The current iteration of Bast's altar in our living room.

Egyptian goddess Bastet, 600 a.C.

Neues Museum-Berlín.

"Bastet" by Emile Corsi, 1877

Egyptian

Bastet

Between 664 and 610 BCE, Twenty-sixth Dynasty of Egypt (664 BC-525 BC)

fashion gods inspire: details ■  Valentino Fall 2015 RTW

Black Cat Statue made of Belgian Marble 1923, by artist Édouard-Marcel Sandoz.

The current state of our House Shrine shared by my partner system and me!

It’s been a while since I embraced you lady Bastet, maybe that’s why my cat has been following me around a lot recently🤔

art by Bettie Barogue

Egyptians gods: Bastet

Bastet is without a doubt one of the most famous goddesses of Ancient Egypt today.

Everybody heard of the cult and worship Ancient Egyptians dedicated to cats. Cats were sacred animals for them. Originally domesticated around two thousand years before our current era, they were loved due to their habit of hunting, killing and eating rats. When you had cats around, plagues were less likely to break out AND the harvest and fields were safe! Through time, this love took on a religious and sacred aspect, and cats became honored, respected and pampered members of every household. When a pet cat died, the humans that lived in its house had to shave their eyebrows to signify their grief. When the cat of a temple died, the entire town mourned. Each pharaoh had a personal cat, dressed in jewelry and that shared their master’s meal. Cats were mummified, just like humans, and were placed inside a necropolis – showing how important they were for Ancient Egyptians. Egyptians even had a firm belief that when a fire broke out somewhere, cats would just jump in the flames and stop the fire by their sheer power! Cats were a BIG deal in Ancient Egypt.

And the goddess of all cats, the cat-goddess, was Bastet (or Bast), the goddess of the city of Bubastis (a name that means “the house of Bastet”, Per-Bastet in proper Egyptian), in the Delta. However, originally Bastet wasn’t a cat goddess: in her oldest incarnations, Bastet appeared as a woman with the head of a lioness, usually wearing the ankh and a scepter. It was only later that she became a cat – somewhere around the Third Intermediate Period. Sometimes a full cat, wearing jewels or nursing her kittens, other times a cat-headed woman holding a sistrum.

Bastet was, just like several other goddesses (Maat, Hathor, Sekhmet, Tefnut), considered one of the “daughters of Ra” – which meant more than just her having the god as her father. The daughters of Ra were goddesses that embodied the power of the sun, each one reflecting a different side of the sun’s light. Each of them was another identity of the “Eye of Ra”, whose function was to help create and re-create life on Earth, by bringing light and by fighting off the darkness. While sometimes merely depicted as sisters, for many others Bastet and Sekhmet were actually one and the same: a same feline goddess, that when angered or triggered, became the furious lioness embodying the destructive and killing aspect of the sun, while Bastet was rather the benevolent and kind side of the solar light. It was for example written in some texts that Bastet became Sekhmet for the night, to protect ferociously Ra during his journey throughout the dangerous and demon-filled underworld, only to return to being Bastet in the morning. Starting in 2500 BCE, many lioness statues were replaced by cat statues in Sekhmet temples, which with time became Bastet temples. [It is theorized that maybe Sekhmet and Bastet began as one same entity, which was later split into two]

But who was Bastet, by herself, on her own? Bastet was, as I said, the kind and benevolent aspect of the light of the sun. Bastet was the embodiment of sweetness, gentleness and tenderness. People depicted her as calm, peaceful and loving. She was a benevolent and very popular deity associated, just like Hathor, with music and dancing – her rites in Bubastis included musical ceremonies, religious dances and ritualized sex. The festivals of Bastet also included a LOT of alcohol – which was justified by the need to prevent Bastet from becoming Sekhmet, putting the burning lioness to sleep by making her drunk. Bastet also embodied maternal love: she was often depicted taking care of kittens, either breast-feeding them, or keeping them in a basket. She was a goddess prayed to at every birth, so that she would protect the newborn. In fact, Egyptians had the habit of making a small cut in the inside of the elbow of the baby, and place in it a few drops of cat blood – this was to make sure the child would attract the favors of Bastet. Keeper of peace, protectress of the house, Bastet was also believed to prevent the spreading of contagious diseases, and to protect humans from evil spirits. No need to say that her cult was practiced more intensely by women, since Bast was the goddess that helped them give birth and take care of the home.

A fun fact: when the Greeks established a correspondence between their gods and the Egyptian ones, they decided that the goddess corresponding to Bast would be… Artemis! It might be surprising to choose the goddess of the hunt and the wilderness for a goddess of peace, maternity and home, but this is actually easily explained by Bast’s “primitive” form as a lioness goddess, which made the Greeks confuse her with another lion-goddess, Tefnut (who they also identified with Artemis).

REBLOG WITH YOUR FAV AND HOT EGYPTIAN WOMAN

i'LL GO FIRST

BASTET

Egyptian Gods: "Anubis & Bastet" by Fiona Hsieh

Jongleur by Janle and Equilibre by Gaillard

The cats are like furry constellations They lap up the Milky Way

- Current 93, Abba Amma (Babylon Destroyer)

Illustration for these lyrics that I’ve always found evocative.

I'm sorry this just popped into my goblin brain and I just had to get it out.

Dua Bastet!

Dua Sekhmet!