Gwenhwyfar: The Cloud Who Would Be Queen.

NAME: Gwenhwyfar. Also Gwenhwyvar, Guenievre, Guenhumara, Jenefer, Ginevra and Guinevere. The Welsh name comes from two words that means either White / Shining / or Holy and Cloud / Phantom / Shadow / or Smooth.

The best bet is either White Cloud or White Phantom but as others have speculated on the true meaning of the name what's to stop you from mixing and matching with other interpretations?

SYMBOLS: Of the original Gwenhwyfar? That's hard to say, the Guinevere that has come to us from more than a Round Table full of hands no doubt obscures most of that was the original Goddess.

I will hazard a guess and say, some of her symbols were such things as a cloud, crown, dog, and various symbols associated with triple goddesses.

IMAGE: A very fair skinned woman of preternatural beauty.

RELATIVES: Gogrvan or Ocvran or Ogrfan Gawr the Giant of Castell y Cnwclas (Father), Arthur {Artviros `Bear Man'} Husband, Gwendydd, Gwenith, Gwynith, Gwyneth, Gweneth, Gynath, Gandieda, Catherina, Catarina (Sisters) Loholt (Son, though some say the son of Arthur & Lionors) and two unnamed sons with Mordred Arthur's son with his half-sister Morgan. And you thought the family relations on Angel were messed up.

SYNODEITIES: Goddess of Sovereignty (Britain), Eriu (Ireland)

DETAILS: No matter what has been made of Gwynhwfar over the years, and she has passed though dozens if not hundreds of hands and minds.

At her start she was said to be a Goddess called White Cloud (or White Phantom, White Shadow, Shinning Cloud etc) who was a mischievous shapeshifter, who from time to time found that she just could not help but incarnate as a human to mix in the affairs of mankind. She would do this by entering a womb and being born as a human.

While that does seem to indicated that she might not have had the most noble of motivations (from a human viewpoint at least) she was not however portrayed as the adulteress at best and adulteress traitor at worst that that we have today in her more well known form of Queen Guinevere wife of King Arthur.

This view first came from the 12th century writer Chretien de Troyes who was also the inventor of Sir Lancelot.

There are more than a few versions of the story of Arthur & Guinevere, with Welsh, British, Irish, German, French & modern takes on the story, the above is just one of them.

Today most think it is just the tale of a king and his queen and all that knights in shining armor stuff.

However the myth from which that story grew is far older than that. Taking place long before there were knights.

For one thing it was believed that Arthur had three queens, all of them named Guinevere (or variations of that name) That this points to a Celtic triple Goddess is a pretty easy conclusion to reach.

A good guess is that she is much like the other Goddess of Sovereignty found in Celtic myth, without whom a God-King cannot reach true power.

So just how did a fun loving shapeshifter out for just a bit of a lark among the humans become the embodiment of adulterous females?

I would guess that White Cloud is perhaps the true original origin of her name.

And like those who looks at clouds and see bunnies, or monsters depending, not on the shape of the cloud but on the shape of their mind, the Guinevere that was born from that Gwynhwfar of long ago is still laughing at the things we human get up to based on the smallest of things.

Guinevere's Maying by John Collier (1850 - 1934)