While contemplating Nero's working with Ghob that resulted with a subsequent bestowal of an earth elemental familiar, I began considering a possible basic difference and similarity from considering servitors and familiars.


A difference:

A servitor is an entity that is consciously created.
A familiar is an entity that is receives from an aspect of the subconsciousness.


A similarity:

A Mage uses both servitors and familiars for accomplishing specific tasks.



I would appreciate some feedback and other insights regarding that basic comparison.

Greetings !
Hello again Praxis!
I would disagree about your classification of a familiar. In My Humble Opinion, it is NOT a creation of your subconcious. It could, however, be a product of the Collective Unconcious. Familiars are allies, coworkers as it were. From outside of you, separate intelligences! Servitors are entirely driven/made up by you. Familiars are here to add their own uniqueness to the workings. The danger of Familiars is to become too reliant on them...well, I guess the same could be stated about Servitors...people tend to become too reliant. hmmm. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wacko.gif)

My belief is that familiars come to you in physical form, such as cat toad, hedgehog.
And that servitors are something you create.
A familiar is to help you here. it is the link to your magickal world when you are in the mundane,
That is how I see it....

Familiars and servitors are not the same thing in my opinion.

From the scant knowledge I know of servitors ... they are created by the magician for a specific purpose ....

... whereas a Familiar is a seperate awareness/consciousness which chooses to latch on to the magician to aid the magician in a task of a discipline ...

The most common familiars are cats which associate with the medieval witches of the UK ....

But I suppose any animal/creature can be a familiar ....

I wonder if the dragons which have latched onto other members can be deemed as being a familiar? They are certainly a seperate existence and not created by the sub-conscious

For me a servitor is created entity that serves you. A familiar is some thing you are or become familiar with after gaining knowledge of its existence, be it a cat, a demon or a imaginary friend.

How can one tell the diffrence between a familiar and just a pet that happened to fall in your lap?
I have a hedgehog as a result of a friend of mine who collects a number of diffrent animals having an unexpected pregnancy, and all but one was bought by the pet store, and I was visiting town (houston) at about this time and descided to take the little raskel in.
And with thought it makes since, becuase Ive learned alot from him and his trust issues. And though reflecting on him has been a relfection on myself, Im not to quick to consider him a familiar. How does one know, or is it one of those many things are instincts alone can tell us?
Servitor sounds by definition to be alot like an egregore, or is it merely a diffrent name for the same thing?
That aside I would be open to suggestion on the matter of familiars as a physical animal...
†Christopher Raven† (IMG:style_emoticons/default/mf_bookread.gif)

Servitors are artificial. That is what I have been told. Familiars are already there. A fairy, an animal, a demon. Things like that. You make a servitor by like doing stuff with a sigil... I dont really know what. I THINK a servitor is a part of you, that absorb back when your done. A familiar is seprate from you. And like other people said, there ARE similarities.

P.S. What is this smilie?? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/i_triangle.gif) It looks like that hat Aleister Crowley wears in some of his pictures...
http://www.hermetic.com/crowley/confess/swatch01.jpg

...theres that pic (IMG:style_emoticons/default/banana.gif)

This post has been edited by Saul de Plume: Nov 11 2006, 04:13 PM

Familiars have a soul. Servitors dont.

That is a very broad statement. What constitutes a soul? Many texts suggest that an animal can be a familiar yet certainly most animals do not have any concept of the "self." If we were to define the soul as one's freedom, creativity, etc. than your statement would seem to contradict endless writings on the matter. What sources or experiences led you to the above post?