The House Witch: Your Complete Guide to Creating a Magical Space with Rituals and Spells for Hearth and Home - Arin Murphy-Hiscock 2018

Using the Cauldron in Hearthcraft
The Magic of the Cauldron

If there is one tool that anyone following a hearth- and home-based spiritual path should have, it would be the cauldron. For all its symbolism and practical association with the hearth throughout history, the cauldron embodies so many of the goals and areas considered important in hearthcraft: abundance, nourishment, spiritual rejuvenation, introspection, and wisdom, to name only a few.

As hearthcraft is also about practicality, the cauldron isn’t simply a symbol; it can be used in everyday activity as well, if you so desire. The modern kitchen cauldron is known as a Dutch oven, available with and without legs depending on indoor or outdoor use, and made of cast iron or enamelware.

If you acquire a cauldron solely for ritual or spiritual use, it doesn’t have to be cast iron. While hearthcraft tends to be very practical and doesn’t specify having a set of tools exclusively for ritual use, you may want to have two cauldrons: one heavy cast-iron Dutch oven—type for cooking, and a smaller, lighter one for spiritual work and as a symbol on a shrine or altar. After all, lugging a twenty-five-pound Dutch oven around can be a bit taxing.

When looking for a cauldron for spiritual work, keep in mind that you’re going to want something that you can clean easily, as well as something that won’t break or take up too much room; you may want to keep it out, on your altar or shrine, for example, to use for offerings or to serve as a candleholder (a tea light in a small cauldron offers the image and feel of a needfire without the mess). Or you might use your cauldron as a focus for small honoring rituals or as a visual focus during meditation.

In Chapter 6 you’ll learn how to create a kitchen shrine. As a part of that shrine, you can use a small cauldron to hold a small amount of salt. The salt in your shrine or altar cauldron can be used for many things:

✵ The salt can absorb negative energy in the space. If placed on the shrine with this intention, the salt will absorb negative energy, but don’t use that salt for cooking, as representative of earth in a ritual, or for purifying anything.

✵ Offer a pinch of this salt at the beginning or end of every day to the spirits of your hearth.

✵ Add a pinch of this salt to your cooking and visualize it banishing anything negative that lingers or as the catalyst that combines and binds the desired energies already present.

Having a small symbolic cauldron is a practical way to incorporate the energies associated with it into your home without having to store a huge cast-iron pot somewhere. Small iron cauldrons, small enough to hold in the palm of your hand up to the size of two fists together, are easily placed somewhere about your workspace without cluttering it up.

Uses for Your Cauldron

Be imaginative! The cauldron can be used in several different ways. Here are some suggestions to get you thinking about how you can involve the symbol of the cauldron into your spiritual practice and your daily work in and around the hearth:

✵ Use your cauldron as a candleholder by slipping a tea light into it or by filling it half full of sand or non-clumping kitty litter and placing a votive on top. Push the votive slightly into the sand so that it is steady before lighting it.

✵ Put a layer of sand or non-clumping kitty litter in the bottom of your cauldron and place incense sticks in it, inserting the base of the stick firmly into the sand. Mound the sand around it if you have to in order to keep it upright. (If your incense is the wooden-stick type, you can also snap some of the bare stick off.)

✵ Place a bit of food in your cauldron as an offering and place it on your shrine or altar.

✵ Put a pinch of whatever herbs or spices you are using to season your food in the cauldron on the shrine or altar.

✵ Place your cauldron in the center of your kitchen and visualize all the stagnant and negative energy spiraling into it from wherever it may be hiding—corners, behind the fridge, under the stove, under the sink, and so on.

✵ When you need to calm yourself, set the cauldron on the table in front of you and breathe deeply to settle yourself. Visualize the darkness at the bottom of the cauldron being a portal to deep, soothing, cool energy. As you inhale, sense that energy flowing up to you. Feel the soothing energy fill you, relaxing tension, calming anger or fears. Do this until you feel calm again.

✵ When you need to energize yourself, set the cauldron on the table in front of you and breathe deeply to settle yourself. Visualize the darkness at the bottom of the cauldron being a portal to a vibrant, joyful energy. As you inhale, sense that energy flowing up to you. Feel the energizing energy fill you, wakening your cells and energizing your body and mind. Do this until you feel ready to take on whatever task you have been preparing for.

✵ Bring in flowers from your garden or that you have collected on a walk through your neighborhood. Place them in the cauldron on your altar or shrine. Remove them at the end of the day.

The Cauldron As a Meditative Focus

Use your cauldron as a meditative focus while saying a prayer or invocation. You can either gaze at the cauldron alone or fill it with water and gaze into it. Here are some ideas for prayers to say before you meditate or to wrap up a meditation session. These are only suggestions; feel free to write and use your own.

Cauldron Prayer for Abundance

As a symbol of abundance, the cauldron really can’t be beaten. Abundance encompasses things like prosperity, plenty of food, good friends, a healthy bank account, and so forth.

Blessed cauldron,

I invoke through thee Undry,

The great cauldron of the Dagda.

Be for me a source of abundance,

Nourishing energy, and strength.

Cauldron Prayer for Inspiration

No matter what our métier—cooking, painting, writing, singing, parenting, answering phones, or driving a bus—there are days when we feel that everything we do is bland or unoriginal. If you feel like you need a bit of supportive inspiration from your spiritual hearth, try calling on Odhinn’s cauldron of poets’ mead for a creative pick-me-up.

Blessed cauldron,

I invoke through thee the cauldron of Odhinn.

Be for me a source of inspiration,

That my work at hearth and in home be motivated by

Divine insight, handled with sensitive perception,

And carried out with poetry.

Cauldron Prayer for Spiritual Renewal

We all need to reinvent ourselves once in a while, especially if our lives feel stagnant or if we feel like we’re getting nowhere. This prayer calls for figurative rebirth to help you get moving again. Remember: to be reborn, you need to give up what you currently have, so this prayer can initiate some changes in your life with which you may not be completely comfortable. It can be hard to give up ingrained ways of thinking, even if you know they’re holding you back.

Blessed cauldron,

I invoke through thee the cauldron of Bran.

Wash me clean of what I no longer need,

And grant me new sight, new understanding,

And new energy to live my life.

Cauldron Prayer for Wisdom

Wisdom differs from knowledge in that it is the accumulation of enlightenment derived from putting knowledge into use, thereby gaining personal experience. Wisdom is what guides us in making decisions related to moral or ethical issues.

Blessed cauldron,

I invoke through thee the cauldron of Cerridwen.

Be for me a source of wisdom,

That I may keep peace and equilibrium within my house,

And that all who step to my hearth know right from wrong.

Grant me insight, blessed cauldron,

And aid me in my daily decisions.