My favorite witchly tool is hands-down the cauldron. There’s so much that can be done - elemental magick, honoring your deities, setting a hearthfire, the list goes on!
Choosing Your Cauldron: Cauldrons come in varying shapes and sizes, but are commonly made of cast-iron and have handles. There are cooking cauldrons, which operate like large soup kettles, small, portable, mini-cauldrons for indoor use, big older copper cauldrons, and modern day kettle cauldrons, safe for cooking while camping. The ideal Witch’s cauldron is cast iron, has handles, and has a lid, if only for practical reasons: The cast iron makes it safe for many heat and flame-based spells, the handles make it easy to carry when it’s hot, and the lid is used to stamp out fires before they get out of control.
Cauldron Upkeep
Rust - This is a very real danger when filling your cauldron with liquid. Remember to always rinse out and pat dry your cauldron.
Fires - Keep a lid and sand on hand to extinguish any magickal fires. If oils are used, water won’t work as well as an extinguisher.
Tradition - I like to keep a sprig of seasonal herbs, or something else decorative, in the cauldron while it’s on the altar, so it isn’t empty. You can put the lid on it, or leave it uncovered, as you wish.
Cauldron Work
This is just the tip of the iceberg - here are some of my favorite uses for a cauldron, whether on the altar or without!
- Honoring the Elements: Fill your cauldron according to the season or day’s elemental hold. For water, you can fill your altar cauldron with spring or rainwater and float a candle and herbs/petals correspondent to the day. For fire, you can light candles to flicker in your cauldron (see below for a safe method). For earth, the cauldron can be filled with fresh dirt and decorated with an herb bundle. For air, incense can be burned in the cauldron, on a charcoal round, or as a cone.
- Cauldron Candle fires: You can have a blaze in your cauldron without having a hearth fire! Line the bottom of your cauldron with any type of sand (often referred to as “cauldron sand”), deep enough to stick candles of your choice in. The sand will support them, and the wax will be easier to take out.
- Incense: Cauldrons are fantastic vessels for incense. I use mine to hold my loose resin incense, burning on a charcoal round. The handles make it perfect for carrying around a sacred space to welcome visitors and the deities. Sand should be laid down in the cauldron, and stick incense can then be placed in it to burn, or a lit charcoal round, or a piece of cone incense.
- Scrying: Cauldrons are wonderful crying vessels. An experienced scryer can fill a cauldron with water and gaze within, or you can wax scry by dashing warm candle wax into cold cauldron waters, then interpreting the symbols.
- Offerings: You can use cauldrons as offering bowls for your altar, your deities, or for any other purpose.
- Bale fire: Cauldrons traditionally were used to hold bale fires, sacred fires of nine woods. You can safely keep a small bale fire in your cauldron by layering some sand, making a small hole, placing some kindling, then topping with your bale woods (which don’t need to be nine - you can light a non-bale, regular magickal fire with your regular woods).
The possibilities only expand when you have a food-safe cauldron for cooking. Go forth, Witches, and cast! :>
