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Three-legged iron pots being used to cater for a school-leavers' party in Botswana. Everyday cooking is done in the school kitchens.

Boiling wheat grains to make bulgur in Turkey, 1990.

A cauldron or caldron (from Latin caldarium, hot bath) is a large metal pot (kettle) for cooking and/or boiling over an open fire, with a large mouth and frequently with an arc-shaped hanger.

Cauldrons have largely fallen out of use in the industrialized world as cooking vessels. While still used, a more common association in Western culture is the cauldron's use in witchcraft—a cliché popularized by various fictions, such as Shakespeare's play Macbeth. In fantastic fiction, witches often prepare their potions in a cauldron. Also, in legend, a cauldron is purported to be where leprechauns keep their treasure.

In the Wiccan religion, a cauldron is often placed at the centre of a sacred circle and used to contain items that will be set alight during a ritual. It is a symbol of abundance and prosperity and is said to represent the womb and is sacred to the Goddess. Water can be placed into a cauldron for scrying (a method of divining the future) or it can hold the ingredients necessary for a spell or incantation.

In some forms of Wicca which incorporate aspects of Celtic mythology, the cauldron is associated with the goddess Cerridwen. Celtic legend also tells of a cauldron that was useful to warring armies: dead warriors could be put into the cauldron and would be returned to life, save that they lacked the power of speech. It was suspected that they lacked souls, like golem. These warriors could go back into battle until they were killed again.

The holy grail of Arthurian legend is sometimes referred to as a "cauldron", although tradtionally the grail is thought of as a hand-held cup rather than the large pot that the word "cauldron" usually is used to mean. This may have resulted from the combination of the grail legend with earlier Celtic myths of magical cauldrons.

At the Olympic Games, the cauldron is the place where the Olympic flame burns for the duration of the games.

• Gundestrup cauldron
• Kama (Japanese tea ceremony)
• Cauldron (computer game)
• Cauldron (book) A novel centering on the story of a European financial crisis that leads to a military confrontation between the United States and France.

• Holy Grail
• A cauldron in a circle

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