CATS!!! Creatures, kitties, witches, and gods: What's so wicked about our favorite felines?

With fun facts re: djinn, jaguars, suffrage, and Da Vinci. Plus gratuitous fur baby photos!

Oct 15, 2024

What’s so witchy about cats?

The pervasive belief that witches are malevolent servants of the devil took root in medieval Europe. At the time, Satan was evolving into a lead character in the Christian narrative, inspiring endless monikers and a fallen angel/prince of darkness subplot. Cats became collateral damage.

TLDR: be sure to scroll to the end for photos of her Highness Queen Zenobia of the Floof, long may she reign.

Magic is lawful neutral

In the pre-Christian world, magic was ubiquitous, morally neutral, and practiced by all genders, with good and ill intent. Though the Romans did try to put the kibosh on it in the 3rd century, through most of human history, sorcery and spells abound.

As Pam Grossman, author of Waking the Witch, told my Witches Part III Study Coven class, there’s nothing odd about magic; the absence of magic is what’s unusual.

Some of the earliest (and witchiest) mythological figures were associated with cats: Hecate, a chthonic Greek goddess of magic, the dark moon, and witchcraft, keeps cats as pets or familiars. So does the sorceress Circe, daughter of the sun god, Helios. In the Odyssey, wolves and lions lounge about Circe’s home as her companions in exile.

Photo by Jose de los Reyes, featuring Sienna Luna

On the Roman side, big cats are sacred to the wild wine god Bacchus. Bacchus was often depicted astride a panther, or driving a chariot led by lions, tigers, panthers, and lynxes. Me-ow.

In some accounts, the Norse goddess Freyja drives a chariot drawn by two cats. (She also rides a boar with gold bristles, or flies as a falcon.) Often compared to Isis and Aphrodite, Freyja is a dichotomous goddess of sex and fertility, lust and wealth, war and death. She leads the Valkyries, the shieldmaidens who pluck fallen soldiers from the battlefield.

Freyja is a seer who can shape the future, a practice called Seidr. Some say the goddess shared this magic with humanity.

Another dichotomous god of death and war: the Sumerian deity Nergal. He provokes violence and destruction just for the hell of it and is often depicted stomping on somebody, while waving a double-lion-headed mace. Paradoxically, supplicants would pray to Nergal for protection. If you can’t beat ‘em, worship ‘em.

In the Americas, the jaguar was a revered symbol of royal power and prestige. The Inca erected temples in honor of this great cat. In Mayan mythology, the Xibalba—the ‘Place of Fright,’ aka the underworld—is ruled by several gods, including a jaguar deity, a symbol of darkness and the night sun. When the sun passes through, he becomes the jaguar god.

In Nahuatl theology, from which Aztec belief derives, duality is a major theme. Many deities are androgynous, the universe is ordered by syzygies. (Syzygy would be a great name for a cat with chimera coloring.)

But the best-known mercurial cat gods are from ancient Egypt.

Though known primarily among the Ojibwa and Cree, stories of the Mishipeshu are shared by many Native peoples near the Great Lakes of North America. The Mishipeshu have feline faces with sea serpent bodies, sometimes covered in copper scales. They have horns as well, likewise said to be made of copper. They’re known to stir up storms, at the peril of sailors and fisherfolk.

It’s a cat god’s world, we’re just living in it

Around 6,000 years ago, Egyptians started taming wild cats. Excavations of burial sites have turned up scores of mummified kitties. (In Cyprus, the remains of a cat were uncovered from a 9,500 year-old human grave.) Egyptian cats migrated across Eurasia and Africa, most likely via water. Cats have a long history of providing rodent control for sailing vessels, among other duties.

Caraway’s urn. She died in October, 2023.

The goddess Bastet (whose name, oddly enough, probably means ‘She of the Ointment Jar’) is a favorite among witches, cat-lovers, and mythology nerds alike. Her most famous attribute is of course her feline head, perched atop a human body. But she was actually lion-headed until around the end of the second millennium BCE.

In the Pyramid Texts (2613-2181 BCE), Bastet is portrayed as a deity with a dual nature: nurturer and fury. You may remember from last month’s post on life and death in ancient Egyptian that Bastet is one of the goddesses who embodies the role of the Eye of Ra. Hence one of her titles, the Sacred and All-Seeing Eye.

In one temple ritual, the body of Osiris is guarded by four lion goddesses, including Bastet and her war-goddess manifestation, Sekhmet.

The Hindu gods gifted Parvati a sacred big cat named Dawon or Gdon. The tiger, or tiger-lion hybrid, is a symbol of the goddess’s power, serving as her battlemount and fearsome weapon.

Parvati is the partner and counterweight to Shiva, god of destruction.

In the Pyramid Texts, Mafdet, the divine executioner, mows down Ra’s enemies and claws out the eyes of evil snakes. Though she was originally associated with a mongoose of some sort, Mafdet came to be depicted as a cheetah or lynx.

The perception of the witch echoes the duality of the god-cats

Today’s witch is helpful and hurtful, dangerous yet wise. Pam Grossman invites us to consider “good” Glenda vs the Wicked Witch of the West. Plus a whole host of other pop culture superheroines and folkloric sorceresses, who are overcome and corrupted by their own powers, from the Scarlet Witch to Maleficent to Hocus Pocus. In stories of pubescent witches (like The Craft), renouncing witchcraft altogether is often the only path to redemption.

A witch is a symbol of virility, of infinite potential. Which must therefore be controlled.

In Tunisia, cats prowling about at night might be djinns, especially if they’re black cats.

Medieval Misogyny: A Timeline

In 1233, Pope Gregory IX issued an injunction against satanic cults in Germany. These cults reportedly answered to a man-cat figure. This injunction, which declared black cats an “incarnation of Satan,” changed the course of history, marking the start of the Inquisition.

In the Middle Ages, Church propaganda equated cats with paganism, and paganism with the devil. The demon-cat hysteria was exacerbated by “confessions” extracted from accused witches—mostly powerless women—interrogated under torture.

Agnes Waterhouse was the first woman executed for witchcraft in England. She supposedly confessed her cat, aptly nicknamed “Satan,” had killed animals and people alike.

In Japanese folklore, the kasha resemble ordinary cats, but they’re actually spirits/monsters/demons. In their true form, the kasha are still cat-like, just human-sized. Their appearance is often accompanied by fire or lightning.

In 1486, the same year the Malleus Maleficarum was published, Pope Innocent VII declared the cat “the devil’s favorite animal and the idol of all witches.” Consequently, cats were set on fire and thrown off bell towers.

In 1519, Cortés descended upon Central America.

In 1562, during the height of the European witch trials, a bishop of the Yucatan stood outside a church and burned books about the Maya, jaguars and all. Ten years later, the Inca were conquered.

The British began expanding their empire; Roanoke was established in North America in 1587. Under King James I, an act passed in 1604 banned witchcraft, conjuration, and any and all business with evil spirits.

Meanwhile, argues Amanda Yates Garcia, author of Initiated: Memoir of a Witch, magic was always a part of the resistance.

"The smallest feline is a masterpiece.” -Da Vinci

Photos by Jose de los Reyes, featuring Collibrina and Keira Grant

Modern Misogyny

Today, “witch” is a slur against powerful women. Usually, she’s a hag-witch, or a slut-witch (Hillary/Kamala). Meanwhile, self-identified witches, pagans, and traditional spiritual practitioners of all genders abound.

“Witchcraft is an act of healing and an act of resistance,” according to Yates Garcia. “Declaring oneself a witch, practicing magic, has everything to do with claiming authority and power for oneself.”

Housecats featured in anti-suffrage cartoons, suggesting the right to vote would flip gender roles, leaving husbands home with the kids and cats. The horror!