Re-visioning Medusa Quotes

“Medusa reminds us that we must not take the female “monster” at face value; that we must not only weigh her beneficent against her maleficent attributes but also take into consideration the worldview and sociopolitical stance of the patriarchal cultures which create her, fashioning the demonic female as scapegoat for the benefit and comfort of the male members of their societies.”
― Miriam Robbins Dexter, Re-visioning Medusa: from Monster to Divine Wisdom

“The name Medusa means ‘sovereign female wisdom,’ ‘guardian/ protectress,’ ‘the one who knows’ or ‘the one who rules.’ It derives from the same Indo-European root as the Sanskrit Medha and the Greek Metis, meaning ‘wisdom’ and ‘intelligence.’ Metis, ‘the clever one,’ is Athena’s mother. Corretti identifies Athena, Metis, and Medusa as aspects of an ancient triple Goddess corresponding respectively to the new, full, and dark phases of the moon. All three are Goddesses of wisdom, protection, and healing.”
― Laura Shannon, Re-visioning Medusa: from Monster to Divine Wisdom

“Medusa was revered and exalted by the Libyan Amazons as the Queen Serpent Goddess of female wisdom. I think all the ramifications of the meaning of this title remain mysterious because female wisdom is denied in patriarchy and women must search beneath the hardened layers of conditioning to find our true heritage. The most common story of Medusa, whose name from ancient Greek medo means “to protect, to rule over” and “the ruling one,” tells the aggrandized patriarchal tale of jealousy, betrayal, rape and murder. In this myth the goddess is split into her “good” and “bad” aspects forcing her to appear to fight against herself—Athena, the daughter born from the forehead of her father, created in alignment with patriarchy as the male myth makers wished, and Medusa, the mortal Gorgon who was punished by Athena. The goddess punishes herself—a very strange, confused and twisted story indeed.

The Classical Greek myths are all variations on these same themes. Demonizing the creative female powers of the cosmos became a high priority for the male-dominated violent hierarchy that sought to replace the more peaceful woman-centered cultures of the Neolithic. In the above-mentioned variation she is blamed for Poseidon raping her, the burden of which still plays out very commonly today, not only in the shame women feel when men rape them but also in the persistent blame that it is a woman’s fault if a man rapes her. Classical Greek mythology is the embodiment of both rape culture and a deep-seated misogyny that are the bedrock of Western civilization. I believe that the challenge in dealing with these violent woman-hating mythologies is to learn what lies at the core of these anti-woman and anti-life myths, for the Medusa Archimage is also cross-cultural.”
― Leslene della-Madre, Re-visioning Medusa: from Monster to Divine Wisdom

“The Gorgon Medusa presents herself to us here and now, requiring us to be fully present, to listen deeply—past the noise of accumulated judgments—to the Ancient Wisdom that is our true inheritance. As the Great Awakener, She reminds us of our mortality and encourages us to reclaim whatever has been silenced or diminished within us while we are privileged to be alive. We are admonished to have the courage to act and speak what is true, to trust ourselves to hold her gaze and know we will not be turned to stone.”
― Joan Marler, Re-visioning Medusa: from Monster to Divine Wisdom

“Medusa. Hiss her name out, like snakes. This is the worst, the most terrible thing—and if we can face that and still reach out to each other, if we can look it full in the face as it happens all around us in the houses and supermarkets and families we see on buses in the parks, in our own street and presumably in the houses of our friends and colleagues and our own families, happening still—if we can face it and not be turning into stone then we can strike. Let the serpents rise from my head, many bodied, writhing. Let them call out what they know and mark it as an act of horror, like thoughts that finally have to speak themselves. And shouting, singing into being, let us finally honour this ancient goddess: the mystery of facing terrible truth. Medusa’s head was cut off but let us reclaim that—this ancient knowledge: the power to see and know the truth.”
― Jane Meredith, Re-visioning Medusa: from Monster to Divine Wisdom

“But as the 20th century dawned, Freudian psychology promoted the regressive notion that women suffer an intrinsic deficiency resulting in “penis envy.” Freud wrote that the “depreciation of women, horror of women, and a disposition to homosexuality are derived from the final conviction that women have no penis.” In his view, Medusa's face represents a “vagina dentata”—a hideous toothed vagina—surrounded by the writhing phalluses of castrated men.”
― Joan Marler, Re-visioning Medusa: from Monster to Divine Wisdom

“Renaissance artists, inspired by Greek mythological themes, created frighteningly realistic portrayals of decapitated women with snakes for hair. The elegantly crafted sculpture by Benvenuto Cellini of a youthful Perseus holding Medusa's head aloft while he stands on her decapitated body was erected in the center of Florence in the mid-16th century. This popular theme was emblematic of the Inquisitional murders of women taking place in many areas of Europe during that time, considered necessary to protect civil society from the dangers of uncontrolled female powers. Later, during the 18th-19th centuries, Romantic artists, poets, and Decadents recast Medusa as a beautiful victim, not a monster. In their view, She represented the ecstatic discord between pain and pleasure, beauty and horror, and divinely forbidden sexuality.”
― Joan Marler, Re-visioning Medusa: from Monster to Divine Wisdom

“The fascination with Medusa did not diminish at the end of the Greek Classical Era. She continued to function as a lightning rod for prevailing cultural attitudes. During the Greco-Roman period, images of Medusa were reproduced for wealthy patrons on mosaics and sculptural reliefs as mostly young and beautiful rather than disturbingly ferocious. Nevertheless, Christian zealots, who were rising in prominence, considered all pagan images abominations to be destroyed, especially of the Gorgon Medusa. During the Medieval period in Europe, Christian scholars considered the beheading of Medusa by Perseus to be an allegory of the virtuous son of god destroying the manifestation of evil, intrinsic to all women, that threatens men's souls.”
― Joan Marler, Re-visioning Medusa: from Monster to Divine Wisdom

“Athena placed the apotropaic image of Medusa's severed head on her aegis or breastplate and on Zeus's shield. Other gorgoneia (images of Medusa's head) were installed on temples and other places to benefit from her protection, even after death. Ironically, gorgoneia were placed on heroes' shields, armor, and chariots to protect the Greek warriors engaged in destroying all threats to the new social order, including her own.”
― Joan Marler, Re-visioning Medusa: from Monster to Divine Wisdom

“It is no surprise, then, that the earth deities of the Old Religion were demonized or co-opted. A typical task for Greek heroes was to rid the civilized world of those “earth-born bogeys.” The Gorgon Medusa, whose gaze turned men to stone, became an obvious target. Nevertheless, on the periphery of the Greek world, there is evidence that She was venerated in her ancient powers. During the 6th century BCE on the island of Corfu, an eight-foot-high full-bodied sculpture of Medusa was placed at the highest point on the pediment of the temple of Artemis. This Medusa is not raging, but is radiant in her full potency. Snakes with open jaws extend from each side of her head and two copulating serpents encircle her waist, carrying the potential for both death and new life. She wears winged sandals, her great wings are fully extended, sheltering her two children, and her bent-knee posture suggests that she is flying. All shamanic dimensions are Hers—the Great Above, the Great Below, the Primordial Waters, and the entire expanse of the Earth. She is flanked by great felines, just as the Phrygian Mountain Goddess Cybele and the seated Ancestral Mother from Çatalhöyük before her.'' ''The establishment of the Greek patriarchal world shifted the previous cultural valence from the egalitarian continuity of the Old Religion to the extreme imposition of male dominance and the cult of the hero. Under this new world order, all challenges to male hegemonic systems were to be crushed. As the classicist Eva Keuls emphasizes, “the suppression of women, the military expansionism and the harshness in the conduct of civic affairs all sprang from a common aggressive impulse.” That impulse was the expression of “male supremacy and the cult of power and violence.”
― Joan Marler, Re-visioning Medusa: from Monster to Divine Wisdom

“The establishment of the Greek patriarchal world shifted the previous cultural valence from the egalitarian continuity of the Old Religion to the extreme imposition of male dominance and the cult of the hero. Under this new world order, all challenges to male hegemonic systems were to be crushed. As the classicist Eva Keuls emphasizes, “the suppression of women, the military expansionism and the harshness in the conduct of civic affairs all sprang from a common aggressive impulse.” That impulse was the expression of “male supremacy and the cult of power and violence.”
― Joan Marler, Re-visioning Medusa: from Monster to Divine Wisdom

“Who is this Medusa whose visage has haunted the western imagination for 2700 years? Why has she remained so potent, and why is it necessary to “re-vision” her now in the 21st century?”
― Joan Marler, Re-visioning Medusa: from Monster to Divine Wisdom

“Many women have identified with the grimace and the rage of Medusa. May Sarton identifies the Medusa-face as the face of her own frozen rage. Emily Culpepper speaks out of her own experience: “The Gorgon has much vital, literally life-saving information to teach women about anger, rage, power, and the release of the determined aggressiveness sometimes needed for survival.” Patricia Klindienst Joplin tells us why the artist is drawn to Medusa: “Behind the victim’s head that turns men to stone may lie the victim stoned to death by men... if Medusa has become a central figure for the woman artist to struggle with, it is because, herself a silenced woman, she has been used to silence other women.” Many artists have identified with the rage of Medusa. The Italian scholar and artist, Cristina Biaggi, who now works in the United States, incorporated her studies of prehistory and ancient history and myth into a powerful fiberglass sculpture, “Raging Medusa” (2000). The sculpture is 5.5 feet in diameter and weighs 98 pounds.”
― Miriam Robbins Dexter, Re-visioning Medusa: from Monster to Divine Wisdom

“In patriarchal societies, the conception of life and death is often seen to be linear rather than circular. Because of a societal fear of death, death figures in patriarchal Indo-European cultures became horrific. Further, in these societies both the feminine divine and the mortal female became subjugated to the males and devalued. Many Indo-European female monsters carry bird and snake iconography. Baltic witches, raganas, take the shape of crows, and they have snakes in their hair. The Roman poet Vergil, in the Aeneid, gives snaky associations to Furies, Dirae, Sirens, and Harpies. Many of these fearsome figures are winged as well. Medusa was one of many monstrous figures who received this iconography.”
― Miriam Robbins Dexter, Re-visioning Medusa: from Monster to Divine Wisdom

“Athena’s helmet may represent the protection of our neural pathways, as mentioned earlier. The experience of trauma affects our ability to think clearly. Therefore the work of healing requires the clear thinking and clear seeing which are also Athena’s gifts. The quality of mindfulness, defined by Bessel van der Kolk as the ability ‘to hover calmly and objectively over our thoughts, feelings and emotions,’ is a key part of recovery and also of Athena’s mental power.

The theme of protection manifests when Athena places Medusa’s head on her breastplate or aegis, right in the centre of her heart. Medusa’s head now becomes the universally powerful apotropaic emblem, the Gorgoneion, placed on shields, walls, houses, temples, roofs, gates and entryways throughout Classical antiquity and even in the present day. I believe this action has profound significance for our theme of healing from trauma.”
― Laura Shannon, Re-visioning Medusa: from Monster to Divine Wisdom

“Despite Medusa’s fearsome appearance, she herself does not personify evil or demonic forces. According to Miriam Robbins Dexter, Medusa is a manifestation of the Neolithic serpent/bird Goddess of life, death, and regeneration. Jane Harrison explains that the ancient Goddess wore the Gorgon mask to warn the uninitiated away from her rites, most likely mysteries of the great cosmic cycles of heaven and earth. Patricia Monaghan sees the snakelike rays streaming out from Medusa’s countenance as a sign of a solar Goddess, while Joan Marler, citing her connection with Hecate, identifies Medusa more with the moon than the sun; either way, Medusa is a heavenly deity ruling over the powers of the cosmos and the rhythms of time.”
― Laura Shannon, Re-visioning Medusa: from Monster to Divine Wisdom

“Freud famously saw the ‘horror’ of Medusa’s head as a symbol of male castration, but the original trauma in the Medusa story is not castration but rape. Most scholars and historians dismiss Poseidon’s rape of Medusa as an insignificant detail, merely one among so many rapes of mortal, immortal and semi-divine women committed by male gods. However, myths which glorify rape as a strategy ‘to enact the principle of domination by means of sex’ are comparatively recent, becoming widespread in Attica around the 5th century BCE.

It is likely that myths celebrating rape reflect a devastating historical shift in cultural values, the change from a society based on equality and partnership to a hierarchical structure based on unequal distribution of resources and the need to control women’s sexuality. Joseph Campbell describes the myth of Perseus and Medusa as reflecting ‘an actual historic rupture, a sort of sociological trauma’ which occurred in the early thirteenth century B.C.E. The myth may refer to the overrunning of the peaceful, sedentary, matrifocal and most likely matrilineal early civilizations of Old Europe by patriarchal warlike Indo-European invaders.”
― Laura Shannon, Re-visioning Medusa: from Monster to Divine Wisdom

“Paralysis, rage and disembodiment, three main elements of the Medusa story, are classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). According to trauma healing expert Bessel van der Kolk, numbing, freezing, and immobilization are common responses to trauma, particularly sexual trauma. As well as causing a sense of being emotionally shut down, long-term trauma held in the body can result in ‘stiff,’ ‘rigid,’ or ‘stilted’ movement, posture, and expression, resembling paralysis. Trauma can also erode key social skills of self-control and self-regulation, causing the uncontrollable rage characteristic of PTSD. The brutal separation of head from body, a third element of Medusa’s story, may reflect the dissociation, fragmentation, and disconnection from the body also typical of the post-traumatic state.”
― Laura Shannon, Re-visioning Medusa: from Monster to Divine Wisdom

“Only gradually have I come to identify Her snake coils and bird wings, as an ancient combination representative of Medusa as Miriam Robbins Dexter describes in this anthology. I realize now that I had been invoking Medusa; calling Her into my being, embodying Her in Seasonal ceremony, embedding Her regenerative creativity in my life. As Marija Gimbutas points out, the earliest Greek gorgons as Medusa was, or wherever Goddess appeared as a mask of death, She was never separate from symbols of regeneration.”
― Glenys Livingstone, Re-visioning Medusa: from Monster to Divine Wisdom

“It is time to reclaim the essence of Medusa’s sovereignty in her entirety, once again re-storying the Queen Serpent Goddess of Female Wisdom.”
― Leslene della-Madre, Re-visioning Medusa: from Monster to Divine Wisdom

“Significant strides have been made by women throughout the world to challenge the deeply embedded misogyny that has plagued the lives of women and girls for millennia. Advancements (which are far from universal) such as the right to vote, to own property, to obtain a divorce, to control our own reproduction, and many other human rights have been achieved by women with great sacrifice and struggle. Nevertheless, the threat of censure, internalized as a template of fear and self-loathing, continues to enforce the physical and psychological silencing of women and girls, even in privileged cultural contexts.”
― Joan Marler, Re-visioning Medusa: from Monster to Divine Wisdom

“When Medusa was killed, her powers were plundered. She was pregnant with her son Chrysaor and the winged horse Pegasus who were born from her severed neck. Pegasus was immediately captured and made to bring Zeus Medusa's roar and the flash of her eyes, which he used as his thunder and lightning. In book three of the Bibliotheca (3.10.3) Apollodorus describes how Athena drains the blood from Medusa's veins and gives it to Asclepius, Greek god of medicine and healing. The blood from her left side is deadly poisonous, while the blood from her right side brings life. Asclepius's powers to cure and raise the dead were thereby stolen from Medusa.”
― Joan Marler, Re-visioning Medusa: from Monster to Divine Wisdom

“The decapitation of Medusa by the Greek hero Perseus, assisted by the patriarchalized Goddess Athena, was painted on pottery, carved as bas reliefs on temples, described in Greek verse, and propagated in myths and legends. Her murder functioned as a cautionary tale defining the ultimate consequence of manifesting female sovereignty.”
― Joan Marler, Re-visioning Medusa: from Monster to Divine Wisdom

“Long before the Gorgon Medusa constellated within the archaic Greek world and was demonized as ugly and ultimately monstrous—with her tongue lolling between sharp fangs, with writhing serpents for hair and glaring eyes—the roots of her multi-layered iconography extended deep into pre-Greek cultures. The earliest agrarian societies of Southeastern Europe, from the 7th-4th millennia BCE, were intimately bonded with the seasonal realities of the living Earth. These egalitarian farmers who developed long-lived, sustainable societies understood that life feeds on life. Death and decomposition are inevitable consequences of being alive, and the nutrients released from previously living matter are essential for life's renewal. Within this context, concepts of the sacred are analogous to the cyclic continuity of all existence. In mythic terms, the Great Goddess, as the Sacred Source of all life, is a metaphor for life giving birth to itself and absorbing itself in death. Therefore, the Goddess of Life is also the Goddess of Death who is responsible for regeneration. Goddesses in various guises who represent this eternal cycle are found in ancient traditions throughout the world. The nature of every society is shaped by prevailing attitudes—honoring and respectful, or fearful.”
― Joan Marler, Re-visioning Medusa: from Monster to Divine Wisdom

“According to Greek mythology, Medusa is a Triple Goddess, one of three gorgon sisters—Sthenno, Euryale, and Medusa—representing past, present, and future. Only Medusa exists as mortal in present time. Her complex lineage composed of multiple myths and stories, combined with cross-cultural influences, is masterfully presented in this volume by the linguist and archaeomythologist Miriam Robbins Dexter. She rightly points out that the typical emphasis on Medusa's fearsome features are the result of extreme Greek bias against female powers, which masks her life-giving and regenerative capacities.”
― Joan Marler, Re-visioning Medusa: from Monster to Divine Wisdom

“Medusa continues to be viewed as protective and apotropaic—warding off evil, warding off the enemy—and even healing in the Greek tradition, but she has also lost her power. It is thus important to pay attention to her beneficent aspects: the fact that half of her blood is healing, and that images of her head are used to protect buildings of multiple functions within the Greco-Roman sphere; so protective is she considered to be that her head was buried near the Argive market-place. Medusa is magical. She reminds us that we must not take the female “monster” at face value; that we must weigh not only her beneficent against her maleficent attributes, but we must also take into consideration the world view and the sociopolitical stance of the cultures which create her, fashioning the demonic female as scapegoat for the benefit and comfort of the patriarchal members of their societies.”
― Miriam Robbins Dexter, Re-visioning Medusa: from Monster to Divine Wisdom

“Although Medusa may be of use to modern feminists, providing an ancient locus for modern rage, it is important to see that the raging head of Medusa has lost the fullness of the original powers of the Neolithic Goddess of the Life Continuum. The Greek Medusa is different from her sisters across time and space.  Whereas the Neolithic Goddess is a powerful arbiter of birth, death, and rebirth, she has been transformed in Greek from a Goddess of the life continuum to a dead head.”
― Miriam Robbins Dexter, Re-visioning Medusa: from Monster to Divine Wisdom

“The wings and snakes may have been late additions to the portrayal of Medusa, but they are nonetheless a natural concomitant of the ferocious death Goddess. Wings were added to Medusa’s iconography ca. 800 BCE, by the Greeks; later on, she was described as winged in text as well. In the portrayal of the Medusa from Miletus, Medusa is associated with snakes but she is not snaky herself. Nonetheless, she accrued the iconography of the Neolithic bird and snake Goddess, the Great Goddess of birth, death, and regeneration.”
― Miriam Robbins Dexter, Re-visioning Medusa: from Monster to Divine Wisdom

“In the Neolithic period, throughout Europe and the Near East, there appear figurines which represent bird/women, snake/women, and bird/snake/woman hybrids. Since Goddesses with bird and snake iconography appear in early historic religions, such as those of Egypt and Mesopotamia, it has been theorized that the figurines represent powerful divine female figures in the Neolithic cultures of Europe and the Near East. The “stiff white nude” figures of the Cyclades, Anatolia, and the Balkans may be death figures, but a pregnant Cycladic figure demonstrates that the Goddess serves regeneration as well as death. Early historic textual evidence of this may be found in the Sumerian Descent of Inanna, where the Underworld Goddess and Goddess of death, Ereshkigal, is in the process of giving birth. Just as the more ancient figures, Medusa too is winged, and she has snaky hair: that is, she embodies both the serpentine and the avian aspects of the Neolithic bird/snake Goddess, even though she does not have these characteristics in her earliest depictions.

The bird/snake Goddess represents the continuum of birth, life, death, rebirth. The realms of the bird and snake cover all of the worlds; the realm of the bird is the heavens, while waterbirds also occupy the waters. That of the snake is the earth and Underworld, and likewise water snakes occupy the waters. Both bird and snake embody graphic depictions of birth, since both are oviparous. Both creatures are graphic depictions of regeneration as well, since birds molt and snakes shed their skin. In Neolithic Europe, death and rebirth were tied together in the tomb which served as a ritual place for rebirth: the tomb was also the womb. In her death aspect, a Goddess such as Medusa turns people to stone—a form of death, since all human activity ceases for those thus ossified. 

Read against the iconographies of the bird/snake goddesses, one can identify ways in which the Underworld Goddess, the death Goddess, gives birth to life. Like Ereshkigal, with her leeky hair, Medusa with her snaky hair is also a birth-giver. But in Medusa’s case, she gives birth as she is dying, whereas in the earlier, Sumerian myth the process of death led to regeneration; the Goddess of the Underworld did not have to die in the process of giving birth; she who presided over death presided over rebirth. The winged snake Goddess, before her head is severed by Perseus, is whole; in prehistory she would have been a Goddess of all of the worldly realms. When Medusa’s head is severed, she becomes disembodied. Disembodied wisdom is very dangerous. Hence, she becomes monstrous. It is her chthonic self which the Classical world acknowledges: Medusa becomes the snaky-haired severed head, a warning to all women to hide their powers, their totalities. This fearsome aspect goes two ways: she can destroy, but she also brings protection.”
― Miriam Robbins Dexter, Re-visioning Medusa: from Monster to Divine Wisdom

“Thus, there is an ambivalence here about the death-aspect of the Goddess. Clearly, she represents regeneration as well as death.  Indeed, the venom of a snake can be both poison and antitoxin. As I will discuss on the pages that follow, Medusa holds here the functions of the prehistoric Goddess of the life continuum: birth, death, and then regeneration. She is multifunctional and multidimensional and she should be viewed in all of her complexity, through a non-patriarchal lens.”
― Miriam Robbins Dexter, Re-visioning Medusa: from Monster to Divine Wisdom