Μέδουσᾰ • (Médousa)

From the feminine participle of μέδω (médō, “rule, protect”), i.e. "she who rules/protects".

Medusa was the most ravishing of three sisters ― an enchanting maiden with golden ringlets. And while many suitors aspired to win her favour, Poseidon took her for his own, raping her in Athena’s temple. Filled with a vengeance for the desecration of her temple, Athena put a curse on Medusa, turning her beautiful hair into serpents and making her so ugly that gazing upon her would turn onlookers to stone.

Let us focus on two aspects of this myth:

• how Athena persecuted Medusa for desecrating her temple and
• how Medusa’s terrifying form as a gorgon resulted from her own violation.

Athena was born from her father Zeus’ head, in full armour, ready for battle. We could say she was the ultimate father's daughter, deeply identified with patriarchal values like reason, strength, and victory. Though we think of Medusa as the embodiment of feminine rage, she too was once known best for her sensual beauty and loving relationship with her sisters. Taken symbolically ― we could say these two women represent the cultural split of the feminine, between civic and primal, logos and eros, obedient and wild. It is the same story we see mirrored in other places, such as the biblical story of Mary and Mary Magdalene. As a virgin goddess, perhaps Athena was threatened by Medusa’s life-giving, primal energy, so she cursed her to become a monster. But let us not forget that it was an act of unspeakable violence that was really at this split.

That Medusa was raped by Poseidon ― and later murdered by Perseus, is symbolic of the wild and unruly feminine cultural subjugation that she represents.

The name Medusa (मेधा, Medha, from Sanskrit मेधा medhā "wisdom", Μήτις from Mítis in Greek, μῆτῐς • mêtis "wisdom" and Egyptian mꜣꜥt, Maat an Ancient Egyptian goddess, the personification of truth, order, and righteousness, symbolized by a feather  ) means ‘sovereign female wisdom,’ so her violation can also be seen as the vanquishing of Goddess religions by the male-dominated culture led by Zeus. To survive these conditions, women have had to become the way Athena was, aligned with her father in other to thrive. But the consequence of being a ‘good daughter’ or a ‘good mother’ is that this darkness, represented by Medusa’s banished fury, will rise in unpredictable ways.

― Toko-pa Turner/ Belonging

Μέδουσα "guardian, protectress"

The legend of Perseus beheading Medusa means, specifically, that "the Hellenes overran the goddess's chief shrines" and "stripped her priestesses of their Gorgon masks", the latter being apotropaic faces worn to frighten away the profane. That is to say, there occurred in the early thirteenth century B.C. an actual historic rupture, a sort of sociological trauma, which has been registered in this myth, much as what Freud terms the latent content of neurosis is registered in the manifest content of a dream: registered yet hidden, registered in the unconscious yet unknown or misconstrued by the conscious mind.

― Campbell, Joseph (1968). The Masks of God, Vol. 3: Occidental Mythology. London: Penguin Books. pp. 152–153.

I cannot help remembering a remark of De Casseres. It was over the wine in Mouquin's. Said he: "The profoundest instinct in man is to war against the truth; that is, against the Real. He shuns facts from his infancy. His life is a perpetual evasion. Miracle, chimaera and to-morrow keep him alive. He lives on fiction and myth. It is the Lie that makes him free. Animals alone are given the privilege of lifting the veil of Isis; men dare not. The animal, awake, has no fictional escape from the Real because he has no imagination. Man, awake, is compelled to seek a perpetual escape into Hope, Belief, Fable, Art, God, Socialism, Immortality, Alcohol, Love. From Medusa-Truth he makes an appeal to Maya-Lie."

― Jack London, The Mutiny of the Elsinore, 1914

#Me(dusa)too

The apocryphal story of Medusa, through a feminist lens, is classic rape-victim-blaming at its most horrific and deadly.

Long before the Perseus beheading story, Medusa was a beautiful young woman. 

Medusa was raped by the God Poseidon in Athena’s Temple.

Athena* angered that her temple had been desecrated, took vengeance on the victim Medusa…not the rapist, Poseidon.  Blaming Medusa’s beauty, Athena made it so no man could ever look at her again. She cursed innocent and lovely Medusa to become a snake-headed gorgon whose glance turns those who look at her into stone.

This rape-victim-blaming story has repeated itself throughout time, and continues through news stories and political events happening right this minute…thus the reason for my rushing this post to publication.

For my painting, I have re-imagined the hideous gorgon and restored Medusa’s youthful beauty and innocence. I have also given her a hashtag stigmata; a merging of Greek, Christian and Contemporary iconography.

― Judy Takács, Ohio, Sunday, September 30, 2018#me(dusa)too