Lore of the Cat: The Circle and The Devourer ~ Pawprints and Purrs

The Circle: When a cat lies coiled at the fireside, it gives a sense of repose and completion - the circle that forms the symbol of eternity. However, there is such a thing as a vicious circle and this unpleasant aspect of its symbolism is represented by a black cat lying curled up. Black cats are often felt to be uncanny and some say they are distinctly sinister.

Cats and snakes share in their light aspects certain physical habits and certain associations in myth and folklore. Snakes are poisonous, cats hiss and spit and the image of the black cat and that of the dark serpent can be interchangeable.

Many mythologies tell of a cosmic serpent which lies encircling the whole world, holding its tail in its mouth. This all-powerful being is hermaphroditic, self-begetting and has no beginning or end. It is static and eternal and is found in widely differing cultures around the world. The Babylonians called it "Tiamat," the Hebrews called it "Leviathan," and sometimes this image of the coiled serpent merges with the image of the coiled cat.

In Teutonic myth the earth was called Midgard because it existed midway between heaven and hell. In this case, an account is given of how the monster was born and met its end, but as both the preceding and superseding Nordic gods had their serpents, there is still a sense in which it was "static and eternal."

The Midgard Serpent was the offspring of Loki, the Devil, and of the Hag, who was known as the "Mother of Evil." Odin, father of the gods, who lived in the celestial city of Asgard, discovered early on by means of divination, that this young monster was being reared in the nether regions with the express purpose of bringing disaster to the gods. It not overcome, Thor, the mighty god of thunder, would be killed by it. This information flung Odin into a raging fury and he commanded that the young serpent be brought to him immediately. Finding it was already immensely long and very ferocious, he seized the creature and hurled it over the walls of Asgard. Its weight was so great that, instead of disappearing over the edge of the world as the indignant god intended, it fell short into the depths of the ocean. Lying on the slimy oceanbed, the serpent grew and grew until eventually it completely encircled Midgard and was able to grasp its own tail.

Thor, however, could never feel really safe so long as the Midgard Serpent was alive. He made several attempts to kill it, but always come off much the worse for wear.

One day the god of thunder decided to make a journey into the land of the frost giants, whose icy blasts were blighting the fields of Midgard. He was accompanied on this escapade by Loki. After overcoming many obstacles, they came to an ice castle where they found the king of the frost giants enthroned. After an extremely chilly welcome, the king tauntingly invited Thor to prove his strength. A huge gray cat leapt forward and sat before the throne. The king challenged the god of thunder to lift it off the floor. Thor confidently approached the cat and grasped it firmly, placing his hands under its belly. When he tried to pick it up, the animal bent its great head back and, although the god used all the strength he could muster, he only succeeded in lifting one of its paws off the floor. The king added to Thor's humiliation by remarking that the god appeared a puny weakling compared with his own race of giants.

In all the trials of his strength and skill, Thor dismally failed. The next day when he was taking leave of the frost giants, their king pointedly asked him if he felt satisfied with his visit. The god confessed that he had been covered with shame, that what caused him the greatest anguish was that he would be dubbed a man of little account. The giant had the grace to admit that Thor had only failed because he had been grossly deceived and in fact, the giants had the greatest respect for the thunder god's power and skill. The king of the frost giants explained how, when Thor had struggled with the great cat, they had all marvelled at his strength and were terrified when they saw him lift a single paw off the floor; for the cat was none other than the Midgard Serpent which encircled the earth.

A desciption of the final death struggle between Thor and the serpent, during the cataclysmic battle at the Twilight of the Gods, shows the full power and horror of this monster who had taken the form of a cat. The serpent writhed in rage on the oceanbed, so that waves as high as mountains billowed over the shores of the earth. As it reared its shaggy head out of the sea, it breathed out fire. Faced with the god of thunder, it coiled and uncoiled, pouring floods of venom over him and suffocating him with its poisonous breath.

The images of the encircling serpent and the cat are closely associated in a Christian myth found in the Coptic apocryphal gospel, Pistis Sophia. In this myth, Jesus describes to the Virgin Mary how the outer darkness is a great serpent, the tail of which is in its mouth, and it is outside the whole world, and surroundeth the whole world. In this serpent of darkness, there are twelve halls in which severe punishment is inflicted, and there are governors in charge of each hall. The governor of the second judgment hall "hath as his true face the face of the cat," and there are seven cat-faced governors in charge of the eleventh hall. It is almost as if the image of hell were split into two, with the serpent representing its passive, engulfing aspect and the cat playing the role of its vengeful executive.

It is possible that these cat-faced governors were forms of the pre-Christian god, Osiris - the father of Bastet - who was closely associated with the goddess of law and justice. As Ruler of the Dead, Osiris is often portrayed holding a royal whip with nine lashes. Perhaps our comparatively modern cat o'nine tails derives from the practices of these torturing officals of the Coptic hell.

The Devourer: In life the cat and the snake fight each other. Although the images of the cat and the serpent sometimes overlap in mythology, they more often stand in opposition. When the shining, celestial cat of the sun god, Ra, fought the advancing darkness of the night, the devourer took form of a serpent. The snake can also be a symbol of light and life - when the setting sun took the form of the fiery asp, then it was the cat who incarnated darkness, chaos and death. The cosmic cat in its dark, demonic aspect was, like the Coptic serpent of hell, the devourer of all that had form.

Devourers of the magnitude of the encircling serpent, or of the cat that swallowed the sun, are always hermaphroditic. They have not got as far as sorting themselves into male and female. Since the sun, with its penetrating rays, is essentially a symbol of the masculine principle, it was the passive, engulfing aspect of the cat that was emphasized in this context. She emerged as a symbol of the darker aspect of femininity.

The black cat took its place among the great devouring goddesses (sometimes shown as bearded to remind one that they are not wholly feminine) that are to be found in most mythologies. She joined the ranks of those female deities who played cat and mouse with the handsome young fertility gods of the spring: loving, castrating and finally slaying them. Although the sun goddess, Freya, whose chariot was drawn by a lively pair of cats, primarily represented fruitfulness, she also led the Valkyries to the battlefields, claiming from Odin her right to choose men destined to be devoured by death. As a death goddess, she was known in Germany as Hel, and she represented there the destructiveness of the winter months.

As a vehicle of the German goddess, Hel, or of the Greek Goddess, Hecate, the black cat was considered by many people to be an omen of death. There appears to be no end to the stories told of black phantom cats that have been seen by dying people and/or their relatives when death is imminent. Typical is one of a woman who was nursing her sick grandfather. As she left his room one night, walking down a corridor, a strange black cat appeared and fled past her. She ran after it, but in spite of searching the whole house, was unable to find any trace of it. Her mother later confessed that she also had seen a strange cat walking around the invalid's bed that evening, but when she tried to find the cat, it seemed to have vanished into thin air. The following day the grandfather died.

Germans believed that if a black cat jumped onto the bed of someone who was ill, it foretold his approaching death. In Normandy it was believed that if a black cat crossed your path in moonlight, you would probably die from an epidemic within the year, while the Chinese thought a black cat was an omen of sickness and poverty.

Among the less enduring habits of cats is the way in which they maim and destroy birds and mice. The bird, which spends its days in sunlit skies, is a symbol of the life of the soaring spirit. A mosaic found in the ruins of Pompeii, depicts a bright-eyed cat pouncing on a bird, powerfully expressing this dark aspect of the cat, seen as a feminine destoyer of male spirituality.

Similarly, though mice are usually portrayed as demonic, mice also often represent the soul. In Teutonic folklore, they were considered to be souls of the dead. The mouse was sacred to the Greek sun god, Apollo, whose priests kept white mice. The mice had their holes under Apollo's altar and were daily fed as a religious rite. It is said that the cat was the only animal not allowed to attend the Buddha's funeral, for it had disgraced itself by killing the rat that had been sent to fetch medicine to heal him. Snakes also feed on rodents and the cat and poisonous viper had apparently distinguished themselves by failing to weep when the Buddha died. In mythology, when the cat is black and evil, the mice are usually white and numious; when the cat is white and a symbol of spirituality, then the mice appear as black and demonic.