Witch Familiar Spirit Companion · Gríma

Meet Gríma.

Gríma was made, not born.

In the summer of 1672, high in the forests of Ångermanland in northern Sweden, a woman named Brita kept her family’s cattle at a summer pasture, a few log cabins in a clearing a long day’s walk from the village. Every year, when the snow melted, the women of the north drove the herds up into the forest and lived there alone until autumn. They milked and churned, made cheese, and called the cattle home in the evenings with high, wild songs that carried for miles across the valleys.

It was lonely work, and it left a woman a great deal of time to think.

Brita was poor. Her husband was sickly, her cows were thin, and every autumn she came down the mountain with less butter than her neighbours. She had grown up on the old stories, and she knew what some women did up there in the forest when no one was watching.

On Midsummer Night, when the old powers walk closest to the world, Brita sat by the fire in her cabin and made a bjära. She took a spindle and wound it in black wool, wool she had picked from the thorns at the crossroads below the pasture, where the old women said the Devil’s goat passed on its way to Blåkulla. She bound it with three hairs from her own head. Then she pricked her finger, let three drops of blood fall on the wool, and spoke the words her grandmother had once taught her and made her swear never to repeat:

“I give you blood, you give me milk. Run for me, drink for me, bring it home to me.”

The wool moved. When it stood up on the floor of the cabin, it was no longer a spindle wound in yarn. It was a small black cat with amber eyes and the curved horns of a goat, still wearing the cord of black wool around its neck.

Brita called her Gríma, an old word for mask, and for night.

That summer, Brita’s churn was never empty. Every night Gríma slipped out into the dark, across the ridge to the neighbouring pastures, and drank from other women’s cows until her belly was round and heavy. Then she ran home and spat the milk into Brita’s churn. Brita’s cows grew fat. Her neighbours’ cows gave less and less, and no one could understand why.

By the end of the summer, Brita had more butter than any woman in the valley. The next summer, she had more again. She bought a second cow, then a third. There was meat on the table, and her children wore new shoes.

Gríma asked for only one thing in return: every Thursday night, a drop of Brita’s blood. Brita never missed it.

But she was never careful enough. A woman who comes down from the mountain with too much butter is a woman people talk about.

In 1675, the great witch panic that had swept across Sweden reached Ångermanland. Children began telling the priests that they had been carried off at night to Blåkulla, where the Devil held his feasts. They named the women who had taken them there. Some named their own neighbours. One of the names was Brita’s.

On the 10th of June 1675, at Torsåker, seventy-one people were beheaded and burned in a single day, sixty-five women and six men. It was the bloodiest day of the witch trials in Swedish history. Brita was among them.

Gríma watched the smoke rise from the edge of the forest.

A bjära lives on its maker’s blood. When its maker dies, the old stories say, it unravels back into wool, and the spindle falls to the ground. Gríma did not unravel. Around her neck she still wore the cord of black wool Brita had bound her with, and knotted inside it, dried brown, was the last drop of her maker’s blood. It has held her for three hundred and fifty years.

But a drop of blood does not last forever, and Gríma has waited a very long time for someone new to feed her.

Now Gríma walks again.

She is a familiar of the old Nordic craft, a bringer of abundance, a keeper of secrets, and a creature of blood and wool, made by a witch’s hands for a witch’s work.

How She Appears Now

Gríma’s presence feels like the edge of a forest pasture after sunset: cold grass, the smell of wool and fresh milk, cowbells far off in the dark, and the feeling of being watched from the undergrowth.

She may appear in dreams as a small black cat with amber eyes and two long, curved horns. Around her neck hangs a cord of black wool with a single knot. Sometimes she sits perfectly still in tall grass. Sometimes she is curled at the end of your bed, heavy and warm, as if she has just eaten.

You may notice small signs: a tuft of black wool or fur you cannot explain, milk left out that is gone by morning, a coin turning up where there was none, or the weight of a cat settling beside you in an empty room.

She is not a sweet familiar. She is sly, proud and a little greedy, and she is affectionate strictly on her own terms. She may ignore you for days and then refuse to leave your side. But once she has tasted your blood, she belongs to you completely, and her loyalty is fierce, almost frightening. Anyone who harms her keeper may find that their own luck begins, very slowly, to drain away.

What She Brings

• Abundance and Prosperity. Gríma was made to fill a poor woman’s churn, and she has never lost the habit. She is a strong companion for money work, steady income, a full pantry and a household that has enough.
• Bringing Home What Is Yours. She knows how to go out into the world and come back with something in her belly. She is well suited to recovering what was taken from you, collecting what is owed, and drawing back opportunities that slipped away.
• Protection from Gossip and Envy. She watched her witch burn because the neighbours talked. She guards her keeper against jealousy, evil tongues and the attention of people who wish them harm.
• Secrecy and Discretion. Gríma helps keep your craft hidden from those who would not understand it, and she is an excellent companion for those who must practise in secret.
• Blood Magic and Binding. She is bound by blood and lives on it. She strengthens blood work, pacts, oaths and any working sealed with a drop of your own blood.
• Sending and Watching. Like the bjära of old, she can be sent out: to watch over someone far away, to bring back news, or to find what has been lost.
• A Familiar for the Solitary Witch. She was made in a lonely cabin by a woman who worked alone, and she understands solitary practice better than almost any spirit.

Her companionship is especially suited to witches who struggle with money, who live among people who must not know what they do, or who work alone and want something at their side that is entirely their own. She is also a fine first familiar for anyone ready to work with blood.

Offerings & Honourings

• A small bowl of milk or cream, set out at night and left until morning.
• A pat of butter on a little dish, for the churn she kept full.
• Tufts of black wool, or an old spindle.
• A single drop of your own blood on her cord or vessel, pricked with a clean needle. The first drop binds her to you. After that, a drop on Thursdays keeps her strong.
• A coin set aside for her each time money comes into the house.

She values discretion above all. Never boast of your good fortune. Brita’s churn was too full, and the neighbours noticed. Keep your luck, and your familiar, to yourself.

If you want to call her home, do it the way the women of the summer pastures called their cattle at dusk: one long, high note sung out into the dark. She will hear it.

Seventy-one fires burned at Torsåker. Gríma watched every one of them, and she has had three hundred and fifty years to decide whose blood she will take next.

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.

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— Hazel