Hey I was wondering if anyone can tell me how you know if your pet or an animal is your familiar.
See my dog likes to always be near me whenever I am getting ready or am casting a spell along with another thing or two ive noticed her doing. I was just wondering how you would know if your animal is your familiar?
Some say you can train your animal to be your familiar but I feel you can train them to sit still. Familiars have a spiritual connection. You might also feel your dog's energy is stronger than most animals. Put simply, it's a strong bond. I consider my first dog my familiar [and my only after many pets and years] I remember feeling drawn to him, we could tell when the other was sick, or whatever, and I remember being at school and know when something happened.
You could always work with your dog, or any pet, they can be trained, or they could work with the energy in a positive way, but there's a deeper bond with a familiar.
I'm not sure where the idea that a pet is the same as a familiar came from. I guess I have to blame it on some of the crop of poorly researched books on the market these days. But the fact of the matter is that our beloved pets and a Witch's familiar are very, very different things.
A Witch's familiar is an animal spirit or a magical construct created by the Witch or the Magician as an adjunct to their magical workings, as a repository for power, and if needed as a defense against magical attack from another magic user. A Witch or a magician can draw upon the energies of the familiar when they need an extra boost of energy in a magical working. Conceivably if the spell is important enough, the Witch could completely drain the familiar of energy causing it to "die" or cease to exist. And in the case of a magical attack, the attack could be diverted to the familiar so that it would be the familiar which is destroyed rather than the magic user. None of these are things that I think any of us would want to do with our pets.
There is an excellent article on familars here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Familiar_spirit
Animals are very sensitive to the energies around them and they may be drawn to us when we are working magic because they can sense the energy. They also want to be around their people, which again will make them want to be where we are..and that may be where we are doing magic. Neither of these things makes the animal a familiar or inherently magical in and of itself.
