There are few female characters in Welsh Mythology who present as great a moral challenge to modern readers as Blodeuwedd, who appears in the Fourth Branch of Y Mabinogi. A face-value reading of her tale paints her as a shallow and faithless woman originally made of flowers, an adulteress who plots with her lover to murder her husband, and a fleeing woman who is ultimately punished for her crimes by being transformed into an owl for all eternity. How could she be anything but a villain? Who would look up to this wicked woman, much less honor her as a goddess? Clearly, there is more going on in her story than meets the eye, and the key to understanding requires some context from medieval Welsh culture, as well as the inherent symbolism of the story with roots that go back further still.
Magically created from the flowers of oak, broom, and meadowsweet she is first called Blodeuedd, which simply means, “flowers.” Later, when she is transformed into an owl, her name also changes, becoming Blodeuwedd—“flower face”—which describes the flower-like face of the owl she has become. Blodeuedd is created for one purpose: to be the bride of Lleu Llaw Gyffes, who has had a destiny lain upon him that prevented him from marrying a human woman. Soon after they are wed, for the first time acting with any agency in the tale, Blodeuedd falls in love with Gronw Pebryr, the lord of a neighboring land, and the resulting love triangle that unfolds in the story is deeply symbolic. Lleu, whose name potentially means “light,” can be seen as the Solar Hero who represents the light half of the year while Gronw, who we meet as a hunter, is associated with chthonic symbols that hint at his status as the Otherworldly Champion who represents the dark half of the year. The two faces of Blodeuwedd underscore this polarity; she is an owl when mated with the Otherworldly Champion, and a Flower Bride when wed to the Solar Hero.
There is therefore potential that the tale of Blodeuwedd in the Fourth Branch is a medieval Welsh resonance of an international folk motif depicting a symbolic reenactment of the endless struggle between light and dark or between summer and winter. It is significant that Blodeuwedd is the pivot around which the balance shifts. This may be an indication of her former status as a tutelary deity—a goddess of the land—and indeed she is literally made of nature. By extension, she may well have been a Sovereignty goddess of the seasonal variety. As such, she has the right to choose her mate, and who she chooses becomes king. This may be why she could not simply have run away with Gronw—only one king can reign at a time.
Whether she is simply a legendary figure from medieval Welsh lore, or is in truth a Sovereignty goddess once worshiped in Celtic Britain, there is no doubt that Blodeuwedd is celebrated and honored in modern times as a divinity in her own right. After dwelling for centuries in darkness and flying on owl wings along the liminal boundary that straddles superstition and sacred symbol—this world and the Otherworld, archetype and divinity—the essence of all that is Blodeuwedd is venturing once more into the light of consciousness. Simultaneously Flower Bride and Owl of Wisdom, Unfaithful Wife, and Lady of Sovereignty, this complex figure holds many lessons for those who seek to know her; through her, we may learn to shed the fragile petals of illusion wrought by the expectations of others, in order to birth the authentic self that is able to see truth with owl-wise eyes.