Familiars

How bizarre that in one culture it is perfectly acceptable for everyone to acknowledge a totem animal or a spirit guide, while in another an individual can be burned at the stake for professing a similar concept. During the same historical period when all good little European children said their prayers and beseeched 14 angels to keep watch over them while they slept, innocent men and women were being tortured to death for being suspected of calling upon other spirit entities to help them cure their neighbors of diseases.

The concept of certain spirit beings who assist a magician or a witch undoubtedly hearkens back to the totem animal guides that attended the ancient shamans, for the familiars express themselves most often in animal forms. The black cat, for instance, has become synonymous in popular folklore as the traditional companion of the witch. Attendant upon such a sorcerer as the legendary Cornelius Agrippa is the black dog or the dark-haired wolf.

The ancient Greeks called upon the predrii, spirit beings who were ever at hand to provide assistance to the physicians or magicians. In Rome, the seers and soothsayers asked their familiares or magistelli to lend a little supernatural assistance. In many lands where the Christian missionaries planted their faith, various saints provided an acceptable substitute for the ancient practice of asking favors or help from the totem animal. Interestingly, many of the saints of Christendom are identified by an animal symbol, for example, the dog with St. Bernard; the lion with St. Mark; the stag with St. Eustace; and the crow with St. Anthony. However, in those regions where the country folk and rural residents persisted in calling upon their familiars, the church decreed the spirit being to be demons sent by Satan to undermine the work of the clergy. All those accused of possessing a familiar or relying on it for guidance or assistance were forced to recant such an association or be in danger of the torture chamber and the stake.

While the wolf became the symbol for such Christian spiritual illuminaries as St. Francis of Assisi and St. Edmund of East Anglia, for the common folk, to maintain the wolf as one's personal totem was proof of their desire to be transformed into a werewolf.

Sources: Hazlitt, W. C. Dictionary of Faiths and Folklore. London: Studio Editions, 1995.
Spence, Lewis. An Encyclopedia of Occultism. New Hyde Park, NY: University Books, 1960.
Steiger, Brad. Totems: The Transformative Power of Your Personal Animal Totem. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997.