Cult of the Divine

3 minutes read time.

Have you ever experienced yourself in an animal form?

Let’s explore what the fetch beast is and how you can meet, feed, and understand your fetch for a deeper ecstatic witchcraft practice.

What is the Fetch Beast?

Witches have a shapeshifting spirit body. This allows us to slip into the other world, meet with spirits, and meet parts of ourselves.

Many cultures have a concept that the human spirit has an animal or beast form. Although the details vary by tradition, the idea emerges that us humans have an animal spirit living within us.

The word fetch comes from Gaelic and Celtic folklore and is considered the spirit double of a person. In traditional witchcraft, we sometimes call the animal double of the witch the fetch beast.

Whatever form this beast takes informs us of the kind of energy we are carrying through this life and in the other realm.

For example, if your fetch takes the form of an owl, investigate the symbolism of the owl to discover the kind of power you are here to work with in your witchcraft.

Owls are nocturnal and hunters, they have sharp senses, excellent vision, can fly, and have a bird’s eye view. They are associated with being wisdom keepers, elders, and carriers of spiritual knowledge.

My fetch beast doesn’t “speak” to me in words but communicates through impressions, sensations, and energy.

The fetch beast is a part of the witches spirit matrix that fuels us with power and as long as it is fed, we will be fed also.

The fetch can take on different forms, various animals or hybrids, but there is usually one primary form or several primary forms that it usually takes for each of us.

Feeding your Animal Familiar

We feed the fetch through spiritual practice and taking care of our bodies, and by honoring our instincts as animals.

While not all decisions should be made from a place of animal instinct, if we can allow this part of ourselves expression when appropriate, this heats up the fetch’s power.

Ritual, ecstatic dance, tantric sex, breath work, and other embodied spiritual practices nourishes the fetch with spiritual energy and in turn nourishes the rest of us.

Feeding the fetch in turn feeds our witchcraft strengthening our power to shift into a more ecstatic, embodied practice. My fetch beast doesn’t usually “speak” to me but communicates through impressions, sensations, and energy.

I learned to access the fetch through journeying, but you might access it through dreams, divination, or sitting with entheogenic plant medicines.

Meet your Fetch to Meet Yourself

As an astrologer, I know how valuable it is to understand ourselves. Working with charts for over a decade now, I have seen the aha! moments and inspiration that comes with the validation of discovering the juicy aspects embedded in our natal charts.

I feel meeting the fetch beast has a similar impact. When we learn the version our animal nature appears to us as, we can understand so much more about ourselves, our desires, urges, and spiritual or ancestral lineages.

This is why I encourage those newer to witchcraft to get right to this part of the work in addition to crafting a relationship with the god self.

Just like deities are often paired with animals, either as helpers or forms that they actually take, we also get to have animal forms and symbols attached to us.

After you’ve met your fetch beast, you can get to work on connecting with this part of you through regular journeying or activities that your fetch enjoys doing.

This can turn into a deep relationship that integrates this animal or part of self in with the rest of your being.

What do you think? What animal form does your spirit take and what does that mean for your witchcraft?