Lucifera and the Cauldron

The Cinder Girl

Jan 09, 2023

Lucifera had always lived by the fire, for as long as she could remember. Orphaned at her life's troubled beginning, she had found comfort in embers and flames. Of all places in the world, that was where she preferred to be, there among the ashes, the darkened stones and the cauldron, around the smoke and the fire.

The great fire that consumed the small hut and swallowed her parents also left her with a huge burn from face to chest. Her burnt skin healed slowly, but it would sting and often pull, never allowing her to forget about that night. It was, in fact, quite mysterious how she miraculously survived those burning fire tongues. She often dreamt of that moment, as wondrous as it had been fatal, when she was carried out of the burning house-turned-furnace on a big white stag. Over and over she would relive the scene, going in and then moving away from the dreadful fire on the back of a giant magical being. It couldn’t have happened, they told her.

Lucifera had been found on the edge of the forest, away from the smoking ruins, and all had assumed she had run away in fear on her own two short legs. She and the old cast iron cauldron from the hearth had been the sole survivors of that tragedy.

Despite the cruelty of the fire that engulfed her childhood dreams all at once, the grief and the mourning, it was, nevertheless, fire that gave her comfort. She knew its scent according to the type of wood and the branch size burning; she had learned to listen to the crackling’s songs, to feel the strength of the flames, and the hypnotic glimmer of that dance between light and shadow was how she felt released. She knew when to light it, stoke it or cool it down, when to feed it air or contain it, when to make it hotter or less intense. The ecstatic power of the flames brought her home and, sometimes, she could swear the flames answered her back.

A distant aunt had sheltered her since the accident. A cold, distant woman, who only took her under her roof so as not to be ill-regarded by others and, since that time, Lucifera slept in the fireplace, behind the cauldron. They lived a little far off from the village centre, so they didn’t see many people.

Out of caution, the aunt had had a wooden mask made to cover her niece's huge burn, for no one else had to feel bad about that terrible sight, her aunt would tell her disdainfully. The son of the carpenter who had made it, out of oak wood, had decided to adorn it with a pair of little deer antlers he’d found by the edge of the forest.

Since her aunt made the girl wear the mask every time they went to the village - “you are never, ever, to be seen without it,” the woman would warn her bitterly —the boy had never seen Lucifera without the mask, which didn’t stop them from having their friendly chats. Nevertheless, celebrations, balls, and parties were heard at a distance, from the house, away from everyone else’s eyes.

Lucifera spent all her time around fire, covered in ash, and when she went out without the mask, it was to go to the forest, where she never came across anyone, to look for twigs and branches she could use as firewood, to keep the warmth of her lap. She never ventured too deep into the woods, for her aunt had told her it was a dangerous place, and if the girl got in trouble, she’d not save her again - she’d already done that once, and once was enough.

At dawn on her thirteenth birthday, Lucifera gave in to the forest’s thrumming call. “I’ll find better wood for my fire in there,” she thought. She grabbed her basket and her hatchet, and off she went into the woods. It was cold and foggy that morning, and the path closed in on her as soon as the girl had gone past the first tree line. She continued, a little lost among the ancient, high trunks. Lucifera heads into an area where the mist seems to have lifted, but the ground is full of thorny bushes that tear her skin. Halfway through it, she can’t decide if she should go on or go back - her legs and feet are bloody, but something tells her to keep going.

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Beyond the increasingly faint mist, she manages to discern a clearing and, by sheer determination, she clambers over the thorns. When she gets there, she drops the basket and the hatchet, for what she sees leaves her stunned. A colossal White Stag, with huge, gleaming antlers, stares at her as he grazes peacefully. Lucifera accepts his silent, familiar invitation, approaching him with her arm outstretched and allowing the great beast’s nose to nudge her gently. As their vibrant surfaces touch, skin to hair, they both light up, and the girl is startled and jumps back instinctively.

The White Stag keeps still and speaks to her in a deep voice: "Return here in the next moon and bring whatever is binding you.” Heart racing, Lucifera thinks through her entire life until that moment.

Did the dream really happen? Was it real? Did my body really light up just now?

Amidst all the questions and the awe, she finds herself alone in the clearing and stumbles her way back home. As she runs through the thorny bushes, she notices the tears in her skin open fast, but heal just as quickly. And so she returns home, no basket or hatchet, for she’s left everything in the woods. Nevertheless, her legs have no tears or scars, and the burn scar has grown smaller.

Throughout the following weeks, Lucifera repeatedly dreams that her entire body is lighting up as she sleeps, and she feels stronger each passing morning.

One month later, on the same moon, she enters the forest again to retrieve her basket and hatchet, and she brings along what binds her: the wood mask that hides her from life. It is a cold and rainy day, and the girl struggles to get through the mud and keep her balance on the slippery ground. As she reaches the thorn wall, she stops and takes a deep breath - the bushes are a lot higher since the last time she was here. Another deep breath, she grips the mask harder in her hand and lunges forward, feeling her skin tear at each step.

On the other side of the thornbush wall is the clearing but, instead of the White Stag, she finds a small, black schist house, smoke billowing out of the chimney. After a few cautious steps, she knocks on the door, but notices it’s ajar. Feeling cold and wet, she walks in, slowly, her eyes adjusting to the darkness inside. It is a small room, with a table at the centre, on top of which she finds her lost basket and hatchet, and a chimney, under which a fire is lit on the hearth, and a cauldron over it. The fire reacts to Lucifera’s arrival stretching its flames over the cauldron. Lucifera observes every detail, from the herbs hanging everywhere, the clay pots lined up on a shelf, to the bones and antlers in a basket.

“Ah! Here you are at last! I’ve been waiting for you for so long, let me take a good look at you. How you’ve grown!”

The words come from a very, very old woman who’s just entered the hut carrying a bundle of twigs in her arms. She sets the bundle near the fire and grabs the girl’s shoulders, looking at her with bright, tender eyes. “Come, let’s get you warmed up by the fire,” the elder says. “I’m your godmother and we, forest beings, have been walking with you even when you don't see us. Are you ready to transform what binds you?” the old woman asks as she sits by the fire.

Lucifera approaches slowly without quite understanding everything that is going on. She places the mask in her godmother's rough, calloused hands. Expecting nothing in return, the old woman offers the mask to the fire, who draws it into its fiery tongues. The fire gobbles up the mask and its flames turn sky-blue.

“Your mask was ordered in disdain, but carved in friendship and adorned in love,” the crone tells her. Then the azure flames spew out the two small stag horns that had been part of the mask, now as white as snow. The old godmother makes her a necklace from the little horns and invites her to return with her cauldron in a month's time. As she bids farewell to her goddaughter, she mysteriously whispers: "Come back, you who know the fire's secrets." Stunned, Lucifera returns home and is amazed to see that the thorn wall has withered away, making the path a little easier, despite the considerable distance.

When she arrives it is already dark and her aunt is waiting at the door with an angry look on her face: "Who do you think you are, disappearing like that? You don't think of anyone but yourself. And you come with an empty basket, you don't even bring firewood...", she hisses full of resentment and spite in her voice. Suddenly, the aunt turns pale and mumbles: "But who are you anyway? Where's your scar?" The girl instinctively brings her hand to her face, her fingers search for the texture of the burn, but she feels nothing but soft skin. The scar had disappeared.

Lucifera realised the dread in her aunt's strangled voice and that, out of fear, she would not let her into the house. "I just want my cauldron," she tells her softly. "Your cauldron? Your cauldron stays here as payment for the shelter I've given you over these ten years," the woman aunt spat at her niece in defiance, violently slamming the door shut.

The girl is left standing outside, not knowing what to do - she needs her only inheritance. Silently, she climbs to the roof of the house and peers down the chimney. Down below, she can see the cauldron in the dim fireplace. Lucifera asks the fire for help and the embers immediately ignite under the cauldron. The flames rise and white blazes lift the old iron container up the chimney, placing it in the girl's hands.

Climbing carefully down from the roof, she sets off wildly toward the forest's edge with her cauldron, basket, and hatchet. She plans to nestle in a nearby crag until it's time to return to the forest clearing. The two small horns around her neck light up when she gets there. Lucifera stands still, for someone else is there. The carpenter's son stands up, astonished, asking, "Who are you?" Incredulous, he recognizes the stalks that he had put in her mask a few years before.

"Lucifera? Is that you?" the lad mumbles, approaching without fear, seeing her face for the first time. Lucifera tells him her whole adventure from the beginning and he listens attentively. They agree that she will stay hidden there until the next moon, when she must return to the forest, and that he will help her in whatever way she needs. They strike up their secret together with a complicit gleam in their eye. From that night on, he visits her in the crag every night, bringing her news from the village, how her aunt told everyone that she had disappeared without a trace, the selfish, ungrateful girl. They cry and laugh together, sowing friendship and planting love over a month of furtive encounters in the glimmering light of the fire and the stars.

On the night of her departure, the carpenter's son gives her a kiss and with a sigh, whispers: "I hope you come back." She enters the forest with her heart in turmoil, carrying only the cauldron and one stem on her necklace, for the other is now hanging from the boy's neck. After much walking through the trees and rocks, when she reaches the spot of the thorny bushes, she finds that instead of spikes, there are now open flowers in the moonlight, their soft, white petals glistening under the moonshine. Lucifera moves forward, eager to see what she will find this time in the mysterious clearing.

She finds the old black schist house with the door ajar, and around her are nine astonishing white deer grazing in the moonlight, who look at her as if they've known her all their lives. She steps forward in awe and respect amidst that herd, as wild as it is sacred, and peers into the house. There's no one there and the house seems empty, save for a shawl carefully folded on a chair. The moment she walks up to the threshold, the embers in the fireplace come alive and the white flames gently reach for the cauldron, caressing her hands and depositing it in the fireplace, on top of the smoke-blackened slabs. It fits perfectly.

She is finally home.

The following month she put on her shawl, made of gold and stone thread, and ventured off to the village dance, to the community's utter astonishment, who commented among themselves, "But who is this girl? Where did she come from?" All night she danced with the carpenter's son around the fire, while both the horns on their necklaces glowed in unison.

After the story, please take some time to feel how it relates to you and what unfolds and resonates with your unique context.

Let's breathe.

What breathes through the tale

What follows is not a symbolic interpretation of the tale, exiling it in a single narrative. There is a unique symbiotic dialogue with the tale’s living layers that is yours to feel, sense, and travel through. The following words are mythical, historical, and place transcontextual information that resonates with the tale pulsing realm.

This tale was imagined, and I subsequently investigated the interwoven connections to this fabling. This is the story of Cinderella, guardian of the embers. As in all tales in this book, here we look for the mysterious shamanic patterns submerged in the fabulated narrative.

Light bringer

The name that immediately came to me for the protagonist was Lucifera, which literally means she who emits, brings or gives light, fire, brightness or clarity, in a clear challenge to Lucifer's name as the fallen angel of darkness. I recalled and subsequently found many connections to this name, such as Mater Lucina, or Saint Lucia. In ancient Roman mythology, Mater Lucina is related to the goddess Juno, and sometimes to Diana. Both are associated with childbirth; they bring children into the light, protecting the women in labour. Their title Mater means mother, and Lucina - from the Latin lux, lucis, "light" - links these goddesses to the light of the moon, whose cycles have been intertwined with female fertility since ancient times, and are even one of the earliest time codifications.

Both goddesses are also deeply related to the forest and the sacred grove, their original temple-place. The wise herbalist and witch Hecate, the creator of the sacred night-vision, relates to light in its black variant, just as Saint Lucia, with her visionary eyes on a platter, brings the ecstatic all-seeing blindness. Mater Lucina, or the Mother of Illumination, entangles herself as a version of the Celtic Sheela-na-gig, whose open vulva is a symbolic portal to the mysterious revelations of other worlds.

Later, in the perpetuation of paganism, the goddess Diana embodies the alchemy of the conjunction of Moon and Sun. Because of her resemblance to Hecate - as patroness of witchcraft in Christian, Gnostic or occult heresy - Diana split her bright personality into Lucina. From her opposite darkness Lucifer, the devil, is born, in a pagan version of yin and yang. The Goddess Diana is portrayed as a shepherdess who resides in springs or caves in the sacred woods. She has connections to semi-aquatic forms, living in underground palaces, and subterranean havens that were ancient caves connected to the pattern of the seven white deer, the initiatory number, and the animal often present in traditional tales.

Matronalia was the Roman festival celebrating the goddess of childbirth and women in general. On this first day of the Roman year, women took part in rituals: at home, they received gifts and prayers from their husbands and daughters, in ceremonies that included ritual meals and, in shamanic terms, cooking and digestion are metaphors linked to transformation and transcendence.

Cauldron

This brings us to the symbolic pattern of the Cauldron, Lucífera's valuable and sacred heritage. Cauldrons are constantly present in European shamanic antiquity, for it is where witches induce the alchemy of their magical potions. This sacred 'item' contains numerous symbols of renewal, such as the womb or belly of the cauldron. In Celtic tradition, the cauldron of death and birth are both used as a funerary cinerary, containing the ashes of the dead, and for ritually washing the newborn child.

There's also the Cauldron that endlessly provides food, like the Cornucopia or the Horn of Plenty - offering limitless wealth; the worldly version of immortality, never-ending material, and spiritual good fortune.

The bottomless cauldron that bestows eternal gifts is also part of this pattern. There is, furthermore, the Cauldron of inspiration and knowledge that delivers intelligence, clairvoyance and knowledge, bringing the individual closer to the sacred shift in world perception, inducing an ecstatic, visionary or altered state of mind - which happens when we drink the soup the witch has brewed in the Cauldron.

The Ancient Celts had the three cauldrons in their metaphysics. The concept of the Cauldron of Poetry, the mystical art of the Celts, tells us that each person has three boiling cauldrons, rescued by the gods from the mysteries of the original abyss. One cauldron facing up, another on its side, and the last one facing down, all empty. The lowest is the cauldron of incubation, located in the abdomen: it relates to maintaining good health and the needs of the organism; it faces upwards and is responsible for bodily functions. The highest, located in the head, is the cauldron of wisdom, for it disperses inspiration, facing downwards and empty; in it, the noble brew in which the true root of all knowledge is brewed is prepared. Both are mediated by the cauldron of movement, in the chest, which controls and disperses the emotions and from where poetic art emerges. Born unstable, the three cauldrons can be turned over and filled with the pouring cauldron of wisdom. Each cauldron presupposed a rescue of the poetic art, of the artistic journey of gathering knowledge and wisdom, and being receptive to visions and dreams of other worlds.

Cinderella

In many old versions of the Cinderella story, she sleeps by the fireplace, and I harnessed that root for this tale. In the original versions, she attends the ball three nights in a row, portrayed here by the three times she has to venture into the forest, in an ancestral pattern of initiatory ritual. In these three journeys into the forest's heart, Lucifera has to go through thorns, pricking and cutting herself, but also having the opportunity to be renewed. The mystical pattern of thorns, spikes, or stings characterizes the intoxication and opening to other dimensions, such as the shamanic journey and the consequent disappearance from the world for a certain period — this also carries obvious connotations with menstruation and its cyclical seclusion. The menstrual flow is figurative in the trickling blood as she goes through these thorny obstacles. The flowers that appear on the third visit carry the primordial symbolism of sexual energy and availability.

Stepmother

The figure of the stepmother is a common character in fairy tales, here portrayed by the aunt. A petty, acrimonious person, a dry and wicked woman who plays the valuable role of initiator of the maiden. In the tales, the stepmother, as a substitute for the mother, often (re)acts cruelly, callously, or violently, which opens the space for the beginning of the journey of transformation and maturation. In this version, the aunt takes this catalytic role, pushing Lucifera towards metamorphosis.

Wooden mask

The wooden mask in this tale acts as the transmutation of the ball gown. It appears to hide Lucifera's monstrous and offensive side, her scars and brands from the fire of her childhood. However, masks have a special meaning among shamanic cultures — the person becomes what they display — because they are portals for the incorporation of mystical entities, bringing possibilities of transformation. It is not by chance that the church banned animal masks around the 12th century due to its fear and belief in the validity of metamorphosis into animals, more than any other pagan practice! The word ‘mask' is also closely linked to the word 'witch' as it seems inspired by one of the Latin names for witch: masca.

Fairy godmother & Nine white deer

The fairy godmother appears in the tale as the elder of the forest, inspired by the ancient Irish legend of finding the right place, a sacred place found by the presence of nine white deer. This is the legend of a saint who lived in the early sixth century. Gobnait fled a family conflict, taking refuge in Inis Óirr in the Aran Islands. An angel appeared to her and told her that she must leave because this was "not the place of her resurrection." The angel said she should seek a place where she would find nine white deer grazing. So Gobnait wandered to many places. First, she saw three white deer, and followed them to another place, where she saw six more. But it wasn't until she reached Ballyvourney that Gobnait saw nine white deer grazing all together. And it was there that she founded her monastic community, and there she remained in her "place of resurrection."

Why are these tales important now?

INTRO, tale list and chapter references.