The veil, is thinning. With the waning of the sun, the Kingdom of Shadow creeps ever closer. The forgotten things are rising. And a voice, her voice, grows slowly stronger. At first a sigh on the wind; a candle flickering without a draft; a dream so deep you awake muggy and unseeing. Then a call so deep it unbirths itself from the marrow of your bones; as she, who is called Crone One, Hecate, Carravogue, Morrigu, Asase Yaa, Mistress of the Moon, Keeper of the Cauldron, Ceridwyn, stirs deep within the Earth.
“Come. Beloved. Oh how long I have waited. Come beloved, come now, will you come? Step into my cauldron, the womb of night, the realm of shadow, and see what can be seen.”
And while your heart longs to take the hand and learn the lessons of the Mother of the Dark, the iron taste of fear wraps itself around your tongue; for, as you have known since you were a little child, there are monsters in the night . . . and wonder and terror, and the knowing of things it would be so much easier not to know.
And who should be more wise of this than Ceridwyn herself; mother of Creirwy, the bright one; the daughter of the light. Mother of Morfran, the son of the shadows, and of the darkening night.
Morfran, whom Ceridwyn so loved, she sought to balance his darkness with an infinite wisdom, and set about the brewing of a potion for her beloved son that would boil for both a year and a day.
The potion into which she poured her blood, sweat, toil and tears and the essence of her very self; a wisdom as deep as the universe is wide. The potion which she set in the keeping of the blind man Morda, tender of the fire beneath the cauldron. The potion she left to the stirring of the young boy Gwion Bach, to ensure it did not catch and spoil.
And just as the world behind our world thrives on the power of three; three jewels of knowledge, three faces of the Goddess, three sisters of the fates, the first three drops of Ceridwyn’s potion would impart the drinker her own blood-born wisdom; leaving the rest a fatal poison.
But the power of three can have a mind of its own, and it seems even a Goddess’s plans may be interrupted by the sisters of the fates – three hot drops of potion spilled onto Gwion’s thumb one day as he stirred the liquid, scolding him red raw. Instinctively, the boy put his thumb quick to his mouth, cooling the burning liquid . . . and unthinkingly gaining the wisdom and knowledge Ceridwyn had intended for her own son and rendering the rest of the potion to poison.
On learning of the boy’s hideous error, Ceridwyn’s howl of rage flew to the four corners of the Earth, and hearing her murderous scream, Gwion fled. In his new found wisdom, he turned into a hare, that he might be flight of foot – but Ceridwyn, greatest of all shape shifters, turned into a hound, snapping at his heels. Gwion became a fish and jumped into the nearest stream; but Ceridwyn became otter, snatching at his fins; Gwion flew from the water into the sky, droplets and scales shivering into the feathers of a dove; but Ceridwyn became hawk, talons at his tail feathers.
And so the chase went on; for every animal Gwion turned himself into, Ceridwyn turned predator, hunting him with relentless vigour, until Gwion had shapeshifted into every creature on the Earth, and Ceridwyn, every kind of hunter. Exhausted, Gwion finally turned himself into a tiny grain of corn and hid, hoping against hope he would escape the great Goddess at last. But Ceridwyn, who knows much, became hen, and ate him whole.
It might have been the end of things then, but for one thing; when inside the mother of all transformation, the grain became planted within Ceridwyn’s womb, and there, it began to grow.
Enraged to find she was pregnant, and knowing the babe to be the reincarnated form of the boy who had robbed her first son of his wisdom, Ceridwyn vowed to kill the child as soon as it emerged from her body. But nine months later, found she could not. For from her womb sprang forth the wisest, most compassionate soul the world had ever known; he of the ‘shining brow’, poet of ages, speaker of the soul of the world, with all the wisdom of Ceridwyn herself, irrevocably transformed by death and rebirth; he who the songs of time would call Taliesin, Father of Bards.
And this is why, at this time every year, the wisdom keepers light candles in honour Ceridwyn, who became the threefold mother – mother of Creirwy, daughter of the light; enlightenment, mother of Morfran, the son of darkness; the shadow self, mother of Taliesin, the keeper of wisdom born of change, transformation, death and rebirth.
And this is why, at this time of Samhain, you may hear the people of the old ways call upon Ceridwyn to hear their prayers for those who have passed beyond the veil; for she is keeper of the beloved dead, holding them deep inside her womb, her cauldron of transformation, until their time comes to be born anew.
And this is why, at this time of year, as the sun wanes and the nights draw in, we too prepare to face our shadows and enter the long dark; the cave of the psyche, Ceridwyn’s cauldron of transformation, to let die what needs to die, so that what might be reborn, might be reborn.
Words: Ellie Brooks of @wildflowerceremonies