier found somewhere on the body and allegedly used to suck the spirits it recognizes. This example can be seen in the Salem wizard's test of 1692. For example, Ann Putnam told Martha Corey that "there is a yellow burd that sucks between your index finger and middle finger, I see it"
Legacy
Folklore
Historian Emma Wilby identifies the recurrent motifs in various European folklore and fairy tales that she believes shows belief in spirits she knows. He notes that in stories such as Rumpelstiltskin, Puss-in-Boots and Frog Prince, the protagonists are approached by supernatural beings when they need help, something that he connects to the appearance of the spirits known in their Early Modern accounts. He believes there is a direct connection between belief and the story of spirits known as the folk tales because "These fairy stories and myths come from the same source of popular beliefs with descriptions of familiar meetings given by commoners and witch. "
Historiography
The latest scholarship on familiars shows the depth and honor of absenteeism from previous demonological approaches. The study of familiar has evolved from academic topics in folkloric journals into common topics in popular books and journals that combine anthropology, history and other disciplines. James Sharpe, in The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: the Western Tradition, states: "Folklorists began their investigation in the 19th Century [and] found that familiars are very prominent in the ideas of witchcraft."
In the 19th century, folklorists fired the imagination of intellectuals who would, in the next few decades, write descriptive volumes on wizards and familiars. An example of familiar growth and scientific development is found at Folklore , which has consistently contributed articles on traditional beliefs in early modern England and Europe.
In the first decade of the twentieth century, familiars were identified as "niggets", which were "the creepy things that magicians hide all over them".
Margaret Murray investigates the familiar variations found in magical practices. Many of the sources he uses are experimental records and demonological texts from early to modern England. These included the 1556 Witch's Assembly of the Witches of Hatfield Perevil, the St Witch's 1582 Tribunal. Osyth, and the 1645 Essex Exam with Matthew Hopkins acting as Wizards. In 1921, Murray published The Witch Cult in Western Europe . His information about the familiar comes from the magic experiments at Essex in the 16th and 17th centuries. In this book Murray dedicates a full chapter to a spirit he knows. His detailed contributions to this topic include several court cases and accounts from Europe where he finds mentioning strangers.
Mary Beth Norton at In the Devils Snare published in 2002, discusses the wizarding crisis of Salem in 1692. He often refers to known spirits as he explores the trials of the Salem witches.
See also
References
- Notes
- Foot Records
- References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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