THE TALE OF MEDUSA
17:39 Apr 16 2013
Times Read: 354
THE TALE OF MEDUSA
How did the Sea Goddess with the most beautiful of tresses become transformed into a hideous, lethal demon? The story of Medusa is intertwined with that of the cold, detached virgin Athena, Olympian goddess of wisdom and war, who flaunts the Gorgon’s Head in the center of her breastplate. Medusa may in fact be Athena’s dark sister, who personifies the shadow side of her powerful instinctive femininity. The historical origins of these two goddesses take us back to North Africa and to the Egyptian goddess Neith, who was known as Anatha in Libya and as Athena to the Greeks.
Neith emerged from the primeval floodwaters, and her name means “I have come from myself.” The inscription on her temple at Sais reads, “I am all that has been, that will be, and no mortal has yet been able to lift the veil that covers me.” Neith represented Mother Death, and to see her face behind the veil was to have died.
In Libya, Neith, known as Anatha, was said to have arisen out of Lake Tritonis, the Lake of the Triple Queens. She displayed her triple nature as Athena, Metis and Medusa, who corresponded to the new, full, and dark phases of the moon. Athena was the new moon warrior maiden who inspired the Amazon tribes of women to courage, strength, and valor. The Sea Goddess Metis, whose name means “wise counsel,” was the full moon mother aspect of this trinity who, in later mythical tales, conceived Athena from Zeus. Medusa embodied the third, dark aspect as destroyer/crone, and she was revered as the Queen of the Libyan Amazons, the Serpent Goddess of female wisdom.
Originally Athena and Medusa were two aspects of the same goddess, Anatha; and as such they are part of the same archetype associated with a feminine-defined strength and wisdom. We will now see how, in the classical Greek tales, these two goddesses were split off from one another and set up as deadly rivals.
In Theogeny Hesiod gives the following account of Medusa’s origins. Medusa was one of the three Gorgon sisters, who were born from the ancient sea deities Phorcys and Keto. Two sisters were both immortal and ageless: Stheno, “Mighty One,” and Euryale, “Wandering One.” Medusa, “Cunning One” or “Queen,” was the only mortal. They lived on the road to the golden apple trees of the Hesperides at the far western edge of the world on the ocean’s edge near the borders of night and death.
According to the classical texts the three Gorgon sisters were originally beautiful golden sea goddesses. The lovely maiden Medusa was pursued by many suitors, but she would have none of them until she lay with the dark-haired Sea God Poseidon, earlier known as Hippios the horse deity, in the soft grass under the spring blossoms. Poseidon, in the shape of a horse, seduced Medusa. After Medusa made love with Poseidon in one of Athena’s sanctuaries and became pregnant with twins, she incurred the wrath of Athena. Some say that Athena’s anger was due to Medusa daring to compare her beauty to that of Athena. Athena may have resented Medusa’s sexual encounter because she had renounced her own sexuality in order to maintain her exalted position on Olympus. Furthermore, Poseidon was Athena’s longtime bitter rival, who contested her rulership of Athens.
Whether Athena’s rage came from the desecration of her temple, sexual jealousy, or competition for supremacy in Libya, she transformed Medusa and her sisters into ugly hags. They became winged monsters with glaring eyes, huge teeth, protruding tongues, brazen claws, and serpent locks. Medusa was singled out as the most terrifying of the three, and her face was made so hideous that a glimpse of it would turn men into stone. Tales, embellished with danger, spread far and wide, telling how the lands and cavern of these fearsome sea monsters abounded with the rigid shapes of petrified men and animals. The Gorgons were feared for their deadly power. Hence the death of Medusa became a worthy heroic quest for the patriarchal solar heroes.
The tale of Perseus’s slaying of Medusa is on of the most ancient of all the Greek myths. The classical version may actually be based on a far older myth, preserved by local folk tradition, which extend back to the Mycenaean Period of the second millennium BCE. It was later overlaid with heroic elements that were so popular among the Greeks of the historic age. Graves feels that this story portrayed actual events during the reign of the historical King Perseus (ca. 1290 BCE), founder of the new dynasty in Mycenae. During this period the powers of the early moon goddesseses in North Africa were usurped by patriarchal-dominated invaders of mainland Greece. The legend of Perseus beheading Medusa means that the Hellenes overran the Goddess’s chief shrines, stripped her priestesses of their Gorgon masks, and took possession of the sacred horse. This historical rupture and sociological trauma registered itself in the following myth.
Polydectes’ plan was to raise a tax of horses from the islanders (according to another version these horses were intended as a bride gift he meant to offer for the hand of Hippodameia). Because Perseus was poor, there was no way for him to obtain a horse; and he was tricked into pledging that he would bring the king the head of the Gorgon with its deadly power. The oldest narratives of the myth of Medusa relate that she was a mare whom Poseidon had mated while in the form of a stallion. Thus Perseus was promising the king the head of a most terrifying horse.
Perseus was assisted in this task with the help of Hermes and Athena. Hermes, messenger of the gods, gave him a curved magic sword, the only weapon capable of slaying the Gorgon. Pallas Athena, protectress of heroes, lent Perseus her brightly polished great shield to use as a mirror against Medusa, thereby avoiding direct contact with her deadly face, which could turn him into stone. They then appeared in a vision and led Perseus to the cave of the Graiae, who were the only ones who knew the exact whereabouts of Medusa.
The Graiae were three old women, a fateful trio of swan maidens, living at the foot of Mt. Atlas in Africa. Between them they shared one eye, with which they could see everything, and one tooth. Perseus tricked them into revealing Medusa’s whereabouts by grabbing their one eye and refusing to return it until they divulged the information he sought. He also forced them to tell him where to find the Stygian Nymphs, from whom he received a magic pouch to contain the severed head of medusa; the dark helmet of Hades, which would render him invisible; and a pair of winged sandals, which would enable him to fly with the speed of a bird to the desolate island lair of the Gorgon sisters.
Perseus then flew over the stream of Ocean to the extremities of the western shores and found the three Gorgons asleep in their great cavern. They were creatures with grfeat golden wings, their bodies covered with golden scales and crowned with wreaths of serpents, evoking the regalia of the royal Egyptian sea priestesses. He kept clear of Stheno and Euryale, who were immortal and could not be killed, and advanced toward Medusa, watching her reflection in his mirrored shield. His arm guided by Athena, Perseus, with one stroke of Hermes’ blade, slashed off Medusa’s head and hid it in his pouch. He then donned Hades’ cap of invisibility, in order ot escape the wrathful pursuit of the remaining Gorgons, and flew off the island.
From Medusa’s severed neck sprang her twin sons by Poseidon – Pegasus, the winged moon horse, who became a symbol of poetry; and Cryasor, the hero of the golden sword and father of King Geryon of Spain. As Perseus flew away, drops of Medusa’s blood trickled onto the hot African sands, causing oases to grow in the desert. In an alternate version these droplets of blood gave birth to a race of poisonous serpents destined to infest the regions with plagues in future ages.
Athena later gave to phials of Medusa’s blood to Asklepius, the God of Healing. It was said that blood from her right vein could cure and restore life, and that the blood from her left vein could slay and kill instantly. Others say that Athena and Asklepius divided the blood between them; he sued it to save lives, but she to destroy and instigate wars. In some traditions it was Athena’s serpent son Erichthonius to whom she gave the blood to either kill or cure, and she fastened the phials to his body with golden bands. Athena’s dispensation of the Gorgon blood to Asklepius and Erichthonius suggests the curative rites used in this cult were a secret guarded by priestesses, which it was death to investigate. The Gorgon’s Head was a formal warning to priers to stay away.
Among Perseus’s adventures on his way back to Seriphus were the turning of Atlas into stone and the rescue of Andromeda. In order to escape from Africa, Perseus had to defeat the huge King Atlas, father of the Hesperides, who were the guardians of the apples of immortality. Atlas, warned by an ancient prophecy that a son of Zeus would rob him of his golden fruits, refused Perseus’ hospitality and attempted to thrust him away. In anger, Perseus held up the Gorgon’s Head and turned the giant into stone, which then formed the Atlas Mountains, upon which rest the sky and all the stars.
Perseus’s story continues with the rescue of the Ethiopian princess Andromeda, who was bound to a rock on the seashore as a victim to a great sea monster, Cetus. He then takes her for his bride and they return to Seriphus to free his mother from the clutches of Polydectes. Perseus presents his promised gift and thereby turns the king and his court to stone. Perseus’s daughter with Andromeda is named Gorgophone.
Perseus gives the Gorgon’s Head ot Athena, who affixes it to her breastplate. Some say that her aegis was Medusa’s own skin, flayed from her by Athena. Other legends tell of the head being buried in the agora before the goddess Hera’s temple in Argos.
MEDUSA AND ATHENA
In order to penetrate the mystery that stands behind the Goprgon’s Head, we must first untangle the threads that weave and bind Medusa and Athena. Medusa and Athena are aspects of the same goddess who emerged from Lake Tritonis in Libya. They are both associated with female wisdom, which is depicted in the serpent symbolism that surrounds them – Medusa with her serpent locks and Athena with her serpent-fringed aegis. Medusa, as wise crone, holds the secrets of sex, divination, magic, death and renewal. Athena, the eternal maiden, is linked with the new moon and presides over the female qualities of courage, strength and valor. This African triple goddess, who was born out of the sea and reigned in the desert, displayed herself as both the armored chaste virgin warrior Athena and the serpent-crowned Queen Medusa, protector of the dark moon mysteries, who celebrated the sexual rites with the lineage of sea gods.
The warrior form of this Libyan triple goddess was clothed in the original legendary aegis – a goatskin chastity tunic. She also wore a Gorgon mask and carried around her waist a leather pouch containing sacred serpents. This outfit was duplicated in the dress of the Amazon women, and later worn by the classical Athena in her Olympioan reign. Any man who removed one of these tunics without the owner’s consent would be killed for violating the potent maidenhood of these young women.
The infamous Gorgon masks were called gorgoneions. They portrayed a face with glaring eyes, bared fanged teeth, and protruding tongue, similar to many images of Kali. They were worn by priestesses in moon-worshipping rituals, both to frighten away strangers and to evoke the Goddess herself. The purpose of the mask was to protect the secrecy required for the magickal work associated with the third or dark triad of the Triple Moon Goddess. It served to warn people against intruding upon the divine mysteries hidden behind it.
These ceremonies included divination, healing, magic, and the sexual serpent mysteries associated with death and rebirth. The female face, represented by Medusa, surrounded by serpent hair was a widely recognized symbol of divine female wisdom. The Ephasus Gorgons with four wings each almost duplicate the flying Gorgons at Delphi, the temple of the world’s greatest oracular priestesses. The venom from the bite of certain snakes induced the hallucinatory state in which the oracular vision was revealed.
The Gorgon face, often red in color, held the secrets of the menstrual wise blood that gave women their divine healing powers. Certain primitive tribes believed that the look of a menstruating woman could turn a man to stone, which links Medusa with the menstrual blood mysteries. The blood that Persues took from Medusa could both heal and kill; it may originally have been her menstrual blood rather than blood from the wound in her neck.
The mask was also worn by priestesses in the sacred sexual rites to symbolize that they were acting not as individuals, but as representatives of the Goddess, whom she empowered to transmit her blessings of healing and regeneration through ritual intercourse. The prophylactic mask was also donned by the funerary priestesses, who initiated people into the mysteries of death. In later times to possess a replica of a Gorgon’s Head was to be protected with a charm against ills that repelled the attack of harmful forces. It was believed to be a protection against the evil eye, and was often depicted in shields, ovens, town walls, and buildings to frighten enemies and ward off malicious spirits.
With the passage of time, Libyan refugees emigrated to Crete. They had brought with them their Serpent Goddess Anatha, and by 4000 BCE she had become known as Athena, the protectress of the palace. Her worship was adopted and then passed on to mainland Greece and Thrace in the Minoan/Mycenaen period. From this era there arose a new genealogy of the birth of Athena. She now was said to have sprung forth from the head of her father, Zeus. Earlier versions reveal that Athena was conceived in a union between Zeus and a mother goddess named Metis/Medusa, who came from the sea.
The tales that come from the transition period between the matriarchy and patriarchy tell how the wise Metis helped Zeus achieve victory over his father, Cronus, by giving him an emetic that forced him to cough up his swallowed children. In honor of her great service Zeus decided to make metis the first consort of the new supreme ruler of the heavens. Although Metis changed into many shapes to avoid Zeus’s lustful advances, she was finally ravished and got with child. Zeus was warned by an oracle that Metis would bear him a second child, who would become kind of gods and men. To maintain his sovereignty Zeus consumed Metis whole while she was pregnant with Athena. The blinding headache that resulted when Zeus walked the shores of Lake Tritonis in Libya could only be relieved through having his head cleft with a double-edged axe (a matriarchal symbol of the lunar crescent). Amidst the rumbling of the earth and raging of the sea, out sprang Athena in armor of gleaming gold. She immediately became her father’s favorite.
Later versions cut out the transitional story of Metis and claim that Athena was conceived and birthed solely from Zeus himself. From a sociological perspective, this myth marks the ingestion of the feminine warrior wisdom principle to the needs of the new patriarchal order. The patriarchy championed Athena as benevolent, suppressed Metis altopgether, and denounced Medusa as evil. Athena and Medusa were then cast as opponents.
As Athena was absorbed into the classical Greek pantheon, she was the only one of the old goddesses who was elevated and respected, and she became part of the new ruling trinity along with Zeus and Apollo. She had to pay a steep price for her supremacy in the new order. First she was forced to deny her femininity and to sacrifice her sexuality, becoming a perpetually chaste virgin. She was cut off from her cyclical nature, which included renewal through sexual rites. She then promised to become champion of the patriarchy by using her warrior potency to denounce, slaughter, and conquer her matriarchal ancestors from Africa.
Graves says that Athena was a traitor to the old religion by affiliating with the solar gods and assisting the solar heroes to slay all the resisting matriarchal fatctions, who were now feared as the Terrible Mother. As she joined Zeus and his son Perseus to kill her own mother Metis/Medusa and supplant her in the hierarchy, Athena was then most appropriately chosen to preside over and pardon Orestes in his trial for matricide.
Duing this time Athena’s prime rival for the rulership of Athens was Poseidon; and it was through the union of her two sworn enemies, Poseidon and Medusa, that she began to wage her war. Historical evidence points to the fact that Medusa was a high priestess of Africa who presided over Libyan tribes of Amazon warror women. Dating from at least 6000 BCE, these fierce and noble African Amazons populated not only North Africa, but also Spain and Italy. The Greek legends of Poseidon mating with Medusa, and Perseus slaying the Gorgon, derive from actual battles waged by the patriarchal Greek soldiers against these warrior women from North Africa. The tribe against whom Perseus fought was a race called the Gorgons.
Medusa, Athena, and Poseidon - In the oldest tales there are references to the beautiful third Gorgon sister, Medusa, who willingly takes the Sea God as her lover in the celebration of the sexual mysteries of the Goddess and her Consort. At a certain point after 2000 BCE the legends tell of the “marriage” or alternately “rape” of Queen Medusa to the oceanic King Poseidon, one of the original Olympians, who had been known in his earlier form as Hippios the horse deity as well as lord of the sea. Poseidon in the form of a stallion mounted Medusa as a mare and fathered Pegasus, a winged moon horse.
An early representation of Medusa, dating from the seventh century BCE in Boeotia, shows her as a small, slender mare-woman who, although masked with a Gorgon’s Head, shows none of the frightful aspects of the classical Gorgon. By associating the Gorgon mask with the slender equine form, this artist permits us to catch a brief glimpse of a far more ancient tradition, in which the dark sister was not an isolated object of fear. The Gorgon mask, as the face of the moon, suggests that Medusa was one of the three aspects of the pre-Hellenic Moon Goddess, and the small native horses of these indigenous peoples were sacred to the early moon cults in rainmaking ceremonies. Poseidon’s rape of Medusa in the form of a stallion tells the story of hwo the first wave of invading Hellenes from Greece, who rode large vigorous horses, forcibly married the Amazon moon priestesses and took over the rainmaking rites of the sacred horse cult through the birth of Pegasus.
This is one variation of many similar stories that appear all over the Mediterranean Crescent around this time, describing the transition from the reign of the goddesses to that of the gods. The supremacy of the Great Goddess who took the young God as her Consort/lover was overturned and the God matures and then usurps her power by forcibly raping, marrying and subjugating her and by suppressing her worship. Poseidon’s soldiers likewise raped the Amazon priestesses, and they ignored the injunction of the aegis and Gorgon mask to stay away unless invited. The Gorgon mask then turned into the portrait of horror, fear, and rage frozen on the faces of these warrior women resulting from their forceful violation.
It was only after Medusa’s union with Poseidon that Athena transformed the beautiful Libyan Amazon Queen into the deadly monster whose horrible face would turn men into stone. In Athena’s rivalry with Poseidon she may have been enraged that Poseidon laid claim to the country of her birth. She saw Medusa’s submission to him in one of her own temples as an act of betrayal from the peoples of her native land. Thus Medusa represented a rival matriarchal religion that needed to be suppressed.
In retaliation against Medusa, Athena, who had already sacrificed her own sexuality, ensured that Medusa would never again participate in the Goddess’s sexual mysteries, because one look at her face would petrify any approaching man. And Freud concluded that the Gorgon’s head represented the terrifying genitalia of the Great Mother, which threatens to castrate men. An alternate interpretation suggests that in Athena’s compassion for her lost sisters, she imbued the Gorgon mask with a new, deadly power, one which could kill the attackers. This was to protect the Queen and her priestesses from continuing to be defiled, degraded, and destroyed through the sexual assault of the invaders.
Medusa, Athena, and Perseus , According to the Olympian Greeks, Athena finally succeeded in destroying and conquering Queen Medusa during the reign of King Perseus, around 1200 BCE. Perseus, whose name also mean destroyer, acted on Athena’s behalf. At her request and with her help, Perseus overthrew the principle shrine of the Old African religion in Libya and slayed the high priestess, thus furthering the suppression of the matriarchal consciousness. Perseus then delivered the Gorgon’s Head to Athena, who wore it over her heart as a continuing token of her underlying connection to Medusa. She displayed the Gorgon’s Head both to strike terror in her enemies and to affirm her supremacy in having denounced and demolished her matriarchal ancestors.
While the earliest representations depicted the Gorgon as a protector of the dark moon mysteries, the patriarchy later conceived her as a demon. Then, in later artistic portrayals, the Gorgon became a beautiful angel. She passed through phases of becoming sinister, sad, and increasingly pathetic, and finally metamorphosed into a calm, dignified death mask.
THE MIRROR AND THE MASK
17:26 Apr 16 2013
Times Read: 355
THE MIRROR AND THE MASK
Many elements of the myth suggest, through its basic ambiguity, the tragic nature of Medusa. One of the most revealing of these is the gift from Athena to Asclepius of two drops of the Gorgon's blood, one of which has the power to cure and even resurrect, while the other is a deadly poison. Medusa's blood is therefore the epitome of the 'pharmakon', while she herself -- as is shown by the apotropaic function of her mask -- is a 'pharmakos'. As has been demonstrated by René Girard, the 'pharmakos' is the scapegoat whose sacrifice establishes the dual nature of the sacred and reinforces the separation of the monster and the god. However, it is for literature and the arts to reveal the close relationship between opposites and the 'innocence' of the victim. In this respect, the myth of Medusa is revealing. In his study The Mirror of Medusa (1983), Tobin Siebers has identified the importance of two elements, i.e. the rivalry between Athena and the Gorgon, and the mirror motif.
According to Ovid (Metamorphoses, IV. 779ff), the reason for the dispute lay in Poseidon's rape of Medusa inside the temple of the virgin goddess. The goddess is supposed to have punished Medusa by transforming her face, which therefore made Medusa an innocent victim for the second time. However, another tradition, used by Mallarmé in Les Dieux antiques (1880), stressed a more personal rivalry: Medusa had boasted that she was more beautiful than Athena. Everything points to the face that the goddess found it necessary to set herself apart from her negative double in order to assert her 'own' identity. Common features are numerous. For example, snakes are the attribute of Athena, as illustrated by the famous statue of Phidias and indicated by certain Orphic poems which refer to her as 'la Serpentine'. Moreover, the hypnotic stare is one of the features of the goddess 'with blue-green eyes', whose bird is the owl, depicted with an unblinking gaze. Finally, because she has affixed Medusa's head to her shield, in battle or in anger she assumes the terrifying appearance of the monster. Thus, in the Aeneid (11, 171), she expresses her wrath by making flames shoot forth from her eyes. These observations are intended to show that Athena and Medusa are the two indissociable aspects of the same sacred power.
A similar claim could be made in respect of Perseus, who retains traces of his association with his monstrous double, Medusa. Using her decapitated head to turn his enemies to stone, he spreads death around him. And when he flies over Africa with his trophy in a bag, through some sort of negligence, drops of blood fall to earth and are changed into poisonous snakes which reduce Medusa's lethal power (Ovid, op. cit., IV. 618). Two famous paintings illustrate this close connection between the hero and the monster. Cellini's Perseus resembles the head he is holding in his hand (as demonstrated by Siebers) and Paul Klee's L’esprit a combattu le mal (1904) portrays a complete reversal of roles -- Perseus is painted full face with a terrible countenance, while Medusa turns aside.
In this interplay of doubles, the theme of reflection is fundamental. It explains the process of victimization to which Medusa was subjected, and which falls within the province of the superstition of the 'evil eye'. The way to respond to the 'evil eye' is either to use a third eye -- the one that Perseus threw at the Graiae - or to deflect the evil spell by using a mirror. Ovid, in particular, stressed the significance of the shield in which Perseus was able to see the Gorgon without being turned to stone, and which was given to him by Athena. Everything indicates that the mirror was the real weapon. It was interpreted thus by Calderón and Prevelakis, and also by Roger Caillois in Méduse et Cie (1960).
Ovid was responsible for establishing the link with Narcissus, a myth that he made famous. It seems that the same process of victimization is at work here. The individual is considered to have been the victim of his own reflection, which absolves the victimizer (Perseus, the group) from all blame. This association of the two myths (and also the intention of apportioning blame) appears in a passage in Desportes' Amours d’Hyppolite (1573) where the poet tells his lady that she is in danger of seeing herself changed 'into some hard rock' by her 'Medusa's eye'. Even more revealing is Gautier's story Jettatura (1857) in which the hero, accused of having the 'evil eye', eventually believes it to be true and watches the monstrous transformation of his face in the mirror: 'Imagine Medusa looking at her horrible, hypnotic face in the lurid reflection of the bronze shield.'
Medusa's head is both a mirror and a mask. It is the mirror of collective violence which leaves the Devil's mark on the individual, as well as being the image of death for those who look at it. Both these themes -- violence rendered sacred and death by petrifaction -- are found in Das Corgonenhaupt (Berlin, 1972), a work by Walter Krüger about the nuclear threat.
However, when considered in terms of archetypal structures, Medusa's mask still retains its secret. What is the reason for the viperine hair, the wide-open mouth with the lolling tongue, and, in particular, why is Medusa female? What relationship is there between violence, holy terror and woman?
THE DISCONCERTING STRANGENESS OF THE FEMININE
17:24 Apr 16 2013
Times Read: 356
THE DISCONCERTING STRANGENESS OF THE FEMININE
Robert Graves (Greek Myths, 1958) believes that the myth of Perseus preserves the memory of the conflicts which occurred between men and women in the transition from a matriarchal to a patriarchal society. In fact the function of the Gorgon's mask was to keep men at a safe distance from the sacred ceremonies and mysteries reserved for women, i.e. those which celebrated the Triple Goddess, the Moon. Graves reminds us that the Orphic poems referred to the full moon as the 'Gorgon's head'. The mask was also worn by young maidens to ward off male lust. The episode of Perseus' victory over Medusa represents the end of female ascendancy and the taking over of the temples by men, who had become the masters of the divine which Medusa's head had concealed from them.
Although it may have become less intense, the battle of the sexes was not resolved. The feminine continued to remain a source of fear for men, and the association of women with Medusa, evoked an aspect of the sex which was both fascinating and dangerous. Medusa often appeared in Renaissance poetry, e.g. Ronsard's Second Livre des Amours (S. 79, 1555), but the stare which turned men to stone was often only a conventional metaphor for the lover's 'coup de foudre'. The comparison took on a deeper meaning during the nineteenth century. Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal (1857) and 'decadent' literature such as Lorrain's M. de Phocas (1901), provide illustrations of the dangerous fascination exerted by woman, with her deadly stare and mysterious hair. But it was Goethe's Faust Part I (1808) which supplied the real significance of this connection. During the 'Walpurgis night,’ Faust thinks he sees Margarita but Mephistopheles warns him that it is Medusa and explains that 'magic deludes every man into believing that he has found his beloved in her'.
This terrible woman, the paragon of all women, whom every man simultaneously fears and seeks and for whom Medusa is the mask, is in fact the mother, i.e. the great Goddess Mother whose rites were concealed by the Gorgon's face. Countless texts illustrate Medusa's affinity with the depths of the sea and the terrible power of nature, e.g. Hugo's Les Travailleurs de la Mer (1864), Lautrémont's Chants de Maldoror (1869) and Pierre Louÿs' Aphrodite (1896), but the most explicit example is probably the text written by Freud in 1922: Das Medusenhaupt -- 'Medusa's Head'. He presents her as the supreme talisman who provides the image of castration -- associated in the child's mind with the discovery of maternal sexuality -- and its denial. The snakes are multiple phalluses and petrifaction represents the comforting erection.
From this point onwards, the myth of Perseus takes on a new psychological meaning. It tells of the exploit of the hero who, because he has conquered ‘castrating' woman and armed himself with the talisman of Medusa's head (seen here in its comforting, phallic role), is able to conquer Andromeda, the terrifying virgin, and kill the sea monster which represents the evil aspect of woman. This motif is also found in the Christian legend of St George (Jacques de Voragine, La Légende dorée, (1264) as well as in the anthropological legends concerning the fear of the 'dentate vagina'. A 'sacred' man must perform the first sexual act with a woman.
Two texts illustrate this aspect of the myth. One is, the Book of Arthur (op. cit). in the passage devoted to the 'Ugly Semblance'. The monster occupies the lands of a maiden who not only asks the king for the assistance of a knight but also for a husband whom she describes as though he had always been intended for her. The task that he performs seems to have been the necessary requirement for his union with the Virgin. The story stresses the association of the monster with the element of water and, in particular, with the sea into which it has to be driven back. The second text is a short story by Döblin, Der Ritter Blaubart -- the 'Knight with the Blue Beard' (1911). Because the hero has had mysterious and intimate relations with a primitive monster -- a giant medusa -- he is forced to either kill all the women he loves or allow them to be killed. However, one of them, because of her purity, confronts the monster in the secret chamber where it lurks. In this last example, the character seems to have been unable to free himself from the maternal influence and fear of the feminine.
Finally, this association of Medusa with castrating woman is very evident in a passage in Chêne et Chien (1952) by Queneau: 'Severed head, evil woman/ Medusa with her lolling tongue/So it was you who would have castrated me?' However, the myth reveals -- and this seems to be obscured by the Freudian interpretation -- that woman's 'castration' is a result of the violence imposed on her by the original hero. Woman only appears in the story divided by separative decapitation, casting off the feminine in the remote depths of the world. Cast down, the feminine remains unrecognized within its innermost recess and it is this 'abject' void which maintains the theatre of the world and the logic of the talisman. In this theatre, woman occupies the two opposite extremes of evil (castration, sorcery) and their cure (the phallus, the Virgin), i.e. of the abyss and the Ideal. That is why, despite her terrifying power, she is fascinating. 'Fascinum' means 'charm' and 'evil spell', but also 'virile member'. Between the 'emptiness' and the Idol represented by the division of woman, yawns the gulf of male Desire. This persistent ambiguity can be found in the classification of the creature called the medusa. It owes its name to its resemblance to Medusa's head (Apollinaire, Bestiaire, 1920), but is included in the Acephelan category. Medusa keeps her secret behind the ambiguous mask. Although she is 'representable', she is never 'presentable' and even Perseus only sees her reflected in his shield. She is the hidden presence, absent from the world, which enables the scene to be played out. In his 'heroic comedy' Le Naufrage de Méduse (1986), Ristat shows Perseus searching for the Gorgons and meeting Hermes, the 'Guardian of Resemblances', who proves to the terrified hero that 'Medusa herself is only a shadow'.
However, the hero remains trapped in the interplay of images and the logic of the talisman, just as he remains fascinated by the Gorgon mask. Thus Medusa's head becomes, for the man who takes possession of it after severing it from the terrifying woman, and in accordance with the principle of the 'pharmakon', the complete opposite, i.e. the 'skeptron' -- the sun.
‘O MEDUSA, O SUN'
17:20 Apr 16 2013
Times Read: 360
‘O MEDUSA, O SUN'
In the same way that there is a hidden similarity between Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, and Medusa, a similarity also exists between the sun, symbol of the Ideal and the Gorgon's mask. Although they are both objects of desire, Athena and the sun are unapproachable and terrifying for those who come too close. This danger is illustrated by the Platonic myth of Phaedrus (247-8e) in which the downfall of souls is brought about by an overpowering desire to see the sun. Certain structural elements from the myth of Medusa also reappear in the myth of the Cave (The Republic, 514-7a), i.e. fascination, averted eyes, violence inflicted on the philosopher, etc.
In his poem (op. cit.), Queneau maintains that the sun, like the Gorgon, is fearsome and castrating: 'The sun: O monster, O Gorgon, O Medusa/O sun'. In this way, Medusa herself can become an incarnation of the Ideal, i.e. of Virtue (Du Bellay, Epithalame, 1559), of Beauty (Baudelaire, op. cit., 'La Beauté') and of Truth (Kosmas Politis, Eroica, Athens, 1938). Surely the sun itself is the severed head that, like the head of St John the Baptist, only soars in the zenith: 'In triumphant flights/from that scythe' (Mallarmé, Hérodiade, 'Cantique de saint Jean', 1913). Whoever seeks Athena, finds Medusa's head. Whoever approaches too close to the sun discovers its castrating and castrated monstrousness (Bataille, L’Anus Solaire, 1931).
Although Nietzsche had embarked upon the destruction of all idols, he too, in this way, recognized the desire for death inherent in the desire for truth at any cost. The philosopher who wants to examine all things 'in depth', discovers the petrifying abyss. The destiny of the man whom Nietzsche refers to as 'the Don Juan of knowledge' will be paralyzed as if by Medusa, and will himself be 'changed into a guest of stone' (Morgenröte i.e. the Dawn of Day, 327, 1881). This is also the destiny of the 'lover of truth' who, in the Dionysos Dithyramben (1888) appears to be 'changed into a statue/into a sacred column'. Nietzsche, who was aware of the necessity 'for the philosopher' to live within the 'closed circuit of representation' (Derrida), to seek the truth even if he no longer believes in it, without ever being able to attain it, devised his own version of the 'truth', his Medusa's head, the Eternal Return: 'Great thought is like Medusa's head: all the world's features harden, a deadly, ice-cold battle' (Posthumous Fragments, Winter 1884-5).
All thinkers who reflect upon the nature of representation, as well as on thought which pursues the 'eidos' are in danger of confronting Medusa's head. Thus, Aristotle, in The Politics (VIII) differentiates between instructive and cathartic music which is associated with Bacchic trances, whose instrument is the flute and which should be avoided. To prove his point, he refers to the myth of Athena. When she played the flute, her face became so distorted that she abandoned the instrument. It was in fact she who had invented the flute to imitate an unknown sound, virtually unrepresentable, i.e. the hissing of the snakes on Medusa's head as she was decapitated (Pindar, The Pythian Odes, XII, 2-3). As she played, she noticed in a spring that her features were becoming distorted and assuming the appearance of the Gorgon's mask. This once more introduces the Narcissistic theme and the blurring of the difference between Athena and her rival, which here arises from tragic art. Therefore, in terms of philosophy, art should remain in the service of the 'eidos' by continuing to represent the image that arouses desire for the Object.
But it is also condemned if it presents the object in such an obvious manner that the remoteness of desire degenerates into dangerous enjoyment. This partly explains Tournier’s condemnation of image and photography in La Goutte d'Or (1985). He explicitly links their power to Medusa's petrifying fascination and contrasts them with the art of writing which is the art of education and the route to wisdom 'par excellence'.
It would seem that the fear experienced at the sight of Medusa's head is the terror of discovering the secret behind the representation of the image.
From Companion to Literary Myths, Heroes, and Archetypes. Ed. Pierre Brunel. Routledge, 1996. Copyright © 1996 by Routledge.
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