Cat Symbolism And Cats In Ancient Egypt..

{ March 14, 2007 @ 12:43 pm } · { Uncategorized }

Bastet and Sekhmet

the Egyptian Cat Goddesses

The Ancient Egyptians revered cats more than any culture in history.
The Goddesses above are Sekhmet, who is lion-headed,
and Bast, who is cat-headed.
Bast is the Patroness of the Clan.
Hail Bast!

Cat Symbolism

Cats are an image of wholeness – a merging of the physical and spiritual, the psychic and the sensual. For a cat, these are not separate worlds, but one. They have been tagged with a variety of traits, including curiosity, nine lives, independence, cleverness, unpredictability, and healing.

During the thousands of years in which the cat has lived among human beings it has been venerated at one period as a deity, and at other times cursed as a demon.

Cats have long been held sacred and linked to images of power. Egyptians named the Goddess Bast as the divine mother of cats. The cat was sacred, and to kill one might be punishable by death. If a cat died,it’s owner went into mourning, performing elaborate funeral rites. Cat cemeteries were established on the banks of the Nile, where the sacred animals were mummified and then laid to rest, together with vast quantities of cat mascots and bronze cat effigies.

The Egyptian term for cat was Mau, an imitation of a cats cry and a mother-syllable.Cat worship began in Egypt, where the first domesticated cats descended from a wild ancestor, felis libyca.

In the Cult of the Cat, Patricia Dale-Green says, ‘Like the moon it (the cat) comes to life at night, escaping from humanity and wandering over the house-tops with its eyes beaming out through the darkness.’ Many people believed the cat was the child of the moon and it was said that ‘the moon brought forth the cat’. This curious link has been regarded as due to ‘the changeableness of the pupils of the eye, which in the daytime is a mere narrow line, dilatable at night to a luminous globe.

From the magic of their eyes arose the belief that cats were seers with strong mediumistic powers. In the East the cat is said to bear away the souls of the dead, and in some parts of West Africa, is accepted that the human soul passes into the body of a cat at death.

Bastet

Bast is the Egyptian Goddess with the body of a beautiful young woman and the head of a cat. She held many, sometimes contradictory, roles. These beliefs were not all necessarily held at the same time, or in the same place. Beliefs shifted over several millennia, and over vast geographical distances.

Bast is the Goddess of cats, the rising sun, the moon, truth, enlightenment,sexuality, physical pleasures, fertility, bounty, birth, plenty, the household and protector of the home, civilization, creation, music, dance, the arts, hemp, and battler of serpents which attack the sun god. Bast also represents the Maiden aspect of the Triple Goddess. She was viewed as the beneficent side of the lioness-goddess Sekhmet.

Name Variations: Bast, Bastet (usually when in full cat form), Pasch, Pasht, Ubasti, Ba en Aset. Sometimes considered to be the Egyptian version of the Greek Artemis and Roman Diana.

Bast was the daughter of Isis and Osiris, the twin sister of Horus, and possessor of his “eye” the sacred and magical “utchat”. As time went on, the utchat became more associated with cats. It was often depicted as cat shaped in later art. It is probable that many of modern Indo-European names for the cat are derived from the word utchat: cat, chat, cattus, gatus, gatous, gato, katt, katte, kitte, kitty, etc. From “Pasht” we get the remaining Indo-European names for the cat: pasht, past, pushd, pusst, puss, pussy, as well as the word “passion”. Bast was also married to of Ptah and mother of the lion god Mihos.

Her worship was centered in delta city of Bubastis.

Sekhmet

Sekhmet (AKA Sekhmet, Sakhmet, or Sekhmet the Destroyer) is the Goddess of sunset, destruction, death, rebirth and wisdom. She is also sometimes defined as a warrior or huntress goddess. The cycle of life and death was created when the primeval Goddess Sekhmet-Bast divided into two sisters, Sekhmet and Bast. Another legend regarding her origins is that she was created by Ra from the fire of his eyes as a creature of vengeance to punish mankind for his sins. Later, she became a peaceful protectress of the righteous, closely linked with the benevolent Bast. The lioness-goddess, worship was centered in Memphis.

Sekhmet is typically shown as a black skinned woman with the head of a lioness. Her eyes and hair are often orange or red. Sekhmet represents the Crone aspect of the Triple Goddess.

Halloween was originally celebrated as the Feast of Sekhmet and Bast.

This Blog was inspired by a question from a new blogging friend to my page,Denis H,Thanx,hope that was good info.