The Cauldron of Rebirth by Jennifer Emick

[Dept of PMM Artists & things]

Cauldrons figure heavily in Celtic art, ritual, and mythology. Cauldrons were an ever-present ritual item in Celtic religious practices. Many beautifully worked examples have been found intentionally deposited in the bottoms of lakes, springs, and wells as offerings to the gods of water.

In Celtic daily life, the cauldron was the most important item a house-hold possessed. It was used for cooking and brewing, for dyeing, and for working leather. The cauldron's usual place was in the center of the home, and so it was associated with the axis mundi, a symbolic representation of the center of the cosmos. The cauldron itself was a microcosm of water, a miniature representation of the abundant well at the base of the world tree.

Cauldrons were also an essential accoutrement of the druid, and there is much evidence of their ritual use in temples, where the cauldron would have been used for divinatory purposes, for collecting the blood of a sacrifice, or for holding sacramental meals.

The cauldron found at Gundestrup is the most famous example of the druids' ritual cauldrons. It is worked with pictorial narratives of mythological tales, including the Spear of Lugh and the Cauldron of Rebirth.

The Dagda's Cauldron of Plenty

The Cauldron of Bounty belonged to the Dagda, or “Good God.” The Dagda was the son of the goddess Danu, one of the eldest of the Dé Danann. The Dagda was a god of excess and abundance, and also of music and inspiration. He was especially associated with the craft of the bards and is often depicted in statuary with a harp in his hands.

According to the later legends of Dagda's Cauldron of Plenty, it contained an endless supply of sustenance and could never be emptied. Symbolically, it is the sea, with its endless supply of fish, water for the rains, and the source of healing springs and pools.

Rebirth and Regeneration

Many stories revolve around the Cauldron of Rebirth, which is another form of the Dagda's cauldron. In innumerable mythological stories, the cauldron is used to resurrect warriors slain on the battlefield. Indeed, many early examples of Celtic ritual art depict lines of warriors patiently standing in line as the god dips them, one by one, into the cauldron.

In this aspect, the cauldron is closely related to Celtic ideas of the after-life and rebirth. The gods of water were themselves continuously reborn, and the waters of the cauldron have obvious parallels to the watery environment of the womb, the passageway to new life.

The importance to druid ritual of ritual immersion in cauldrons may be one of the reasons the Celts readily accepted Christianity. Resurrected gods and rebirth by watery immersion were already an integral part of Celtic spirituality when Christian missionaries arrived in Ireland with their own ideas about baptism.

A related Welsh myth tale tells of the cauldron of Bran, in which slain fighters are placed during a battle. The warriors emerge overnight from the cauldron unharmed, save for the loss of their powers of speech, a probable reference to the reborn soul as an infant incapable of speaking.

The womb analogy carries over in the role of the cauldron as a source of inspiration. Artistic and poetic inspiration arose from the depths of water, and the bards and poets attributed their ideas to the guardian of the waters.