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I'm taking a class on Chinese medicine at my university, and as I was doing research for my paper, I stumbled across a comparison of the conception of microcosm and macrocosm in the West as compared to China. It's fascinating, so I want to post it. Super-long quote beneath the cut:

From Science And Civilisation In China, Vol. 2, History Of Scientific Thought, by Joseph Needham, 1956, Cambridge University Press

Pages 294-8

If anything in Europe was analogous to ancient and medieval Chinese thinking in terms of cosmic pattern or organism, it was this doctrine [of macrocosm and microcosm], though it never dominated Western ideas to the same degree. Two analogies were involved: one postulated point-for-point correspondences between the body of man and the universe or cosmos as a whole, the other imagined similar correspondences between the human body and the society of the State. We must glance for a moment at these theories and compare them with Chinese parallels, asking if there was any difference of emphasis in the two civilisations. We may call the larger theory the 'universe-analogy' and the smaller one the 'state-analogy'.

Among the pre-Socratic fragments there is nothing very definite to be found, and it is not till the time of Plato and Aristotle (-4th century) that the ideas attain any prominence. It may be said that Plato employed all the arguments but never used the term 'microcosm', while Aristotle used the term at least once but was too empirical in his biology and too abstract in his cosmology, as Conger says, to care much for the idea. The first authentic occurrence of the term microcosm is in his Physics, where he says, in the course of some arguments about motion, 'If this can happen in the living being, what hinders it from happening also in the All? For if it happens in the little world (it happens) also in the great, etc.' The Stoics continued what Plato had begun; most of them agreed that the world was an animate and rational being. Hence detailed correspondences with the being of man were inviting. Seneca, in his Quaestiones Naturales (c. + 64), did not hesitate to draw them. Nature was, he believed, organised after the pattern of man's body, water-courses corresponding to veins, air-passages to arteries, geological substances to various kinds of flesh, and earthquakes to convulsions.

This general outlook permeated late antiquity and the middle ages in Europe. It may be found everywhere. Philo Judaeus, a contemporary of Seneca, called man 'brachys kosmos', … the little world. Manilius, the astronomical poet, gives the assignment of parts of the body to regions of the zodiac. Galen in the +and century, though not emphasising the theory, alludes favourably to it. Plotinus in the +3rd held extremely organicist views, though they were so saturated with supernaturalism as to have little influence on scientific thinking; there is much in the Enneads which suggests the conception of the universe as a hierarchy of wholes, those on one level being the parts of the wholes on the next. Macrobius, about + 400, said that certain philosophers called the world a large man and man a short (-lived) world.! While Clement of Alexandria accepted the universe-analogy, other early Christian fathers were inimical to it, but this opposition was only temporary, and one finds it in full swing in later patristic literature. It is interesting to note that the first works bearing the term microcosm in their titles were written within a few years of one another; both were of the + 12th century, while one was Jewish and one Christian. The former was the Sefer Olam Qatan (Book of the Little World) by Joseph ben Zaddiq of Cordova (+ 1149), ' and the latter, the De Mundi Universitate Libri Duo, sive Megacosmus et Microcosmus, of Bernard of Tours (c. + 1150). …

The universe-analogy was still vigorous in the 16th century, There was never a more thorough-going and consistent supporter of it than Paracelsus, and it runs through all his alchemical and medical ideas. His followers, such as Robert Fludd in Medicina Catholica of + 1629,/ elaborated the same lines of thought. What is striking about these 16th- and early 17th-century nature-philosophers is their sometimes close approximation to Chinese conceptions. When Fludd, speaking of polarity, sets up opposites such as the following:

Heat—Movement—Light—Dilatation—Attenuation Cold—Inertia—Darkness—Contraction—Inspissation; Sun—Father—Heart—Right Eye—Sanguis vitalis, Moon—Mother—Uterus—Left Eye—Mucus,

he is talking like any Chinese exponent of the theory of Yin and Yang. When Giordano Bruno, regarding the universe as an organism composed of organisms, speaks of a sexual intercourse between the sun and the earth, whereby all living creatures are brought into being, he is using an extremely characteristic Chinese metaphor of frequent occurrence. Presumably, however, the origins of these presentations were 'Pythagorean' and Neo-Platonic, rather than immediately oriental, since at this time recent Chinese influences could hardly be suspected.

Analogies for more than Yin and Yang polarity can be found in European thought. Even the symbolic correlations have at least traces there. When Agrippa of Nettesheim (+ 1486 to +1535), in his De Occulta Philosophia, compiled a correlative tabulation, it was strikingly similar to the venerable Chinese forms. He aligned the seven planets with the seven letters of the Name of God, the seven angels, seven birds, fish, animals, metals, stones, parts of the body, orifices of the head, etc., and did not forget the seven dwellings of the damned. Forke, ' who laid much emphasis on this in his account of Chinese correlative thinking, was right enough in concluding that ‘sixteenth-century Europeans were not a whit further advanced in the natural sciences than the Chinese philosophers of the Sung (+ 12th)'. The tradition runs on through Bruno (+1548 to +1600), who has tables of correspondences in his De Imaginum Signorum et Idearum Compositione of + 1591, and Franciscus Patritius, whose Nova De Universalis Philosophia was almost contemporary (+ 1593).

The question is, where did these correlative tabulations come from? There is no doubt that they were largely Arabic and Jewish. Philo Judaeus, fifteen centuries before Agrippa, had classified things in sevens. In a great number of subsequent writers, but especially among the Jews and in Arabic works such as the Rasa-il Ikhwan al-Safa', there are 'Chinese" correlations— the parts of the body, the planets, the gods, the strings of the lyre, zodiacal constellations, seasons, elements, humours, letters of the alphabet, perform a complicated ballet in groups of fours and sevens. Though the Chinese category of fives is rarely, if ever, found, one cannot help wondering whether some inspiration from the –3rd-century Chinese School of Naturalists did not find its way through Indian contacts or over the Silk Road to Byzantium, Syria and other parts of the Near East.

It is here that the corpus of mystical Jewish writings, the Kabbalah, played an important part. Its origins are still extremely obscure; there seems to have been a connection with Gnosticism, Persian sufism, and conjectural influences from still farther east (Loewe, 1). The elements of the system go back to the - and century, but the earliest text (the Sefer Yesirah) dates only from the + 6th and the first historical personage definitely connected with the Kabbalah (Aaron ben Samuel) died towards the end of the + gth. The chief text (the Zohar) is of the +10th. The system included a great deal of numerology and magico-mystical arranging of letters and numbers, many doctrines of demiurges and angels, and distinct similarities with Chinese thought in its lists of 'pairs' (ziwwugh, syzygies) of things, as if grouped in Yin and Yang categories, Some references to metempsychosis might betray Buddhist, or at least Indian, influence, but other origins were certainly Greek, for Ptolemy and Proclus had associated the parts of the body, the senses, and the human psychological states, with the various planets. The doctrine of the macrocosm and the microcosm naturally appears in the Kabbalah. Kabbalistic notions undoubtedly influenced that extraordinary man Raymond Lull (+1232 to +1316), in whose works tables of correspondences in the Chinese manner can be seen. Here was the immediate precursor of Agrippa of Nettesheim.

It may well turn out that the 'correlative thinking' of the 16th and early 17th centuries had more influence on scientific minds in the true dawn of modern science than has generally been allowed. This is indeed the theme which runs through all the brilliant contributions of Pagel on the 'dark side' of scientific discoverers such as J. B. van Helmont. Bruno, in abandoning geocentrism, did not give up the universe-analogy; he said that the sun in the megacosm corresponded to the heart in man. It has now been shown, by Temkin (1), Pagel (4, 5, 6) and Curtis (1), that the discovery of the circulation of the blood by William Harvey was at any rate partly inspired by the known relation of the sun to the meteorological water circulation cycle. We may also ask whether similar influences stimulated Leibniz in his elaboration of the first European philosophy of organic naturalism.

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Before looking at the other side of the picture, the parallels in Chinese thought, I should like to allude to the part played by the two analogies in the development of alchemy. This was on the whole beneficial; the statement of the Tabula Smaragdina that 'That which is beneath is like that which is above' was sound science. In later alchemy the sulphur ('of the philosophers") was thought to be the materia prima, from which all other substances could be derived, hence it was considered the true microcosm (Hitchcock, 1). We have already noted the essential part which the universe-analogy played in the systems of men such as Paracelsus and Fludd. It is curious to remember that the term 'microcosmic salt' (sodium ammonium hydrogen phosphate, HNaNH4PO4,) lingered on long into modern chemistry; it was so called since it was first prepared from human urine in the early 17th century.

It is now time to re-examine the Chinese parallels. If definite statements of early date are not very common, this is because the universe-analogy was implicit in the whole world-outlook of the ancient Chinese.* The Huai Nan Tzu (c. - 120) gives a very detailed statement of it, as also the Chhun Chhiu Fan Lu. The Li Chi (Record of Rites), put together about -50, says that man is the heart and mind of heaven and earth and the manifestation of the five elements. The I Ching likens heaven to the head and earth to the belly. The whole theory of Phenomenalism, which we shall presently describe in relation to the sceptical attitude of Wang Chhung (see below, PP. 378-82), rested on a belief in a one-to-one correspondence between the ethics of human actions on earth and the parallel behaviour of the heavenly bodies. It was thus essentially anthropocentric.

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Was now the Chinese universe-analogy philosophically similar to the form which it took in Europe? I am strongly inclined to think not. Europe had the macrocosm-microcosm doctrine, yes, and to that extent, a primitive form of organic naturalism, together with its minor counterpart, the state-analogy, but both were subject to what I shall call later on (Sect. 46) the characteristic European schizophrenia or split-personality. Europeans could only think in terms either of Democritean mechanical materialism or of Platonic theological spiritualism. A deus always had to be found for a machina. Animas, entelechies, souls, archaei, dance processionally through the history of European thinking. When the living animal organism, as apprehended in beasts, other men, and the self, was projected on to the universe, the chief anxiety of Europeans, dominated by the idea of a personal God or gods was to find the 'guiding principle'. One sees it again and again— in the world-soul animating the world-body in the Timaeus; or the leading principle, the Hegemonikon … sought by the Stoics (who differed very much among themselves as to what it was); a or Seneca's summary statement that God is to the world as the soul to man; repeated by Philo and Plotinus; and echoed by the Pirké Rabbi Eliezer in the + 8th century.

Yet this was exactly the path that Chinese philosophy had not taken. The classical statement of the organismic idea by Chuang Chou in the - 4th century (cf. above, PP. 52, 288) had set the tone for later formulations, expressly avoiding the idea of any spiritus rector. The parts, in their organisational relations, whether of a living body or of the universe, were sufficient to account, by a kind of harmony of wills, for the observed phenomena.

This conception is often clearly stated in the famous +3rd-century commentary of Hsiang Hsiu and Kuo Hsiang on the Chuang Tzu. For example, in chapter 6 someone asks the question, ‘Who can associate in non-association and cooperate in noncooperation?’ Hsiang and Kuo comment:

The hands and feet differ in their duties; the five viscera differ in their functions, They never associate with each other, yet the hundred parts (of the body) are held together with them in a common unity, Thus do they associate in non-association, They never (force themselves to) cooperate, and yet, both within and without, all complete one another. This is the way in which they cooperate in non-cooperation . . . Heaven and Earth are such a (living) body.

The cooperation of the component parts of the organism is therefore not forced but absolutely spontaneous, even involuntary. In another passage the same commentators suggested that even if there were reluctance to cooperate, or positive ‘anti-social’ action, the self-regulating or cybernetic control of the world organism (as we might put it) was so powerful that all things would continue to work together for good. Commenting on the passage about relativity in the 17th chapter, they said, concerning 'If we look at things from the point of view of the services they render...':

There are no two things under Heaven which do not have the mutual relationship of the "self' and the 'other'. Both the 'self' and the 'other' equally desire to act for themselves, thus opposing each other as strongly as east and west. On the other hand, the 'self' and the 'other' at the same time have the mutual relationship of lips and teeth. The lips and the teeth never (deliberately) act for one another, yet 'when the lips are gone, the teeth feel cold'. Therefore the action of the 'other' on its own behalf at the same time helps the 'self'. Thus though mutually opposed, they are incapable of mutual negation.

As Fêng Yu-Lan says, this last conclusion is surprisingly reminiscent of the dialectic of Hegel.

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Much has already been said about the importance in the Chinese worldview of action at a distance, in which the different kinds of things in the universe resonate with one another. In the +5th-century Shih Shuo Hsin Yu we find the following:

Mr Yin, a native of Chinchow, once asked a (Taoist) monk, Chang Yeh-Yuan, ‘What really the fundamental idea (thi) of the Book of Changes (I Ching)?' The latter answered, 'The fundamental idea of the I Ching can be expressed in a single word, Resonance (Kan).' Mr Yin then said, 'We are told that when the Copper Mountain (Thung Shan) collapsed in the west, the bell Ling Chung responded (ying), by resonance, in the east. Would this be according to the principles of the I Ching?' Chang Yeh-Yuan laughed and gave no answer to this question.

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To touch the coarse skin of a tree is thus, at the same time, to experience one’s own tactility, to feel oneself touched by the tree. And to see the world is also, at the same time, to experience oneself as visible, to feel oneself seen. Clearly, a wholly immaterial mind could neither see things nor touch things—indeed, could not experience anything at all. We can experience things—can touch, hear, and taste things—only because, as bodies, we are ourselves included in the sensible field, and have our own textures, sounds, and tastes. We can perceive things at all only because we ourselves are entirely a part of the sensible world that we perceive! We might as well say that we are organs of this world, flesh of its flesh, and that the world is perceiving itself through us. Walking in a forest, we peer into its green and shadowed depths, listening to the silence of the leaves, tasting the cool and fragrant air. Yet such is the transitivity of perception, the reversibility of the flesh, that we may suddenly feel that the trees are looking at us—we feel ourselves exposed, watched, observed from all sides. If we dwell in this forest for many months, or years, then our experience may shift yet again—we may come to feel that we are a part of this forest, consanguineous with it, and that our experience of the forest is nothing other than the forest experiencing itself. Such are the exchanges and metamorphoses that arise from the simple fact that our sentient bodies are entirely continuous with the vast body of the land, that ‘the presence of the world is precisely the presence of its flesh to my flesh.'

The Spell of the Sensuous, by David Abram, page 49

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"If I sometimes use the verb “to be” in discussing certain parallels, it remains true that the map is never the territory, and that a sameness of meaning can never be traced even within a single myth, ritual, hymn, or tale, much less within two or more such texts. Narrative, the shared technique of all such cultural artifacts, deals precisely in ambiguity, unlike, for example, philosophical writing, which strives for unity of meaning or even ideological unity within a given text or series of texts. The comparative method used here depends instead on the ambiguity of symbols and the narratives within which they are embedded or inscribed. This strategy must be one of doubled or even palimpsestic complexes of meaning: a strategy of strategic drift, of multiple identities, partial overlappings, masks, family traits and other “soft” categories. If Eliade and others used the term “history of religions” to imply that one may derive a single story' from the multiplicity of faiths, the term “histories of religion” might be preferable; for although the spirit may be “one,” its stories are endlessly multiple (or even “fractal”) in their organic becoming. Soma itself serves as just such a soft category, since I am not attempting to identify it as one plant or another (despite a bias toward Wasson’s A. muscaria), but rather as a function (the transformative substance, fire/water) or narrative motif."

Ploughing the Clouds: The Search for Irish Soma by Peter Lamborn Wilson

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Blåtimen (The Blue Hour)

Østmarka, Oslo

Norway

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The animistic culture of the early modern village is also responsible for the fact that familiars were often envisioned in animal form. Like many of their 'humanoid' counterparts, animal familiars were often not remarkable in any way: neither exotic nor intimidating, they generally resembled small mammals, and less frequently, birds or insects, and were described with vivid realism. In order to gain some insight into how these envisioned animal familiars could have possessed the numen of a sacred beings we need to move more deeply into an understanding of how animals in general were experienced in early modern Britain. ... The lives of common people were so intertwined with those of their animals that, as one late seventeenth-century gentleman observed, they made 'very little difference between themselves and their beasts'. Animals were in many ways, as Keith Thomas notes, 'subsidiary members of the human community, bound by mutual self-interest to their owners, who were dependent on their fertility and wellbeing'. The common people would have been surrounded by the smell of animals, the noise of animals, the fur and the faeces of animals. But just as significantly, they would have been surrounded by the 'animal-ness' of animals; the eager curiosity of the dog, the lazy grace of the cat, the stealth and skill of the rat, the grumpy good nature of the oxen, the noisy assertiveness of the crow. The uninhibited nature of the animal, so true to itself, so unrestricted by societal values of good and bad, kind or unkind, appropriate and not appropriate - would have been intimately woven into an individual's impressions of 'what life was' and 'how one could be'. Given the ubiquity and value of the animal, it is not surprising that, in psychological terms, some of these impressions were used by the early modern popular psyche to craft envisioned familiars - and that these familiars were imbued with the numen of sacred beings and duly reverenced.

Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic, by Emma Wilby, pages 228-230

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…the visual forms assumed by these early modern familiars were wholly congruent with their origin. The representations of fairy and demon familiars found in early modern encounter-narratives reflect the animist culture of the rural village, as opposed to the theistic culture of the cloister or oak-panelled study.We have already seen how, among the common folk of this period, the assortment of spirits which came under the umbrella term of fairies - bizarre and sometimes ridiculous-looking as they were - possessed the numen of sacred beings, and as such were objects of devotion. In Wales fairies were held in an 'astonishing reverence' and people dared not 'name them without honour'; while in England, according to one late sixteenth-century commentator, 'The opinion of faeries and elfes is very old, and yet sticketh very religiously in the myndes of some.' That this devotion was not only reserved for the beautiful and/or noble fairy monarchy and other spirits who conformed in some way to stereotypical Christian notions about sacred beings, is suggested by contemporary descriptions of relationships with fairy familiars.

Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic, by Emma Wilby

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…theatricals, deceptions and moral ambivalence lived quite comfortably alongside spiritual experience in elite magical traditions of the period. Theatrical English magician Alexander Hart, for example, was said to have 'sat like an alderman in his gown' when in consultation, while literate Scottish cunning man Thomas Weir (East Lothian, 1670) always wore a cloak, which was 'somewhat dark', and carried a staff which was 'carved with heads like those of satyrs'. Similarly, scholars frequently point out that elite practitioners could be morally ambivalent: while they could perform magic to heal the sick, find lost goods, identify criminals, predict the future, uncover treasure and ensure success in business and so on, they could also perform magic to gain control over the minds of others, create illusions, raise the dead and gain revenge on enemies. These ambivalent activities reflected ambivalent motivations. While magicians could adopt lives of prayer and piety, through which they made 'humble supplication that God should extend to them the privilege of a unique view of his mysteries' - they could simultaneously lust after power, sex and worldly wealth. Such contradictions can clearly be seen in the life of Thomas Weir. Throughout his life Weir was widely considered to be an exceptionally religious man, who feared God 'in a singular and eminent way; making profession of strickness in piety beyond others'. However, this piety did not protect Weir against charges of witchcraft, and in 1670 he was burnt at the stake on Edinburgh's Castle Hill, having confessed to adultery, incest and other 'flagittious and horrid sins' and after refusing to repent of his deeds or renounce the Devil. Unless, as Weir's prosecutors suggested, Weir's piety was an elaborate and long-standing hoax, we can only assume that his complexities of character were genuine.

Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic, by Emma Wilby, page 212

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The shaman's overt employment of theatricals and subterfuges have, in the past, led scholars to dismiss him a quack—an opportunistic trickster whose magical activities and reputation are founded on elaborate false­hoods. The reality, however, is more subtle. The shaman sees no contradiction between the employment of theatricality and deception and the genuine performance of effective magic; in other words, deception is seen as an integral part of an effective ritual, whether it is intended to help or to harm. That this can indeed be the case is supported by the fact that psychologists have observed that many of the shaman's subterfuges inspire a strong placebo response, in both clients and observers. Knud Rasmussen claimed that 'It is difficult indeed for the ordinary civilized mentality to appreciate the complexity of the native mind in its relations with the supernatural; a "wizard" may resort to the most transparent ' trickwork and yet be thoroughly in earnest.' The Alaskan Inuit shaman, Najagneq, 'frequently employed deceptions to protect himself from his neighbors by playing on their superstitions, and he was not afraid to admit that he had made an art of pulling their legs'. When he was asked, however, whether he really believed in any of the powers to which he pretended, he returned an unequivocal 'yes'. As a result of meeting shamans like Najagneq, Rasmussen drew up a model of shamanic thinking which effectively articulates the complexities and contradictions integral to the shamanic vocation. The model is comprised of four levels, listed here in ascending order: 4. The exploitative level, concerning those spooks and powers deliberately invented by the shaman to impress and intimidate the uninitiated. 3. The socio-historical level, concerning the 'mythological image of the shaman' created by his own theatricals and 'sleight of hand' illusionism. 2. The psychological level, concerning those 'personal guardians, helpers, and familiars who capture and bind the imagination'. Also associated with the acquisition of occult powers. Although coloured by cultural and personal elements, it can open up to the metaphysical level. 1. The metaphysical level, concerning profound transcultural and transpersonal realizations. Rasmussen claimed that shamans can operate on all four levels of shamanic thinking at the same time.

Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic, by Emma Wilby, page 208

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Anthropologists have shown that without recourse to the written word human cultures primarily express themselves through imagery, whether in the form of art, mythology or magical belief and ritual. This 'imaginal language' can be highly sophisticated and express complex ideas and states of mind, much of it being employed metaphorically and symbolically. The encounter-experiences of both cunning folk, witches and shamans are narrated in this imaginal language and this presents real problems for the scholar looking for evidence of mystical experience…The art historian, Ananda Coomaraswamy, has argued that the rise of rationalism and literacy has caused modern western man to gradually lose the ability to think in images, and that this 'imaginal illiteracy' prevents him from fully deciphering primitive visual mythology. 'To have lost the art of thinking in images', he claims 'is precisely to have lost the proper linguistic of metaphysics and to have descended to the verbal logic of "philosophy."' From this perspective, to have lost the art of thinking in images is synonymous with a reduction in the capacity to recognize descriptions of mystical states … The anthropologist, and indeed anyone raised in the modern western world, approaches primitive visual mythology much as they would a foreign language.

Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic, by Emma Wilby, page 204

The book referenced in this quote is: Coomaraswamy, Ananda (1977) Selected Papers: Traditional Art and Symbolism, ed. Roger Lipsey, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

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In The Secret Commonwealth, Robert Kirk provides evidence of a different kind of link between the feeding habits of the fairies and the bloodlust of the demon familiar when he describes 'the damnable practise of Evil Angels, their sucking of blood and spirits out of Witches bodys (till they drein them, into a deformd and dry leanness) to feed their own Vehicles withal, leaving what wee call the Witches mark behind'. Kirk's claim that the familiar sucks 'blood and spirits' out of the witch is pertinent in the light of another passage in which he claims that fairies gained nourishment by piercing animals with elf-arrows and then sucking out 'the aereal and aethereal parts, the most spirituous matter for prolonging of Lyfe . . . leaving the Terrestriall behind [my italics]'. Although Kirk only mentions animals being consumed by fairies in this way, earlier in the same passage he claims that humans can also be 'pierced or wounded with those peoples weapon' and contemporary trial records sometimes contain references to humans having been 'elf-shot'. A later Scottish folk tale in which three of four men are reduced to 'bloodless bodies' because the malevolent banshee (a fairy woman) had 'sucked them dry' resonates with Kirk's descriptions of both demon familiar and fairy feeding habits. Despite the sensationalism of promising the soul, renouncing Christianity and sucking blood, the most common payment given to the English witch's animal familiar (often in conjunction with payment in blood) was ordinary food…The demon familiar did not usually, explicitly, verbally contract for this farm of payment, but it seems to have underpinned the witch/familiar relationship, being employed on a continuous basis rather than in exchange for a particular deed done. In many parts of early modern Britain fairies were fed in precisely the same way. Like the demon familiar they were partial to the odd animal sacrifice, but most commonly expected simple foodstuffs in return for their services and goodwill. Substances such as ale or milk were often poured on springs, trees and rocks etc. sacred to fairies, while bowls of bread, milk or water and suchlike were left in the kitchen overnight for both domestic hobmen and visiting trooping fairies.

Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic, by Emma Wilby

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For some magical practitioners the relationship with the familiar involved travelling with them to, or meeting them in, a different place. The witch, notoriously, journeyed to the sabbath (these experiences being predominantly recorded in Scottish witch trials), while the cunning woman journeyed to fairyland or, as it was called in the period, 'elfhame' (literally 'elf-home'). A few magical practitioners claimed that they first met their familiars in fairyland, or at the sabbath; however, a greater number claimed that their journey to these places had been initiated by the familiar's invitation.

Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic, by Emma Wilby, page 84

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Most people today would consider themselves to have little or no knowledge about early modern familiars. In reality, however, the basic dynamics of the relationship between a cunning woman or witch, and her spirit ally, is easily recognizable to all of us, being encapsulated in narrative themes running through traditional folk tales and myths from throughout the world. Classics such as Rumpelstiltskin, Puss-in-Boots, the Frog Prince and so on, are representative.

Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic, by Emma Wilby, page 59

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…cunning folk frequently described their familiars as either being fairies, or being connected to the fairies through serving the fairy king or queen or having access to/living in fairyland. Although it was not uncommon for cunning folk to define their familiar spirits in a variety of other ways, calling them, for instance, 'angels', 'saints', 'sprites', 'imps', or 'spirits of the dead' and so on, there is enough correlation between popular conceptions of these types of spirit and the heterogenous group of folk spirits defined as fairies to justify the usage of the term 'fairy familiar' here. The familiar spirit used by the witch, on the other hand, will be defined as a 'demon familiar'. Although the term 'demon' was used to describe many different kinds of spirits in the period, including fairies, it shall be used here in the sense that it points to a spirit which, unlike the fairy, was more commonly associated with purely malevolent acts.

Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic, by Emma Wilby, page 57

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Favorite little detail of The Magician nobody ever mentions: his belt is a little ouroboros.

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Historians have long recognized that magical beliefs and practices of pre-Christian origin survived into the early modern period, however in recent decades there has been a growing acknowledgement that these beliefs were more pervasive and influential than previously thought. One scholar has gone so far as to claim, for example, that 'pre-Reformation European peasants were virtually pagan, that they held animist beliefs in a spirit world which had to be appeased in order to maintain their crops and livestock, that these beliefs were overlaid in varying degrees by Christian notions which were to a large extent adapted to·'animism.' There is no doubt that allegiance to nature spirits and pagan deities masqueraded behind the worship of the saints; that ancient traditions of ancestor worship lay at the core of the cult of the dead and that the most sacred events in the Christian calendar, such as Christmas and Easter, were superimposed over already-existing pre-Christian religious festivals. The same was true of many annual agricultural rituals, such as those performed on Plough Monday or during Rogation Week, and the seasonal fire rituals performed on holy days such as St john or St Peter's Eve. More light-hearted pursuits such as Church Ales, May games, Hocktide sports, morris dancing, mumming, dancing with hobby horses and celebrations involving the Lords of Misrule or the Summer Lords and Ladies and so on, possessed an even thinner veneer of Christianity.

Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic, by Emma Wilby, page 14

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American Crow on the fence by my house

Photo by me, taken on FujiFilm X-T30 II