Gardening and the Egyptian #cat goddess Bastet — a #novel preview

This morning, I took part in a Unitarian Universalist summer service. In my talk, I reflected on The Egyptian Cat Goddess the Goddess Bastet (a part of my novel The Unicorn, The Mystery) and on the spiritual practice of gardening.

The YouTube video of my talk  is below. The complete text of my talk is below that.  The service took place at the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration on Stenton Ave. in Philadelphia.

 

 

In the summer, I garden.  This is a common hobby for many, especially writers.  It teaches patience, attention, and relentless hope.  Not everything that we plant comes back – especially after a long icy winter.  Not every seed sprouts and not every sprout makes it.  In this way it makes me focus on the positive – on what does come back and on what does sprout.

Being a Unitarian Universalist gives me a spiritual context in which to think about gardening. Many of our flowers attract bees – such as bee balm, lavender and the butterfly bush. And bees, of course, are good for the planet.

Every now and then, a plant from my writing appears in my garden – seemingly out of nowhere but probably from a seed dropped by a bird.  Last year it was a tall flowering weed known as a “sow’s ear” which was also in the manuscript I just finished writing, titled The Unicorn, The Mystery which is set in the 1500s in France.  I was amazed, of course, at the sow’s ear in my backyard.

Recently, I planted catnip.  Cats love our backyard and often we see one sleeping there – most often in the shade of the young hazel nut tree that my partner’s sister sent us. Inside, my office looks out to the backyard where the garden is. Our old cat Felix has taken to sleeping on the inside back windowsill – no doubt protecting his territory.

I have long been fascinated by the Egyptian Cat Goddess Bastet. In my novel, The Unicorn, The Mystery, my monk character (who in many ways is a Unitarian Universalist at heart) prays to the Goddess Bastet.

 

I stepped slowly and softly as if the soles of my feet had ears.  I took another step. A branch snapped under my foot.  I winced. That would never do.  If my beloved unicorn heard that she would assume there was a human nearby – big enough to snap a branch under foot – and hide.  It seemed like I would never find her.  I decided to pray.  But I had prayed to the One God before and it hadn’t worked.  Who would I pray to? Who would help me?

Immediately, the Goddess Bastet leapt to mind. Bastet was an Egyptian Goddess who was half woman and half cat. I knew about her because when I was a boy, my mother would tell me the stories that her father had told her.  He had loved Greek mythology and found out that the Goddess Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, was related to the earlier Goddess Bastet from Egypt who came from the even earlier fierce lioness Goddess Bast, the warrior goddess of the sun.

The followers of Bastet ruled ancient Egypt for a time in the land where cats were sacred.  I remember that my mother’s emerald green eyes gleamed as if she were a cat herself when she told me about the Goddess Bastet who kept away disease and was the protector of pregnant women. The stories she told me about the fierce, soft, cat Goddess Bastet were so vivid that she made me want a cat for my very own pet.

My mother cautioned me, however, not to mention cats to anyone but her. People with cats were looked on with suspicion, she warned me. For some reason cats were looked down on by the Church as wily creatures associated with Satan. Again, my mother told me that it was very important never to anger the Church.

Surely, the Goddess Bastet would help me find my beloved unicorn. She of all the gods and goddesses would understand why I had to find my beloved unicorn to save her.

I closed my eyes tightly until I saw a slim woman, standing tall.  She had very good posture, with the head of a cat.  I knew it was Goddess Bastet, just as my mother had described her.

 

 

And so, the Goddess Bastet and other worlds – real, imagined and both – is something for me to mull over as I tend the soil and do the spiritual work of gardening.

 

Namaste

 

To learn more about my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders (just published by Adelaide Books New York/Lisbon), click here.

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Cats And Their Writers

This blogpost is devoted to my beloved Princess Sappho who died last week from complications of kidney disease which the vet said may have included cancer.

I was broken hearted — extremely — and also feeling a tad foolish for feeling this way.  Then just last weekend, I was in Manhattan for a photo conference at the International Center for Photography and on Monday I spent the afternoon at the New York Public Library (on Fifth Ave. with the stone lions in front). Two separate instances occurred — which convinced me that my feelings were real and true and that I should share the story of Princess Sappho.

In the first instance, someone I was talking to at the conference said (in response to hearing about my beloved’s departure) — that she couldn’t hear anymore because “it’s like losing a person.”  In the second instance, a sign in front of the Berg rare book collection of the NY Public Library — mentioned that one of the archives of a famous writer from history (I forget his name) included a pussycat paw on a letter opener that he used to remember his beloved pet.

Now I think the latter is absolutely garish and even if I did use a letter opener, I would never do this or suggest it.  But the mention of it gave me pause.  Often,  there is a strong bond between a writer (and others) and her or his pet.  If a love between two humans is sacred, then a love between a feline familiar and her or his human is also sacred. (The metaphor continues for dog lovers.)

I am a practicing Buddhist and believe in the concept of energy — and that the energy continues in some form after death — so I have been imagining Princess Sappho (who in life was extremely feisty) prancing around in the sky. But nonetheless I am still extremely sad at losing her.

Princess Sappho came to us nearly five years ago as “Baby Girl” with her brother Felix “Baby Boy” because their father Dan’s fiancé was allergic to cats.

Dan’s young son had chosen the brother and sisters when they were kittens and named them.

When Dan decided to put them up for adoption, our friend the poet Maria Fama sent their picture to us in an e-mail.

[This photo, on the right, was used last year by The Chestnut Hill Local in an article on my teaching and writing.  ]

My partner renamed Baby Boy “Felix” (which means happiness in Latin.) The brother had picked Barbara as his person immediately and to my delight, his sister chose me!

When Barbara asked me if I wanted to rename her, I replied that I had always wanted a cat named Sappho.  So Sappho it was. But then she started acting like a Princess (for instance, she really didn’t like it –narrowed eyes and flattened ears — when I would pet her brother) so we named her Princess Sappho.  She also went by Princess. Barbara gave her nickname of Princess Pi Pi — and sometimes we just called her “Girlie.”  She didn’t seem to have a preference for her name — she always came when she was called and she even came when Barbara was calling her brother — sometimes she especially came then.  Names didn’t seem to matter to Princess Sappho: she knew we were hers.

One day when we came home from the art museum, Princess was jumping from the bed about four or feet straight up in pursuit of a buzzing fly — which she eventually caught.

For almost the entire five years that she lived with us, Princess Sappho would sleep on my chest or my hip every night.

I have done my best writing in the past four years, with Princess Sappho perched in my lap or sitting beside me.

 

Farewell Princess Sappho.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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