Familiars:
For the beginner, IMHO,

A familiar is NOT a pet, even thought the beast concerned may sleep on your bed or hang from your rafters. The nearest thing a familiar will get to a pet is that SOMETIMES it will behave as if it’s domesticated (whatever that’s supposed to mean!).
The familiar will always choose you. It will bring you gifts. It will have a life of it’s own away from you. What makes it a familiar is its behavior and the simple ability to communicate with you. You can change places in the night (because the night is always the time when the way of a familiar is most blatant) and not be disturbed when you wake in the morning with twigs in your hair and scratches along your shoulders!
Familiars are messengers and spies and companions for life. Even after my last familiar left his body, he has continued to be useful, and helpful, stalking the boundary of my property as a barely recognizable entity.

Does anyone out there have a familiar? If so, what is it, and how does it relate to you? I am very curious, I seem to have acquired a new familiar, its very non-traditional, it makes me question, “why that”, and I would like to know what the rest of you have as one

~aside~ Totem animals too greatly interest me. Give me your input, I am always on a path of learning.

birds....birds are always singing about me, circling me and I have even been swooped by two...one raven and one owl....they sit on my fence...and watch...

My Totem Animal, Double's As My Familiar At Times, Until I aquire A New One.
Although My Cat Damascus, seems to be working his Way up to being one.

I don't like animals.

If it has more than two legs and isn't furniture I don't trust it

Okay, I've been getting some good responses, anyone else?

I don't have any familiars that I'm aware of...but I do have a housegnome...he doesn't bring me gifts though. He just hides my keys when he thinks the house needs cleaning...

I don't have a familiar, but I do have a vestigial third nipple on my right side. Should I just offer it up to animals that come near me and see which ones will suckle?


Shadowborn

Calling Matthew Hopkins... more for the gallows! Him over there!

*hums*

'Who do you want to burn, tell me
Who do you want to set on fire
Who do you want to burn
You can leave it all to me...'

Yeppers...I'd probably be fuel for the fire if subjected to a test...it's fairly evident upon close perusal.


Shadowborn

i dont have a familiar or totem that i know of....i am not completely sure how to tell...i relate well to birds if that means anything...i have had a few wild once approach me...and let me hold them...and (embarassing as it is) my laugh attracts seagulls....( i squeek ....loudly )....and have always had dreams of flying *le sigh* not sure if that counts for anything...im a beginner to craft work and the knowlege of the different religions and such ...hope this made sence to somebody

birds are considered messengers from the God/dess...

In that case, I think I get the message about my current hometown loud and clear. Then only birds you see around here with any real frequency, are seagulls and crows. Nothing but scavengers and carrion feeders...


Shadowborn

I don't know what seagulls symbolize, but crows symbolize magick. The kelts thought they were a good omen...all their warrior and crone goddesses had crows and ravens as their symbol...they called Macha the Battle Crow

Macha means brothers.. interesting

There is the legend of Fionn Mac Cumhaill, the greatest warrior of the Fianna, in the last battle, all of the fianna were killed except him, his legs were broken and he was bleeding heavilly so he hauled himself upright and lashed himself to a tree and pretended to be dead, then when an enemy warrior approached he killed them, legend has it that he duped about fifty enemy soldiers this way before they wised up then the enemy surrounded him but they couldn't leave the battle field until he was dead so they sent men in every few minutes to see if he was dead yet but he killed them to, the enemy generals eventually ordered the idiots to stop going up to him and they set up camp around him, they stayed there for days until a crow landed on Fionns shoulder ,then they knew he was dead because crows will only land on the shoulder of a Si or a dead man.

Hmm...I couldn't tell you why there are so many of them here then. If I were picking descriptives for Spokane, 'magical' would not be anywhere on the list.


Shadowborn

don't you realize that yet?


I'll betcha you've got your own personal familiar that you don't even recognize as one!

shadow

i know what you mean about really only having two kinds of birda around.. smae up here in alaska...ravens/crows.. and seagulls...
atleast for the most part...

Yep. Everything is relative. I wouldn't want to have the eye to see what's here, however. This place just feels tired and dead...I don't know how else to describe it. There is simply an underlying sense of repression in the air here, for me.


If I do, it's certainly not a crow or a gull. Birds don't like me, and the feeling is mutual.


Shadowborn

*nods* We get a few others around, just not within the city limits much. The only others I can remember seeing around here are sparrows. If you get to the outskirts of town there are quail...the occasional robin who seems very lost...


Shadowborn