Citation: Quoted from Confronting Familiar Spirits by Frank Hammond. Available in book and e-book form.
Confronting Familiar Spirits
by Frank and Ida Mae Hammond
"Familiar spirit" is the designation of a specific type of
evil spirit. It is so classified because of its chief characteristic:
namely, familiarity. It is a relationship, a familiarity, with a person
or personality. For example, a woman, whom Paul encountered in Macedonia,
had a familiar spirit which gave her powers of divination. (Acts 16:16-18)
Familiar spirits are common amid the practices of spiritism and witchcraft,
but their activity is by no means limited to persons and practices so
obviously occult. Evil spirits are personalities. They can reason, decide,
express emotions and communicate. Personalities have the capacity to relate
to one another. Two human personalities can form a relationship; and,
through communication and communion, that relationship can be enhanced.
Likewise, a person can form and develop a close relationship with an evil
spirit. When a person forms a relationship with an evil spirit (which
can be done either willfully or through ignorance), he then has a familiar
spirit.
Communication is the chief characteristic of a familiar spirit. The spirit
responds quickly to the summons of the medium. A medium, such as the witch
of Endor whom Saul consulted (I Sam. 28:7), is a go-between which forms
a communication link between the earthly world and the demonic realm.
Thus, anyone who becomes a channel of communication for an evil spirit
is a medium. He has a familiar spirit.
A familiar spirit is something that a person has, because it is a personality
identified with a certain individual. In the same sense that one has a
book, a friend or a cold, one can be personally identified with a demon
spirit.
"Regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after
wizards, to be defiled by them: I am the Lord your God." Lev. 19:31,
KJV, (emphasis mine)
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If
you are going to work with ritual abuse survivors, you must also get educated
if you want to be effective. And you must learn to be humble. Trauma survivors
do not need to be around ignorant, modern-day Pharisees. Survivors in
pain need people who will connect with them on an emotional level, get
right down in there where they are, and listen. --Kathleen Sullivan