Your impression was just your impression, and not based on anything specific in the rules.
Okay, fine. Nice we got that cleared up.
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Is there a reason you need to drag this conversation out and to make it personal, or are you just trying to alienate people? If you followed what I said earlier I have said as much over a dozen posts ago, but without the smarmy insinuations.
You did NOT say that in so many words in earlier posts - not in an understandable way anyway.
Right now I can only wonder why you feel the need to drag this conversation out. You wanted me to accept that your impression was your impression, and in my last post I did just that.
As far as I was concerned we were done at that point.
What are thoughts on a Bjorner magi initiating the Minor Mystery Spirit Familiar? The wording of the mystery seems careful to say it is NOT binding a familiar, but says the Mystery is "using similar rules to those for binding an animal familiar". It also seems like it may not break the spirit of the rules or the spirit of the House.
As for the rules, it requires finding a Mystagogue to initiate it and whatever sacrifices of time and resources may be involved in the initiation script. The original forsaking of a familiar during The Ritual of the Twelve Years counts as a minor ordeal, which represents either gaining a minor flaw or losing a minor virtue.
As for the House, there seems to be a concern with the word "binding" as it implies some loss of freedom or possibly enslavement (which is confusing to me because the rules in ArM5 seem very specific that the animal must choose freely to enter the bond). The section on "Finding a Suitable Spirit" says "Elemental spirits may welcome the freedom to move beyond their appointed place."
Anyway, it seems like an alternative to not allowing familiars for Bjorner ever. There seem limited ways to reduce botch dice for spell casting (the gold familiar bond being one) and very clear rules about how many botch dice to roll for ritual spells and casting in non-magic aura which then makes Bjorner much less reliable spell casters.
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They also have the only form of shape-shifting that isn't stopped by things like Parma Magica and the Aegis, which isn't that bad either, especially once you get into the stage of initiating the inner mysteries of the house improving that form. As for the rest, you're correct in stating that the forsaking in the ritual of the twelve years is an ordeal. To bypass that, you need to modify the Ritual of the twelve years to remove/replace the ordeal prior to indoctrination. Tradition within House Bjornaer may be a social impediment to such a project. YSMV on how much this is a gamestopper, and I suppose if you decide to allow a Bjornaer character created without that ordeal, you've decided to undergo a change from the standard setting. If you're doing this mid-campaign, you could always explore the option of initiating a minor virtue to undo the ordeal, but that does require a GM call stating it is possible. And again, how the rest of the House reacts to a Bjornaer finding a loophole arround an Ordeal undergone by the entire House may vary from saga to saga.
As for spirit familiar itself, the first paragraph of the virtue is very clear that the magi can only have one type of familiar, whether normal or spirit familiar. Therefore, a Bjornaer, having lost the ability to have a familiar, cannot use a Spirit Familiar (or the Daimonic version) unless they also have a way to get arround the flaw of the House.