Identity is complex; woven of place and space, of time, and of the conditions we were born into, of the somatic reality that we find ourselves in, with the continuous unfoldment of experiences and circumstances, as well as of the choices that we make along the way. Identity is fluid. Layered. We are never just one thing. We are enveloped in the ever changing womb of the universe. We are the seeds and the sowers, the vastness of sky and small beings under its canopy. We are individuated and interconnected. We are ever becoming. In the alchemy of life’s fires, we become Cerridwen the shapeshifter; Celtic goddess of transformation.

Inside the Collective Cauldron of Our Time

This is a difficult moment in history. We’re witnessing a grand collapse, falling down with the structures we’ve lived in. It’s a Tower moment, if we speak Tarot language. The systems are flawed, but we need them. Complete destruction such as we’re experiencing right now is frightening for good reasons. Deep breaths. Seriously, breathe with me. 

Slow inhale through your nose, fill your belly up with air, blow it up like a balloon. Pause at the top of the inhale. Hold. And exhale slowly, letting your belly relax. Empty the air out completely. And do it again. Slow deep breath. And again. 

We are living in the cauldron. Wrapped in collective darkness. On the one hand, it’s the vessel within which old forms dissolve. We melt in the pot of chaos, breaking down within the soup of shared grief, heat increases rage. We are trying to hold on to ideas and ideals, but they’re collapsing. On the other hand, it’s the womb of the goddess, and in it we’re growing new forms. New identities will be born.

The Dangers of Certainty

The danger is rigidity. The poison of certainty is bubbling all around us. When the world as we’ve known it collapses, the attempt to hold onto something may turn the vision to myopic, the thought process to stagnant and stuck. Perspective becomes limited. The ability to look at things through different lenses, weakens. Can you see that happening around you? Can you feel your belly tightening, or the sensation of your jaw stiffening, when you – you who thought yourself to be so open minded – feel so right about something? 

You are right, right? You are one hundred percent sure about that. You are certain. Rightness threatens to ossify your view. 

Tyranny stretches its tendrils through this historical period, through rising fascism, through the jaws of authoritarianism slowly closing in on us. But certainty’s dangerous tentacles reach from within the belly of the beast of our own becoming. 

What we might need in this pressure cooker moment, is to melt a little. Dissolve rigidity in the heat of the brew we are stirring. Be fierce. Be gentle. Be wild. Be civilized. Embody generosity. Take good care of ourselves. Where does pliability come from? What needs to soften? Where do we need to firm the form so that it can hold the liquidity of your changing world?

Do you know how to shapeshift? Do you know how to molt? 

Cerridwen the Shapeshifter: Why Her Story Matters Now

In her dark season magic, Celtic goddess Cerridwen shapeshifts. She knows how to be of the land, of the waters, of the skies. She changes her form. She is determined, and therefore adjusts. She is powerful. And pliable. She has goals. They blow up in her face. She’s pissed. The chaos she faces churns her, stirs her, enrages her, engages her. The heat of her rage melts her form. She can become whatever is needed as she chases Gwion Bach; the one who stole the three drops of sacred potion she’s brewed for a long long time. 

Why She is Called a Shapeshifter

A mother wants to help her son. She meddles with magic. She is a goddess. She brews a potion for a year and a day. She knows what herbs to gather and when, she carries the wisdom of the land in her veins. She knows what incantations to mutter. She’s a pro in Celtic witchcraft. And when her plans dissolve in the heat of her own cauldron of transformation, righteousness and rage roar in her bones. 

In a culture that’s moving further in the direction of closed mindedness and rigidity, we need to cultivate fluidity. Mutability. Elasticity. Cerridwen’s shapeshifting myth tells a tale of spiritual transformation. You can read more about who she is in this essay. Her mythic alchemy mirrors our own worries, frustrations, anger at injustice, tendency to demonize that which we see as wrong, and our lack of ability to see a broader picture. 

Cerridwen shapeshifts in order to properly chase and successfully catch the person who stole from her. She’s brewed a potion in her cauldron, meant to transform her son’s darkness into radiance; the heat and the stirring alchemize the contents into a powerful substance. Now, the heat ignited and stirred by wrath, spin and stir her ability to shapeshift. Now she’s the one alchemized in the fire – the fire of her own fury. 

Why Shapeshifting is Essential in Times of Upheaval

Shapeshifting is part of our ability to adapt to the circumstances we’re in, to change our form in order to better handle the situation we’re facing, to rise and meet the occasion – sometimes in a way that best serves our own needs, desires, and agenda, sometimes in service of someone else, of something else, of something greater.

Cerridwen’s rage causes her to shapeshift. Her protective Mama Bearness causes her to change forms. But it’s also the feeling of betrayal. And it’s also her own frustration; she’s worked hard for this potion. She was patient. She did the work. The potion is churned for her son’s transformation. She wants a better life for him. She’s sure it’s for his own well being. She knows it’s for her own peace of mind too. And someone else took it! 

We’re gonna take on different forms for different reasons, at different times, with different people. Each of us contains a multitude. That’s a necessary feature of our humanity. Each of us carries many roles.

We need to figure out how to show up in this time of collective upheaval; how to show up to our conversations, how to show up to situations, how to show up to our relationships with our peers, with our closest friends, with our parents, with our colleagues, with the most challenging people in our community. We need to figure out what form to take when we talk to our children. 

Our multitude is necessary. 

How do we adapt within these stormy waters? How do we navigate all that is collapsing? How do we change in ways that support us and others while all of the stable forms we’ve counted on in our society dissolve? How do we reconfigure who we are while burning in the flames of injustice? We cannot stay the same. We cannot stay the same person that we were when the reality we lived in offered a different kind of a world. 

Shapeshifting is the liquefaction of identity. 

We need to try on different forms, to learn how to fluidly transmute, how to flow between roles and identities, how to integrate as many parts of ourselves as possible, how to shapeshift, and how to metabolize. 

Not only now – this is necessary work no matter what the world places on our plate – but definitely now, when what’s placed in front of us is narrow mindedness, dogma, lack of critical thinking, superficiality, binary thinking, and tribalism. 

The Shapeshifting Myth: From Cauldron to Becoming

Learning how to shapeshift is not the entire arc of our transformation. The mythic journey of Cerridwen is more complex. There are stages and phases. There are layers. There’s a softening that comes through not only the shapeshifting on the outside – between animals and environments – but on the inside; within the digestive system, within the womb, within the mind, and in the heart. 

Our journey through these difficult times starts with our desire to alleviate the suffering of loved ones, of people in our community who struggle. It begins with our desire to dispel racism and bigotry, to help those who are most hurt by the rule of a fascist regime. It starts with our frustration with cruelty and ignorance and lies. It begins with wanting to transform the most hideous, foul parts of society.

The Brewing of the Cauldron of Wisdom

It begins with Wise Woman, goddess of renewal, Cerridwen, and her worry about her son, her desire to help him, her fear for him as the embodiment of darkness in a world that so clearly favors the light, and maybe her utter disgust with his opinions and views. Maybe she feels the need to cast this powerful spell because of who he voted for and what that means for other people’s rights. She brews a potion for wisdom and brightness in her cauldron of transformation, so that she can give it to him and uplevel his intelligence, his perspective on certain things, and make him more attractive. 

It takes a year and a day to brew the potion for this great spell. She gathers all she needs from mother earth; roots and leaves and seeds and flowers, bark and fungi and feathers, skin and eyes and scales, hair and fur and fangs. and mutters the incantations required to set the cauldron in the fire and start to churn this potion of inspiration. 

To help her stir, and tend to the potion day and night, she calls upon the old blind man, Morda, and the young peasant boy, Gwion Bach. 

After a year and a day, right when the potion is ready, Cerridwen is not there to catch the three drops of Awen – the spark of divine inspiration that has been brewed in the cauldron of regeneration this whole time. Maybe she’s preparing for this great moment. Maybe it’s an unconscious choice to be late. The three drops leap out of the cauldron and land on the hand of Gwion Bach. The brew is hot, and the young peasant boy sticks his thumb in his mouth to cool it down. He immediately fills with the brightness of Awen. 

Gwion’s Flight and Cerridwen’s Transformations

Gwion Bach, now filled with divine sight, with prophetic power, with cosmic creativity, and with ferocious intelligence, realizes immediately that he’s in trouble. He must flee. The spark of Awen grants him the power to shapeshift. He turns himself into a hare so that he can escape fast from the wrath of the goddess.

And the goddess of magic, indeed filled with rage upon discovering what has occurred, turns herself into a greyhound and swiftly gallops across the land after him. Another turn on the road will cause another form to emerge in this shapeshifting myth. Gwion Bach knows that the goddess is catching up with him. He can feel her closing in. 

Life’s road bends and twists, the world is constantly changing, and so much is out of our control. But our ability to adjust, to adapt, to transmute, grants us the power to co-create with the universe, to stir the cauldron of transformation within our own being, and to shapeshift so that we can influence the situation and make a difference. 

The hare that is Gwion Bach runs fast and arrives at a stream. He jumps in. His body transfigures as soon as it hits water, and fish scales replace hare fur. Cerridwen jumps in right after him, taking the form of an otter. Her teeth are about to catch him, and he turns his face upwards and flies toward the sky as a wren. Celtic goddess Cerridwen, who is the embodiment of nature, with instincts and intuition as sharp as a Hawk’s, turns herself into one and flies after him as fast as she can. 

It is not unlike our own lives, when what we are after seems to shapeshift and escape our talons swiftly. It is not so different from our own reality, where we are about to achieve something and life’s wheels turn, spinning us away from what we’ve worked hard for. It’s not unlike us to fill with rage and try to catch the cause for our loss and disappointment. And like us, Cerridwen faces the challenge and changes her form to achieve what she pursues. 

She almost has him in her beak, but the wren who is Gwion Bach looks down and sees a barn, and in the barn he sees a pile of wheat. Without hesitation, he flies right into it, becoming a seed, a little grain, a tiny piece in a big pile. 

And then he hears her. A hen. And she’s pecking at the pile of grains. He burrows deeper in, just as we do when we are him. But life is a transformative journey. It devours us. It digests us. We are but seeds, caught in the beak of great mother hen. 

She eats him.

Why Shapeshifting Matters in Dark Season Magic

The journey is far from being over. The shapeshifting process hasn’t ended. Gwion Bach, now a seed, is in the belly of the hen who is the goddess, finds a way to transform yet again. He carves a path from Cerridwen’s digestive system and into her womb. There, he will need to wait for nine months, to grow slowly in the dark, to take his time to become the next version of his own becoming. 

When the goddess feels the little seed shift into her womb, her anger rises. “I’ll show you!” she says to her belly. “You just wait! When you are born, I will kill you! I can’t wait!”

And she waits.

In the meantime the power of Awen that was generated in the darkness of the cauldron, goes through an alchemical process. It grows through the body of this new being, deep within the dark embrace of the womb of the goddess. 

Dark times are necessary for new forms to grow. Down into the soil. Up toward the light. Deep in the womb of mother night. 

Cerridwen couldn’t dispel the darkness of her son. Just like Summer cannot defeat Winter – they cycle around, take turns, spin from one to the other with everything that’s in between. Instead, she herself goes through a process of transformation, while chasing the one who is to blame for her so-called failure. 

The shapeshifting process of both Cerridwen and Gwion Bach is mythic alchemy. As the power of Awen is a seed in her womb, Gwion Bach becomes Taliesin; the great bard of the Celtic tradition. In the darkness of her womb there’s alchemy. A churning of wisdom and creativity, a stirring of inspiration and intelligence, a brewing of muse and regeneration. 

Celtic goddess Cerridwen is changed by it too.

The goddess of rebirth cannot destroy him. When Taliesin emerges from Cerridwen’s womb, his brightness enchants her, envelops her, inspires her. She loves him. She cannot kill him. But she cannot keep him. 

This kind of deep work cannot happen in bright daylight. For radiance to grow, for light to glow, dark nights must take place. This is a Winter Solstice tale. This kind of alchemy requires depth. Quiet. Identity death. Release. An Underworld journey. Reconfiguration. This is a witch’s resistance. The blackening force of decomposition is a fertilizing force. 

Authoritarian systems demand fixed identity, obedience, sameness. This kind of deep Winter magic demands real emotion, the ability to change, creative thinking, and the kind of perspective one can only gain by shifting from land to water to sky, between grain and bird and fish and mammal. 

Shape becomes more blurry in the dark. Winter is hard and it softens our edges. It’s the season of dreaming deep in the cave, of imagination and vision, reflection, and a slower pace. Shapeshifting happens in the liminality of the dark.

Shapeshifting is the refusal to calcify. It’s a ritual of freedom. It’s a willingness to try, to twist, to unbecome and become, to fail, and to fly, to be swallowed and to be reborn. 

Becoming the Shapeshifter 

New forms gestate in the dark. The time around Winter Solstice opens a powerful portal into the cauldron of transformation. Dark season magic is not limited to the end of Fall and the beginning of Winter. The mythic alchemy of death and rebirth, of a melting identity, of resistance through liquidity and renewal through decay, is a thread we can weave life with whenever this kind of work is necessary. 

How to Work with Cerridwen’s Shapeshifting

During this season, or as you move through this historical moment, and whenever big feelings come up, ask yourself (and you can journal about it too);

• • What form would support me (and more than me) in this moment?

• • Who do I need to become in order to move through this challenge, this pain, these struggles, in a wise and creative way?

• • What form/s do I need to shed?

• • What part/s of my identity do I need to liquify?

• • What helps me be more fluid?

Notice your own rigidity.

As a form of resistance to authoritarianism, to rigid thinking, to intolerance, to dogma, to narrow mindedness, to bigotry, and to today’s polarizing culture, we can start by noticing our own righteousness and closed mindedness. These are qualities we tend to project onto others. We can soften the edges by recognizing them within ourselves. This is shadow work. And it’s important to do so if we want to change things.

It’s not easy. This kind of ego softening though, is what happens in the cauldron, and it’s necessary if we are to transform. 

Here’s a (free) somatic spell to do shadow work in an embodied way. You can pair it up with this essay for full effect. 

Breathe and regulate your nervous system.

Make sure to breathe. Slow, deep belly breaths. Breaths that expand the belly and chest with your inhales, and soften and relax the belly as you exhale. This kind of breath helps regulate the nervous system. Without nervous system regulation it’s hard to make any healthy changes. 

Try this practice, which incorporates another goddess – Greek goddess of the Crossroads, Hecate – to support your Nervous System regulation process. 

Ask yourself;

• • What am I clinging to? 

• • Where am I too certain?

• • In my shapeshifting process, what form would feel liberating?

• • As the season darkens, as I move into the cauldron, as I move into the underworld, who am I becoming? 

Take the time to listen to your Muse. 

Cerridwen is the goddess of inspiration. You already know that she brews the spark of Awen, bringing forth the spirit of creativity. Shapeshifting is creative work. The act of making art changes us. We transform in the fire of our creativity. 

Write a poem. Write a song. Paint, draw, dance, cook, sing, sculpt. Let your Muse guide you. Make room for her to flow in your life. She will change you. And with her guidance, you will change little bits and pieces of the world. Let your creativity grow in your womb. Slowly. Churn it in your cauldron. 

If you want to cultivate a deeper relationship with your Muse, subscribe to my Substack for free – it’s a cauldron of creativity where we explore mythic magic and archetypal alchemy, invoking and building a deep relationship with Muse. Here’s some muse medicine with Cerridwen. With each Muse Medicine, you get prompts for stirring your own creative fire.

In this series of videos, you’ll stir the cauldron of transformation in your body, mind, heart, and creativity. It’s a five part dark season somatic magic – an embodied spell for deep connection, inspiration, regeneration, and incubation. Each video churns Cerrridwen’s story, sparks more ideas, and moves your body in ways that enliven the Muse. It’s free, made with love, and will support your mythic alchemy.

To craft your own Cerridwen ritual, download my free ritual guide for the secular soul. It’s filled with ideas and frameworks – simple yet profound – for creating your own ceremonies.

Read this essay to dive more deeply with Cerridwen the shapeshifter, to stir the cauldron of transformation, and to deepen your relationship with the goddess of rebirth and her shapeshifting myth. 

I’m so grateful for your presence here. Thank you for reading and engaging in this deep work. If this was in any way interesting, helpful, or inspiring for you, please share it with your intelligent, creative, mythic friends. 

So much love,

Hagar