Satanism Today - An Encyclopedia of Religion, Folklore and Popular ...

88 Familiars
the Fallen Angels. 1967. New York: Free Press,
1971.
Godwin, Malcom. Angels. An Endangered Species.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990.
Prophet, Elizabeth Clare. Forbidden Mysteries of
Enoch: Fallen Angels and the Origins of Evil. 1983.
Livingston, MT: Summit University Press, 1992.
Familiars
Familiars are spirits associated with witches who
are traditionally portrayed as serving their masters
by carrying out their wishes. In addition to aiding
witches by carrying their bewitchments to the
intended victims, familiars also acted as the infernal
equivalent of guardian angels, providing
witches with protection from attacks. They usually
take the form of animals, and are sometimes
conceptualized as having the power to shape-shift.
In terms of the older stereotype of witches, cats
were an especially favored form of familiar, which
partially explains the periodic cat massacres that
swept through Europe during the Middle Ages.
Familiars were said to be given to witches by
the Devil or by other witches. They required
blood, and their masters either sacrificed animals
for them or provided blood to them directly
through protuberances on the surface of their own
skin—termed witches’ teats or witches’ marks.
Individuals with supernumerary nipples—sometimes
called monkey teats, a not uncommon
condition—were especially suspect as witches.
Tortured by agents of the Inquisition, accused
witches often confessed to feeding imps by such
means. Some of the witches executed in Salem,
Massachusetts, were said to have had witches’
marks with which they fed diabolical familiars.
See also Imp
For Further Reading:
Guiley, Rosemary. The Encyclopedia of Witches and
Witchcraft. New York: Facts on File, 1989.
Fantasia
The final segment of this 1940 Disney animation
film features the dead rising and dancing before
the diabolical master Chernobog, who comes alive
and causes graves to open. The great masters of
classical composition, Tchaikovsky, Bach, Beethoven,
etc. provide the music for this ballet of evil.
Fantasy art, a style that depicts themes of the dark
and macabre, sets the stage for the spectacle of
souls being ravaged by flames and demonic forces
that accomplish their dark deeds by night and
hide before dawn breaks. Disney has done a
superb job of creating entertainment that
impresses imaginations all over the world with
fearful, frightening images—fodder for nightmares
in young and old alike.
Faust
The Devil’s pact idea entered into the popular
consciousness of the Middle Ages via the tale of
Theophilus, who according to legend had been the
treasurer of a church in the sixth century. Unfairly
dismissed from his job, he sought revenge with the
aid of a magician. This sorcerer invoked the Devil,
Theophilus sold his soul, and he was subsequently
restored to his position. However, he eventually
regretted his actions, prayed to the Virgin Mary,
and was saved. The legend of Theophilus provided
a model for the later narrative of Faust—easily the
most famous man to sell his soul to Satan—
though Faust was motivated by pride rather than
by the urge for revenge. Also, unlike Theophilus,
Faust did not escape his infernal fate in most
versions of this story.
The story of Faust became the basis for a series
of literary productions, including plays by Johann
von Goethe and Christopher Marlowe. In the
short story “The Devil and Daniel Webster,” an
American version of the Devil-pact narrative by
Stephen Vincent Benet, a poor New Hampshire
farmer, Jabez Stone, sells his soul in exchange for
seven years of prosperity. Near the end of the
term, however, Stone regrets his bargain and hires
the famous attorney Daniel Webster to defend
him. Webster successfully pleads Stone’s case and
wins his acquittal from an infernal jury. Other
literary treatments of this theme are more subtle.
For example, in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of
Dorian Gray, a young man wills that his picture
age rather than himself:
“How sad it is!” murmured Dorian Gray, with
his eyes still fixed upon his own portrait. “How