Saturday Goddess Blogging

There's the "Story" of Cerridwen:


Once there was a witch named Ceridwen, and she had two children. The one, her daughter, was as beautiful a child as you could ever hope to see; the other, her son Morfran, was so ugly, ill-favored and stupid that he sickened everyone who saw him.

Ceridwen was grieved that Morfran was so horrible, and resolved by her magic arts to make him into such a great bard that no-one would mind his ugliness. She began to cast a great spell. Many were the plants that she cast into her cauldron, many the incantations said over it. An old blind man named Morda was set to keep the fires burning beneath it, assisted by a young boy, Gwion.

The Cauldron of Wisdom and Inspiration must be kept boiling for a year and a day, and then the first three drops from it would impart ultimate knowledge to the one who drank them. But the rest of the liquid would be deadly poison.

Long labored Ceridwen, roaming far to find the rare and exotic herbs she required, and so it chanced that she fell asleep on the last day of the spell. The boy Gwion was stirring the brew when three drops flew out onto his thumb, and they were scalding hot, so that he thrust it into his mouth to stop the burning. Instantly, he had the wisdom and inspiration of ages, and the first thing that occurred to him was that Ceridwen would be very angry.

He ran away from the house of Ceridwen, but all too soon he heard the fury of her pursuit. Using his new magical powers, he turned himself into a hare. She turned into a greyhound bitch, and gained ever more on him. He came to a river, and quick as thinking became a fish. She became an otter. He leapt from the water, and in the middle of his leap became a bird of the air. The witch Ceridwen became a hawk. In desperation, he looked down and saw a pile of wheat. He dived, landed, and as it scattered he turned into a single grain. Then she landed and became a hen, and pecked at the grain until she had swallowed Gwion.

Soon after, Ceridwen found herself with child, though she had lain with no man. When she realized that the baby was Gwion, she resolved to kill it, and Morfran wanted her to also, in revenge for his not becoming a bard. In due course, the babe was born, and Morfran would have slaughtered him on the spot, but the mother said no, because it was the most beautiful child ever seen. But she took him and, sewing him in a bag, set him adrift on the ocean.

And, Then, There's The Mythology of Cerridwen:

Cerridwen ("White Sow", or "White Crafty One") is the Welsh grain and sow-goddess, keeper of the cauldron of inspiration and goddess of transformation. Her son Afagddu was so horribly ugly [that] She set to making a brew of wisdom for him, to give him a quality that could perhaps overcome his ugliness. Every day for a year and a day She added herbs at the precise astrological times, but on the day [that] it was ready[,] the three magical drops fell instead on the servant boy, Gwion Bach, who was set to watch the fire. Instantly becoming a great magician, the boy fled from Her wrath, and as She pursued him they each changed shape--a hound following a rabbit, an otter chasing a salmon, a hawk flying after a sparrow--until finally the boy changed to a kernel of wheat, settling into a pile of grain on a threshing-floor. Cerridwen, becoming a black hen, found him out and swallowed him down.

Nine months later she gave birth to Taliesin, who would be the greatest of all bards.

Called "the White Lady of Inspiration and Death", Cerridwen's ritual pursuit of Gwion Bach symbolizes the changing seasons. Her cauldron contains awen, meaning the divine spirit, or poetic or prophetic inspiration. Her link as the Mother of Poetry is seen in Her reborn son Taliesin, and in the Welsh word that makes up part of Her name, cerdd, which also means poetry.

Cerridwen signifies inspiration from an unexpected corner. Plans may go awry; projects may change. Do not be too quick to hold a project to its course--instead let it take its shape as it will.

The name, itself, is pronounced ke-RID-wen. It is of Welsh origin, and its meaning is "fair, blessed poetry." [In] Celtic mythology, [it is the] name of the goddess of poetic inspiration [and] the name of the mother of the legendary sixth-century Welsh hero Taliesin. . . . Ceridwen is a rare female first name

So, ok, it took me all of two weeks to get to focusing on a goddess of poetry. Shoot me, pursue me as a hawk, swallow me up as a piece of grain. You knew that when you picked me up and warmed me at your breast.

To modern Wiccans, Ceridwen is She who stirs the cauldron of birth, and life, and death, and rebirth, and life, and death, and rebirth and life and, well, I think you get it. Her cauldron, symbol of her womb and precursor to the Romanticized/Anglicized Holy Grail, is where everything dead goes to be cooked down to its essence, which then, like the herbs in a bubbling cauldron (think soup pot if you don't have a cauldron), blend with the essences of everything else in the pot in order to create something completely new. A mere three drops of the wisdom contained in an understanding of that process is enough to impart wisdom that can overcome any handicap, wisdom that can transform a kitchen-boy into the greatest poet that the world has ever known.

We Wiccans chant, "One thing becomes another/In the Mother/In the Mother. One thing becomes another/In the Mother/In the Mother."

Now, as the year itself begins to die, as leaves fall from trees and are transformed into the earth from which new trees will grow, is a good time to think about Ceridwen. What parts of your life need to die and return to the cauldron, to the womb of the Mother? What change do you hope to see in the next year-and-a-day (the traditional training period before a new member could be initiated into a coven)? What transformations might wisdom work within you when it splatters, hot and unexpected, on your thumb? Who will be so angry to see you acquire new wisdom that they will pursue you mercilessly, changing, themselves, as they pursue you? Are you still willing to stir Ceridwen's cauldron?

Much, much more on Talesien here.