Symbols - What does heaven look like
Boiled in a cauldron
A type of rebirth experience in which the person having the spiritual experience feels themselves and usually sees themselves, to be boiled in a cooking pot or cauldron often for a long time. The process is often preceded by dismemberment.
The use of the cauldron to effect rebirth has caused it to enter myth and legend. We see for example the following extremely important cauldrons in Celtic and Greek myth:
- The spoils of Annwn from the Mabinogian – describes a magic cauldron; there is the cauldron of Bran the Blessed and the cauldron of Ceridwen the goddess
- Medea’s cauldron - in Jason and the Argonauts and the Golden Fleece
- Plato and the Greek Krator
- The Cauldron of Odrorir – owned by Odin and in Norse myth
Rather intriguingly, some of the legendary cauldrons in myths have been reproduced so that they now physically exist – like a replica of a visionary experience. Just a small number of examples which are physically in existence include:
- The cauldron of the Dagda an Irish god
- The Gunderstrup cauldron
The symbolism of the experience is the same as with all rebirth experiences in that it symbolically shows the reconfiguration of the person’s functions with the removal of unwanted function and the addition of new needed function. The purpose is to make the person fit for a new role within the spiritual world connected with their destiny.
Instead of the process being a long slow gentle one however, it is completed within one visionary experience and is thus traumatic, as the removal of the functions and addition of new ones can be felt physically and real pain ensues. Boiling in a cauldron involves considerable heat and flame. The person may be actually physically bathed in sweat as a consequence of the experience.
The Composer simply adds images suited to the degree of reconfiguration that has had to take place. If the person is lucky they simply become unconscious during the worst parts, if they are not lucky they symbolically see and experience every step of the process.
Observations
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- A P Elkin - Aboriginal men of high degree - Mulukmuluk
- A Psycho-Spiritual Experience Ibogaine by KBF
- Anaesthetist goes out of body
- Aurora consurgens - 05 An allegory of rebirth
- Burmese boiling
- Clement of Alexandria - Protrepticus - Describes the Dionysian mysteries
- Gershom Scholem – On the Kabbalah and its symbolism - The Red Heifer
- Ishikawa Goemon
- J Isaak Hollandus - Hand der Philosophen 1667, Vienna edition 1746
- Jason and Medea with a living fleece
- Mircea Eliade - Describes Siberian shaman rebirth 003069
- Mircea Eliade - Rebirth In the cave of the Reindeer woman
- Mutus Liber 06
- Nuremberg Chronicle - Boiled in a cauldron
- Picts – Type of experience - Boiled in a cauldron [rebirth]
- Soustelle - Aztecs and Mexica - Rebirth misunderstood
- The Twelve Keys of Basil Valentine - Key 01
- The Twelve Keys of Basil Valentine - Key 05
- Vitebsky, Piers - Siberian shaman
- Waterhouse, John William - The Magic Circle
- Zosimos of Panopolis - The Mushaf as-suwar - 1st Book of Truth Killed and cut into pieces, divided and cut into fragments till he decayed
- Zosimos of Panopolis - The Vision of Zosimos - 03
- Zosimos of Panopolis - The Vision of Zosimos - 04