White Rose of Avalon

Goddess

  • Priestesses of Aphrodite

    For today’s post I would like to take a brief look at what it meant to be a priestess to love goddesses in the ancient world!   In ancient Greece and Rome, priestesses in honor of Aphrodite and Venus (respectively) were a bit unlike those honoring other Greco-Roman goddesses.   Priestesses of Aphrodite-Venus were vessels…

  • Five Welsh Celtic Goddesses

    For today’s post I want to look at five of the most important Welsh Celtic goddesses.    This list contains five goddesses that appear in the Mabinogion.   I have mentioned all of them before, two of them I have written about more than once!    Today will be a countdown of these goddesses that…

  • Morgan Le Fay as Morrigan

    Morgan Le Fay can be seen as an Arthurian take on the Irish Celtic goddess the Morrigan.   The Morrigan is a death goddess and a war goddess.    She was often associated with battlefields and warriors.    The Morrigan was a crow goddess who was deeply connected to this bird, which makes sense given…

  • The White Goddess

    The book The White Goddess by Robert Graves is considered one of the most influential books in modern Goddess worship.   It was even influential to men who created modern forms of paganism.    The book got its day in the sun in the 1960s among the counterculture.    It is also a very controversial…

  • Avalonian Goddesses

    The Avalonian Goddesses refers to the goddesses worshipped by modern Avalonian witchcraft.   They are the five goddesses whose stories appear in The Mabinogion.   Cerridwen, Blodeuwedd, Rhiannon, Branwen, and Arainrhod are all powerful goddesses in Welsh Celtic tales.   In the Avalonian tradition Cerridwen, Blodeuwedd, and Rhiannon each take a third of the year…

  • The Blodeuwedd and Guinevere Connection

    Blodeuwedd and Guinevere have many commonalities in their tales.   Both could be seen as sovereignty goddesses that had marriages that gave kingship to their husbands.   Both had marriages that began as happy, but devolved into unhappiness on the part of the wives.   Both found true love when they were already married, and…

  • Blodeuwedd and Flower Brides

    Blodeuwedd is a faerie bride, and Celtic goddess, who appeared in the fourth branch of the Welsh Mabinogion.   She was also known as “Flower Face” (the meaning of her name), “May Queen”, and “May Bride.”   Since I will soon be a May bride myself, I could not resist doing a post on this…

  • Sovereignty

    The definition of sovereignty is the right to rule.   This is something that played a huge role in both Arthurian legend and royal history!   In ancient times sovereignty was represented as a goddess of the land, and many early myths and legends feature a marriage between kings and goddesses of sovereignty. Within the…

  • Love Goddesses

    Goddesses of love and sex appear in culture after culture around the ancient world.   Sex as a means of worship is very common and even important in ancient cultures and polytheistic religions.   In Greece and Rome she was Aphrodite and her Roman counterpart Venus.   In Celtic regions there were several Goddesses associated…

  • Rhiannon: Faerie Queen

    Rhiannon was a horse goddess in ancient Wales.    This Celtic goddess had her story told in the Mabinogion.   Besides horses Rhiannon also has three songbirds that are symbols of her power.    Rhiannon seems to be related to the ancient Gallo-Roman horse goddess Epona, and a derivative, possibly of the earlier Celtic goddess…