(^214) A Wiccan Bible
Common sense: It is not appropriate to take a human child from a shopping center and
raise it as your own.
Respect for critters: It is not appropriate to take a baby bird from its mother’s nest and
bring it home to be your pet.
Kin Familiars
Most Wiccans have knowledge of the kin familiar and simply call it a familiar. Those
who have shed the spooky names that seem to come with the Wiccan religion substi-
tute the word friend for familiar. Although they might use the word pet to talk about the
critter in mixed company, many know exactly what that critter is and commune with
him or her every day. Others argue that the critter is not a familiar, demonstrating the
belief that the word familiar is only used to describe animals that have a formal role in
religious rituals. To those folk who believe the word familiar only belongs to animals
used in formal rituals, I have to point out that real life is vastly more important than
ritual. Not wanting to be redundant, but wanting to address those who are not already
convinced of this, I ask that you please read Chapter 6 of my book Wicca for Couples
(New Page Books, 2001) to understand where I am coming from on this issue.
If you have bonded with a specific animal, that creature is your familiar. It doesn’t
actually matter if you have welcomed it into your home or given it a name. Those ac-
tions are more a result of the bonding process. It is the joining of hearts that denotes
the union and that union, rather than its formal marking is what is important. Except
for the practicality of limiting factors, it also matters not if you have one or one hun-
dred and one. Like relationships with humans, there is plenty of love to go around. But
also like relationships with humans, there is only so much time in a day. I have observed
that my closest friendships are shared with people who, like I, do not have a tremen-
dous number of close friends.
One need not place his dog on his altar and bless him for that dog to be his familiar.
Neither does one need to take one’s cat everywhere one goes or buy it special jewelry
to mark its rank as familiar. Oh, these things might seem fun, but often they are more
for the amusement of the owner than the bond between one and his or her critters. It’s
not a hard concept to understand, and yet people sometimes seem completely blind in
this regard.
If you were to ask a bare footed friend if they want to walk on hot pavement all
afternoon, they would probably say no. Yet every year at our local Community Festi-
val^3 , I see dozens of dog owners walking their dogs on the blacktop, at a complete loss
to understand why their beloved pets are practically goose-stepping. Finally, I figured
it out. It wasn’t that they did not care about their animals, it was because they did not
communicate with them. Upon this realization I started attending with a sign on my
canopy that reads: “Your dogs are walking funny because their feet are being burned.”
Amazingly, people read the sign and instantly brought their animals onto the grass of
the park. One woman even dropped to her knees in tears and covered her dog’s feet
with water from one of those stylish bottles. More often than not, when we abuse our
t WB Chap 12.p65 214 7/11/2003, 5:55 PM
barré
(Barré)
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