Animal Rhythm of Life and Death: Cherishing Bastet’s Fragrant Cosmos - Neela Bhattacharya Saxena

Once upon a time, two young sisters were keenly observing a bug in Sunamganj, a small town in Sylhet. That critter was called kumari poka, virgin bug! They both watch the bug build a mud house. They see her fly away over and over again and come back with tiny bits of soft clay. The older sister, more adventurous and curious, prompts the younger and they follow the critter.  They see her collect the clay from the small moist pile emitted by an earth worm. They witness the recycling world of Nature. Both girls pleased to solve the mystery run away to play. India was undivided then, and what is now Bangladesh, was still my mother’s home; older sister of this drama, my mashi, and the younger, my mom, who recalls the event with great delight.

My nonagenarian mother often remembers the lush land, green spaces, rivers, orchards and the people but mostly her carefree world punctuated by beautiful rituals, songs, floods, turtles and snakes. It was a fragrant world of gods and goddesses, of coexistence of animals and humans. Wiki informs me the bug my mom enjoyed watching was probably a form of mud dauber, a wasp. I prefer the name, Virgin Bug! Wiki says, the females build the nest and hunt spiders for their young. Shapes of the nests vary, including one like an organ pipe. Through my mother’s child eyes, I see the Virgin building her nest bit by bit to give birth and to raise her young, soon to fly away.  A bug working so hard for a transient existence.

In my backyard as I followed our aged and ailing cat Kivi’s rhythms, of going inside and outside, of life to death, I witnessed an entire universe of critters creating the most magnificent sensuous drama.  I saw a little black snake with golden stripes look at me with great intensity. It shows itself suddenly as I walk bare feet on soft green grass, ruminating. I see it entwined near the water spout for the garden hose or slithering away alongside my flower patch or basking on a stone, reminding me of James Hillman’s black serpent. My son assures me, it is harmless, garter or gardener’s snake, although Wiki says it does have some venom. Thinking about serpent energy, I would sit on my stone seat, and Kivi would come, smell and caress the grass, touch the cool earth with her paws. She would then find a hiding spot in the woods and vanish for hours.

Suddenly a woodchuck passes as I watch from my kitchen. I see a bird pick a bug and feed another bird, same size as her, not her baby.  Yellow, brown, blue, black, red birds with magnificent designer feathers chirp away as they pick seeds from our feeder. Hawks, eagles circle above as I lie looking at the blue dappled sky. Our resident rabbit is happy hopping near our backyard hut. I recall a set of massive turkey vultures show up once, making a lot of noise that attracted my attention to their feathery display. Even a fox like creature had visited that patch of land.

Our cottonwood tree fills the yard with white soft materials, waiting to be woven into the beauty of existence. I marvel how little I, a bookworm since childhood, know of the world of animals, birds, bugs, their profound bond with each other and the most delightful cosmos. They know in their bones the beauty, grace and rhythm of the Great Mother’s universe. Nature, a PBS TV program, can produce both delight and despair as you see the vanishing world of our magnificent animal species. But recently I saw a show called "India’s Wandering Lions" that provided comfort. How amazing to see people and lions in Gujrat hang around each other without any animosity and in apparent cooperation to survive! 

Lions remind me of Sekhmet, a deity similar to and coextensive with Bastet. I have seen magnificent sculptures of Sekhmet in museums but Bastet has been very real in our cats.  A Durga and Kali loving woman like me finds fierce animals most enchanting.  Old cultures have a deeply sacred connection with the animal world, but Bastet with her relationship with fragrant alabaster jars intrigues me. I smooth the grey fur of Kivi as she licks her muddy paws from wandering into the stream between the trees, and I wonder about ancient Egypt and their feline goddesses.

Worshipped at least since the 3^rd millennium BCE, Bastet has many names and forms. A protector goddess, she is the milder form of Sekhmet. One form, of course, is that of a woman with a cat’s head, the goddess of joy, dance, family and love. Herodotus gives a detailed description of the festivals held in the city of her other name, Bubastis whom the Greek historian connects with his own Artemis, the goddess of animals and vegetation.  

But why is this cat goddess associated with an ointment/alabaster jar? I thought that image appears in a Biblical tale and is connected with the figure of, until recently rather maligned, Mary, the Magdalene. Most deities have an external manifestation as well as an internal meaning only available to the initiate. I suspect a continuum of the Egyptian mysteries with mystical Judaism and esoteric Christianity where Magdalene is a supreme figure. The cosmic form of Sekhmet-Bas-Ra represents an all-encompassing divinity within the Anunian Theurgy according to Mutata Ashby, the author of The Kemetic Tree of Life: Ancient Egyptian Metaphysics and Cosmology for Higher Consciousness.

The serpent on Sekhmet’s head is a reminder of transformation of consciousness. Human, animal, divine synergy is present in all cultures that teach that transformation. Legend has it that Kanthak, the horse that led Siddhartha into the starkness of reality away from the pleasure dome of his father’s palace, died of a broken heart when Gautama left to seek the roots of suffering.  Epona is a horse goddess in the Celtic world who leads the souls in their afterlife.  Our Kivi revealed the mystery of life and death in ways that no book ever could. Her green eyes had sparkled with profound tenderness as she would curl up against me and would remind me of the gentleness of Green Tara.  

When we had to put Kivi to rest, a howling emptiness filled our hearts and those woods. Her sister Kimmy bid her farewell; our heartbreaking silence might have communicated the end time. Her green eyes had turned to stone in death; her body like soft clay. Her ashes will return to the stream and be recycled by the Virgin Mother. The Buddha who knew the starkness of reality tells Subhuti in the Diamond Sutra that what is known as the highest teachings are not the highest. “All composed things are like a dream, a phantom, a drop of dew, a flash of lightning.” What does this diamond truth, the Vajra realization mean? One must drop all intellectual posturing for the emptiness of the Vajra to work its way into the hardened skull that is under its intellectual ego.

Mud houses of our lives are just a flash of lightening, an ephemeral, fragile and most gorgeous show. It is the Great Mother’s Maya, the lila that fills us with the intensity of joys and sorrows. Kivi showed us that one can’t be a detached witness but participate in the pulsating rhythm that is life that includes birth and death. Moisture descended upon us like the tears of Kuan Yin after weeks of dryness. Soft rain falls soundlessly, a delicate aroma permeates the air, and wind is chiming its song across the newly leafy trees of young East Coast summer. Mystery of death unfolded in great intensity and Kali, my pregnant nothingness, had received our Kivi back in her womb.