Welcome to day six of the Green Knight Week here at White Rose of Avalon, my Darlings! Today’s post is also this week’s Femme Fatale Friday post, so I will be discussing Morgan le Fay and her plot to kill Guinevere in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as a battle between a Winter Goddess and a Summer Goddess. The actual plot to kill Guinevere with the appearance of the Green Knight at the Court of Camelot is only briefly mentioned in the actual poem.
When Sir Bertilak is explaining to Gawain how he came to be the Green Knight, he mentions that Morgan le Fay did hope that his appearance at Court would scare Guinevere to death. However, this is still a very important passage, as it shows the animosity between Morgan and Guinevere. Given the Yuletide setting and timeline of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, we can state that Morgan le Fay is taking on the guise of being a Winter Goddess. Not to mention that Morgan le Fay is a Death Goddess who acts as a Psychopomp to ferry Arthur to Avalon upon his death, which also adds to a Winter Goddess association.
Guinevere is a Faery Queen Goddess associated most strongly with Beltane, the height of Spring and leading into the dawning of Summer on the Wheel of the Year. This puts her seasonal association at an exact opposition to Morgan’s Samhain, the height of Autumn, and leading into the dawning Winter position. Therefore, I interpret this small portion of the poem that states that Morgan le Fay had hoped that the Green Knight would scare Guinevere to death to be the opposition between the Winter and Summer Goddesses, between the High Priestess and the Empress, between the Dark and Light Feminine! This makes a lot of sense seasonally as well because we can think of the Dark Feminine as the Lunar and the Light Feminine as the Solar for this purpose, meaning that Morgan le Fay’s plot to kill Guinevere was the plot to keep rulership over the world when the Sun had returned at Winter Solstice. Winter Solstice had just passed when the Green Knight first arrived (as he got to Camelot on New Year’s Eve), so the Sun was growing stronger, and the Light Half of the Year was firmly on its way! Essentially, in the context of the poem, I am viewing Morgan and Guinevere as archetypal seasonal opponents, like the Green Knight and Gawain (Green Knight as Winter, Gawain as Summer), and the commonly discussed Oak and Holly King (more on that in tomorrow’s post). I believe we can interpret this as the Divine Feminine version of this seasonal opposition!
So, at the end of the day, the poem exemplifies this eternal archetypal and seasonal dance between the differing aspects of the Divine Feminine through the way it positions Morgan le Fay and Guinevere. Both aspects of this Divine Feminine energy hold equal power and equal importance, bringing a true balance to Nature, to the Wheel of the Year, to the Seasons, and to the Faery lands. I hope you have enjoyed this short exploration of Morgan le Fay and Guinevere as Faery Queen Goddesses of Winter and Summer in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. What aspect of these equal and opposite Divine Feminine energies do you find most interesting? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
Note on Image: The image at the top of the post is a medieval painting captioned on the site where I found it as Morgan le Fay catching Sir Lancelot with another woman, which gives me major Morgan and Guinevere vibes. I found the painting on https://myfairyland.jimdofree.com/fairy/morgan-le-fay/.
LINK TO AVALONIAN ROSE FAERY MYSTERIES PATREON: patreon.com/AvalonianRoseFaeryMysteries
SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: I am absolutely thrilled to announce that I will be doing my first-ever Herbal Tea Blending Class on December 29, 2024! This is a live event hosted at the shop Phoenix Lane. Here is the link to the event on Facebook if you are interested in learning from me in person: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19hU6vdFm3/
Further Reading/Watching
- Sir Gawain and the Green Knight translated by J.R.R. Tolkien
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=GZcTOqhhVRY (This is one of my videos about Morgan le Fay and Guinevere!)