Cerridwen’s Cauldron & The Terror of Incubation
a story for when everything breaks down
About a year into the pandemic, I dreamt I was being chased across a city by a giant woman with long burgundy hair. Every time I evaded her, she’d find a way to catch up to me. At the end of the dream, I jumped in the back of an 80’s era cream-colored van with a group of friends who were touring in a band. We hung out of the van’s open back door, throwing handfuls of round, hard candies onto the road, hoping our pursuer would slip on them, a la Scooby Doo. I woke up just as the woman’s massive arm reached into the van, and I knew in my bones–if she caught up to me, she would eat me.
A few days later, at our monthly slumber party, I told Sonja about the dream. Like a good best friend, she listened and asked questions. Did I think the dream was prophetic? No, definitely not a prophetic dream–just weird. Did I have any particular associations with the woman? Did she have a name? The name Cerridwen popped into my head. I knew she was a Celtic goddess, but I couldn’t remember anything else about her.
I started studying the history and stories of Cerridwen, and the first thing I learned is that she's Welsh. In her book, If Women Rose Rooted, Sharon Blackie uses the term ‘Celtic diaspora’ to reference people who have Celtic roots but no longer live in Celtic regions. My family is part of the Celtic diaspora. My dad’s grandfather was a first generation American. His family immigrated from Wales. I wasn’t terribly surprised to find out my psyche was sending me a message through a dream about a Welsh goddess.
Cerridwen, Gwion, and Initiating Transformation
Here is the story of Cerridwen (summarized from a version told by Kristoffer Hughes in his book, Celtic Goddess of Inspiration: Cerridwen): Cerridwen was the wife of a Welsh nobleman. Their son, Morfran was horribly ugly, and Cerridwen was afraid he would never find his place in society unless he had a special skill to mark him as unique. Cerridwen, who was well known for her powers of magic, divination, and witchcraft, decided she would use her powers to make Morfran a prophetic storyteller. She gathered herbs and plants, and set to work on her spell. For one year and a day the herbs and plants she gathered would boil in her cauldron. When the time was right, three drops would fly out of the cauldron, and whoever they landed on would become a great bard and prophet. Her plan was for those drops to land on Morfran, but, as we know, plans don’t always work out as expected.
Cerridwen hired an old blind man to stir the cauldron and a young boy, Gwion Bach, to tend the flame under the cauldron. Unfortunately for Cerridwen (and Morfran), when the time came for the three drops to jump out of the cauldron, she’d fallen asleep. Gwion stepped in front of Morfran and pushed him out of the way. The drops landed on Gwion. The cauldron shattered when its spell was complete, and all the remaining potion turned to poison and melted into the earth.
Cerridwen was pissed. Thwarting a helicoptering, mega-powerful, witchy mama with a plan for her kiddo’s future success is a pretty stupid and life-threatening decision (although some might consider Gwion inspired). What followed was an epic, shape-shifting chase: Gwion, who now held all the knowledge of the world, turned into a hare. Cerridwen transformed into a greyhound. The hunt was on. Gwion approached the River Ayrwen and transformed into a salmon. Cerridwen became an otter. Gwion became a wren and Cerridwen, a hawk in fast pursuit. Finally, Gwion saw a pile of grain in a farmer’s field. When Cerridwen’s talons grabbed Gwion, he slipped out of his tiny wren body and fell to the earth as a single grain hidden in the farmer’s field. Cerridwen transformed into a hen and pecked her way through the pile of grain until at last, she consumed Gwion.
Here’s the part of the story I love most: rather than holding on to her anger and disappointment, Cerridwen felt Gwion’s knowledge and the beauty of his changing being in her body. Her heart softened. Gwion broke down, molecule by molecule, until he was no longer a grain or a wren or a salmon or a boy with a wacky plan to become something that was not meant for him. After his dissolution, Gwion felt Cerridwen’s love and transformed into a baby. Inside Cerridwen's body, Gwion became Taliesin, and the most famous bard in Britain was born.
It wasn’t too long after my Cerridwen dream that shit started falling apart (turns out maybe it was a titch prophetic). My mother slipped deeper into dementia and Parkinson’s Plus and was mostly incommunicative. I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease after a total bowel blockage that ended with a morphine drip and a night spent in Urgent Care. I wasn’t hired (again) for a tenure-track position at the college where I’d spent over a decade devoted to my students and colleagues. I was unraveling. Of course, I was unraveling.
My Cerridwen dream was like one of Taleisin’s prophetic tales, and, as so often happens with a prophecy, I didn’t understand what it was showing me. A transformation had begun, but all I could feel was pain, loss, anger, and disappointment. I needed time to incubate, but everything felt urgent.
Transformation often begins as pain and terror. When Gwion sat in Cerridwen’s belly as a tiny piece of grain, he was horrified. There was no way out of what was to come. When Cerridwen digested that little piece of grain-shaped Gwion, it hurt like hell, but as his transformation continued, he saw the light (for real, this is how the story goes)--he saw the light and was full of the knowledge of what he was becoming. But before he could step into what came next, he had to spend time in the dark belly of Cerridwen. I imagine her belly as a cauldron, and that cauldron is the place where all of our bubbling, fermenting, what ifs emerge–the creative lava that forms the landscape of our lives.
Like Gwion (and Cerridwen), I was too close to my own pain to see what new possibilities were getting ready to be born. In the midst of so many things going so un-according to my plans, I was terrified of the uncertainty, the what if of my life. I wasn’t ready to see the glimmer of what comes next for what it was: the growth that begins when we truly allow ourselves to grieve what is lost and the emergent potential for liberation when we gain enough distance from our pain to see the potential when everything around us is breaking down. I had to learn how to soften my heart towards acceptance before I could begin thinking about how to re-organize and re-build.
Creative Process as Healing
Awen is a Welsh word that loosely translates into ‘flowing inspiration.’ Kristoffer Hughes calls Cerridwen’s transformational potion Awen, and he defines it as, ‘the creative transformative force of divine inspiration that sings in praise of itself; it is an eternal song that sings all things into existence, and all things call to the Awen inwardly.’ When I sit with this definition, I’m reminded of the creative spark, that force that makes each of us our own unique being and, when we connect with it, acts as an agent of change. One way to consider Cerridwen and Gwion Bach’s story is as a reminder of how that creative spark, that Awen, acts as an initiator for healing. Healing is what happens when we tend our wounds and give them the time and care they need. Incubation, baby.
The pain, anger, and fear of this moment we are living in often feels debilitating, but if we take cues from Cerridwen, what new shapes might emerge in response to the terror and heartbreak? What is incubating right now that will become the tender foundation of the future, the potential for liberation?
Like Baubo (and her power to transform the absurd into action and change), Cerridwen is a goddess for our times. When we drink from her cauldron, we may not know the form our initiation will take, we might not yet see the transformation that is underway, but we can draw from Cerridwen’s inspiration. Awen is on the wind and in the soil. Awen is chants and resistance but also softness and tenderness.
Registration Open for 8 Week Joyful Practice for Dark Times Workshop
Speaking of cauldrons bubbling with inspiration and possibility, registration is open for round two of our 8 week (Zoom) workshop: Joyful Practice for Dark Times.
This workshop is designed for writers, seekers, and anyone who wants to explore creative practice with community support. We value the ingenuity of beginner minds, the wisdom of experience, and everything in between. We see joyful practice as an element of resistance and deprogramming from colonialism and capitalism. We are anti-racist, anti-ableist, pro-queer, pro-equity and aim to hold space for an array of neurotypes, backgrounds, and skill sets. We want to know your wild brains and your emergent stories.
You can find more information about this generative writing community and register here.
I so loved this story, and a weird association with that cauldron. I have owned one almost exactly like this one -- cast iron, about a million pounds. So heavy, that when I moved from California nearly 15 years ago, I left it there. But this photo and story brought it back and made me wish I'd kept it. It had been my grandmothers -- she immigrated from Turkey during the Armenian genocide. She was a teenager and was escaping persecution. She landed on a family farm in the Central Valley, and her job was slaughtering hogs. The cauldron had been used to butcher the hogs, which she did for years until she married and left the farm to head her own household. Not a pleasant association, but somehow that cauldron landed with me.
What would I use it for now, if I still had it? Would it fuel my witchy fantasies? What new shapes and purposes could it be put to use now? Instead of being a vessel used for the processing of a dead animal, maybe a vessel for bringing forth some other kind of positive power....