Spirit Familiar vs. Servitor / Egregore

Dear Reader,

Most folklore about witches in English speaking countries talk about them having familiars. Some familiars are cats or dogs. Some of them are more ... exotic, such as 'demons'. I'm a necromancer. I have a fish but my fish is not my familiar. Though he is sensitive to magical work and gets all hyper when I am doing stuff in the kitchen (where his tank is). My familiar is the same one that I had back when he was alive, my cat.

Re-read that last sentence. It's a weird one. When my cat was alive, my cat's name was Sandy and the body the cat inhabited was female. Sandy was my marginally reformed barn cat who regularly did things like attack my feet in my sleep for fun. Still, when ever I was performing magic, Sandy showed up and stuck around like a fuzzy guardian until the spell was complete. Sandy has been dead now for almost twenty years. Sandy is different now. Instead of a ginger cat running its head into my leg to get my attention, I get a cold spot there. And out the corner of my eye, I can see a dark brown cat prowling around the apartment every so often (more so during hunt season). Sandy now answers to Spooky. Just like when they were alive, offerings of potato chips go over really well.

Spirit familiars like Spooky are actually pretty common. They are spiritual beings with their own independent agenda and intelligence. They are not dependent upon you or continual spell casting by others for their presence. They have it all on their own because they are a being, not a construct. When you start researching familiars in witchcraft, you start to find that there's a pretty strong record of spirit familiars, usually named demons because anything that could be named a demon by witch hunters was.

Now, I'm not saying it is impossible for someone to have a demon as their spirit familiar. I'm just saying it is highly unlikely because demons tend to be rather powerful and have greater agency than most spirit familiars. It's like the difference between a house cat and tiger. Sure, they're both cats, but the tiger is bigger and much more formidable in just about every way. It is highly unlikely that the tiger is going to be willing to be your pet and if it happens, there's still a good chance that they may decide to eat your face some day.

Servitors are spiritual constructs that do a specific job or set of jobs. They're like spiritual robots that do only what they're programmed for. They can be very complicated and do a great many things. But they are, in the end, only capable of what they are programmed to do. Spirit familiars are unpredictable at times. That's because they have their own sense of agency and will not always follow orders. Literally, it's like herding cats sometimes. Servitors are much easier to organize and give marching orders. Egregores are more complex spiritual robots but have the same limitations because they're only as good at doing things as their programming is.