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CAT
To the ancient Eyptians, a cat mummy like this one from Abydos symbolized the abiding protection and favour of Isis, Mother Goddess, and Bast, the moon goddess who was herself cat-headed.
    Its eyes being variable, the cat symbolizes the varying power of the sun and the waxing and waning of the moon and the splendour of the night; it also denotes stealth; desire; liberty. As black it is lunar, evil and death; it is ony in modern times that a black cat has been taken to signify good luck. Amerindian: The wild cat portrays stealth. Celtic: Chthonic powers; funerary. Chinese: A yin animal as nocturnal; powers of evil; powers of transformation. A strange cat is unfavourable change; a black cat, misfortune, illness. Christian: Satan; darkness; lust; laziness. Egyptian: Lunar; sacred to Set as darkness; as lunar the cat can also be an attribute of Isis and of Bast, the moon; it represents pregnant women as the moon makes the seed grow in the womb. Graeco-Roman: Attribute of the lunar Diana. The goddess of liberty has a cat at her feet. Japanese: Powers of transformation; peaceful repose. Scandanavian: Attribute of Freyja, whose chariot is drawn by cats. Witchcraft: A familiar and disguise of witches; the black cat as the witches' familiar is evil and ill luck. Cats and dogs as witches' familiars are rain-makers.
— J.C. Cooper, An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Traditional Symbols, Thames and Hudson, London, 1978, p. 30 (Image: Egyptian Cat Mummy, An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Traditional Symbols, p. 30)

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CAT
Mao = cat, and mao = octogenarian, are phonetically close; so a picture showing cats and butterflies expresses the wish that the recipient should live to by 70 or 80. A cat with a plum (mei = plum is phonetically close to mei = each, every, always) and bamboos (zhu = bamboo is phonetically close to zhu = to wish, pray) means: "At all times we wish that you may reach a ripe old age.
    If a strange cat has her kittens in one's house this is a very bad sign: even if she only enters the house it is an omen of poverty, because the cat knows that lots of rats are going to come and eat the family out of house and home. Mothers warn children who won't go to sleep that the cat will come and get them.
    Cat flesh is not eaten in North China, a prohibition which does not apply in the South. Nor was the cult of the cat known in South China, which was practised in Gansu. North Chinese cats catch mice, but in South China, especially in the Canton area, they are said to be too lazy to bestir themselves. Because of its very good eyesight, the cat can see spirits in the dark. In the province of Zhejiang white cats are never kept, because they get on to the roof at night and steal the moonbeams: they can even turn into mischievous spirits. For this reason too dead cats should never be buried lest they turn into demons; it is safer to hang them up on trees. In Taiwan one may still occasionally see a tree festooned with dead cats.
    It was believed that if a cat jumped over a coffin, the corpse was revived and become 'undead', to haunt the area. In short, the cat has demonic powers: it has its uses as a mouse-catcher, but it can also be a very dangerous creature indeed.
    A girl who dolls herself up a lot and flirts around is castigated as a 'black cat'. The mountain cat is the hare. Insincerity in someone is described as 'the cat weeping over the mouse' (which it has just eaten!). Chinese painting: (above) A cat looking at a peony: "May you be rich!"
— Wolfram Eberhard, A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1986, pp. 58-59. (Image: Chinese Cat, A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols, p. 58)

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CAT
Superstition: Deadly diseases can be given to a child by a cat sucking its breath. Source: There is still today a strong association between cats and ancient witchcraft. But cats have been the familiars of those that perform magic since long before medieval witchcraft was born, as far back as Egyptian times. Particularly black cats were thought to be possessed of special powers which helped the magician, or later the witch, perform magical tasks, black being associated with the power of death. The source is probably based on vampirism and the sucking of the spirit or life from the defenseless body. Left: Portrait of a Little Girl (1969) by Fred Aris (courtesy of the Portal Gallery).

It was securely asserted right up to Victorian times that animals possessed no soul and were, for all practical purposes of a much lesser value than mankind, and superior being on this planet. With the advent of the extraordinary amount of damage that man has sustained on his world, we may be less willing to place ourselves at the head of the superiority stakes today. In fact we tend now to look upon animals as having many qualities that man could learn from, and the world of superstition is no exception. Right: Ancient Egyptians believed cats had souls and we have the overwhelming evidence of literally millions of their mummified remains, like this example, to prove it.

Superstition: The psychic powers of animals.
Lore and Sources: Dogs are said to be able to tell coming death and danger and can reputedly see ghosts, while cats, in the world of mysticism, carry a far higher magical power than ever man pretended. The origin of cat-power derives almost certainly from the original Egyptian worship of the cat emblem "Bast" in the city of Bubastes. Anyone visiting a museum of Egyptian artifacts will find the beautiful Bast cat sitting eleganlty with the paws positioned perfectly in front, the dark black coloring strongly reminiscent of power and black magic. The witchcraft of the Middle Ages turned the black cat into the "familiar"; a creature that could change shape and perform or help perform rituals and spells for the witch. Today, we fear the black cat that crosses our path. This represents most clearly the conflict that existed between the Church, the cross and the pagan practices of witchcraft.
    If a black cat walks towards you in America and Europe, it brings good fortune, but if it walks away, it takes the luck with it. Mothers should always keep cats away from babies because they "suck the breath" of the child like a vampire. If we watch cats while they snuggle up to us on our laps, they will tend to come close to the mouth and sniff. One can imagine how this might have seemed, given the fear of dark forces, like a sucking motion that might endanger a child by sucking out its life. Right: While it was usually a cat that was a familiar for a witch and a dog for a wizard, the concept of all totem animals has a long and persistent history.
— Peter Lorie, Superstitions, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1992, pp. 56, 134
(Images: Fred Aris, Portrait of a Little Girl, Cat Mummy, Egyptian Cat, Peter Lorie's Superstitions, pp. 56, 134)

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CAT: femininity
In Egypt, the cat (aelurus) was a symbol of the moon. It was worshipped in the form of the great cat, Mau, who, in the Book of the Dead, struck down the mythological snake Apophis who had tried to capsize the solar barque. It was also the goddess Bast, a personification of the sun's power of fertility. Bast protected the sun against snakes while it slept. The Thebans called the female cat lady of heaven.
• Muslims thought the cat a lucky animal with seven lives, but a black cat had magical powers.
• In China, the cat (mao) is a symbol of clairvoyance, linked to the moon and to everything that characterizes it. In some regions, it is thought to have demonic powers, and be able to see spirits at night. White cats were thought to transform themselves by night into harmful spirits because they had stolen the moon's rays.
• Traditionally, the cat was thought to have a feminine nature, and the Pawnee Indians of North America use the wild cat as a symbol of shrewdness and ingenuity. Just as in fairy tales it personifies savoir-faire with a penchant for lies and hypocrisy. In other traditions, it is malevolent because it possesses the subtlety and evasiveness of the devil, and is thought of as a symbol of death.
• In dreams a cat signifies an agonizing situation; and is often resented as hostile, aggressive and formidable. According to Aeppli, who retains the Pawnee's symbolic interpretation, this animal with 'shiny fur that crackles when stroked, and offers a velvet paw at one moment and strikes with all claws out the next, appears particularly in women's dreams, just when they are becoming aware of feline characteristics within their own natures.'
— Nadia Julien (Ed.), The Mammoth Dictionary of Symbols
     translated by Elfreda Powell (from 1989 Belgian edition)
     Carroll & Graf Publishers, New York, 1996, pp. 65-66

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CATS:
Nocturnal and independent, the cat is a less virile symbol than the dog, being lunar rather than solar, and endowed with the hidden mysteries of the female rather than with the more open strengths of the male. The cat was domesticated by the ancient Egyptians around 2000 BC, and came to represent Bastet, the moon goddess, as well as other deities. The Chinese credited the cat with the ability to banish evil spirits, although its entry into a house was seen as an omen of poverty. In the West, the cat represented Satan, lust and darkness, and its best-known symbolic appearance is as the black familiar of the witch. In their more favourable aspect, cats were seen as rain-makers, perhaps owing to their acute sensitivity to water.
Bastet
With its fixity of gaze, the cat symbolized watchfulness to the Egyptians. It stood for Bastet, the moon goddess, who coldly and calmly surveyed the doings of men and beast. [Bast has been dated to 2890-2686 BC, depicted on temple walls as a woman with head of a cat, lion, or large desert cat. Bast became associated with the domestic cat around 1000 BC. "Bastet" is the most common mistranslation of Her name.]
The Jaguar's Eyes
South American Indians believed that the mirrored eyes of the jaguar were a conduit to the realm of the spirits. Shamans claimed to see the future through a jaguar's eyes. [Irene R. Siegel's Eyes of the Jaguar is a journal of one woman's initiatory "journey into the nagual into Incan Shamanism with the totemic power animals of the Four Winds.]
Cats
Cats can stand for domesticity, but are also used to represent cruelty (perhaps because of their hunting habits) and liberty (since they are difficult to catch). In the Celtic world, cats symbolized evil and were used in ritual sacrifice.
The Tiger
Particularly revered in China, the tiger symbolized ferocity and protectiveness, and images of it often adorned gateposts and entrances to buildings. Considered to be king of the beasts, it represented vitality and animal energy.
— David Fontana, The Secret Language of Symbols, Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 1993, p. 85
(Images: Bastet, Jaguar's Eyes, Three Cats with Mouse, Tiger from Cats Page, Fontana's Secret Language of Symbols, p. 85)

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CAT:
Ancient Egyptian cat deities were associated with wild cats who fought desert snakes. The cat in the Sun god Ra's boat conquered the serpent Apep. Later, the domestic cat goddess Bastet (left) became a protective deity, a mother who protected her young, so that cats were often venerated and mummified in Ancient Egypt. The Chariot of the Norse goddess Freyja was said to be drawn by two cats.
    Cats were reviled as unclean by the early Jews. In medieval times they were feared by Christians, who associated them— particularly black cats with witchcraft. The Chinese and Japanese believed cats could release evil spirits in corpses. In Buddhism they are cursed because, along with the snake, they did not weep at Buddha's death.
    However, models of cats with one paw raised in a beckoning gesture, called manekineko, are put in the windows of bars and restaurants in Japan because they are thought to bring prosperity. (p. 194)
— Rowena & Rupert Shepherd, 1000 Symbols, Thames & Hudson, London, 2002
(Image: Egyptian Cat Logo, 1000 Symbols, p. 194)

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Cat:
Cats were sacred to the Egyptians, who named them after their own feline speech, Mau. The divine Mother of all cats was the Goddess Bast, whose sacred city of Bubastis was famous for its joyous and elaborate festivals. The Greeks identified Bast with Artemis, whose Roman name was Diana, the name that became widely known in the Middle Ages as Queen of Witches. Therefore the cat was identified with witchcraft and (even worse) with Goddess worship, which accounts for its frequent appearance as a witch's familiar and an emblem of Halloween. The Goddess Freya rode in a chariot drawn by cats, recalling ancient images of the Mother of the Gods, Cybele, in her chariot drawn by two lions; and Freya too was suspected of evil magic by patriarchal thinkers.
    Superstitious belief in the cat's magic powers has survived into the present day. Some people even go so far as to turn and retreat if they see a black cat crossing their path. The cat's magic was not always malevolent or "bad luck". Albertus Magnus, the teacher of Saint Thomas Aquinas, insisted that a man could become invisible by wearing on his thumb the ear of a black cat, boiled in the milk of a black cow. Apparently the recipe was never tested; or if it was, the negative results were ignored. Some people still believe that a cat can smother an infant in the crib, because crib death used to be blamed on vampire-cats sucking babies' breath. (pp. 367-368)
(Image: Black Cat, www.inthehoopdesigns.com)

Cat's Eye:
Other than the comparatively rare chrysoberyl cat's eye stones, most cat's eye or tigereye minerals consist of chatoyant quartz: that is, a translucent variety with inclusions of some other fibrous mineral capable of reflecting light in the characteristic straight ray resembling the slit pupil of a cat.
    The Arabs assigned very peculiar properties to such a stone. They believed it could make its wearer invisible in battle. They also believed it could prevent an adulterous wife from conceiving children by her lover, provided her husband made her drink milk in which the stone had been dipped, before he went away on a journey. Perhaps the stone, perceived as an eye, was thought to affect various phenomena of vision and watching. (p. 506) (Image: Cat's Eye Gemstone, www.rudraksha-ratna.com)

Familiar:
The idea of a witch's familia spirit, or demon, or imp, embodied in some kind of animal, arose from the ancient concept of the personal daemon in animal form. Sometimes this was imagined as a guardian or tutelary spirit, like the totem animals of the American Indians. Sometimes it was viewed as an animal incarnation of a part of one's own soul, like the ba of the Egyptians. Just as a loved person could be considered a kindred soul, so a beloved pet might also seem soul-connected.
    All these ideas of connection between human and animal were more or less diabolized under the Christian system, which regarded animals as soulless or demonic, or at the very least devoid of any feelings that needed consideration. Men, jealous of women's propensity to make pets of animals and treat them with love, soon found ways to condemn women for sensual, affectionate relationships with their dogs or cats. A woman seen fondling or talking to her pet fell under suspicion of witchcraft. Even a woman who spoke to any animal, as one might say "Hello there" to a squirrel or a bird, could be considered a witch. During the centuries of persecution, women were often burned for keeping cats, or nurturing lambs, or talking to frogs, or raising colts, or even for having mice in the house or toads in the garden.
    Black animals were especially suspected of harboring demons, since black was the color of underworld beings in general. That is why the popular image of a witch is attended by a black cat, even today. Witch-finders insisted that their victims suckled familiar demons through a supernumerary teat located somewhere on their bodies, and this was identified with the "devil's mark". An important aspect of witch-finding was stripping the accused woman and searching minutely for this mark, or pricking her all over with sharp instruments, which the male investigators seemed to enjoy. Needless to say, no one ever succeeded in distinguishing "familiars" from ordinary animals. (p. 247) (Image: Oliver Sits: Crow Woodcut, www.thisnext.com)

Halloween:
Our Halloween rituals are relics of the pagan All Hallows Eve, the original nighttime festival according to the lunar calendar, preceding the solar-calendar daytime version that was Christianized as "All Saints". The festival used to be the Feast of the Dead (Celtic Samhain, or Vigil of Saman). It was perhaps the most important of the cross-quarter days, when the "crack between the worlds" could open up and let the spirits pass through. Therefore the ghosts of dead ancestors could revisit the earth, join their descendans at the feast, and give necromantic interviews and omens. In Ireland, all the sidh or fairy hills (grave mounds) were said to open up for the occasion. Folks insisted that it was impossible to keep the fairies underground on Halloween. Since these "fairies" were simply pagan spirits, the church naturally insisted that demons were abroad on Halloween, summoned by witches, which was the usual term for the ancient pagan priestesses whose business it was to communicate with the dead.
    Halloween trick-or-treat customs descended from a belief that the family dead would bring gifts or goodies to the children during their temporary return from the other world. Gifts, food, and sweets were always the standard method of attracting children's attention to religious holidays, as is still shown by our own Christmas and Easter customs. Thus, "the dead relations have become the good fairies of the little ones." Black cats, owls, bats, and broomsticks were the familiar spirits and tools commonly associated with witches, who retained a dominant position in the Feast of the Dead despite the church's attempt to assimilate it in honor of its own canon of saints. (p. 180)
(Image: Witch on Broom, bestfreeclipart.com)

Sistrum:
The sistrum was a sacred rattle, used in the worship of the Egyptian Great Goddess (Isis, Nephthys, or Hathor). The sound of its clattering wires was said to dispel evil spirits, the same kind of magic later attributed to church bells in medieval Europe. It was decorated with various designs, sometimes a head of the Goddess, sometimes a small phallus representing her consort.
    Egyptian paintings show the sistrum not only in the hand of the Goddess herself, but also in the hands of her priestesses and other high-ranking women. Plutarch relates its many mystical meanings. The curved top stood for the orbit of the moon, presided over by a figure of the Goddess in her cat for (Bast). The four rattles represented the four elements whereby she created the universe. Their sound indicated mingling of the elements in the process of creation. (p. 105) (Image: Bronze Sistrum with Head of Hathor, www.vroma.org)

— Barbara G. Walker, The Woman's Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects
     HarperSanFrancisco, San Francisco, 1988

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CAT
(1) Cats are often symbolic of what you associate with them, or how you feel about them in general (the color may also be important). (2) Associated with independence, aloofness, and self-sufficiency. (3) May represent immature sexuality. (4) Since they roam at night and can see in the dark, cats can represent intuition or the subconscious. (5) Metaphorically, can be used as follows: being catty = being sneaky, malicious, a gossip, or making hateful remarks toward another; as playful as a cat = having a good time or fun with whoever or whatever is available; letting the cat out of the bag = disclosing a secret. (6) A black cat is often symbolic of bad luck.
— Kevin J. Todeschi, The Encyclopedia of Symbolism, A Perigee Book, New York, 1995, p. 60

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BAST, LADY OF FLAME
Bast is most popularly known in her domestic cat form, although she too adopts the guise of a lioness when identified with Sekhmet or Hathor. Egyptian writings show her to be the Sun's heat of spring and early summer, nurturing life which comes forth from the moist earth, after the Nilotic inundation has receded. Hence she is a goddess of teeming fertility, and often appears with her kittens around her. So close was she to Hathor in her mild, joyous character that the two goddesses and their festivals were almost indistinguishable. Hathor's own holy city, Dendera, was even called "Per-Bast of the South", after Bast's own city, and contained an important temple of the cat-goddess.
    Bast appears as a cat, or a cat-headed woman, dressed in an unusual patterned robe which Egyptologists believe indicates her foreign origins. The red colour of her dress recalls other Sun-goddesses who wear red garments, such as Baltic Saule amd the Australian aboriginal Sun-woman. In both these examples the red garment symbolizes the rising Sun. Since Bast is "Lady of the East" (like Hathor) and personifies the gentle warmth of the Sun, we may regard her also as the power of the morning sunrays, as opposed to Sekhmet who is the fierce heat of noon, and who declines to her home in the Mountain of the Setting Sun.
— Janet McCrickard, Eclipse of the Sun: Sun and Moon Myths, Gothic Image Publications, Glastonbury, Somerset, UK, 1990, pp. 196-197 (Image: Bast, www.waterholes.com)

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BLACK JAGUAR
Black Jaguar represents the duality of life: the forces of light and dark. The sun and the moon. day and night, life and death, death and re-birth, truth and illusion. With its highly reflective eyes it was thought that the jaguar had the power of divination and the ability to see into the future. The jaguar is revered as a divine figure and the possessor of knowledge. The Toltec's believed that the yellow jaguar was the Sun God who became a black jaguar at night to travel unseen in the spirit world. Eclipses were caused when the jaguar swallowed the Sun and the black jaguar could be born into the earth reality when the sun returned. It is said that a Great Being came to the Mayan people from the stars, and taught them that the greatest of all virtues was integrity. He instructed the people in the beauty of unconditional love, forgiveness, and peace and to be honorable and trustworthy. Where the jaguar found hearts blackened with hatred, greed or dishonesty, he would haunt those unfortunate souls, relentlessly stalking them until they embraced the wisdom of integrity and transformed their lives. (Panther Mythology)
— Robbyne LaPlant-Seaman, "2009 The Year of the Black Jaguar"
(Image: Black Jaguar, www.whitewolfjourneys.com)