Black Cats
In Western culture, black cats are often looked upon as a symbol of bad omens, and we hear of such superstitions as a black cat crossing one’s path bringing bad luck.
Originally, the superstitious believed the luck of a black cat to be good luck. It was Christianity which deemed cats, particularly black cats,to be pagan and therefore evil. Historically, the cat was first endowed with archetypal power in Egypt where it came to be regarded as a Sacred animal.
The cat was an incarnation of deity, and it was as the daughter of Isis and Osiris, that the great cat goddess Bast was honoured.
At the end of the Roman period, the respect given to the cat gradually waned, but it did so in company with those of all other Egyptian Sacred animals, overshadowed by the promotional powers of the Christos.
In Europe. black cats were associated with the Scandinavian Goddess, Hel and with the Greek Goddess, Hecate.
The Sun Goddess, Freya, whose chariot was drawn by cats, represented fruitfulness and fertility, but she was also the leader of the Valkyries and demanded her right to choose those men destined to be devoured by death.
With this background of association, it’s easy to uderstand why cats could be symbolically seen as an omen of death. Equally, they could be seen as an omen of great change, of a threshold being crossed, a door being opened, a new life awaiting in a liminal moment.
Depending upon individual pyschological framework, this could be a good thing – or a bad thing.
Recommended Reading
If you have a feline animal companion, you will thoroughly enjoy this book.
The authors discuss cats by breeds, with literary excerpts, folklore and legends. (You may even forget the lamentable alleged demonic affiliations).
The book is ‘light’ reading, not a scholarly tome and, as such, easy to follow for any reading level.
The Mythology of Cats: Feline Legend and Lore Through the Ages (amazon.com);
(amazon.ca)