Our familiar is named Froggy; you may recognize him from his home left of here, underneath the navigation bar. He is a merging of the image of Mother Dutten’s toad familiar and Joan Upney’s familiar toads in The Apprehension and Confession of Three Notorious Witches (1589). Joan Upney was accused of witchcraft, and under examination, admitted to having a series of sickly and runaway familiars. Her final two toads died when, having heard the witch-hunters were coming for her, she ran away. Froggy is part of an experiment in imagining the benefit of exploring news ways of representing concepts in witchcraft for teaching and research.

Download Your Own Familiar

View full size image.

Print full size fiducial marker

Froggy has been turned into a fiducial marker readable by computer as an Augmented Reality Figure by Alan Craig from NCSA. In order to see Froggy as an AR figure you will need a Windows machine with a USB webcam. Please follow these instructions:

1) Go to HitLabnz and download and install the Black Magic Book application.

2) Download this zipfile.

3) On your windows computer go to: C:\Program Files\BlackMagic Home Edition.

4) Delete the directory called data folder and the wrl folder.

5) Replace with the folders of the same names from the above Froggy AR zip file.

6) Double click on BlackMagic home edition program.

7) Select appropriate output size for your camera (try 320 X 240) and click "ok."

8) Hold book page up to camera, making sure the black bounding box of the fiducial marker is fully in view of the camera.

9) Rotate paper and enjoy your newly conjured familiar spirit.