Happy day-after-Saint-Patrick’s-Day! How are we feeling? Since we spent the last 24+ hours raising way too many glasses of green drinkables in honor of history’s most notorious snake-hater, I feel compelled to, in a small way, represent the other side of the feud. And if we’re gonna talk snakes, there’s only one mythic monster who fits the bill. That’s right–it’s Medusa time! Gorgon, coiffure icon, and stone-cold man killer.
Origins of Medusa
It’s a story as old as time itself: ancient Greek woman runs into a god, said god acts like an asshole, woman gets punished.
Seriously: Do better, Religion.
Medusa’s story follows this arc as well. She was just a maiden hanging out in the temple of Minerva (Greek: Athena), minding her own business, when Neptune comes along (Greek: Poseidan) and does what pretty much every Greek and Roman god does whenever they encounter a beautiful maiden. And I mean whenever. Honestly, I don’t know how they had time to get any of their god jobs done with all the “seducing” they were doing.
Also, he may have been disguised as a horse at the time? Seems like an odd choice, but based on what I know of Greek and Roman mythology, it checks out.
Anyway, their fornication having taken place in Minerva’s temple, she’s offended and disgusted. Rather than telling Neptune to stop having equine dalliances in her house of worship, she turns Medusa’s hair to snakes and her face into a murder weapon, proving that the credo of “sisters before misters” held no weight in the ancient world.
Not cool, Minerva. Not. Cool.
Medusa is also one of three sisters, checking another archetype square in Greek Myth bingo. However, of the three, she is the only mortal one. Why that is, I don’t know for sure. I assume it’s because her mom was seduced by Zeus disguised as a giraffe or Aries pretending to be a mongoose or something. It’s a guess, but you know I’m probably not far off.
Powers and Abilities
Fair or not, Minerva’s vengeance did gift Medusa with some magic powers–namely, the ability to turn men to stone with one look. Now, a couple of clarifications here:
- All the sources I’ve encountered do say “men.” I don’t know if that’s doing the sexist thing of using “men” and “human” interchangeably, or if she really does affect only males.
- There’s some conflicting information about the source of Medusa’s power. Some sources say it’s her gaze that does the stoning, while others say it’s because she’s so hideous that the shock of looking at her is what causes the transformation.
Since there’s room for interpretation here, I’m going to interpret it in the way I see fit–a way that doesn’t make this any worse on a poor girl who did nothing wrong except MAYBE loved horses a little too much, depending on who you believe.
Therefore, let it be know by all that, on this blog, Medusa is not ugly, and her powers only work on human males. Instead of painting her as reviled troll-hag lurking around the Greek countryside, she’s a badass champion and defender of women.
By the way, this all tracks with the symbology of the Gorgon, which is, according to Monstropedia, “the female genitals and the ‘devouring’ female sexuality behind them.”
And then there’s this:
“The original Gorgoneion may have only been a head. It has been suggested that the body was added for the purpose of enabling Medusa to be killed, not only as a means of explaining the origin of this disembodied terror-head, but also to enact the conflict between man and his fears of a demonic female sexual energy.”
Monstropedia
So…instead of a snake-infested head floating around turning people to stone, they decided to throw a body on Medusa just to make her more sexually terrifying to men.
Best. Monster. Ever.
If you like “disembodied terror-heads,” make sure to check out our previous article on the Nukekubi, a bodiless vampire from Japan. It is just as weird as it sounds.
Defeating Medusa
Ah, that was fun.
Now for the shitty part. If you thought the circumstances of her transformation were unfair, you’re really gonna hate how she dies: Perseus cuts her head off to use as a weapon, and when he’s done, he gives it to–are you ready for this? Athena, aka Minerva, who sticks Medusa’s head on her shield and goes off to fight in the Troyan war.
Which…sucks.
I’ll be honest: When I started this article, I didn’t know much about Medusa beyond the snake hair and stone glare. But now that I have, I kind of love her. In fact, I’m having to stop myself from including more tidbits about her just to keep this article focused. Like, did you know she is also the Mistress of the West Gate of Death? And that her blood could reanimate the dead as well as act as a lethal poison? How awesome is that? I know I’ve said recently that I have no interest in mythology retellings, but seriously–I would read the hell out of a story about her.
Or possibly, maybe, write it too.
Sources
- https://www.monstropedia.org/index.php?title=Medusa
- https://www.metmuseum.org/
- https://gocity.com/en/dublin/blog/facts-about-st-patrick
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medusa
