I’m posting this mostly for fun. It’s meant to be light hearted perhaps semi serious?
But my question is what does everyone think about the idea of our beloved pets being our familiars? Plausible? Cheesy? What makes one type of a relationship a familiar and another one a pet?
My cat is for sure my familiar, he has been with me many lifetimes. He knows what I’m thinking and feeling and always gives me a heads up when there’s energy shifts in the house. The last time he died, it took me three months to find him again and another four months to pick him up.
There were signs that led me to him, in case your wondering LOL
Sorry I a not able to post pics but he’s siamese lilac point and the love of my life.
I believe it’s based on personal choice and the type of bond, a lot of pagan communities tend to shun the idea of a pet being a familiar. However that seems almost limiting to me. While I don’t consider my own pets familiars due to that not being the type of bond present; I don’t disbelieve in the possibility for others to have such a bond.
There’s a reason that the word ‘familiar’ is used the way it is. What makes a familiar a familiar is the immediate and intuitive awareness that would cause you to use the word familiar. I’ve written the word ‘familiar’ seven times in this post without spell-check, and am becoming familiar with the spelling of ‘familiar’.
My reasoning is much the same as yours. I’d rather have a familiar (a relationship in which I am intimately acquainted) than a pet (something I touch for pleasure…weird)
When you think about it that way it’s really practical and I don’t know why it’s so frowned upon in pagan communities
I guess they just think it makes them too close to larpers vs real magicians?
Now come guys let’s post cute pics of our familiars/pets!!!
Would love to hear more of your story on what signs led you to him!
What a beautiful and sweet relationship you guys have
I sort of started a thread called “cat thread for posting cats and such”. The name got changed to “thread for posting animals and such”.
Someone suggested that it wasn’t occult related and I had no idea how to form an argument to the contrary. It was like someone telling me that multiplication isn’t math.
I guess cats and animals just by themselves isn’t strictly occult related but I’m pretty sure as long as we’re also discussing the possibility of them being our familiars we get a loop hole and could probably dress them up in hats if we wanted!
The day after he died I had a dream about him, he told me to find him and he would give me a sign. He told me what he wanted to be called.
I located him at a breeder, who I found online accidentally, whose name happened to be a favorite city of mine at the time in a C.S Lewis book. His parents names were familiar to me as well and had special meaning. The color purple kept showing up as well.
I called the breeder, they had a litter planned for the near future and there was usually four to six kittens to a litter. I put my name down but was told I would have to wait a year because my name was #50 on the list.
Well when it came to crunch time, I cried thinking I had failed, then the breeder called and said the kittens were born, and he was available. He was not what anyone on the list wanted LOL
He turned out to be a lilac pointe “purple” and in his picture they color the heads with dots to tell them apart usually, he had a purple dot.
The breeder told me he was a wild one before I came to visit, yet when I held him he fell asleep. She said that had never happened before. the minute I saw him was love, and we found each other again.
He has the same personality, likes, dislike, quirks as my previous cat which is weird in itself, even down to food preference LOL
so im wondering is your familiar? Is there some random spirit attached to the cat or is it like you cat as a spirit form and you talk to it. And how do you bond and aquire an animal familiar. There is so much conflicting info out there i desire a cat and would like to have an animal famuliar.
The latter would be most correct. i didn’t acquire him, more like he acquired me LOL
I always know what he is thinking and feeling and vise versa, we talk more on an emotional and psychic level, obviously I use words but connection is much higher than that. The one thing I find hard to do is sometime put things into words because there just are none LOL
But put the intention out there and be specific, and let the magick happen for you.
To be fair, this is mostly due to hordes of teeny bopper “witches” talking about their “familiar” destroying their altar, eating offerings, and shitting on the carpet.
Old legends abound regarding the witches Familiars in essence, small demons which could be sent out to do a witch’s bidding. Although cats, especially black ones were the favored animal for such a demon to inhabit, dogs, toads, and other small animals were sometimes considered familiars. These witches’ familiars help them cast spells, or in the case of Harry Potter, deliver the mail.
The myth spread widely as many in Europe had cats as pets to kill off mice and rats, when someone was accused of witchcraft they were often seen talking to the family pet, hence the term familiar, or something your close too with a bonded relationship. Others when seen talking to themselves and the pet usually a cat was seen nearby, felt they must be responding to telepathic communications from a spirit that manifested itself in the cat or family pet.
In Europe and England cats were associated with spirits of the land and nature. Fairies, dwarves, and other elemental creatures were believed to inhabit the bodies of animals. The power of the Xian church grew in the Middle Ages, many pagan beliefs went underground because any spirit other than an angel must be a demon. During the witch-hunt era, many domestic animals were killed because of their association with supposed witches and heretics.
As far as I know, the original meaning of familiar is literally a spirit. So no. Pets aren’t familiars. A familiar spirit could possess an animal maybe, put that requires you to actually confirm it somehow.
But also what lawclerk said
My familiars are entities rather than spirits, however, assuming a pet and a person can form a familiar based bond it’s totally not out of the scope of possibility regardless of what it was deemed in the past, there’s a reason practices evolve and it’s usually not advised to assume text are 100%.
I keep forgetting to mention that I use those words interchangeably.
A cat is the only known creature with can pass through a Magick Circle/force-field without issues.
Al.
Challenge accepted.
I figured it out! The version of my cat I see out of the corner of my eye is a lynx!
I guess this is my tabby’s godform?
Well why not? Who says they can’t have one?
Looked it up symbolically the lynx is associated with secrets and the unseen
I always got the feeling this was an extension of my kitten (who despite his large size is only 9 months old) so I’ve never been afraid of it.
I also want to thank everyone for the intlligent responses. I look forward to seeing all the different ways people think about their familiars.
I also agree the spirits we work with are familiars. Historically that does seem to be the more accurate definition that is until the church decided their biggest problem was old cat ladies.
