Hi Toyin,
So far as I know a familiar can certainly by acquired without intending to do so. Indeed, it could be argued that even in traditional shamanistic cultures the 'spontaneous' acquisition of the familiar is just as - if not more - common than the deliberate. From what I have read it seems that the familiar never completely relinquishes its 'autonomous' nature, though the shaman can gain a certain amount of control over it.
What I thought was interesting about your description was your linking of some initial vision and/or strong sensory experience with the subsequent more day-to-day sense of a presence. In shamanistic narratives the familiar is usually initially acquired through one or more 'peak' experiences - often a dream or vision encounter, but can also be a powerful auditory hallucination or experience of physical possession etc. But after this dramatic event it seems to me that a shaman's ongoing interactions with his familiar (that is, in daily life but also healing rituals and intentions not involving public seance) can often be more prosaic. The shaman 'talks to' their familiar and 'listens to' what they may have to say but in the way a Christian might communicate with God through prayer - a process of trying to interpret certain feelings and thoughts as spiritual communications and to understand the senses of presences as opposed to directly confronting and face-to-face interactions with the 'other'.
As for how to take advantage of a familiar - I'm not an expert here. I suspect there are as many ways as colours in the rainbow - shamanistic techniques, ritual magic techniques, wiccan techniques .... Christian techniques ....
With all good wishes,
EmmaSent: Tue, 22 March, 2011 5:31:36
Subject: Re: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] FORTHCOMING: WHO IS THIS PERSON WRITING MY PHD?
Thanks for your response , Emma.Please forgive my late reply.The impressions come and go on their own terms.Can you tell me more about the nature of a familiar and how one may take advantage of it? Can it be acquired without intending to do so?ThanksToyinOn 19 March 2011 08:03, emma wilby <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Hi Toyin,An evocative account of - what seems to me like - the acquisition of a familiar. I wonder - can you bring the sense of the presence to you (through some form of intention) or does it come and go of its own accord and on its own terms?Emma
From: toyin adepoju <[log in to unmask]>Sent: Wed, 16 March, 2011 16:04:49
Subject: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] FORTHCOMING: WHO IS THIS PERSON WRITING MY PHD?WHO IS THIS PERSON WRITING MY PHD?
Toyin Adepoju
I ask myself this question in recognition of the sense of wonder that continually emerges for me from the development of ideas in the PhD I am undertaking in Comparative Criticism.
You see, some of the best ideas of the PhD are not written wholly by me. They are developed in collaboration with someone I don’t know, someone I am only beginning to be able to identify through subtle cues that define the contours of the person’s personality.
I have chosen to describe this being in terms of a distinctive personality because the entity actually demonstrates a shape representing their nature and style of working.This shape is perceivable in mental terms through subtle promptings about possibilities for developing ideas, through the sense of an invisible personality behind me or at my shoulder as I compose ideas in writing, through a sense of looking forward into a landscape of knowledge I can only dimly sense with an awareness of the certainty of its existence, like an animal smelling water from a far distance.Perhaps a more realistic interpretation of this mysterious experience is to understand these cognitive unfoldings as demonstrations of conjunctions between the conscious and subconscious minds as they work together to constitute a whole, even though the processes of the subconscious are not often available to consciousness.This interpretation may clarify the majestic motions of ideas as they enter into particular orbits, mesh and undergo transformation, but can they explain the sense of an invisible personality by my side or behind me that flashes in and out of my awareness as I work?
What is the relationship between this current sense of an unseen personality and an earlier impression of an invisible figure that began to follow me everywhere after about a year of daily magical invocation and meditation in 1993?
What connection could these experiences have to the two experiences in my living room in Benin in 1996 in which as my mind went to my earlier interest, abandoned for the previous three years, in developing the cognitive potential of the Yoruba/Orisa Ifa system of knowledge and divination, I instantly sensed an invisible presence at my side, a sense of an intangible presence that recurred at various times as I carried out this work on Ifa during my MA at the University of Kent in 2003?
Can these experiences be related to a particularly striking experience in the late 1990s in which, as I reflected on a forest that awed me by the numinous presence that radiated from it, I suddenly found myself elsewhere, in a different room, in non-verbal but eloquent dialogue with a woman. Having ascertained who I was, that I was not dreaming, that I was in a strange place in which I had been welcomed, I opened my eyes to find myself back in my study?
Could these experiences of mine demonstrate interactions between personal and extra-personal fields of consciousness?
Full essay forthcoming