The Cauldron in the Forest

In the British Museum I saw, in an exhibition on the Celts, the Gundelstrup Cauldron, from Denmark. Silver, with great panels inside and out. Of god faces, a god with horns, animals of all kinds, hybrid animals, a man riding a fish, a girl plaiting the hair of a goddess – all stern and staring. What ritual drink did the cauldron contain? Wine? Mead? The blood of sacrificial victims? And weaving through it all in the background, the leaves of a linden, here the primal tree of the forest. All creation merged and was the other.