How Cats Became A Symbol of Femininity
Unveiling the History and Mythology Behind the Feline Connection to Women
Unveiling the History and Mythology Behind the Feline Connection to Women
Cats have a long history of being associated with feminine energy. This is because they are often thought to be nurturing, mysterious, and submissive. The “Catwoman” have also become very prominent in popular culture. From Eartha Kitt to Beyoncé, many female singers, artists, and movies have borrowed from the feline archetype and imagery to explore these feminine aspects of power, beauty, attraction, and allure.
Cats represent grace, intelligence, sensuality, and independence. Although cats are self-sufficient, they still desire our love attention and affection. It is no wonder that a famous British psychologist, Ernest Jones, often associated cats with humanity's dark feminine side. This mysterious, mischievous nature coincides with a woman’s more aggressive, seductive, and even assertive feminine characteristics. With that in mind, it can be argued that cats represent feminine energy and power.
The love and nurturing nature that a cat provides to its young, is also very similar to the mother’s love and care in the human species. Cats are often very maternal and associated with the softness of femininity as they tend to their offspring.
Cats played a significant role in Ancient Egyptian spirituality, society, and culture. In fact, they were worshiped, deified, and mummified as well. Cats were seen as sacred as a sign of luck, fertility, and a valuable domesticated cohabitant to control rodents and vermin that would threaten diseases or deplete the crops and food storage in their homes. Killing a cat in Ancient Egypt would be punished by death.
It was believed that cats were an incarnation of the goddess Bast aka Bastet. As one of the most renowned goddesses, Bast represented good luck, fertility, pleasure, mystery, sensuality, and protector of women and childbirth.
The original feline power was the goddess Sekhmet, who was worshiped prior to Bastet. She was the lioness goddess who was associated with war, retribution, rage, destruction, and death. She was the most unpredictable and deadly of the two feline goddesses. While both of them were powerful protectors of women, childbirth, and the home, Bastet emerged later as the domesticated feline that was softer, warm, and benevolent.
However, the divine mother goddess energy is at the core of them both, as they are both evolving aspects of the dual energy and balance of the goddess, Hathor. Hathor was the Egyptian cow goddess of motherhood, love, fertility, and all things feminine, preceding them both as the symbol of all aspects of the divine feminine principle. She is both creation and destruction, and the harmony and balance that was at the root of the Ancient Egyptians beliefs.
Egyptians were fascinated with duality and the relationship between opposites and contrasting sides. This was reflected in how they saw the Nile river separate the land from east to west and how the river flowed south to north. As well as how they observed their lush cultivated land contrasted with the harsh arid desert once the river receded. To them, this was simply the dual power of the goddess. She demonstrated the healer and destroyer within and its complimentary and contradictory aspects, all in the name of creation.
In Ancient Egypt, the goddess was a complex and evolving aspect of our emotions, passions, instincts, and creative forces. All of these ideas just continued to be reflected by the feline characteristics.
Bastet was one of the most worshiped deities in Ancient Egyptian mythology and is still seen as a protector of the home. She is often seen as having power over fertility, and a guardian against evil.
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