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Teml Ceridwen Y Bala

Goddess Temple of Bala

Call us on 01678 521117

Teml Ceridwen Y Bala

Goddess Temple of Bala

Ceridwen and her Cauldron

… (Ceridwen) bore him nine months, and when she was delivered of him, she could not find it in her heart to kill him, by reason of his beauty. So she wrapped him in a leathern bag, and cast him into the sea to the mercy of God, on the twenty-ninth day of April.1

Taliesin as Gwion Bach, looking after Ceridwen's cauldron on the shores of Llyn Tegid.

Taliesin as Gwion Bach, looking after Ceridwen’s cauldron on the shores of Llyn Tegid.

April 29th is tantalisingly close to Calan Mai, or Beltane! Perhaps this is an invitation to consider the role of the cauldron itself in the story of Ceridwen and Taliesin. If you aren’t very familiar with it, you might like to review the rest of the tale here.

There are a number of magical cauldrons in Celtic folklore. To name but a few, we have the Pair Dadeni (the cauldron of rebirth), which originally belonged to Bran Fendigaid (Bran the Blessed), and which can revive dead warriors. Another, known as the Cauldron of Plenty, was one of the four treasures of the Tuatha Dé Danaan. From this cauldron, everyone of good character could eat their fill and the cauldron never ran out. Another cauldron with the ability to judge character was that of Dyrnwch, which was said to be one of the Thirteen Treasures of Britain and could distinguish between a brave man and a coward – and the food of the latter would never cook.

 

The Gundestrup Cauldron – image: Knud Winckelmann and Nationalmuseet- commons.wikimedia.org - CC-BY-SA-3

The Gundestrup Cauldron – image: Knud Winckelmann and Nationalmuseet- commons.wikimedia.org – CC-BY-SA-3

 

Ancient cauldrons, together with other metal objects, have turned up in surprising places all over Europe and are often found deposited in water or marshy ground. Were they meant as offerings? It’s interesting that many of the objects found in such places appear deliberately to have been placed beyond use: in his book Home, archaeologist Francis Pryor, writing about finds in Eastern England, notes “… hundreds of Bronze and Iron Age metal finds dredged from the rivers of lowland England….,”2 adding that, for example, the cutting edges of swords were often blunted. In the case of the very famous Gundestrup Cauldron (see above), found in 1891 during peat digging in Denmark, the vessel had been taken apart and its sides placed in the bottom of the cauldron.3 Rather closer to Llyn Tegid is the Llyn Fawr cauldron4 , found buried in peat at the bottom of Llyn Fawr, Rhonnda Cynon Taff, in 1913. Found together with tools and weapons, the objects date to the early Iron Age and in this case appear not to have been deliberately damaged.

View west at Craig-y-Llyn Viewpoint toward Llyn Fawr © Copyright Mick Lobb and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

View west at Craig-y-Llyn Viewpoint toward Llyn Fawr © Copyright Mick Lobb and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

Cauldrons have also been found together in large numbers: at an Iron Age settlement in Leicestershire eight cauldrons were found buried in a circle5 , with a further three nearby, while in Chiseldon, Wiltshire (a village very near Avebury), no fewer than seventeen cauldrons have been recovered following a chance discovery in 2004. Many of the vessels appear to have been placed carefully into a pit with ox skulls.6 One of the cauldrons, reports Wessex Archaeology, had been deliberately damaged before it was buried.7

Not only cauldrons but swords, shields, and much else has been found in these watery locations. We can speculate about what this means and why some items were deliberately damaged, but we’re unlikely ever to know for sure. However, it’s worth remembering that many of us can’t resist throwing coins into a well or sacred spring, an act which of itself involves putting the coins beyond normal day-to-day use. I don’t remember that anyone ever told me the coins should be silver (at least in appearance) but somehow I just always knew, and this sort of “just knowing” often suggests an archetype, a mental image present in the collective unconscious and said to be inherited from our earliest ancestors. I suspect many of us also have an archetypal cauldron image, usually a large, rounded container of metal, with three legs and some means of holding it over a fire. But on another level, it is simply a container in which a magical transformation takes place: so what of Ceridwen’s own womb, and indeed the goddess herself? I can’t think of anything more transformational than the production of a human being from a tiny seed, whether that be fertilised ovum or grain of wheat.

In his new book Cerridwen: Celtic Goddess of Inspiration, Kristoffer Hughes acknowledges the practical properties of the cauldron and adds: “It seems evident that the cauldron, by association of its physical and nourishing qualities, evolved naturally to represent spiritual sustenance and fulfilment in the mind of the Celtic people and onwards into modern Pagan practise.” He goes on suggest that as spiritual symbol its attributes are “contextually expressed within the Celtic material almost exclusively in relation to the divine feminine.”

Hughes also tells us that there are two words for cauldron in Welsh – crochen and pair, with the former related to the word for womb: croth.8 In a very real sense, the cauldron is the goddess, is Ceridwen, who changes everything she touches….. Hers is the cauldron of inspiration, of Awen, a word which certainly includes the concept of inspiration but doesn’t really translate into English in a straightforward way, and could also be described as meaning holy breath, genius, the muse.

 

Ceridwen, by Christopher Williams (1873- 1934)

Ceridwen, by Christopher Williams (1873- 1934)

 

Coming to realise that Ceridwen is herself the sacred vessel, it follows that the cauldron-as-archetype remains outside the linear histories imposed by the patriarchy and despite many attempts to co-opt its power the vessel and its properties remain wonderfully cyclical: the cauldron/womb is filled: with food, an infant, magical herbs, and then emptied; the cycle repeats. Even though Ceridwen’s cauldron splits in two after the three magical drops of Awen have been produced, we are in no way lacking a cauldron because Ceridwen herself stands in that place. It’s also worth remembering that Taliesin has no father and that’s important. As Carol P Christ, in Rebirth of the Goddess: Finding Meaning in Feminist Spirituality, notes, “Psychologist of religion Naomi Goldenberg has argued that a simple, basic, and fundamental lie must be maintained for patriarchy to function. This lie is the denial of the womb that gives us birth. The lie of patriarchy tells us that the Father is the only true parent.”9

I’d like to give Kristoffer Hughes the last word, as his book Cerridwen has been such an inspiration of itself (and forgive the advertising but we have it on order and hope to have a number of copies in our shop within a few days – I can’t recommend it highly enough)! I will post a link here when the book is available, but meanwhile you might like to check out the same author’s From the Cauldron Born, also an excellent read.

“The manner by which we perceive the nature of Cerridwen is irrelevant when one considers what she represents. She is the conduit of Awen.”10

Geraldine Charles
2 May, 2021

 

  1. Sacred-texts.com. 2021. The Mabinogion: Taliesin: Taliesin. [online] Available at: <https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/mab/mab32.htm> [Accessed 25 April 2021].
  2. Francis Pryor, Home: A Time Traveller’s Tales from Britain’s Prehistory (Penguin, 2015)
  3. København, N., 2021. The Gundestrup Cauldron. [online] National Museum of Denmark. Available at: <https://en.natmus.dk/historical-knowledge/denmark/prehistoric-period-until-1050-ad/the-early-iron-age/the-gundestrup-cauldron/> [Accessed 26 April 2021].
  4. National Museum Wales. 2021. Cauldron from Llyn Fawr. [online] Available at: <https://museum.wales/iron_age_teachers/artefacts/llyn_fawr/#:~:text=This%20cauldron%20was%20discovered%20in,for%20use%20as%20a%20reservoir.> [Accessed 1 May 2021].
  5. MOLA. 2021. Getting to the bottom of the Glenfield Park cauldrons. [online] Available at: <https://www.mola.org.uk/blog/getting-bottom-glenfield-park-cauldrons> [Accessed 26 April 2021].
  6. BBC News. 2021. Chiseldon village’s replica Iron Age cauldron unveiled. [online] Available at: <https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-24988282> [Accessed 1 May 2021].
  7. Wessex Archaeology. 2021. Chiseldon Cauldrons. [online] Available at: <https://www.wessexarch.co.uk/our-work/chiseldon-cauldrons> [Accessed 1 May 2021].
  8. Kristoffer Hughes, Cerridwen: Celtic Goddess of Inspiration [Kindle version] Llewellyn Publications 2021. Available at http://www.amazon.co.uk [accessed 25 April 2021]
  9. Carol P. Christ, Rebirth of the Goddess: Finding Meaning in Feminist Spirituality (Routledge, 1998)
  10. Kristoffer Hughes, Cerridwen: Celtic Goddess of Inspiration [Kindle version] Llewellyn Publications 2021. Available at http://www.amazon.co.uk [accessed 25 April 2021]