I do love a kick ass heroine and that goes for kick ass goddesses as well. For my next book set in my ancient Roman/Druid world, Betrayed, it's the Moon Goddess Arianrhod who is the goddess who inspired the story of Nimue and Tacitus. On the surface of things, if you read her official legend in the The Mabinogion, translated by Lady Charlotte Guest (Welsh legends collected in the nineteenth century in the Red Book of Hergest), it would be easy to dismiss her as a minor goddess who fell from grace and then had the good manners to drown shortly afterwards.
But there is so much more to Arianrhod than that. She was a powerful Moon Goddess and Weaver of Fates of both god and man. She didn't need a man to protect her and certainly didn't need a man to tell her what to do or how to behave. But the world changed and powerful female deities were no longer seen as a positive influence. After all, it might give women ideas that they, too, did not need to bow to the every slightest whim of man.
And so Arianrhod was reduced to that of a disgraced, powerless female and was no longer perceived as a threat.
For more on the legend and looking beyond and between the lines, join me over at the Historical Hearts blog today. I'd love your views on the 'divine feminine'.
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