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The Goddess Bast

© Linda Casselman

She stands silent. She is beautiful. She is serene. She watches over all. She sees everything. She is the Protectress. Her name is Bast.

Bast is the Sacred Cat and her name means devouring lady. She is depicted as having the body of a woman and the head of a domestic cat. She holds the sacred rattle, Sistrum, and she possesses Utchat, the divine, all-seeing eye of Ra.

Daughter of the sun god Ra, wife of Ptah, and mother of Mihos, Bast is an ancient Egyptian goddess who is still greatly revered by many today. Her worship began around the year 3200 BCE during the second dynasty in northern Egypt and her city is Bubastis. There, and in many other ancient cities, Egyptians celebrated Bast's feast day, October 31st, with great joy and enthusiasm honouring their goddess, their protectress.

Indeed, the people of ancient Egypt turned to Bast for protection and for blessing, as she was a renowned and beloved goddess. She was the protectress of women, children, and domestic cats. She was the goddess of sunrise, music, dance, and pleasure as well as family, fertility, and birth.

Bast presided over many aspects of human existence, but she is best known for her protection of domestic cats as she too took the form of a cat.

Cats were very sacred animals to the ancient Egyptians. They held a high, honoured position in many households and were more important even than humans. Cats were demigods in ancient Egypt. Anyone caught harming or killing a cat, even by accident, was punished by death, for cats guarded the royal granaries keeping them relatively free from vermin which threatened the food supplies.

Another aspect of Bast is her twin sister, Sekhmet. Sekhmet is also a goddess, depicted as a woman with the head of a lioness. She represents the negative, darker side of the goddess. As the lioness goddess, Sekhmet symbolizes the destructive forces in Nature and in human nature, while Bast is everything pure and good and life-giving. Together, the sister goddesses make up a whole - the balance of good and evil.

You may wish to take a moment to honour this great ancient egyptian goddess. Light a green candle (Bast's sacred colour) and be nice to a cat, her cherished animal.

Visit these sites for more information and images of Bast:

The Faces of Bast

Bubastis

The Temple of Bast

The copyright of the article The Goddess Bast in Mythology is owned by Linda Casselman. Permission to republish The Goddess Bast in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.