Marie-Louise von Franz, on Cats

Historically, the cat was first endowed with archetypal power at the time when in Egypt it came to be regarded as a sacred animal….

The cat was also worshipped as lunar.

It was believed that during the hours of darkness, when the rays of the sun were invisible to humans, they were reflected in the phosphorescent eyes of the cat, as the light of the sun is reflected in the moon…

In the Middle Ages, the cat came to be predominantly endowed with the power of the devil.

Some women, it was said, had the power to put their souls into black cats.

These were witches, dedicated not any more to the light powers but to the dark powers, to the devil.

The Catholic dissociation from the instincts, sexuality, and generally speaking from the feminine natural element, probably has as much to do with the development of the cat as a destructive, instinctual feminine symbol…

The whole devilish nature of the cat, its witch aspect, has only come into the foreground since the time of Christianity.

That has to do with the patriarchal banning of the feminine shadow…

Something else I should mention about the cat as its independence….

You often see cat dreams in women who have no independence, who are too duly attached to the husband and children and I always stress with a cat does.

A cat goes its own way and knows what it wants and goes his own way.

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