Familiar Spirits GILLIAN: I put on a spell. SHEP: And how does one “put on a spell?” GILLIAN: I used PYEWACKET. SHEP: You mean—you spoke to him about it? And what’s he supposed to do . . . Is PYEWACKET a witch, too? GILLIAN: He’s a—FAMILIAR! SHEP: A what? Oh, yes, I remember, a pet who’s supposed to do his master’s bidding. Gill, what the hell are you getting at? (Act II, Scene 2)
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Pyewacket was the name of a familiar spirit listed in the 1647 book The Discovery of Witches by self-appointed Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins. Three years earlier, Hopkins claimed to have overheard a group of witches meeting near his home in Manningtree, Essex, England. Hopkins arrested a local woman whose name he said he heard mentioned in the meeting and deprived her of sleep in order to ellicit a confession of witchcraft. After four days, the woman did confess, and provided a list of names and descriptions of her familiar spirits. They were: • Holt, a white cat • Jamara, a Spaniel-like dog without legs • Vinegar Tom, a Greyhound-like dog with the head of an ox who transformed into a headless child • Sacke and Sugar, a black rabbit • Newes, a polecat (a type of weasel) • Elemanzer, Pyewacket, Peck in the Crown, and Grizzel Greedigut, all of which were described as imps (small mischievous demons) Hopkins claimed in The Discovery of Witches that he and nine others saw the familiars as the
The frontispiece of Matthew Hopkins’s 1644 book, The Discovery of Witches.
woman called them by name, and while the first five were in the form of specific animals, the others came in forms “which no mortal could invent.” The incident detailed in The Discovery of Witches was the first time that the name “Pyewacket” was attributed to a witch’s familiar. It was not, however, the first mention of witches having “familiar spirits” in animal form. James VI of Scotland, who was later crowned King James I of England, published a treatise titled Daemonologie in 1597 in which he linked witches to specific animals and described familiar spirits as forms taken by the devil to tempt humans into doing his work. While James VI did not list any specific names of familiars, he did describe the spirits as coming “in likeness of a dog, a Catte, and Ape, or such-like other beast.”