(Continued from last week)
The Egyptian Hathor, the cow headed goddess, personifies the principles of joy, feminine love, music, dance and motherhood. Bat, meaning soul, is also an Egyptian Goddess with the horns and ears of a cow. She is associated with the musical instrument called the sistrum, one of the most frequently used sacred instruments in Egyptian temples. Bat is similar to Hathor except that Bat’s horns curve inwards and Hathor’s curve outward.
Anubis is the African golden wolf (previously thought to be dog or jackal) headed Egyptian god of death, mummification and the god who ushered souls into the after-life. Bastet is the cat-headed Egyptian goddess of warfare and the protector of cats.Khepri is the famous dung beetle(scarab) headed Egyptian God. Like the scarab pushes dung in a perfect ball before him using his horns, Khepri pushes the sun across the sky down into the underworld, from where it emerges the next morning. The word Kheper means ‘to come into being’ and the god is associated with rebirth and renewal and the sun at daybreak.
Tawaret, meaning the Great One, is the hippopotamus-headed Egyptian Goddess of childbirth and fertility. The ibis-headed Egyptian God Thoth maintains the universe, arbitrates godly disputes and judges the dead, handles the arts of magic, the system of writing and the development of science.
Japanese mythology has a warrior god named Amida who has a human body with a dog’s head.
The JapaneseTanukiis a badger or raccoon who can turn into a human and trick people by impersonating Busshist monks.
The fox-like creatures, known as Kitsune, also possess similar powers, and they trick men into marriage by turning into seductive women.
In Chinese Mythology Chu Pa-chieh is a divine being who, because of his licentiousness in heaven, is sent to earth with the head of a pig and the body of a man. He kills his family and preys on travellers until he is turned to the path of virtue by the goddess Kuan Yin. He then becomes a priest. (We have a similar story of Valmiki, the author of the Ramayan).
Khnum, the ram-headed Egyptian God, is the god of the source of the Nile River and the creator of the bodies of human children, which he makes at a potter’s wheel from clay, and places in their mothers’ wombs. The crocodile-headed Egyptian God, Sobek is associated with pharaonic power, fertility, and militaryprowess, but serves additionally as a protective deity against the dangers presented by the Nile river.
In the modern world, most of the religions have abandoned the concept of man-animal divinities. Our Gods now are purely anthropomorphic. Even the new Goddesses that are added to the Hindu pantheon, like SantoshiMaa who was created in the seventies, are just simply divine women without any animal magic at all.
(Concluded)
(To join the animal welfare movement contact [email protected], www.peopleforanimalsindia.org)