- Attibutes: Lunar Goddess of Wisdom, Fertility, Reincarnation, Karma, Air and Water
- Symbols: Silver Wheel, moon, owl, stars, spirals and everything that denotes circular movement
- Place: Wales
This Welsh Goddess is considered the most powerful Celtic Moon Goddess. Arianrhod (pronounced Arianrod) or Aranrot has long silver hair and is the daughter of the Goddess Mother Don (Welsh Goddess equivalent to the Irish Goddess Danu) and her consort, Beli. She governs over Caer Sidi, a magical fortress that is believed to be built in a spiral.
Benevolent, she is worshiped as a priestess of the Moon and is said she have descended in a chariot from the sky to see more closely the lands she ruled. Her festival in Europe is celebrated on December 2, but she is also honored during every Full Moon.
She is Goddess of the Moon and the stars and she is also called the Silver Wheel as she carries the souls of the dead on her paddle-wheel boat to Emania (the land of the dead on the Moon), where she is sovereign.
Caer Arianrhod is her kingdom in the Corona Borealis constellation, where souls reside between incarnations and the Goddess decide when they should return to life.
It is also said that this Goddess can become a great owl capable of seeing in the darkness of the human subconscious and the human soul. The owl represents death and rebirth, wisdom and initiation. It moves with determination and strength through the night, with wings that comfort and heal those who seek it.
In Celtic tradition, this Goddess is seen as Maiden and as Mother, two aspects of the Triple Goddess in Wicca and, like the Goddess Rhiannon, she also plays an important role in the Mabinogion, a collection of prose manuscripts dating back to ancient times.
The Wheel of the Year
The Silver Wheel of Arianrhod also has 8 rays, or divisions, representing the Sun’s trajectory through the known universe, and this circular trajectory marks the change of nature by the seasons of the year as well as the Sabbats, consequently. It is the very cycle of life, which, instead of having an end, it always restarts.