In witch parlance, animal companions are called familiars. This could be “birds, toads, hares and, most notably, cats, writes Michelle Mae in Witchcraft. The Library of Esoterica (Taschen Books). Even more than pets or companions, familiars are “guardians of the supernatural.” Apollo’s sister Artemis was attended by deer. As the goddess of wisdom, Athena was often portrayed with an owl while Circe had an affinity with lions and wolves. My patron witch Hekate was accompanied by dogs, often hounds who bayed at the moon.

Writes Mae: “Bonds are believed to develop between witches and their familiars in which a single consciousness is established. This unified relationship grants the familiars the ability to perform tasks or retrieve objects. Some have healing powers or harming potential, depending on their magickal master’s request.”

I’m not a goddess but I’m trying hard to become a witch and the first familiar in my adult life was Orville, the charming and roguish Senegal parrot. A quarter pounder (he weighed in at four-and-a-half ounces), he sat on my shoulder and occasionally displayed what might be considered healing powers—regurgitating his food into my mouth because he loved me and taking naps with me, me lying prone and he perched on one leg on my forehead. Then there was the harming potential which was more his idea than mine—flying across the room to bite my ear (I mean, HARD) when I was talking on the phone. Once he hopped around to get just the right angle on my Dad’s ear when he and I were having a conversation. Attention placed elsewhere was definitely verboten. Larger parrots have been known to break bones with their scythe-like beaks.

Orville came to an untimely end many years ago but is always with me. I guess you could think of him as an animal spirit (which are not at all unlike witchy familiars) and in his current incarnation he cannot draw blood. I’ve been thinking about him recently as I read more and more about modern witchery. While Orville has become part of my being, a forever unified consciousness, if you will, I’ve recently been conjuring other types of familiars. Grady told me about the Incan Huaca - sacred spaces, be they monuments or other more organic places - and described a crack in an Austin sidewalk that exuded special energy. I thought about the states of mind which I keep coming back to, regardless of whether they serve me. “Doubt digs deep ditches in my head,” I wrote recently. Writing it out may have started the process of exorcising this particular demon of mine. And speaking of writing . . .

The Prompt

. . . write about your familiars, whatever or wherever in the world or heavens they might be. Sally wrote about coming to Albuquerque “because of a feeling.” She traveled “on a fuming bus from overripe Florida” and

there they were,
tall mountains,
cool craggy grey and midnight mystery purple and
light sky blue,
splotches of sunset pink—
facing them
comfort covered me in
blessings
I didn’t know I was searching for
home,
but here I am.

And here’s Phil Hughes-Luing’s gorgeous dream-wake piece about “Where Most I Am”:

My face alongside the pillow
sensing light behind closed eyes
time hazy, consciousness approximated
this familiar state of knowing unknowing
streams through my body gone, absent
undifferentiated, expansive, unbound
prior to thought, prior to waking
another familiar into day begins