Judika Illes - The Element Encyclopedia of Witchcraft - The Complete A–Z for the Entire Magical World

Historically, attitudes toward cats parallel those toward women: when women have been respected and honored, their psychic gifts cherished, cats are beloved, sometimes deified; when women are perceived as dangerous and perverse, cats have been degraded and demonized. When women’s knowledge is particularly respected, cats are venerated; when women’s knowledge is particularly feared, cats are tortured and killed.

As we begin the twenty-first century, no other animal in the Western world is as identified with witchcraft as the domestic cat, particularly black cats. Black cats are sometimes used as short-hand to represent witches: a common Halloween image depicts a black kitten emerging from a cauldron or peaked hat. It’s not even necessary to see the witch; the kitty’s presence is sufficient for witchcraft to be evoked.

Cats are beautiful, intelligent creatures that cannot be ruled. It is not that they are intentionally disobedient (well, not usually; although as most cat owners will acknowledge, there is the occasional knowing spiteful act), but that the entire concept of obedience is foreign to their nature. Cats perform various services for humans, not least gracing us with their beauty, but only on their own terms; they can only be enticed, not commanded.

Cats epitomize the pleasure principle: sensuous creatures, they crave warmth, fine foods, soft fabrics, the choice seat in the house. Nocturnal, independent and mysterious, cats come and go as they please. Don’t be fooled: although domestic creatures, cats are never entirely tame.

They have profound associations with sex. It’s no coincidence that “ pussy ,” the common nickname for cats, is also a common nickname for the female genitalia. (The word “ puss ” may actually originally derive from “ lepus ” or rabbit, another animal profoundly associated with sex and witchcraft.)

Both male and female cats have reputations as lusty, prodigiously sexual creatures. Female cats will take one lover after another, as will the males. (To accuse a man of “ tom-catting around ” suggests he may not be a prime candidate for “ til death do us part .”)

Since at least the time of Aristotle, cats have been used to symbolize lasciviousness and sexual insatiability, in folklore as well as an artistic device. Cats are affiliated with sexually autonomous female deities like Bastet, Diana, Freya, Hathor, Hecate, Kybele, and Lilith.

During the Witchcraze, women were accused of being sexually insatiable. Because mortal men lacked the capacity to satisfy them, these women craved Satan’s charms, taking demonic lovers who often manifested in the form of black tom cats—or at least that’s the witch-hunter’s version. By the eighteenth century, “cat” had become slang for a prostitute, hence the “ cat house .”

Cats’ associations with sex have deeper implications: cats possess lush fertility. Felis , the scientific name for cats, derives its origin from the Latin root fe , “ to bear young .” Other words deriving from this source are feline, fecund and fetus . Cats, like frogs, are often considered weather harbingers, announcing the start of the fertilizing rain. Jewelry in the form of images of a mother cat surrounded by a large litter of kittens was a popular fertility charm in ancient Egypt.

The earliest indication of intimate relations between people and cats derives from a recently discovered (2004) burial in Cyprus, dating back approximately 9500 years ago. A carefully buried cat was discovered inches from a human burial, which also contained jewelry, polished stones, shells, and tools. The cat’s bones were arranged to parallel that of the human and displayed no signs of butchering. It appears to have been a beloved companion animal. Cats are not native to Cyprus and so it is believed to have been imported (although cats are notorious stowaways on ships).

General wisdom suggests that cats were first domesticated in Egypt (although Libya or Nubia are alternative suggestions), where domestic cats were bred at least four thousand years ago. (However, because of that recently discovered burial, dates are being retabulated backwards.) Ancient Egypt certainly provides the first written records of cats, the clearest evidence of domestic cats and the closest identification with deification of cats.

As Egyptian culture became increasingly agrarian, stored grain attracted mice and other vermin, who, in their turn, attracted cats, who very quickly demonstrated their usefulness to people. Cats became sacred guardians of the grain. (See ERGOT.)

The most famous sacred Egyptian cat is Bastet, whose titles included Mistress of the Oracle and Great Conjuress of the Casket . She is depicted as a cat, often bejeweled, or as a woman with a cat’s head, sometimes surrounded by kittens. Bastet has dominion over sex, fertility, marriage, magic, music, childbirth, prosperity, joy, dance, and healing—in short the pleasures of life. She provides humans with a range of protections: against infertility, the dangers of childbirth, evil spirits, illness and bodily injuries, especially those caused by venomous creatures. A tomb inscription says Bastet bestows “ life, prosperity and health every day and long life and beautiful old age .”

Bastet offers special protection to women and children and serves as matron of magicians and healers. Her cult originated in the swamps of the Nile Delta. The earliest known portrait of Bastet dates to c. 3000 BCE. She was a pervasive figure in Egypt from about 2000 BCE, and by about 950 BCE, her cult was found throughout Egypt; she was the most popular female deity in the kingdom. Worship of Bastet reached its zenith during the reign of Osorkon II (874–853) when a major temple was erected at her cult city Bubastis. Devotion to Bastet officially survived until 30 BCE and the Roman conquest.

Bastet’s annual festival in Bubastis was Egypt’s most popular festival. An ancestor of today’s Mardi Gras, the festival was renowned for its parties, revelry, and drunkenness. Herodotus, the Greek traveler and historian writing in the fifth century BCE, claimed that more wine was consumed in Egypt during this festival than during the entire remainder of the year. Although many details have been lost, Bastet’s festival celebrated female sexuality and generative power. Boats sailed up the Nile headed for Bubastis. As a barge approached towns and settlements on its way to the festival, it would halt and the mainly female celebrants on board would loudly hail the local women congregating on the riverbanks. They would shout sexual obscenities to each other, dance wildly, and perform ana-suromai , the ritual act of lifting up the skirts to expose the vulva, associated with laughter, healing, and defiance of grief.

Bastet, daughter of the sun, is a solar spirit, associated with the life-giving warmth of the sun. (Her sister Sekhmet, a lioness, represents the sun’s scorching, destructive potential.) Bastet possesses lunar associations as well. She is the mother of the moon. Her son Khonsu was reputedly able to impregnate women with his moonbeams. (That belief survives in the superstition against single women sleeping exposed to moonlight.)

The Greek biographer Plutarch, writing in the first century CE, suggested that one of the reasons Egyptians worshipped cats is that cats’ nocturnal habits reveal powerful lunar affiliations. Cats’ eyes also appear to grow in size and luminosity in harmony with the moon’s waxing. The ancient Egyptian cat was not exclusively a sacred temple animal but was also a family pet or domestic animal, a bit of holiness in one’s own home. Although Egypt had many sacred animals, no others lived so intimately with so many people. (Compare and contrast other sacred creatures, like baboons or crocodiles, which by necessity were kept at a distance.) Familiarity didn’t breed contempt, however: even a house cat maintained its mysterious, sacred nature. Herodotus reports that anyone convicted of intentionally killing a sacred animal was sentenced to death, and to varying extents all cats were sacred. Four hundred years later, the Sicilian historian Diodorus Siculus (born c. 100 BCE) witnessed an incident where a Roman official accidentally killed a cat and was promptly lynched by a mob. Although the fact that he was a Roman official suggests that the cat may have been the last straw in a deadly dynamic, Diodorus suggests that the situation wasn’t uncommon and that most such deaths occurred as spontaneous lynchings by enraged mobs before the person could be legally tried and judged. When a pet cat died, it was customary for the human family with whom it lived to shave their eyebrows as a sign of mourning and respect.