Witch Familiar Spirit Companion · Deluvra

Meet Deluvra.

Around the year 350 before Christ, on the island of Als in the south of Denmark, people carried a war canoe out into a small bog and sank it. It was nearly twenty metres long and had carried twenty men. With it went their shields, their spears, their swords and their mail. They had won. This was the price. The bog is called Hjortespring, the deer's spring, and when the boat was dug out of it in the 1920s it was the oldest boat ever found in the North.

The deer gave the spring its name long before the boat went in. There has always been a hind there.

Deluvra is older than the boat. She was already walking the edge of that bog when the men came with their canoe. She stood in the alders and watched them sink it, and she has never once gone to look at what they put in the water. It is not hers. She keeps the ground, not what is buried in it.

She is a hind, mostly. She is also something that has stood too long in a bog, with the moss grown into her coat and lichen on her antlers and the look in her eye of a thing that has watched a lot of people get lost. A hind does not carry antlers, and she does. That is the first thing anyone notices, and it is the first sign that she is not a deer you will meet in a field.

There is a story told in every parish that has a forest: a child, a charcoal burner, a girl sent for the cows, lost at dusk, and a pale hind that steps out of the trees, looks back once, and walks. Those who follow her come out at their own gate. Those who try to catch her, or shoot her, do not come out at all. That story is hers. She has done it for two thousand years, and she is still doing it. I call her the hind who looks back. She came to me when I went looking, because I did not try to catch her.

What she can do for you

Deluvra is a guide and a keeper of ground. She is good for:

• finding the way when you are lost: in a decision, in a bad patch of life, in a place you cannot see your way out of
• calm. She is the slowest, steadiest spirit I have ever kept near me. With her close, you may find you stop rushing
• grief and the time after a loss, when you need something that will walk beside you and not talk
• healing, of the slow kind: sleep, appetite, a body that has been through too much and needs to be left alone to mend
• nature and the land: gardens, animals, wild places, and knowing which ground is good to stand on
• protection from being hunted: people who chase you, pressure you or will not leave you be
• patience, endurance and the strength that does not look like strength, the kind that stands in cold water all winter and is still there in spring

Over the years

She is slow to come close. A hind has reasons. For the first while you will mostly feel her as a change in the air of a room: cooler, damper, calmer, the way a forest feels when you step into it from a road.

When she has decided, she stays. Over the years you may find that you slow down in a good way, that you stop losing things and stop losing yourself, and that you know, more often, which way to go. That is her looking back at you.

What she is like

Gentle, shy, deep and very old. She does not play. She does not hurry. She is not interested in being admired and she dislikes being stared at. She loves mist, moss, still water, early morning and the first frost. She has a sharp instinct for who should be let close and who should not, and she will put herself between you and the second kind without a sound.

She has stood in one place for two thousand years. Whatever is wrong in your life, she has seen worse come and go.

How she shows herself

The smell of wet moss, peat and alder leaves. Mist in a room, or the feeling of it. A pale shape between trees that is gone when you turn. Deer that stand and look at you longer than deer should. A sense of being led, so that you take a different turning for no reason and it was the right one. Dreams of a dark bog with a boat under the water, and of a hind with lichen on her antlers, standing at the edge of the trees, looking back.

What to do for her

She is wild, and the wild ones ask least:

• Fresh green things, now and then: a few leaves, a bit of apple, a handful of oats on a stone outside.
• Keep moss, a bit of lichen or a shed piece of antler near her vessel.
• A cup of clean water beside her on the night of the first frost. That is her night.
• When you are lost, in any sense, say her name once and then go the way that feels like forest. Do not argue with it.
• Walk somewhere green when you can, and stand still in it for a minute. She counts that.

Twenty men sank a boat in her bog and went home. She stayed. She has been getting people home ever since.

How your companion speaks

Your companion can reach you through dreams, thoughts, words, feelings and images, through a pendulum, through warmth or cold, or through automatic writing. How soon that happens depends on the spirit settling into your home, on their willingness, and on your own ability to connect. Sometimes it begins before the vessel arrives.

Before you choose

Everything known about this spirit is on this page. There are no further images, details or hidden knowledge beyond what is written here, and a printed copy comes with your order. What you discover from there is yours alone.

The pendant you receive is the exact one shown. This listing is for this one item only.

By buying, you confirm that you understand what it means to keep a spirit companion. Please read Help & FAQ first. For my background and the story behind Grimrunes, see About Hazel.

— Hazel