Lore of the Cat: The Moon, The Immortal, and The Seer ~ Pawprints and Purrs, Inc.

The Moon: The cat has always been associated with the moon. Like the moon it comes to life at night, escaping from humanity and wandering over housetops with its eyes beaming out through the darkness.

Ancient Greeks believed that at the beginning of the world the sun and moon created all the animals. The sun created the lion, but it was the moon that brought forth the cat.

The life of the cat has been likened to that of the moon and in some cases, even identified with it. Demetrius Phalarius, a Greek poet, claimed that the cat's sympathy with the moon was such that the size of its body increased and decreased according to the waxing and waning of the lunar orb; that the cat had peculiar reproductory habits, producing litters consisting of first one, then two, then three kittens until it reached a litter of seven. The total number of its young corresponded to the twenty eight degrees of light which appear during the moon's revolution, the cat then stopped having kittens.

At Kirk Braddan in the Isle of Man there is a runic cross built into the wall near the south porch of the parish church. This is a wheel cross, about four feet in diameter, and between each section is carved an animal. Of the four quadrants, three contain cats - one lean, one plumper and the third positively fat - while the fourth displays a shrew mouse. The common number of teeth in rodents is twenty six, the shrew mouse having twenty-eight teeth, again coinciding with the days of the moon's revolution. This animal is fond of burying itself out of sight as the moon does at the end of its last quarter; and is not in fact blind, as believed by the Egyptians. The animals obviously represent the stages of the moon, and the cross is almost certaintly a relic of moon and cat worship.

On the upper arm of the cross, two cats supporting a human face between them are depicted. Plutarch states that the human countenance between two cat-like figures upon a stone is designed to designate that the changes of the moon are regulated by wisdom and understanding.

Sometimes the cat's eyes were identified with the moon, changing as they do from crescent to round. Topsell described how they shine more fully at the full, and more dimly in the changing and wain. He explained that not only is the cat more active after sunset, but the dilation and contraction of its pupils are the waxing and waning of the moon.

It appears that the images of the cat and the moon have been so confused that many people have been unable to distinguish between them.

The cat was worshipped by the Egyptians as a lunar, as well as a solar goddess, and cats where held sacred in all moon temples. Both of Bastet's parents were moon deities and her son, Khensu, was a moon god. One point of view was that Bastet was the moon eye of the sky god, Horus, and another was that she was the night eye of the sun god, Ra. The belief was that during the hours of darkness, the rays of the sun were invisible to man and they were mirrored in the phosphorescent eyes of the cat as light of the sun is reflected in the moon.

Bast's name has been translated as "the Soul of Isis," and in later dynastic times, the cat goddess was very much involved in the cult of her divine mother. The moon cats of Kirk Braddan were a relic of Isiac ritual.

During the Greek period in Egypt, Bastet was identified with Artemis, the foreign moon goddess. A myth tells how when the Greek gods fled into Egypt hotly pursued by the monster Typhon, Artemis transferred herself into a cat and took refuge in the moon. One Egyptian rock temple dedicated to Bastet was called Speos Aremidos, the "Cave of Artemis."

As a goddess of the sun, Bastet could be lion- or cat-headed, but when she personified the moon, she was always a cat. A lion-headed Bastet is easily confused with other goddesses, but a cat-headed deity is indisputably Bastet.

Sometimes Bastet has the limbs and tail of a cat, but she is typically depicted in bronze as an upright, cat-headed figure with human limbs and wearing a long, ribbed and heavily embroidered robe. Sometimes her robe is V-necked, and sometimes she wears a shawl over her shoulders. She may wear a stiff, high collar made of beads or cowrie shells fitting close up under her chin, or a pendant with a sacred eye engraved on it. An engaging bronze cat in the Metropolitan Museum of New York has a garland of lotus blossoms in low relief suspended from a high, tight collar.

Bastet often has long pointed ears, but is also portrayed as bat-eared. The inner hairs of her ears are often shaped to represent the "feather of Maat" (Maat being the Egyptian goddess of truth), and the feather is then picked out in gold.

Bastet usually carries her three emblems - a sistrum, an aegis and a basket - and is believed to be immanuent in them. No other deity bears this trinity of emblems, which is unique to Bastet in her cat-headed form. Leonine Bastets sometimes carry individual emblems but they seem never to have all three.

Bastet is the only know Egyptian aegis bearer and usually carries this little shield in her left hand holding it across her chest. Often the aegis is lion-headed, showing her close affinity to Sekhmet and as a reminder that she can be very fierce. Sometimes the aegis has the head of a cat crowned with a solar disk and uraeus, the emblems of Sekhmet.

The sistrum, which is usually carried in her raised right hand is often Hathor-headed, linking her with the cow goddess of pleasure, and usually has a sacred cat sitting either in the loop or on top of it.

When Bastet bears a rush basket, which is used to carry her kittens, it swings from the crook of her left elbow. Other times, she is portrayed with four erect kittens at her feet.

Bastet is portrayed as slim and elegant or staid and statueque. She is alert and vibrant, other times more restful. But all the still silent images of the goddess have a dignity about them - one is always aware of a stately presence.

The Immortal: The cat that is on the stele in the Turin Museum shows being worshipped by two devotees with an accompanying text of the beautiful cat which endures, endures. When a cat curls up with its head touching its tail, it forms a circle and as such is a symbol of eternity. The circle has no beginning or end; in its roundness there is no before or after. It is static, resting in itself, perfect and complete.

In Scotland, single standing stones of the Neolithic age are known as "cat stanes;" and near Maidstone in Kent, there is a famous cromlech, consisting of a vast block of sandstone resting on three other blocks, which is known as Kit's Coty House. No one knows why such ancient monuments should be associated with cats, but they are symbols of indestructibility and perpetuity.

The cat is a strong, hardy animal. It is suspicious and cautious in its approach to other creatures, and in its wild state it is ferocious. If it falls from a height, it has been known to miraculously land on its feet, which are exceptionally well padded so that it can do so without injury. If not actually immortal, the cat is at least reputed to have nine lives.

Nine is a mystical number, composed as it is of a trinity of trinities, and from the earliest times it has been regarded as specially significant. The River Styx encompassed the Greek hell in nine circles; in Teutonic mythology there were nine worlds over which Odin gave power to Freya, the goddess of love. According to an Egyptian system of astronomy, there were nine spheres and the Egyptian pantheon consisted of three companies of nine gods. The Greek Apollo (brother of the moon goddess, Artemis, with whom Bastet was identified) created the lunar year which consisted of nine months; and in Christian myth the fateful hour of Christ's death was the ninth.

It is said if one takes even one of a cat's nine lives, it will haunt and work its vengeance against that one. In Europe and Africa, to kill or even maltreat a cat was believed to bring bad luck. In India, where Parsees respected the cat as an uncanny animal, the destruction of one was treated as a serious crime. But only in Egypt was cat murder punished by the death penalty, and Herodotus has described how a Roman soldier who killed a cat was promptly lynched by a crowd of outraged Egyptians.

When a household cat died in Egypt, members of the family shaved their eyebrows as a sign of mourning. The cat's master placed the body in a linen sheet, and carried it amidst the bitter lamentations of the bereaved to a sacred house where it was treated with drugs and spices by an embalmer. It was then laid in a specially prepared case and was finally deposited in sacred vaults. Food was often buried with the cats, and this food was continually renewed by incantation recited by priests. In a tomb at Abydos containing the skeletons of seventeen cats, rows of tiny offering pots were found in a recess presumably for receiving milk.

Cat funerals were accompanied by much breast beating, wine drinking and the clashing of cymbals. Cats which had served in temples and been worshipped as representatives of Bastet, were buried in a more sumptuous manner than others and treated with additional honors. The expenses connected with cat funeral rites were met by the donations of pious individuals. Embalmed cats were dispatched from all parts of Egypt to Bubastis, where they were ranged on shelves of collective tombs in an immense cemetery devoted to them.

A rich man's mummied cat would have elaboratedly wound and plaited linen bandages, dyed in two colors, formed into beautiful patterns. The head would be incased in papier mache, with painted linen discs sewn on to represent eyes and nostrils. Midribs of palm leaves would imitate ears, which were always very carefully pricked up. A poor man's cat would be rolled up in a simple bundle, but the rolling would be carefully and respectfully carried out.

The honored relics of cats were also enclosed in mummy cases. The case, which was anything up to three feet high, consisted of wood or of colored, plaited straw which was hollowed out in the shape of a standing or seated cat. It was surmounted by a painted, wooden cat's head. Bodies or bones of cats or kittens were enclosed in smaller bronze or faience cat figures. Mummy cases could have eyes formed of crystal inlaid with gold, the pupils being of black obsidian.

A little bronze cat coffin, which often had the figure of a cat perched on its lid, could be as small as three inches in length - suitable only for a newborn kitten or a fetus. It would be guarded by four bronze kittens sitting on their haunches on its lid.

Embalmment was based on belief in the cat's immortality, for it was hoped that if the physical body was kept alive, the soul of the animal would return. The cat was closely associated with the idea of resurrection. Cat priests took part in rites connected with life beyond the tomb.

The ankh which the solar Bastet sometimes carried, is a symbol of eternity. The word ankh means life - the life, presumably, of the sun since its loop represented a solar disk. Not only did the living wear the ankh as an amulet to prolong their lives, but the emblem was also buried with the dead to renew life and effect resurrection. The scarab was the other sun symbol which also could be buried with the dead to give them power to rise again. A scarab shaped spot found between cats' ears is thought probable recognition of the divinity of those Egyptian cats selected for temple life.

Cats have been believed to enshrine spirits of the dead. Members of certain Gold Coast tribes are still convinced that when people die, their souls pass into cats. In Japan a black patch on the back of a cat - supposed to represent a woman in a kimono - is considered a "sacred mark" by certain sects. All such cats are sent to a temple, for it is assumed that they contain the souls of ancestors.

The "temple mark" of the Siamese cat is a shadowy patch low down on the back of its neck. It is said that a god once picked up a sacred Siamese cat and left the shadow of his hand forever on its descendants. At one time, when a member of Siamese royalty died, one of his cats would buried alive with him. The tomb had small holes pierced in the roof, and when the cat succeeded in escaping through one of them, the priests knew that the soul of the prince had passed into the cat and they conducted the animal to the temple with appropriate honors. When the young King of Siam was crowned in 1926, a white cat was carried by court chamberlains in the procession to the throne room. Presumably, this was the cat which carried the soul of the deceased monarch.

The temple cats of Siam take part in religious ritual. Members of the black coated, golden eyed variety are to be found reclining on cushions in richly ornamented cages, incense burning before them and offerings of food at their sides.

In the eighteenth century, cats played an important part in the ceremonies of a religious order residing in North Burma. The priests practiced secret rites in a subterranean temple called Lao-Tsun, "The Abode of the Gods." They kept a hundred sacred Burmese cats, and one, a golden eyed cat called Sinh, sat with his master at the foot of the statue of a goddess who had eyes of sapphire and presided over the transmutation of souls. Sinh's master was an aged, golden bearded high priest, who lived in rapt contemplation of the goddess. According to legend, when the high priest died one night, Sinh immediately leapt onto his master's throne, taking up his position facing the goddess. For seven days this sacred cat, bearing the soul of the high priest, refused all food and continued to stand erect, gazing into the sapphire eyes of the goddess.

When the time came for Sinh's master to be replaced, the priests assembled, and a hundred temple cats appeared walking in slow procession. The priests prostrated themselves and waited until the cats (which they believed enshrined the souls of their elders), had surrounded their chosen successor to the high priest.

The spirituality of the cat was emphasized when, in later Egyptian theology, Bastet was represented as having wings. It was in the form of a sparrow hawk that her mother, Isis, had hovered over the dead body of Osiris, causing his breath to return by the fanning of her wings. Mut, the Theban mother goddess, was often depicted with the head of a vulture. When Bastet was identified with one of the mother goddesses, she was represented as a cat-headed hawk, and was a symbol of the soaring immortal soul.

The Seer: The eyes of cats are probably responsible for much of the spirituality and the magic that have been attributed to these animals. The cat shares with the snake an unblinking gaze, and its disconcerting habit of staring fixedly into human eyes has a compelling power which affects some people deeply. The pupils of their eyes shine in the darkness, and in half light some reflect a fiery glow.

The Egyptian name for the cat is mau, which means "to see." Cats' eyes have been intimately linked with movements of the sun and moon. It was because Bastet represented the eyes of the all seeing Horus that she was worshipped as both a solar and a lunar goddess.

According to Egyptian myth, the original sky god had only one eye, and when he wept, it was from the tears of this eye that the human beings who peopled the earth were created. This primordial eye was detachable, and the creator god, whose two children had been separated from him, sent the eye off into the abyss to search for his wandering offspring. The eye found the children, but when it returned, it was to discover that another eye had grown and had usurped its place in the god's face.

In order to pacify the outraged eye, the creator god transformed it into a cobra and elevated it to a position on his forehead, from which it guarded his crown. This rearing, poisonous snake which encircled the god's brow was given great majesty, power and magic; but the eye could never be fully or permanently appeased and the anger of the eye (or the aggression of the snake) was no doubt an expression of the raging heat of the sun.

The eye that had ousted the "elevated" one was probably the milder sun, and these two eyes later developed into the solar goddesses, Sekhmet and Bastet, the lion and the cat.

The sky god became known as Horus - it was as if the light of the single eye of the creator had been split into two - the light of the sun and the light of the moon. The power that had first been known as the cobra came to be thought of as the solar and lunar cat.

There is also the myth of the moon, which tells how Horus temporarily lost his lunar eye. The sky god had engaged in a blood curdling combat with the Egyptian devil whose name was Set. During the struggle, in which Horus seized Set's testicles, the devil tore the left eye out of the sky god's head and flung it over the edge of the world. Luckily, Thoth, the ape god of wisdom, guardian of the moon, saw the battle and went off into outer darkness to search for it. He eventually found the lunar orb lying broken in pieces. These he gathered up and reassembled, restoring the full moon to Horus. Another version says that Set tore out the moon eye and swallowed it, but Ra insisted that he put it back where it belonged.

A relief on the wall of the temple of Bubastis showed that when King Osorkon first endowed Bastet with power, he offered her an amulet of the "sacred eye." These eyes of Horus, which the cat goddess represented, had a very powerful magic of their own - perhaps inherited from the archaic cobra. The name for the sacred eye is utchat, meaning "to be in good mental and physical health," and the right or solar eye of Horus was considered to be the source of all human health and happiness.

Many cat amulets have the utchat engraved on them and cats with sacred eyes were often depicted on scarabs, the eye giving the object its power of protection. Utchats frequently adorn the larger bronze figures of cats, having either been engraved directly on their chests or on a suspended penchant carved in relief.

Where the utchat is used as an amulet, it is usually made as a solid plaque. Sometimes a solar disk and uraeus were added to the sacred eye; sometimes it was provided with the wing, leg and claw of a bird, presumably to emphasize its spirituality. An utchat amulet has been found which consists of a large eye with a secondary one inset above it; nineteen long eared cats are sitting on their haunches in rows filling the space above and below the pupil. Separately, the images of the cat and the eye are powerfully magical; in conjuction, the two enhance the magic of one another. Since Bastet was the "flaming eye of Horus," there is a sense in which the "sacred eye" is always that of the cat.

The eyes of Horus protected not only the living but also the dead. In the sixth dynasty, twin utchats appeared on coffins, indicating that the deceased were under protection of solar and lunar deities.

To be cat-eyed is to be able to see in the dark, and the cat goddess, as a personification of the moon and as daughter of Osiris, god of the dead, had her part to play in the underworld. An amulet has been found bearing the inscription: May Bastet revivify the deceased among the glorified. A vignette in a funerary papyrus shows a cat sitting on its haunches, with a scarab beetle depicted above it, and below it a rectangle containing the sacred eye. This cat was believed to take part in the mummification rites of human beings, and was known as "The Cat of Lapis Lazuli." Utchats were often carved from lapis luzuli - perhaps because its intense blue speckled with gold seemed specially suitable for the eye of the sky god.

The ceremonies connected with mummification were magical in origin. As each bandage was laid in position, words were uttered which had the power to preserve the part swathed. After consecration and an invocation to the deceased, the priest took a vase containing ten perfumes and smeared the body twice from head to foot. Certain precious stones were laid on the mummy, and these were considered to have magical significance - i.e., cornelian strengthened the dead's steps, and crystal lighted his face. A special aniointing preceded the bandaging of the head; then the mummy's left hand was filled with thirty six substances which were used in embalming and symbolized the thirty six forms in which the god Osiris revealed himself. When the anointing and bandaging were complete, the ceremony closed with an appropriate address to the participants.

The text of a funerary papyrus was concerned with the welfare of the dead. The utchat drawn near the Cat of Lapis Lazuli emphasized her power to give protection against evil unseen in the darkness of human beings. Deities were believed to be immanuent in the pictorial representations, and the power of the word that the written formulae accompanying them were capable of determining their actions. Therefore, if the Cat of Lapis Lazuli can be taken to represent Bastet, references in the papyrus that she took part in mummification rites actually effected the deity's participation in them. The purpose of embalmment was to ensure the body would live forever, and the scarab stressed the cat's association with resurrection.

The cat's reputation for second sight resulted in its suffering terrible tortures at the hands of people who wanted to acquire the faculty themselves. The eyes of a black cat mixed with the gall of a man was a charm designed to endow human beings with second sight. Those who coveted the power to see demons could find the following prescription in the Jewish Talmad: Find and burn the placenta of the first litter of a black cat, which must have been one of its mother's first litter, then beat it to a powder and rub it into the eyes. It was not, however, always considered necessary to kill a cat in order to participate in its occult powers. People in England used to believe that the mere proximity of a tortoise-shell cat helped one to develop powers of clairvoyance, and children were encouraged to play with them.

The cat goddess of the moon lit up the night, throwing light on things which would otherwise be concealed. By the light of the sun, one sees the outer world, but the moon lights up a world hidden in darkness and it is the cat goddess who brought in-sight with her illumination of the "under," or "inner," world. The moon was thought of as a searcher - a seeker of the truth. Bastest was often known as the "Lady of Truth," and a scarab engraved with a cat is inscribed, Bastet is truth. The beams of the moon point out the way - the Tao; and a narrow path or bridge was called the "cat-walk," perhaps because the cat goddess chose the precarious Middle Way. In French folklore, the black cat shows men the way to wealth, for peasants say if you tie a black cat to a spot were five roads meet and then let it loose, it will lead you straight to a hidden treasure.

It is probably because it was believed that the light of the sun and moon shines through its eyes, the cat came to be associated with Christianity, for Christ is the "Light of the World." Although the game "cat's cradle" had an ancient solar derivation, the name was later interpreted by Christians as "cratch-cradle," - the manger (creche) in which Christ was laid. Christ was mythologically linked with dying and resurrecting sun gods. There is an Italian legend that at the moment when Jesus was born in the stable, a cat gave birth to a kitten under the manger.