This was originally posted in NortiaRea's "Favorite Art Masterpieces"-thread, but I now follow some good advice and make a separate thread of it... I hope "General Magick Discussion" is the right place for this.
Our subject is a classic occult mystery: the Gundestrup Cauldron. This is a real, honest to the gods, magickal artefact of ancient past. The Iron Age cauldron was found in a Danish bog and is now kept at the National Museum in Copenhagen. (Diameter: 69 cm, height: 42 cm.) It's origin is still mysterious. Living in the southernmost part of Sweden I can actually go on day-trips to the Danish capital, so I use to go on a sort of pilgrimage at least once a year to look at this wonderful and mysterious treasure, studying it and meditating over it.
The cauldron is made mostly of silver, with some details of gold and glass. The style isn't Norse but rather Celtic. But its still strange, with some Hellenistic, Scythian, Thracian and perhaps even Middle Eastern elements. The silver plates that the cauldron is made of are depicting somewhat ominous mythological scenes. I have heard that some people think this cauldron is the actual source of the magickal cauldrons figuring in many Celtic myths. Some people even go so far they think its the origin of the legend of the Holy Grail. Well, I don't know about the latter... A litte bit far-fetched perhaps...
Most likely the cauldron was displayed in a temple somewhere, and must have been quite famous in those days. But how did it come to rest on the bottom of a Danish swamp? Was it stolen by raiders and then sacrified to the gods of the fen, "given back" to the Otherworld, or did somebody hide it there?
Some pieces of the cauldron are missing; are those molten down for monetary gain, or have somebody so to say disarmed the artefact magickally? Nevertheless, the object has still a very strong magical presence and you don't have to have advanced psychic abilities to feel the power emanating from it. This is the real thing, the stuff legends are made of.
The above is perhaps the most famous plate. Many experts think that this plate depict the god Cernunnos, or at least somebody like him. It seems clear that this is an image of a god of forests and wild beasts. As you can see he's holding a torc in his right hand and a snake in the left. My own guess is that its symbolizing his power as a god of the Nature and the Wild to on one hand reward those who understand the nature and on the other hand punish those who exploits it. But I can of course be totally wrong...
This ghastly scene seems to show infantry warriors marching to a goddess (?), who drops them in a great kettle, whereupon they ride up in the sky as horsemen.
A sacrifice of bulls, and some leopards?
Elephants and gryphons...
And what's going on here?
So what do you think this artefact really is? What was it meant to do? In what strange rituals was it used? Feel free to guess and speculate!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gundestrup_cauldron