Strength

The Care and Feeding of Familiar Creatures

The professor of familiar creatures will help you teach your dog to fetch a ball, a stick … or a mandrake root for a magic potion.

Key Symbols

• Everyone at Mandrake Academy has an animal familiar — a magical companion and assistant. The Initiate has a white rabbit. The Magician has a great-tailed grackle. The High Priestess has a black cat.

• The professor of familiar creatures is pictured feeding her own familiar, a wyvern, by hand. Wyverns are dangerous, dragon-like creatures, with wings, two legs, and a serpent’s tail. While the wyvern isn’t likely to bite the hand that feeds him, any close interaction with the creature entails an element of risk.

• The Strength card illustrates bravery and courage. The professor might seem fearless, but that’s not necessarily the case. She’d be the first to tell you that she both fears and respects the power of every wild creature. She’s learned, however, to maintain her composure, even in the face of danger.

• She’s also learned that some animals feed on fear, so she refuses to display any hint of vulnerability. Instead, she snatches victory from the jaws of defeat.

• Astrologically, the Strength card is linked to Leo, the sign of the lion. The wyvern, like all fire-breathing dragons, is a mythic version of the lion.

• The professor’s fiery red hair, like a lion’s mane, hints at her connection to Leo. So does the ruby-red heart pinned to her blouse, and the giant glyph for the sun behind her. Leo rules the heart, and Leo is ruled by the sun.

• The glyph for Leo, in the top right corner of the card, spells out the connection. The Leo glyph is a curved line that looks like a lion’s tale or a lion’s mane.

• The wyvern’s tail looks something like the Leo glyph. It’s also reminiscent of the figure-eight lemniscate about the professor’s head, which is a symbol of infinity.

• The symbol at the top left corner of the card is the Hebrew letter Teth, which means serpent. The wyvern has a serpent’s scales, a serpent’s tail, and a serpent’s tooth. The imagery calls Shakespeare’s King Lear to mind. He complained, “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is, to have a thankless child.” Happily, familiar creatures aren’t children, which means we can release them back into the wild if they start to bite.

Practical Magic

Every major arcana card in the Wizards Tarot includes a familiar creature. Some depict more than one. Go through the major arcana cards, list the familiars you see in each one, and write down the human and animal characteristics you associate with them.

Strength’s Familiar Creatures Spread

Familiar creatures represent a primal side of human nature. The animal you choose as your familiar — or the animal that chooses you — will reveal a lot about your personality.

This majors-only spread is designed to help you find the familiar creature that’s right for you.

1. Pull the major arcana cards from your deck and shuffle them.

2. Start dealing the cards, face up, into four separate piles: one for creatures of fire, like the wyvern in the Strength card; one for creatures of water, like fish; one for creatures of air, like birds; and one for creatures of earth, like dogs and cats.

3. Keep dealing, until you come to a card that pictures an animal in its own element.

This isn’t a quick spread — but the process of finding a familiar creature shouldn’t be rushed. If you run out of cards before you succeed, pick them up, shuffle them again, and keep dealing.

Once you’ve found your familiar, get to know the animal. Study the image and examine its role in the card. Research the creature’s characteristics. Give your creature a name, or ask him to reveal it to you during meditation. Later, you can ask him to help you with spellwork, or to find information for you on the psychic plane.

Remember that working with a familiar creature entails a measure of self control. Before you can tame a wild animal, you’ll have to tame your own animal instincts, drives, and passions.