Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits

Emma Wilby examines familiar spirits in early modern Britain, considering the accounts associated with both helpful cunning folk and people accused of witchcraft. The book traces how magical practitioners were said to meet spirit allies, work with them, renounce them or enter into pacts, while examining the shifting boundary between fairy familiars and demonic beings.

Wilby places British witchcraft records alongside traditions associated with Siberian and Native American shamanism, as well as visionary and mystical experience in European religious history. Her argument is that beliefs about witches’ familiars may have grown from older folkloric traditions surrounding fairy helpers used by benevolent magical practitioners. The study therefore links witch-trial evidence with wider ideas about healing, spirit worlds and altered states of consciousness.