familiar spirits;
Sorcerers or necormancers, who professed to call up the dead to answer questions, were said to have a "familiar spirit" (Deut. 18:11; 2 Kings 21:6; 2 Chr. 33:6; Lev. 19:31; 20:6; Isa. 8:19; 29:4). Such a person was called by the Hebrews an 'ob, which properly means a leathern bottle; for sorcerers were regarded as vessels containing the inspiring demon. This Hebrew word was equivalent to the pytho of the Greeks, and was used to denote both the person and the spirit which possessed him (Lev. 20:27; 1 Sam. 28:8; comp. Acts 16:16). The word "familiar" is from the Latin familiaris, meaning a "household servant," and was intended to express the idea that sorcerers had spirits as their servants ready to obey their commands. Easton’s Bible Dictionary
In early modern English superstition, a familiar spirit, imp (Faery), or familiar (from Middle English familiar, related to family) is an animal-shaped spirit who serves for witchery, a demon or other magician-related subjects. Familiars were imagined to serve their owners as domestic servants, farmhands, spies, and companions, in addition to helping bewitch enemies. These spirits were also said to inspire artists and writers (compare Muse). Wikipedia
Familiar Spirit "A man or woman having a familiar spirit" is the translation in the Old Testament of the Hebrew ''Ob or Aub, which means a sorcerer or necromancer, and in The Secret Doctrine (1:364n) is translated serpent. Such a person is a medium who is more or less under the control of this elemental or elementary, miscalled spirit, by whom he may be entranced; and is to be distinguished sharply from an adept or genuine theurgist, who is in self-conscious control of his own higher faculties through initiation following due and long preparation. These familiar spirits are equivalent to the Greek daimones, and to elementals and elementaries. Rakefet
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'Ob (Hebrew) Also aub. A necromancer, one who "calls up the dead" in order to learn from them future events; secondarily, the spirit of divination in the necromancer; and thirdly, the apparition, shade, or kama-rupa itself which is raised. 'Ob is "the messenger of death used by the sorcerers, the nefarious evil fluid" (SD 1:76), the lowest aspect of the astral light -- "or rather, its pernicious evil currents" (TG 237). As the astral light in its lower aspects was sometimes symbolized by a serpent, so was 'ob often thus symbolized. As signifying the powers of darkness, the denizens in the lower regions of the astral light, and the evil and immoral practices of necromancy, it is the opposite of the Shemitic word 'or (light, glory; to enlighten, inflame with wisdom and knowledge), used also for mystic revelations and the communication of esoteric truth. Rakefet