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The Gundestrup Cauldron

Sacred Source has re-created this amazing Celtic ritual cauldron in polymer-resin at 3/5 the size of the original which is housed in the National Museum, Copenhagen.


Gundstrup Cauldron

click for larger (75kb) image

Our reproduction, 17" diameter and 10" tall, allows all 13 panels to be seen in full detail. This artifact contains more specific visual information about Celtic life, ritual, religion and culture than any other, and has been called by scholars "the single most valuable barbarian treasure ever unearthed."

See our Gundestrup Cauldron catalog page.
Cast in polymer resin with silvery metallic patina finish.

 

Click on a photo for an enlarged view.

Gundustrup Cauldron

Overview picture of the complete Gundestrup Cauldron, which was crafted in Gaul circa 100 BCE. It was discovered in a peat bog in Denmark in 1891, where scholars suggest it had been placed as an offering to the deities of Nature in a Druidic ritual. The cauldron's 13 panels recount a Celtic Foundation Myth similar in importance to the Hebrew Genesis cycle, the Greek Illiad, and Roman Aeneid.  

 

Maeve

The Hiberno-Celtic goddess Maeve, she who endows the sovereign with his powers and the Earth with fertility, rides upon her wheeled chariot in a sunwise direction. The elephants identify her with rulership, the griffins and lion with her War Goddess aspect.    

Esus/Cu Chulainn

The Celtic God/Hero named Esus/Cu Chulainn, guardian of cattle and beasts, is introduced. He offers a torc, symbolizing wealth and prosperity; the horned-serpent associates him also with water. The various beasts and fish-rider on right refer to a Celtic shape-shifter chapter of the larger myth.  

 

Esus/Cu Chulainn

The leaping horned figure Esus/Cu Chulainn's great ordeal is shown. First, with a chariot-wheel as his weapon, he defeats Fergus, the central deity in the panel(who is also Maeve's lover/ally). He also leaps upon and breaks the neck of a horned serpent, a form of the Goddess Morrigan with whom he also must do battle.  

 

Esus/Cu Chulainn

Three further aspects of Esus/Cu Chulainn's epic battle are shown. Top: Maeve's ally Froech and 3 riders try to jump the Hero's felled tree obstacle; next Froech with his warriors and trumpeteers march warlike against Esus/Cu Chulainn; finally the Hero wrestles with Froech and drowns him as predicted.  

 

Donn Cooley

Donn Cooley, the great bull of Gaulish/Ulster kingship, was the Celtic cultural symbol of the annual life-death-ressurection Year-King. This deified bull of tribal fertility, after defeating the bull of Goddess Maeve (in struggle that parallel's and echos that of Esus/Cu Chulainn), is himself ritually slain. The triple rendering of this deed emphasizes its importance, and a second depiction of this ultimate sacrifical offering appears as a panel mounted on the cauldron's bottom.    

 


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