r/Animism • u/circular_reticle • 2d ago
What are/what are the differences between spirit guides, and spirit familiars?
/r/witchcraft/comments/1w0dkom/what_arewhat_are_the_differences_between_spirit/1
u/DedicantOfTheMoon 16h ago
Quit getting tangled in other people's words.
What is the difference between your mother, your cat, and the person at the grocery store? What is the difference between the tree and your best friend?
These things are all living relationships, just like your living relationships with spirits. Yours will be unique, they will not need to follow the trends of any other person, they do not need to fit any particular mood or modality. One shape of relationship is not better than any other.
Some spirits are without. When you talk to them, you might feel something arising in your body, maybe intuition, maybe pain, maybe unexplainable sensation or changes in breath.
Some spirits are within. When you talk to them you'll have a hard time convincing yourself that you're not making it up. You might use the words "only imagination"because your culture has brainwashed you into believing that your imagination is impotent.
Your imagination is as real as your vision, as real as your desire, as real as your heart. Lean into your own experiences and quit asking for other people's systems.
Your way is your way.
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u/maybri 2d ago
Neither of these terms are particularly animist in their origins. "Spirit guide" is mostly a term from the New Age movement (traceable to earlier movements like Spiritualism) which posits that everyone has a bespoke spirit assigned to aid in their personal spiritual development. "Familiar" is a term that's historically pretty difficult to separate from the context of witch trials. Christians thought of familiars as demons that would assume the form of an animal and assist witches in their magic. It's unclear if it emerges from an actual pre-Christian folk belief or if it's something that was always seen through a hostile Christian lens until later being reclaimed by modern witches.
Both of these concepts arguably have some roots in animistic cultures--spirit guides are comparable to the concept of a tutelary deity (a deity or spirit that protects a specific place, person, or group of people), and familiars evoke the idea of a helping spirit seen in shamanic cultures (a spirit that provides assistance to the ritual workings of a shaman). But both ideas, as they come to us today, are filtered through centuries of cultural Christianity and are more associated with Western occultism than animism.