Familiars

Witches and magicians throught the ages have had familars. There is a wealth of lore behind these beings, but for now I'm going to concentrate on the practical side of aquiring, keeping, and working with a familiar.
Knowing whether you need or are going to get a familiar is an important issue often ignored. Your choice to aquire a familiar may be based upon a 'feeling' that you ought to have one, and this is often the best way to find out if you need one or not. However, you should be wary of wanting a familiar as a fashion statement of sorts, or to make up for some deficiency in yourself, percieved or otherwise

There are also practical considerations to take into account, as there are with any animal.
A familiar can often look after itself better than most animals, but you still have to be prepared to feed it, pay vet's bills, create a clean, comfortable, and appropriate environment for it, and get any licenses necessary. Not to mention legal restrictions on keeping certain animals in your area.
It is possible to get round some of these restrictions by being extremely sneaky, but the law has to be taken into account sometimes, not to mention that the possibility of finding space for a 7 foot salt water crocodile in an inner city flat is somewhere between that of my being Madonna's long lost sister and of New York being devoured by a Shoggoth (oh my gods, what have I said?!?).

Divination is one way of finding out if a familiar is necessary, and which familiar is suitable for you, as is meditation upon the matter. A familiar will often be of the same species as your totem animal (see previous essay on shamanic totems for more information on finding your totem animal) or of a related or compatible species.

For example, my totem is the snake, as are my familiars, but I have also worked with lizards and cats (which on the surface may seem to be the enemy of snakes, but which have a lot more in common with the scaley little darlings than one might think). Someone who's totem is a dragon, might well have a monitor lizard as a familiar (monitors are one of the most advanced and intelligent species of reptile, can get extremely large, sleep a lot, and can bite chunks out of people they don't like). For what it's worth, the infamous Komodo Dragon is a gigantic (and very appealing) species of monitor.
This also applies to entities you work with which have animal associations, i.e. your familiar could be the animal with which your patron deity is associated. For example, a magician working with Epona could have a horse as her familiar, or a witch who's patron is Athena may have an owl as his.

Other ways of telling if you are destined to have a familiar include dreams, affinities, constant reccurrences of images relating to a specific animal, entities telling you during a communicatory working and, not least of all, an animal you have been dreaming about turning up on your doorstep.

You should never choose to bring up or aquire a familiar lightly. More than any animals in your life, your familiar with be your companion, ally, and confidante. Do not abuse this privelege. One way of aquiring a familiar is to bring it up yourself. For this it is necessary to get the animal when it is very young and to nurse it by hand. You should feed it by hand (although you should also ensure that it should be able to feed itself). A young carnivore, when weaned can be fed meat you have chewed for it, and so forth.
Whatever animal you choose as your familar, you should learn as much about it and it's dietary and other needs as possible before you start. Pay careful attention to the animal, and learn what its needs and likes are.

Of course, not all, or even most familiars are brought up this way. Your familiar may just turn up on your doorstep one day and let you know what it is. This often applies to animals such as cats, dogs, and birds, and whatever fauna is native to your area, but even animals that are not typically found wandering the streets of wherever you live can 'find' you. If you go to shops selling, or hang around with animal breeders, you may well find your familiar sitting in a tank (or whatever) looking at you, and demanding that you take it home.

If you work with an entity that feels you ought to have an appropriate familiar people with a non-literal attitude to god-forms can plug their ears here), you might well be compelled to go to an animal shop and to attend to a particular creature. This particuarly applies in the case of god forms which have associated creatures that are not native to the environment in which you live.

You should take the advantages and disadvantages offered by the species you have or are considering as a familiar. Cats are probably the most common witch's familiar, as they are intelligent, psychicly inclined, hardy, and versatile. Snakes are similarly psychicly inclined, but in mose countries there will be times of the year where it is unsuitable to take them out at all, and you can never send them out alone. Dogs in general tend to be a bit too boistrous and fearful of a magickal environment to be really useful, although there are a few who seem to take well to it.
Such things should be taken into consideration, but are less important that your own instincts.

An often unconsidered question is what to do with your familiar once you have it. Now, while it's all very well to have your familiars perched around you looking sweet and fucking up your typing skills (thank you Yig), there are actually a lot of magickal uses for the modern magician's familiar.

The Magickal Role of the Familiar
Apart from being companions and confidantes, your familiar can have a definite place in magickal ritual.
A common role played by familiars is as a 'lookout' for magickal entities, as many animals are far more sensitive to entities than humans. Cats typically begin watching things and get agitated when an entity is in the area, snakes also display unusual behaviour. Obviously, you'd best be familiar with the animal's usual behaviour in order to notice when it's acting unusually.
The soothing effect animals have on humans can also be taken advantage of in a magickal situation.
In terms of more drastic participation in magick, it has been known for familiar animals to apparently become possessed by an entity, often one that appears in the form of that animal.

Magickal Protecton Of Your Familiar During Workings
Depending upon your attitude towards magick and your familiar, you might want to consider how you can protect it magickally during rituals and at other times. If your familiar wears a collar, protective sigils or symbols can be drawn in ink or scratched into the collar with a sharp instrument or protective amulets and talismans may can be hung from the collar.
Of course, this is all very well in the case of cats, dogs, or even rats, lizards, or ferrets, which can wear collars. However, if your familiar is a bird, fish, spider, or snake, a collar is out of the question. A bird could have a small amulet clipped on to it's leg, but if your familiar is a snake or fish, protective amulets probably aren't an option, but if they are going to remain within a container of some sort during the working, protective items may be put on it.
Another method for the protectction of a familiar is petitioning a deity which is protective of the species of familiar you have. Bast can be petitioned to protect cats, Lamia to protect serpents. Research may be necessary, but most animals have a deity which can be called upon to protect them. A consideration when calling upon a deity to protect an animal is that it does not confilict with whatever other entities you wish to work with.
If you use circles or anything similar, it should be noted that your familar will not necessarily stay put. You really don't want your cat to idly wander through and break a circle when you've got something on the other side howling for your blood.

Physical Protecton Of Your Familiar During Workings
Make sure that your magickal tools cannot be easily knocked over, and you should be especially careful with candles, breakable objects and glasses of liquid. Many animals dislike smoke, so excessive use of incense near the familar might aggrevate it. Some animals might feel the desire to play with or eat your magickal tools, so this is something else that should be taken into account.
If you are undertaking a long ritual, you may want to make sure that animals such as cats and dogs have water to drink. Animals that can be kept in small tanks, aquaria, or cages, can be kept in a containiner within the ritual space with items that are necessary for their needs, and taken out (or not in the case of fish) at an appropriate point.

Information on the Treatment of Animals During the Witch Trials:
http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~jup/witches/animals.html