ecosophia | Magic Monday

It's getting on for midnight, so we can proceed with a new Magic Monday. Ask me anything about occultism and I'll do my best to answer it. With certain exceptions, any question received by midnight Monday Eastern time will get an answer. Please note: Any question received after then will not get an answer, and in fact will just be deleted. I've been getting an increasing number of people trying to post after these are closed, so will have to draw a harder line than before.) If you're in a hurry, or suspect you may be the 143,916th person to ask a question, please check out the very rough version 1.0 of The Magic Monday FAQ here. Also: I will not be putting through or answering any more questions about practicing magic around children. I've answered those in simple declarative sentences in the FAQ. If you read the FAQ and don't think your question has been answered, read it again. If that doesn't help, consider remedial reading classes; yes, it really is as simple and straightforward as the FAQ says.

The image? I've decided to do another pass through magical personalities, and I figured I'd start with one of my own teachers. This is John Gilbert, with whom I studied the teachings of the Universal Gnostic Church, the Order of Spiritual Alchemy, the Modern Order of Essenes, and the Magickal Order of the Golden Dawn -- this last, of course, is the parent body of the Fellowship of the Hermetic Rose. This photo was taken in 2008 in eastern Tennessee at a Druid event there; it was the last time John and I met in person, though we corresponded via email and talked on the phone quite a bit after that.

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~~With that said, ask me anything!~~

**This Magic Monday is now closed. See you next week!***

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Hi JMG,

I have asked about the magical importance of cats in the past and as I am a Kemet whose patron is Bastet, cats are a fairly common topic. Now one of my last questions comes to this: why is it that cats are the black sheep of the media world? In any media, tv, movies, or otherwise, you would be hard pressed to see a cat or something to related to it not be abused.

Is it just commonly funny (for some people) to use them as the abuse/horror trope? Or is there a larger undercurrent of deeming them as “evil” or “dark” by the same kind of people who would burn them en masse in the 1400s during the witch hunts? It seems that the rate of these “jokes” have increased during this very dark period of time, which makes me so uneasy and nauseous I have to turn of the tv.

That's really odd. Recall that I've had zero contact with mainstream media for a good many decades, and so I wasn't aware of this. Nor do I have any idea why it's happening. Anybody else?

My favorite was the crazy cat from The Kiss (1988) that they hit with a garden rake and fried in the bug zapper. So suburban. Mr. Kittles from Scary Movie 2 was based off of it. I love cats btw. If you are cool to them then the vast majority who aren't totally wild will eventually be friendly right back, but apparently that's way too demanding for some people.

Unfortunately, it's simple practicality. Dogs are more difficult to get ahold of or bully in the way that gets good results onscreen. Meanwhile, cats are smaller, seen as more durable, easier to locate while not being associated with disease. It is a wholly unpleasant business.

That’s what I was thinking as well, for my mental health I think it would be best if I just threw out the tv altogether (sigh)…

Bingo!

This is actually a well-known trope of media writers, which you can see here: https://www.amazon.com/Save-Last-Book-Screenwriting-Youll/dp/1932907009

They explain what a "Save the Cat" scene is like this: "It's the scene where we meet the hero and hero does something - like saving a cat - that defines who he is and makes us, the audience, like him." The reverse of this trope is equally true as well. Harm a cat and that character is signaled as the villain, or at least a person who the audience will not sympathize with should they be punished or harmed later on.
So "cat", in media, can sometimes be a used a a short-hand for morality.

What does it mean when the usage of the "cat" symbol changes over time? I have no idea, I'm just passing along what little relevant information I happen to have.

~Rose

Magic Monday

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