I was actually wondering how you figure out your spirit animal. I've tried dreams but nothing has happened. I also tried meditation but I can't sit still or relax ^^"
If only you want to see it, then you basically want a spirit animal. Except you will need to develop the ability to see energy. This is technically a form of clairvoyance.
Usually before seeing guides/spirits/etc a person will begin to see auras and lower level energy movement. One of the easiest forms is seeing the energy between your fingertips.
I recommend the books on healing by Barbara Ann Brennan. They by far some of the best books on energy available.
There are also several online resources for finding guides. Simple google search will turn up loads.
a familiar is an energy entity/being that you create with your own energy, just like servitors, tulpae and egregore.
also if you want to you can create a familiar that only you could see, hear or even sense though that would require a lot of experience manipulating energy
In my tradition, the familiar spirit is one of three things.
The fetch-beast is one, a fairy lover. The fetch is your other self; Basically, it represents you. It is the double of you, an astral and etheric self which can sometimes take the form of an animal, animal-like figure, or person.
It can also leave your body (i.e., spirit flight). The fetch is an important part of hedgewitchery as it is the form we take when we travel to the otherworlds. It is a term witches use to describe their wandering soul, the eternal part of the self.
Isobell Gowdie, a 17th century Scottish witch, was reknown for having a fetch of a hare. To cultivate a relationship with it, you must be able to recognize it and call it, in a intimate and almost sexual relationship, loving yourself. My own fetch manifests as a Mare with a rotted face, or a pale woman with a similar mares head. I can assume this form as I please when hedge crossing.
There is also the Fetch Lover. This is the higher self, a composite of everything your fetch-beast and it's physical counterparts are.
Another familiar is the imp, or a spirit alliance. These spirits may work with you out of nowhere, or may be gifted to you by a higher power (in my tradition, this is the Witchfather, the Folk Devil). They are demons or fairies (or both, as I don't consider them that different) There are many ways to gain one such spirit. I work with an ancestral spirit, a fairy shade, I call grandmother Jaquabit.
Even the gods have familiars, animal spirits and daimons (little devils) that serve them. Interfacing with a physical animal or it's parts, that is holy or representative of a entity, is interacting with one of that gods many fetches.
Isobel Gowdie? A mentally deranged schizophrenic. If such a person made those same outrageous claims today, she would be "sectioned" to a mental hospital.
It was because of her that all the nonsense about witchcraft came to be believed! During 17th century Witch Trials, it was Gowdie's ridiculous accounts of witchcraft that condemned many of the accused.
She wasn't a witch! She was a very sick young woman!
Sidestepper, the physical animals can sense energy and they're attracted to it, the concept of having a physical familiar started because a old woman had a cat and the people thought that she was a witch but she wasn't, though I respect your beliefs, you can't actually have a physical familiar, just an animal friend that is attracted to your energy.
Chauran, Alexandra (2013). Animal Familiars for Beginners. Jupiter Gardens Press. ISBN 1938257669.
- to paraphrase
"present witches use wildlife, pets or believe that invisible spirit versions of familiars can act as magical aids."
