Fetch

From Traditional Witchcraft Wiki Project

The 'fetch is the ghostly double of a living person, also known as a doppelgänger, double, phantom, wraith, fylgia, puckril, puckerel or bid. This double haunts man during his life, and is a kind of guardian spirit, akin in some ways to a daemon or inner genius. It is held by some that this spirit attends man in his caul, and that if it is destroyed the man will lose his guardian spirit.

Such a spirit sometimes takes the shape of an animal, and has been identified with the notion of a witch's familiar (see also fylgia). The animal shape of a fetch is related to a person's disposition, which Paul Huson puts forwards as the basis of vampires and werewolves (see "Mastering Witchcraft"); this self-same idea is greatly expounded in Nigel Jackson's book, "The Complete Vampyre".

Although bound to the body, the fetch is capable of roaming abroad, either in the shape of its owner or in animal form, which is the basis of a huge canon of folklore (and an even larger corpus of witch arts). In witchlore the fetch is often sent forth in animal shape, normally as a hare, to carry out certain tasks, but if it should be injured then such injuries are transferred to the host in the corresponding body part. Elsewhere it is given that to see one's fetch is to an omen of impending death, for the body has "given up its ghost". Such roaming also accounts for the occurence of bilocation.

One's fetch is further related to inherited fate and virtue. In the Northern traditions, it is held that on birth a person inherits a herditary guardian spirit, called a fylgjukona, which holds ones ancestral wyrd or fate and their luck. This being connects one to their ancestral inheritance.