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50-605: In the five known Mesopotamian City Laments, the lament is written in voice of the city's tutelary goddess . The destruction of the city, the mass killing of its inhabitants, and the loss of its central temple are vividly described. Special attention is given to the divine sphere, where the gods order the destruction of the city, the city patron gods implore against this, but in vain. The patron gods are exiled to live as deportees in foreign cites, lamenting their devastated shrine. Subsequently, they return from exile and renew their former existence. The Lament for Ur , or Lamentation over

100-629: A circle and pray to Satan for her familiar to appear while the Wiltshire cunning woman Anne Bodenham described, in 1653, that she conjured her familiars by methods learned from books. In some rarer cases there were accounts where the familiars would appear at times when they were unwanted and not called upon, for instance the Huntingdonshire witch Elizabeth Chandler noted, in 1646, that she could not control when her two familiars, named Beelzebub and Trullibub, appeared to her, and had prayed for

150-415: A dog to attack by way of magical means. The dog, interestingly enough, was tried, convicted, and hanged". The witch's mark added a sexual component to the familiar spirit and is often found in trial records as a way to convict a suspected witch. The mark was most commonly an extra teat found somewhere on the body and was suspected to be used to suckle the familiar spirits. An example of this can be seen in

200-439: A god to "deliver her therefrom". It was also believed that familiars "helped diagnose illnesses and the sources of bewitchment and were used for divining and finding lost objects and treasures. Magicians conjured them in rituals, then locked them in bottles, rings and stones. They sometimes sold them as charms, claiming the spirits would ensure success in gambling, love, business or whatever the customer wanted. This sort of familiar

250-409: A mysterious figure whom she only referred to as her "master", "willed her to open her mouth and he would blow into her a fairy which should do her good. And that she open her mouth, and that presently after blowing, there came out of her mouth a spirit which stood upon the ground in the shape and form of a woman." In a number of accounts, the cunning person or witch was experiencing difficulty prior to

300-483: A pact with their familiar spirit. The length of time that the witch or cunning person worked with their familiar spirit varied between a few weeks through to a number of decades. In most cases, the magical practitioner would conjure their familiar spirit when they needed their assistance, although there are many different ways that they did this: the Essex witch Joan Cunny claimed, in 1589, that she had to kneel down within

350-461: A particular place, geographic feature, person, lineage, nation, culture, or occupation. The etymology of "tutelary" expresses the concept of safety and thus of guardianship. In late Greek and Roman religion , one type of tutelary deity, the genius , functions as the personal deity or daimon of an individual from birth to death. Another form of personal tutelary spirit is the familiar spirit of European folklore. Socrates spoke of hearing

400-459: A rebuilding, nor give praise for such a prospect. Much of the postexilic scroll of Isaiah concerns the destroyed and restored city of Jerusalem. Laments can also be found in the Book of Jeremiah , the Book of Ezekiel and Psalm 137 . Tutelary goddess A tutelary ( / ˈ tj uː t ə l ɛ r i / ; also tutelar ) is a deity or a spirit who is a guardian, patron, or protector of

450-431: A variety of things including, milk, bread, meat, and blood. Familiar spirits usually had names and "were often given down-to-earth, and frequently affectionate, nicknames." One example of this was Tom Reid, who was the familiar of the cunning-woman and accused witch Bessie Dunlop , while other examples included Grizell and Gridigut, who were the familiars of 17th-century Huntingdonshire witch Jane Wallis. An agathion

500-486: A winged tiger... She has given me three assistants—the jarga (the panther), the doonto (the bear) and the amba (the tiger). They come to me in my dreams, and appear whenever I summon them while shamaning. If one of them refuses to come, the ayami makes them obey, but, they say, there are some who do not obey even the ayami . When I am shamaning, the ayami and the assistant spirits are possessing me; whether big or small, they penetrate me, as smoke or vapour would. When

550-477: A yellow bird who sucked between her fingers. Ann Putnam in particular was supposed to have frequently seen the yellow bird in her afflictions. Tituba was said to have seen strange animals that urged her to hurt children, which included a hog, a black dog, a red cat and a black cat. "During the Salem witch trials, there is little account of the practice of animal familiars, although one man was charged with encouraging

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600-534: Is a familiar spirit which appears in the shape of a human or an animal, or even within a talisman , bottle, or magic ring. It is strongest at midday. Using her studies into the role of witchcraft and magic in Britain during the Early Modern period as a starting point, the historian Emma Wilby examined the relationship that familiar spirits allegedly had with the witches and cunning-folk in this period. In

650-479: Is in a state of receptivity, in sleep or trance. In modern phraseology [spiritism], his familiar spirit would be the control [control spirit]. Mircea Eliade : The Goldi [Nanai people in Siberia] clearly distinguish between the tutelary spirit ( ayami ), which chooses the shaman, and the helping spirits ( syven ), which are subordinate to it and are granted to the shaman by the ayami itself. According to Sternberg

700-500: Is patron of yogis and renunciants. City gods and goddesses include: Influenced by the religion of Islam , Indonesian people believe in jinn , particularly on the island of Java. Those jinn who adhere to the religion of Islam are generally benevolent, however, non-Muslim jinn are considered to be mischievous. Some of them guard graves. If a pilgrim approaching the grave has evil intentions, they would cause severe illness or even death. Spirits called shedim are mentioned twice in

750-413: Is perhaps a fairy or a god? When my eyes, drawn like a magnet To this cat that I love... A. P. Elkin studied the belief in familiar spirits among Australian Aboriginal people : A usual method, or explanation, is that the medicine man sends his familiar spirit (his assistant totem, spirit-dog, spirit-child or whatever the form may be) to gather the information. While this is occurring, the man himself

800-554: Is that of Hellen Clark, tried in 1645, in which Clark was compelled to state that the Devil appeared as a "familiar" in the form of a dog. The English court cases reflect a strong relationship between State's accusations of witchcraft against those who practiced ancient indigenous traditions, including the familiar animal or spirit. In some cases familiars replace children in the favour of their mothers. (See witchcraft and children .) In colonial America animal familiars can be seen in

850-441: Is the double, the alter ego, of an individual. It does not look like the individual concerned. Even though it may have an independent life of its own, it remains closely linked to the individual. The familiar spirit can be an animal (animal companion). The French poet Charles Baudelaire , a cat fancier, believed in familiar spirits. It is the familiar spirit of the place; It judges, presides, inspires Everything in its empire; It

900-565: Is the patron of military personnel and police, while Mazu is the patron of fishermen and sailors. A similar concept in Christianity would be the patron saint example of archangels "Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, etc." or to a lesser extent, the guardian angel . In Hinduism , personal tutelary deities are known as ishta-devata , while family tutelary deities are known as Kuladevata . Gramadevata are guardian deities of villages or regions. Devas can also be seen as tutelary. Shiva

950-413: The arx (citadel) or other prominent or central location. The tutelary deity of Praeneste was Fortuna , whose oracle was renowned. The Roman ritual of evocatio was premised on the belief that a town could be made vulnerable to military defeat if the power of its tutelary deity were diverted outside the city, perhaps by the offer of superior cult at Rome. The depiction of some goddesses such as

1000-516: The Hebrew Bible . In both of these instances ( Psalm 106 :37 and Deuteronomy 32:17) the shedim are associated with child sacrifice or animal sacrifice . The term " shedim " is believed by some to be a loan-word from the Akkadian shedu , which referred to a spirit which could be either protective or malevolent. In Korean shamanism , jangseung and sotdae were placed at

1050-610: The Magna Mater (Great Mother, or Cybele ) as " tower-crowned " represents their capacity to preserve the city. A town in the provinces might adopt a deity from within the Roman religious sphere to serve as its guardian, or syncretize its own tutelary with such; for instance, a community within the civitas of the Remi in Gaul adopted Apollo as its tutelary, and at the capital of

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1100-716: The ayami is within me, it is she who speaks through my mouth, and she does everything herself." Among those accused witches and cunning-folk who described their familiar spirits, there were commonly certain unifying features. The historian Emma Wilby noted how the accounts of such familiars were striking for their "ordinariness" and "naturalism", despite the fact that they were dealing with supernatural entities. Familiar spirits were most commonly small animals, such as cats, rats, dogs, ferrets, birds, frogs, toads, and hares. There were also cases of wasps and butterflies, as well as pigs, sheep, and horses. Familiar spirits were usually kept in pots or baskets lined with sheep's wool and fed

1150-456: The medieval and early modern periods , familiars (strictly familiar spirits , as "familiar" also meant just "close friend" or companion, and may be seen in the scientific name for dog , Canis familiaris ) were believed to be supernatural entities, interdimensional beings, or spiritual guardians that would protect or assist witches and cunning folk in their practice of magic , divination , and spiritual insight. According to records of

1200-558: The 16th and 17th centuries. The court system that labeled and tried witches was known as the Essex . The Essex trial of Agnes Sampson of Nether Keith, East Lothian , Scotland , in 1590, presents prosecution testimony regarding a divinatory familiar. This case is fundamentally political, trying Sampson for high treason, and accusing Sampson for employing witchcraft against King James VI . The prosecution asserts Sampson called familiar spirits and resolved her doubtful matter. Another Essex trial

1250-459: The British accounts from the early modern period at least, there were three main types of encounter narrative related to how a witch or cunning person first met their familiar. The first of these was that the spirit spontaneously appeared in front of the individual while they were going about their daily activities, either in their home or outdoors somewhere. Various examples for this are attested in

1300-473: The Goldi explain the relations between the shaman and his ayami by a complex sexual emotion. Here is the report of a Goldi shaman. "Once I was asleep on my sick-bed, when a spirit approached me. It was a very beautiful woman. Her figure was very slight, she was no more than half an arshin (71 cm) tall. Her face and attire were quite as those of one of our Gold women... She said: 'I am the ayami of your ancestors,

1350-819: The Greek East Aphrodite and Agathe Tyche . The Lares Compitales were the tutelary gods of a neighborhood ( vicus ) , each of which had a compitum (shrine) devoted to these. Their annual public festival was the Compitalia . During the Republic, the cult of local or neighborhood tutelaries sometimes became rallying points for political and social unrest. Chinese folk religion , both past and present, includes myriad tutelary deities. Exceptional individuals, highly cultivated sages, and prominent ancestors can be deified and honored after death. Lord Guan

1400-492: The Mesopotamian laments are in the voice of the city's tutelary goddess, Lamentations, with its monotheistic background, is instead tenderly addressed as "Daughter Jerusalem" and "Daughter Zion". Like its Mesopotamian predecessors, it personifies the city, grieves over its destruction by God, and prays that calamity will overtake its destroyers. Unlike them, God does not weep over the destroyed sanctuary, nor does it portray

1450-599: The Remi (present-day Rheims ), the tutelary was Mars Camulus . Tutelary deities were also attached to sites of a much smaller scale, such as storerooms, crossroads, and granaries. Each Roman home had a set of protective deities: the Lar or Lares of the household or familia , whose shrine was a lararium ; the Penates who guarded the storeroom (penus) of the innermost part of the house; Vesta , whose sacred site in each house

1500-587: The Salem witch trials of 1692. For example, Ann Putnam told Martha Corey that, "There is a yellow burd a sucking between your fore finger and midel finger I see it." Recent scholarship on familiars exhibits the depth and respectability absent from earlier demonological approaches. The study of familiars has grown from an academic topic in folkloric journals to a general topic in popular books and journals incorporating anthropology, history and other disciplines. James Sharpe, in The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft:

1550-467: The Shamans. I taught them shamaning. Now I am going to teach you... I love you, I have no husband now, you will be my husband and I shall be a wife unto you. I shall give you assistant spirits. You are to heal with their aid, and I shall teach and help you myself...' Sometimes she comes under the aspect of an old woman, and sometimes under that of a wolf, so she is terrible to look at. Sometimes she comes as

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1600-403: The appearance of the familiar, who offered to aid them. As historian Emma Wilby noted, "their problems... were primarily rooted in the struggle for physical survival—the lack of food or money, bereavement, sickness, loss of livelihood and so on", and the familiar offered them a way out of this by giving them magical powers. In some cases, the magical practitioner then made an agreement or entered

1650-487: The city of Ur is a Sumerian lament composed around the time of the fall of Ur to the Elamites and the end of the city's third dynasty around 2000 BCE. The Lament for Sumer and Ur concerns the events of 2004 BCE, during the last year of King Ibbi-Sin 's reign, when Ur fell to an army from the east. The Sumerians decided that such a catastrophic event could only be explained through divine intervention and wrote in

1700-642: The edge of villages to frighten off demons. They were also worshiped as deities. Seonangshin is the patron deity of the village in Korean tradition and was believed to embody the Seonangdang . In Meitei mythology and religion ( Sanamahism ) of Manipur , there are various types of tutelary deities, among which Lam Lais are the most predominant ones. In Philippine animism , Diwata or Lambana are deities or spirits that inhabit sacred places like mountains and mounds and serve as guardians. In Shinto ,

1750-515: The familiar spirit commonly appeared to magical practitioners in Britain was that they would be given to a person by a pre-existing individual, who was sometimes a family member and at other times a more powerful spirit. For instance, the alleged witch Margaret Ley from Liverpool claimed, in 1667, that she had been given her familiar spirit by her mother when she died, while the Leicestershire cunning-woman Joan Willimot related, in 1618, that

1800-473: The lament that the gods, "An, Enlil, Enki and Ninmah decided [Ur's] fate". The Lament for Eridu . Unlike Ur or Akkad we don't have a good idea of how Eridu actually fell, or when other than in the Early Dynastic period. The Sumerian King List simply says "Then Eridug fell and the kingship was taken to Bad-tibira". This lament also describes how the loss of favor with the gods led to its fall. There

1850-618: The mountain east of Jerusalem (Ezekiel 10:18-19)." In the Jewish tradition, this genre also appears over a millennium later in the Hebrew Bible , particularly in reference to the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon in the sixth century BCE. The similarities are, however, of motif rather than of form; in other respects, the Hebrew genre is quite different from its Sumerian predecessors. The Book of Lamentations shares some motifs with earlier Mesopotamian laments. Whereas

1900-514: The personal protection of a deity were established in the Republican era , when for instance the Roman dictator Sulla advertised the goddess Victory as his tutelary by holding public games ( ludi ) in her honor. Each town or city had one or more tutelary deities, whose protection was considered particularly vital in time of war and siege. Rome itself was protected by a goddess whose name

1950-518: The sources of the time, for instance, Joan Prentice from Essex , England, gave an account when she was interrogated for witchcraft in 1589 claiming that she was "alone in her chamber, and sitting upon a low stool preparing herself to bedward" when her familiar first appeared to her, while the Cornish cunning-woman Anne Jeffries related in 1645 that hers first appeared to her when she was "knitting in an arbour in our garden". The second manner in which

2000-557: The spirits, or kami , which give life to human bodies come from nature and return to it after death. Ancestors are therefore themselves tutelaries to be worshiped. Some tutelary deities are known to exist in Slavic Europe, a more prominent example being that of the Leshy . In Vietnamese folk religion , Thành hoàng are gods who protect and bring good things to the village. Familiar spirit In European folklore of

2050-553: The time, those alleging to have had contact with familiar spirits reported that they could manifest as numerous forms, usually as an animal, but sometimes as a human or humanoid figure, and were described as "clearly defined, three-dimensional... forms, vivid with colour and animated with movement and sound", as opposed to descriptions of ghosts with their "smoky, undefined form[s]". When they served witches, they were often thought to be malevolent , but when working for cunning folk, they were often considered benevolent (although there

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2100-462: The voice of his personal spirit or daimonion : You have often heard me speak of an oracle or sign which comes to me … . This sign I have had ever since I was a child. The sign is a voice which comes to me and always forbids me to do something which I am going to do, but never commands me to do anything, and this is what stands in the way of my being a politician. The Greeks also thought deities guarded specific places: for instance, Athena

2150-457: The witch hunts that took place in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692. Familiar spirits often appear in the visions of the afflicted girls. Although the 1648 law that defined a witch as one who "hath or consulteth with a familiar spirit" had been suspended ten years earlier, association with a familiar spirit was used in the Salem trials as evidence to convict suspected witches. Sarah Good was said to have

2200-656: Was also a Lament for Uruk and a Lament for Nippur . The literary works of the Sumerians were widely translated by, for example, the Hittites , Hurrians and Canaanites . Samuel Noah Kramer suggests that subsequent Greek as well as Hebrew texts "were profoundly influenced by them." Contemporary scholars have drawn parallels between the lament and passages from the Bible (e.g. "the Lord departed from his temple and stood on

2250-524: Was in the habit of taking his large poodle dog named Boy into battle with him. Throughout the war the dog was greatly feared among the Parliamentarian forces and credited with supernatural powers. As noted by Morgan, the dog was apparently considered a kind of familiar. At the end of the war the dog was shot, allegedly with a silver bullet . Most data regarding familiars comes from the transcripts of English and Scottish witch trials held during

2300-764: Was some ambiguity in both cases). The former were often categorized as demons , while the latter were more commonly thought of and described as fairies . The main purpose of familiars was to serve the witch, providing protection for them as they came into their new powers. Since the 20th century some magical practitioners, including adherents of the neopagan religion of Wicca , use the concept of familiars, due to their association with older forms of magic. These contemporary practitioners use pets or wildlife, or believe that invisible versions of familiars act as magical aides. Pierre A. Riffard proposed this definition and quotations A familiar spirit – ( alter ego , doppelgänger , personal demon, personal totem , spirit companion)

2350-532: Was technically not illegal; England's Witchcraft Act 1603 prohibited only evil and wicked spirits". Familiars are most common in western European mythology, with some scholars arguing that familiars are only present in the traditions of Great Britain and France. In these areas, three categories of familiars are believed to exist: During the English Civil War , the Royalist general Prince Rupert

2400-529: Was the hearth; and the Genius of the paterfamilias , the head of household. The poet Martial lists the tutelary deities who watch over various aspects of his farm. The architecture of a granary ( horreum ) featured niches for images of the tutelary deities, who might include the genius loci or guardian spirit of the site, Hercules , Silvanus , Fortuna Conservatrix ("Fortuna the Preserver") and in

2450-554: Was the patron goddess of the city of Athens . Tutelary deities who guard and preserve a place or a person are fundamental to ancient Roman religion . The tutelary deity of a man was his Genius , that of a woman her Juno . In the Imperial era , the Genius of the Emperor was a focus of Imperial cult . An emperor might also adopt a major deity as his personal patron or tutelary, as Augustus did Apollo . Precedents for claiming

2500-510: Was to be kept ritually secret on pain of death (for a supposed case, see Quintus Valerius Soranus ). The Capitoline Triad of Juno , Jupiter , and Minerva were also tutelaries of Rome. The Italic towns had their own tutelary deities. Juno often had this function, as at the Latin town of Lanuvium and the Etruscan city of Veii , and was often housed in an especially grand temple on

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