My favorite resource for understanding the historic, symbolic and spiritual significance of the Celtic foundations for our Wiccan celebration of the turning of the Wheel of Year is Mara Freeman's book Kindling the Celtic Spirit: Ancient Traditions to Illumine Your Life Through the Seasons. It is organized in twelve monthly chapters that include seasonally appropriate mythology, folklore, literary references, crafts and recipes. Each chapter concludes with a meditation designed to promote personal and spiritual growth as we move through the cycle of the year: The Inner Cauldron.

The cauldron is one of Wicca's most powerful and revered objects. It is a symbol of transmutation, germination, and transformation. But above all it symbolizes the womb and the Goddess. The belief that the cauldron symbolizes the womb of the Great Goddess arises from the concept that everything is born out of it and returns to it. The cauldron mysteries are an integral part of Wiccan mythos.

Cauldrons have held a magical significance in many cultures throughout the centuries. In ancient Ireland, it was believed, cauldrons were never depleted of food during feasts. In ancient times they were use for human sacrifice, which was related to death and rebirth. In Greek mythology the Witch goddess Medea restored people to youth in a magic cauldron. In Celtic lore the cauldron is the symbol of the Underworld. In Greek and Roman mythology the cauldron was hidden in a cave. Some relate the cauldron to the Holy Grail (since the Grail is supposedly the chalice used by Christ at the Last Supper), and speculate this was why some Christians were not too eager to seek the Grail because of its association with the cauldron and the Goddess. One of the most famous cauldrons is the Gundestrup cauldron, now housed in the National Museum of Denmark, which dates back to the Second or First Century BC. The cauldron depicts Celtic deities and rituals and is believed to be druidic.

What better place to return to contemplate renewal on this, the darkest day of the year, on the eve of the birth of the Sun, than to the sacred cauldron?

Renewal

We have arrived at last at the close of the year, a time of endings and new beginnings. At Winter Solstice the seed of light is tightly folded within the bud of darkness. From now on, as the days grow longer, the sun-seed slowly unfurls from this center, through the spring days of Imbolc and Beltaine, to its full flowering at Summer Solstice. At this point it will reach the outermost ring of the year's spiral and begin to contract slowly toward the center once again. Perhaps this is the meaning of the spiral art carved by the ancient ones on the walls at Newgrange, aligned as it is to this most important time of the year. (It is also believed that there may be a hidden passage on the other side of the mound, aligned to the Summer Solstice sunset.)

As we look toward the threshold of a new year, we become more aware of our journey as a spiral that circles around yet continually moves us onward to the next cycle of our soul's evolution. Amid all the busy Christmas preparations, it is important to take some time to tune into the deep, dark womb of the year's midnight, to feel and enjoy the quiet interval that comes when the curtain has gone down over the stage of this year's rich drama and the new play has not yet commenced. (In my experience, a failure to take the "down" time in winter is the real reason behind those cold and flu bugs that make us rest whether we want to or not.) In the [year's final] meditation, we enter the silence of the Earth itself to experience its mysteries and to prepare for our rebirth into the light of a new cycle.

(Freeman, 2000, p. 377-378)

Sources:
Alan G. Hefner (1997-2006). the MYSTICA: An online encyclopedia of the occult, mysticism, magic, paranormal and more.

Freeman, Mara (2000). Kindling the Celtic Spirit: Ancient traditions to illumine your life throughout the seasons. New York: HarperSanFrancisco.

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 1:22 PM