What did the witches’ familiar really look like?

The witch’s familiar was not originally a particularly intuitive cat chosen to accompany rituals. In English sources from the 16th and 17th centuries, the word first refers to a familiar spirit: a personal spirit believed to assist a witch or, in some accounts, a practitioner of popular magic. This spirit could appear in the form of a man, a woman, a child, a strange creature, or a very ordinary animal.

The black cat watching beside the cauldron belongs to the long afterlife of this figure, but it considerably simplifies its history. Trials, pamphlets, and treatises on demonology also mention dogs, toads, rats, mice, ferrets, rabbits, birds, flies, and hybrid creatures. Above all, the texts do not describe a relationship comparable to the one we have with a domestic animal: they speak of a contract, a service, food given to the spirit, and a power it was supposedly granted to perform certain tasks.

A familiar is first and foremost a spirit, not a species of animal

The English term familiar spirit refers to a spirit attached to a person and believed to assist them. In witchcraft accounts from the early modern period, it is frequently presented as a personal demon. Its animal form is only one appearance among many.

This is a fundamental distinction. A source may speak of a cat while asserting that it is actually a spirit that has taken the form of a cat. The familiar is therefore not defined by its species but by its relationship with the human being to whom it is bound.

This relationship is described in several ways. The familiar may reveal information, identify an enemy, find an object, aid in a healing, cause harm, or carry out revenge. In pamphlets hostile to witches, these services become evidence of a demonic pact. In other accounts concerning cunning folk, that is, popular practitioners of healing, divination, or the search for lost objects, the helping spirit may be portrayed in a less sinister light.

The historian Emma Wilby devoted a major study to these accounts in Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits. She shows that British testimonies are not limited to the theological figure of the demon: they also resemble traditions of fairies, household spirits, and supernatural helpers in folklore. This interpretation remains debated, but it requires us to move beyond the overly simple image of the “little demon disguised as a cat.”

The witch’s familiar is above all an English figure

Presenting the familiar as an institution found in a comparable form “in many cultures” erases precisely what makes the phenomenon interesting. The very specific figure of the familiar spirit nourished by the witch and charged with carrying out her wishes is particularly characteristic of English witchcraft accounts from the 16th and 17th centuries.

Demonic animals appear elsewhere in Europe, and traditions of supernatural companions are obviously much broader. But the English familiar has its own vocabulary, scenes, and recurring accusations. Gabriela Garcia Leddy’s thesis on English pamphlets emphasizes how this figure became a recognizable motif in judicial and popular literature.

It is also important to remember the nature of these documents. Witchcraft pamphlets are not personal diaries written by the accused. They are printed texts based on interrogations, testimonies, trials, and accounts intended for the public. They reflect the words attributed to the accused, but also the judges’ questions, demonologists’ theology, readers’ expectations, and printers’ taste for extraordinary stories.

In 1566, a cat named Sathan entered history

One of the most famous testimonies comes from the Chelmsford trials, in Essex, in 1566. A pamphlet published that same year recounts the interrogations of Elizabeth Francis, Agnes Waterhouse, and her daughter Joan Waterhouse.

According to the printed account, Elizabeth Francis is said to have received from her grandmother a spirit called Sathan, which appeared notably in the form of a spotted white cat. The spirit was then said to have been passed on to Agnes Waterhouse and to have changed form. In the pamphlet’s various scenes, it can appear as a cat, toad, or monstrous dog.

These details are important because they show that the “animal familiar” is not necessarily conceived as a biological animal possessing magical abilities. In the logic of the text, the spirit changes form and uses the animal as its appearance.

The 1566 pamphlet is one of the earliest English printed works devoted to a witchcraft trial. It helped establish a model that would be repeated for decades: a marginalized person, a personal spirit, an agreement, food given to the familiar, and harmful acts carried out on request.

Elizabeth Stile’s familiars fuel the witches’ imaginary

Thirteen years later, in 1579, A Rehearsall both Straung and True, of Hainous and Horrible Actes Committed by Elizabeth Stile was published. The pamphlet recounts the accusations brought against Elizabeth Stile and several others tried for witchcraft.

The document is particularly famous for its woodcuts. They show familiar spirits in animal or monstrous forms and depict a woman feeding them. The copy held by the British Library and reproduced in the digital collections is one of the most striking images of the visual construction of the familiar in the 16th century.

In the account, these creatures are described as spirits or “fiends” that had taken the form of cats, rats, or toads. One of the most disturbing scenes concerns their feeding: the pamphlets claimed that some familiars were fed with the witch’s blood.

This idea would play a major role in later prosecutions. Examiners would search the bodies of the accused for a mark or growth interpreted as a “witch’s teat” through which the familiar could feed. This was obviously not a reliable medical criterion, but a judicial construct that could turn scars, moles, or anatomical peculiarities into alleged evidence of witchcraft.

Matthew Hopkins and the hunt for familiars

The figure reached one of its tragic peaks in 1640s England with Matthew Hopkins, who presented himself as the Witch-Finder General. His activities in eastern England accompanied a particularly intense wave of prosecutions.

In 1647, Hopkins published The Discovery of Witches. The associated frontispiece depicts several familiar spirits bearing names that have become famous in the history of English witchcraft, including Pyewacket, Jarmara, Sack and Sugar, and Grizzel Greedigutt.

This vocabulary may seem almost quaint today. In its context, it was not. Identifying a familiar was part of an accusatory system that could lead to imprisonment and execution. It is therefore important not to turn witch-hunt documents into mere decorative folklore.

The familiar was not necessarily a black cat

The cat became the quintessential familiar in popular culture, but the historical sources are much more varied. Cats, dogs, toads, rats, mice, rabbits, ferrets, birds, and insects appear in the accounts. Some creatures are perfectly ordinary; others possess monstrous features, horns, fiery eyes, or composite forms.

Blackness is not a requirement either. The cat in the Chelmsford case is described as white and spotted. The automatic association between witches and black cats resulted from a long iconographic and folkloric evolution, not from a rule formulated in the trials.

Why do domestic animals occupy such an important place? Their daily proximity to homes provides part of the answer. A cat, dog, rat, or toad can enter a story without requiring a spectacular prodigy. In a culture where witchcraft was suspected of acting secretly at the heart of the neighborhood, the ordinary animal became an ideal vehicle for imagining an invisible presence.

The literature of the period further reinforces this association. In Macbeth, Shakespeare has Graymalkin, the cat, and Paddock, the toad, calling to the witches. The scene does not create the tradition, but it bears witness to the Jacobean public’s familiarity with this type of figure.

Familiars, Fairies, and Auxiliary Spirits

Reducing everything to the Christian demon nevertheless creates another problem. Some popular magic narratives describe spirits that resemble fairies, supernatural men or women, the dead, or protective beings. They may offer knowledge, teach remedies, or request services in exchange for their help.

Emma Wilby proposes reading some of these testimonies as traces of a broader body of visionary traditions and stories concerning fairies. From this perspective, religious and judicial authorities may sometimes have translated experiences that people could have understood differently into demonological language.

Other historians place greater emphasis on the construction of narratives through interrogations, judicial pressure, and printed templates. The two approaches are not entirely mutually exclusive: a confession may draw on a real folkloric imagination while also being reshaped by the accuser’s expectations.

This caution is useful for any history of witchcraft. The sources tell us with certainty what people said, what judges asked, and what printers published. They do not always allow us to reconstruct exactly what the accused believed before their interrogation.

A Witchcraft Confession Is Not a Neutral Account

When pamphlets claim that a woman possessed a familiar, two extremes should be avoided. The first is to take every detail as a literal description of a supernatural event. The second is to regard it all as pure invention unrelated to the beliefs of the time.

Witch trials took place amid fear, social conflict, and severe power imbalances. Some statements resulted from leading questions, deprivation, psychological pressure, or violence. Matthew Hopkins and his associates notably used interrogation practices that make any naive reading of the “confessions” impossible.

At the same time, the accounts contain motifs that go beyond a single trial: encounters with spirits, offers of help, supernatural gifts, food offered to the entity, personal names, and animal appearances. Their repetition suggests the existence of a shared imagination, even when its interpretation remains debated.

How the Familiar Became a Companion to the Modern Witch

Contemporary witchcraft has greatly softened the figure. In Neopagan literature and popular culture of the 20th and 21st centuries, the familiar may become a beloved animal, a spiritual ally, a guide, or simply a companion whose presence accompanies magical practice.

This transformation is understandable, but it should not be projected onto ancient sources. Modern systems of Wicca and Neopagan witchcraft developed in the 20th century. They draw on elements of folklore, ceremonial magic, and historical representations, then give them new functions.

The familiar does not, moreover, hold a mandatory place in Gerald Gardner’s historical Wicca. There is no traditional Gardnerian rite requiring everyone to “find their familiar animal.” Contemporary practice varies enormously from one tradition to another.

To put these transformations into context, see Neopaganism, History, Traditions, and Practices and Who Was Gerald Gardner?.

Can a pet be called a familiar?

In contemporary practice, there is nothing stopping someone from using this word to speak symbolically of an animal with which they share a very strong relationship. They simply need to understand that this is a modern use of the term, different from the familiar spirit of the English trials.

There is no serious historical method for determining that a cat, dog, or bird is “destined” to become your familiar. Animal adoption should therefore remain a decision based on the ability to meet its real needs, not on an alleged magical affinity detected through a reading or synchronicity.

An animal does not need to participate physically in rituals either. Fumigations, essential oils, flames, charcoal, toxic plants, powders, and resins can pose a risk to certain species. The symbolic relationship benefits from fully respecting the animal’s behavior and limits.

If you wish to incorporate its presence into a practice, the simplest approach is to let it be what it is. Its behavior can acquire personal or symbolic significance without needing to attribute supernatural abilities to it or force it to remain in a ritual space.

The Familiar Is Not a Totem Animal

The familiar, animal guide, double, auxiliary spirit, and totem are not synonyms. These concepts come from different historical and religious contexts. Bringing them together under a single category of “spiritual companion” produces appealing but historically fragile parallels.

The early modern English familiar belongs to the history of British witchcraft, folklore, and demonology. A symbolic animal encountered in a dream belongs to a different category. A spirit connected to a particular religious tradition belongs to yet another.

This distinction helps avoid the reflex of assigning a fixed magical meaning to every species. A raven is not automatically a divination familiar; a cat is not necessarily a protector; a toad is not intrinsically linked to witchcraft. It is stories, texts, and practices that construct these associations.

What the Familiar Really Teaches Us About Witchcraft

The familiar is valuable for the history of occultism because it lies exactly at the intersection of popular folklore and learned demonology. The domestic animal, fairy, demon, auxiliary spirit, and imaginary companion can overlap to the point of becoming difficult to distinguish.

It also reminds us that the historical witch is not simply an earlier version of today’s modern pagan witch. The people prosecuted in the 16th and 17th centuries lived in a religious, legal, and social world profoundly different from ours. Imposing our contemporary categories on them erases their history just as much as it does the history of modern practices.

To continue exploring these representations, our article on the Witches’ Sabbath once again helps distinguish between demonological accusation, folklore, and later reconstruction. The Witchcraft collection brings together books and tools devoted to the various traditions of witchcraft.

Sources and further reading

For the most comprehensive study of the relationship between folk magic and familiar spirits: Emma Wilby, Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic, Sussex Academic Press, 2005.

For the analysis of familiars in English pamphlets: Gabriela Garcia Leddy, “One may be an Imp as well as another”: The Familiar Spirit in Early Modern English Witchcraft Pamphlets, doctoral thesis, University of York, 2016.

For the 1579 pamphlet on Elizabeth Stile: A Rehearsall both Straung and True, of Hainous and Horrible Actes Committed by Elizabeth Stile, London, 1579, reproduction of the British Library copy.

For Matthew Hopkins: Matthew Hopkins, The Discovery of Witches, London, 1647, reproduction of the original held by the British Library.

To place the 1566 trials within the series of English pamphlets: Marion Gibson, Early Modern Witches: Witchcraft Cases in Contemporary Writing, Routledge, as well as the documents published in connection with the trials of Elizabeth Francis and Agnes Waterhouse.

Cover image: woodcut from A Rehearsall both Straung and True, 1579, British Library. Reproduction identified as being in the public domain by the Public Domain Image Archive.