Bastet

"The writers of old called this creature a Bastet: a monster of nightmare that inhabits the twilight world between the living and the dead."

- Gaius to Merlin

A Bastet was a magical monster that resembled a large panther with bat-like wings. Sorcerers could curse unfortunate victims to become one on the stroke of midnight with an insatiable desire to kill that they would be unable to control, Freya was an example of this (The Lady of the Lake). The curse was so strong that it wasn't lifted until her final moments, when the Bastet that took over her was fatally wounded.

Egyptian Mythology


A Bastet (Ubasti, Baset, and later Bastet) is an ancient solar and war goddess, worshiped at least since the Second Dynasty. In the late dynasties, the priests of Amun began to call her Bastet, a repetitive and diminutive form after her role in the pantheon became diminished as Sekhmet (Goddess of War and Vengeance), a similar lioness war deity, became more dominant in the unified culture of Lower and Upper Egypt. In the Middle Kingdom, the cat appeared as Bastet’s sacred animal and after the New Kingdom she was depicted as a woman with a cat’s head carrying a sacred rattle and a box or basket. (see also: Bastet at wikipedia)

Bastet is the bastardized name of Bast, another Egyptian Cat Goddess because of confusion and alphabetic pollution. As the Egyptian language changed, some letter-sounds were in danger of losing their pronunciation. So scribes fought a rear-guard action by nailing extra letters to the ends of words. Thus Bast became Bastet. But the 'et' at the end is, or should be, silent.

Bast is the daughter of Ra. She is the cat-headed Goddess of Fertility, Sensuality and Fire Prevention. She also has a flair for avenging wrongs and is feisty enough for the Greeks to have identified her with their own Goddess Artemis. Artemis the Goddess of Hunting, Animal Liberation, Feistiness and Feminism.

The nightly transformation of a cursed individual into the monster is likely based upon the werewolf mythology of numerous cultures.