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Familiars
by James Dilworth
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.
Source Quoted
Spence, Lewis Encyclopedia of Occultism 1959 New York University Press