The Forgotten Familiar

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The Forgotten Familiar

Cerissa

22 episodes

2 hours ago

Before the word witch was ever spoken, there was only the fire—and the people who sat close to it. This long-form episode traces the witch's evolution across millennia: from Paleolithic pattern-readers to Egyptian temple magic, from medieval cunning folk to the trials that murdered thousands, from Salem to feminist reclamation, to today's digital age where witchcraft exists between meme and mystery. This is the Season of Becoming—not becoming something new, but remembering what we've always b...

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Religion & Spirituality

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Before the word witch was ever spoken, there was only the fire—and the people who sat close to it. This long-form episode traces the witch's evolution across millennia: from Paleolithic pattern-readers to Egyptian temple magic, from medieval cunning folk to the trials that murdered thousands, from Salem to feminist reclamation, to today's digital age where witchcraft exists between meme and mystery. This is the Season of Becoming—not becoming something new, but remembering what we've always b...

Show more...

Religion & Spirituality

Episodes (20/22)

The Forgotten Familiar

The Evolution of the Witch

Before the word witch was ever spoken, there was only the fire—and the people who sat close to it. This long-form episode traces the witch's evolution across millennia: from Paleolithic pattern-readers to Egyptian temple magic, from medieval cunning folk to the trials that murdered thousands, from Salem to feminist reclamation, to today's digital age where witchcraft exists between meme and mystery. This is the Season of Becoming—not becoming something new, but remembering what we've always b...

5 days ago

1 hour 29 minutes

The Forgotten Familiar

The Witch Before the Word

December opens with a threshold. A shift. A remembering. This episode marks the beginning of The Forgotten Familiar’s new long-form structure—moving from weekly releases to one richly crafted episode each month. (Two for December as we transition.) This slower, deeper format allows the stories to breathe, the research to expand, and the history to land the way it was always meant to. In this episode, we return to the earliest roots of the witch—before the word existed, before the fear, long b...

3 weeks ago

24 minutes

The Forgotten Familiar

The Bread Witch of Lublin

In 1679, a woman named Regina Zalewska was accused of bewitching bread in the Polish city of Lublin. Her crime was not poison or blasphemy, but the quiet skill of a baker whose loaves rose when others failed. In a world gripped by famine and faith, her whispered prayers over the dough became proof of witchcraft, and her hands, the same hands that fed her neighbors, were condemned by fire. This episode of The Forgotten Familiar uncovers the true story behind the legend of the Bread Witch of Lu...

1 month ago

20 minutes

The Forgotten Familiar

Demeter's Hunger

Grief reshaped the world. When Persephone vanished into the underworld, her mother, Demeter, walked the earth in sorrow, and the fields turned to dust beneath her feet. In this episode of The Forgotten Familiar, we follow the mother of the grain through myth and memory, from divine despair to the birth of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Her hunger becomes the world’s first lesson in balance, the alchemy of loss turned into life. Listen as ancient myth, history, and reverence intertwine to reveal h...

1 month ago

28 minutes

The Forgotten Familiar

When Witches Walked at Midnight

Once, they said witches walked at midnight...not because they were wicked, but because it was the only hour the world forgot to watch. In this special Halloween episode of The Forgotten Familiar, we return to the origins of the witch’s night, from the sacred fires of Samhain to the birth of Halloween, from healers branded as heretics to the quiet rebellion of those who walked through darkness anyway. This is the story of the witch’s endurance, how she survived the pyre, hid in folklore, and r...

1 month ago

27 minutes

The Forgotten Familiar

The Morrígan: The Sovereignty of Endings

Mist gathers over the Irish hills. The crows are already watching. The Morrígan, The Great Queen, The Phantom Queen, is not a goddess of death, but of truth. She is the voice that ends what cannot continue, the shadowed mirror that shows us who we are when the masks fall away. Her story is not one of cruelty, but of sovereignty. In this episode of The Forgotten Familiar, we travel through her many faces: Badb the prophet, Macha the avenger, and Nemain the frenzy, and into the myths that shape...

2 months ago

22 minutes

The Forgotten Familiar

Nyx: Mother of Shadow

Before there was light, there was Nyx. The first mother. The living night. The shadow from which every god, and every heartbeat, was born. Older than Zeus, older than fate itself, Nyx embodies the origin of all things unseen. She is the night sky and the silence before creation, mother of Sleep, Death, and the Fates. In her darkness, stars are born; in her quiet, the universe begins again. In this episode of The Forgotten Familiar, we descend beyond myth and into the primordial. Explore the w...

2 months ago

25 minutes

The Forgotten Familiar

Persephone: The Descent and the Crown

When the earth split open and the god of the underworld rose from its depths, Persephone vanished into shadow. Above, Demeter’s grief turned the world to ice. Below, the maiden became something more. This is not a tale of victimhood, but of transformation. In the silence of the underworld, Persephone learned to speak the language of the dead, to claim darkness as her own, and to return crowned. In this episode of The Forgotten Familiar, we follow her descent and rise, from daughter of spring ...

2 months ago

18 minutes

The Forgotten Familiar

Hestia - The Fire That Withdraws

Not all fires blaze. Some burn quietly in the background, steady enough to be overlooked but strong enough to anchor a world. In Greece, that fire belonged to Hestia, the goddess of the hearth, first and last in every offering, yet absent from mythic spectacle. While her siblings fought for thrones and dominions, Hestia chose another path. She swore herself to autonomy, refused marriage, and stepped back from Olympus’s quarrels. In her silence, she held sovereignty of another kind: the flame ...

2 months ago

24 minutes

The Forgotten Familiar

Vesta & The Flamekeepers

In the heart of Rome, a fire once burned that was never allowed to die. For nearly a thousand years, the Vestal Virgins tended the sacred flame of Vesta, goddess of the hearth, bound to silence and chastity, yet entrusted with the survival of an empire. To outsiders, they appeared obedient: virgins cloistered in ritual. But beneath the vows lay a paradox. In a world ruled by men, the fate of Rome itself depended on the hands of women. Join me as we uncover the story of Vesta and the Vestals, ...

3 months ago

16 minutes

The Forgotten Familiar

She Who Burns (Expanded Edition)

Before independence was signed into parchment, before fire meant fireworks, there was Brigid. A goddess of flame and fertility, later recast as a saint to soften her power. But her story, and her sacred fire, never went out. In this expanded return to our very first episode, we journey deeper into Brigid’s world; into the wells and forges, the poetry and prophecy, the sacred fire at Kildare, and the women who guarded it through centuries of silence. Her story is one of survival, of quiet rebe...

3 months ago

25 minutes

The Forgotten Familiar

The Spirit Drum

In the far north, where winters stretch into endless night and the aurora dances above snowbound forests, the Sámi noaiddit—shamans, often women—once drummed their spirits free. With painted reindeer-hide drums and ancient joiks, they journeyed to ancestors, gods, and distant realms, carrying back healing and guidance for their people. But when missionaries arrived, the drums were seized and burned, and the noaiddit were condemned as witches. Still, their knowledge survived in whispers, lulla...

3 months ago

23 minutes

The Forgotten Familiar

The Changeling at Skeaghbay

The cradle creaks, the wind walks, and a mother begins to wonder if the child in her arms is truly her own. In a coastal village called Skeaghbay, the old protections are still kept: iron at the threshold, salt at the sill, a bowl of cream left out for unseen neighbors. When a baby’s eyes look too old, the line between fear and folklore blurs. This is not a tale about monsters. It is a story about mothers, memory, and a community deciding what fear will make of them. At its heart lies a choic...

3 months ago

23 minutes

The Forgotten Familiar

Sophia: Divine, Ancient, Enduring

She is called Wisdom. Not the tidy kind that never falters, but the ancient presence that remembers the first light, the questions before law, the breath inside matter itself. In Gnostic texts she is blamed for the wound of creation, cast as fallen and flawed. But in her own voice, Sophia tells another story: not of ruin, but of fidelity and the steady love that enters brokenness and stays. In this episode of The Forgotten Familiar, Sophia speaks in the first person. We follow her descent, he...

4 months ago

18 minutes

The Forgotten Familiar

Hecate: Keeper of the Crossroads

She was the torchbearer at the threshold, the keyholder between worlds, the guardian of mothers, children, and the restless dead. Once honored in shrines and offerings of honey and garlic, Hecate was later recast as the dreaded queen of witches—a shadow to be feared instead of a guide to be trusted. In this episode of The Forgotten Familiar, we follow Hecate’s journey, from her perspective, from goddess of light to figure of darkness, tracing how her story was twisted, what that rewriting cos...

4 months ago

20 minutes

The Forgotten Familiar

From Gentle Paganism to Dark Witchcraft

Long before “witchcraft” became a word whispered in fear, it was simply the rhythm of life, rooted in the turning seasons, in gratitude for the land, in the quiet power of those who remembered. Through the story of Anwyn, a healer in the village of Fernlow, we follow the slow shift from trusted midwife to suspected witch. As the Church’s shadow spreads, suspicion takes root, and the sacred is twisted into the sinister. Her story is not unique, it is the story of countless women across Europe ...

4 months ago

29 minutes

The Forgotten Familiar

The Woman Who Would Not Kneel

Before Eve, there was Lilith—made from the same earth as Adam, but unwilling to kneel. For that, she was cast out, rewritten, and demonized. But what if she wasn’t the villain of the story… what if she was the first woman to say no? In this episode of The Forgotten Familiar, we trace Lilith’s long fall from goddess to demon to feminist icon—from Mesopotamian wind spirit to medieval child-slayer to modern dark feminine archetype. She didn’t eat the fruit. She didn’t tempt the man. She simply w...

4 months ago

8 minutes

The Forgotten Familiar

Salt. So simple, yet sacred...scattered across thresholds, tossed over shoulders, whispered into protection spells. In this episode of The Forgotten Familiar, we trace the glittering line salt draws through history, folklore, and feminine wisdom. From ancient Egyptian rites to Appalachian doorsteps, from cradle protections against changelings to the hidden rebellions of wise women, salt has always marked boundaries between safety and danger, truth and secrecy, power and silence. Join me as we...

4 months ago

8 minutes

The Forgotten Familiar

The Bread Curse

They broke the bread…and cursed the village. But what if the true poison lay not in spells, but in the soil? In this episode of The Forgotten Familiar, we uncover the dark history of ergotism, a deadly grain mold blamed on witchcraft, and the way ordinary kitchen rituals became evidence of sinister magic. From medieval France’s “Holy Fire” outbreaks to murmurings in 1692 Salem, we trace how fear turned women who baked and healed into scapegoats for an invisible toxin. 🌾 Dive into folklore, tr...

5 months ago

7 minutes

The Forgotten Familiar

The Midwives Who Burned

They called them witches—but once, they were simply women: midwives, healers, guardians of birth. In this episode of The Forgotten Familiar, we step into medieval Europe’s hidden world of wise women who knew the body’s secrets—and discover how the Church and the state turned their sacred knowledge into heresy, burning them alive to break the power of the womb. 🌿 Unearth the story of the midwives’ quiet rebellion—and their return in today’s homebirths, doulas, and herbalists. ⁠🕯️ Hungry for m...

5 months ago

5 minutes