Welcome to the 34 Circe Salon.
Welcome to Make Matriarchy Great Again.
And welcome everyone to the 34 Services Salon, the Make Cherokee Great Again podcast.We are going to make it great again, and today we're talking Medusa.I am Sean Marlon Newcomb, and as always, Lima George is?
Don Sam Alden, welcome, welcome everyone.Yes, we have an amazing podcast times three today.We have three amazing guests to join us in this conversation about Medusa.And we are going to have you all introduce yourselves.
We're gonna start with Star, and then Miriam, and then Joan.So Star, take it away.
Hello, everyone.Solstice greetings and blessings to you all.My name is Star Goody, and I taught writing and literature at Santa Monica College.I've been published in articles on shilin gigs in many places.
One of my main things that I did was I did a TV series called The Goddess in Art, which is all on YouTube and my website, stargoody.com. and I got to interview many wondrous people.
I wrote a book on the art of living, Falstaff the Fool and Dino, which looks at the qualities of wit and freedom through the fool.
And most recently, I wrote a book on Sheila Negegg's Dark Goddess of Sacred Power, which was just recently published in Italian.And it was through her that I came to Medusa.
And I also, seeing Joan, she published my article, The Icon of the Bulba, A Basis of Civilization, which I think should be in every room instead of the 10 committees.
Heartily endorsed.All right, Miriam, would you like to introduce yourself?
Okay, just as Marissa said, I send solstice greetings to everybody. And I'm Miriam Robbins Dexter.I'm an academic.My PhD is in ancient Indo-European languages, comparative myth, and archeology.
And I'm a philologist, and I love translating texts about the goddesses.
Fabulous.And you have also published on... Oh, okay.
Yeah, I've published a few books.And I also, after Maria Gumbudis passed away, I was asked to finish her final book, The Living Goddesses.And I also, just like Joan, published a festschrift in her honor.
and also a book of her articles called The Kurgan Culture.And let's see, my first book was called Whence the Goddesses, a source book, in 1990.And that was the year Starr interviewed me for her cable program, which was wonderful.
I've since co-authored some books.One was called Sacred Display, which I co-authored with Victor Mayer.And it really runs into what Starr has been doing.It's on what I think is a shamanic dance, a very bold display of the genitals.
And I traced this through many European languages and my co-author, Victor Mayer, found some texts of the same sort in East Asia languages.
And then Vicki Noble and I published a few years ago an anthology called For Mothers of Women's Spirituality, and both Star and Joan are in that, as is Vicki.
Yes, yes.Wonderful.Thank you, Miriam.Joan?
By the way, Miriam, I'm so glad that you augmented your very, very sparse introduction to yourself, because all of these books that you've published, everything you've done, and all that you haven't told us that you have also done, are so important.
And the same with the work that Star Goody has done, too. and you were also very sparse about, but so important to all of us.And I am very honored and happy to be with both of you here today.
I first heard about Maria Gimbertas from Joseph Campbell, and this was in 1987.And he basically said if he had, if he had had her work earlier, he would have written his work very, very differently.
And that just, you know, made everything just shine for me.And I realized I have to find this woman.I mean, absolutely.And at that time I was working as a programmer at KPFA in Berkeley.And I knew that I could find her and we would, and I did.
And she was very kindly allowed me to interview her.And that started That changed my life, basically, as you can imagine, you know, anyone who's met her and particularly spent any time with her.
There's a transmission of profound knowledge and spirit that came from her and continues to come from her work.So she asked me to work with her.
which was an incredible thing, which was such, I mean, I'll never be the same as I was before, and I don't want to do that.
To be able to understand the development of European society, European culture, and that there was a time before patriarchy, there was a time before we were all under this incredibly horrific
pattern of destruction and particularly silencing of women and everything that we know so much about at this time.
And there was another time before, and she chronicled it because she had to know why, what was happening in Europe before the Indo-Europeans came in, before patriarchy came in, before warfare came in.
And what were all these sculptures that she then described in her later work that Miriam then completed in her book, the living goddesses.
So I'm not sure exactly when Medusa came to my mind, but certainly once I had Maria's material operating within me, the meaning of the significance of Medusa just was phenomenal because I understood for the first time, as many of us understood for the first time, that
what was going on in what she called old Europe, which was pre-patriarchal, was an experience that people had, the first people who were farmers in Europe, who developed sustainable societies.
Their idea of the whole cycle of life, which is found in indigenous societies still throughout the world, is that
Life comes from life, life comes from the earth and the fruition and beauty and fruitfulness comes to an end and then there is death and then the release of nutrients for new life to come.So that life and death and regeneration are that pattern.
And something happened that Maria described as the collision of cultures that has led us to warfare and everything that we have inherited that we are still trying to get ourselves out of.
And the Medusa and the demonization of the female form came from that demonization of women that was not existing in old Europe.So that's what I'll say there.And I'm sorry, it's so much a mouthful,
I mean, I have done a lot of publishing and this and that and the other thing, but I don't have to talk about that right now.I think what we're looking at is Medusa.
What Joan has done in commending Miriam and Starr for their very important contributions to the field, she has neatly avoided talking about her own very important contributions to the field.
But we will take the transition as it comes and move on to talking about specifically Medusa.And I'm curious how Medusa came into each of your lives.How did she first appear to you?How did you come across her in your studies?
And how did she take shape in your lives?So Star, do you want to go ahead and get us started?
Sure. She came into my life when I was writing my book on Shilinagig, a display figure in medieval churches and secular buildings on holy wells and tombs, much like Medusa was in a lot of places, too.
And I was trying to trace her back through what her spiritual and historical and prehistorical forebears were.So I took her back through Celtic culture, And then to classical culture, which of course had to display figures of Baobo and Medusa.
Because I knew that I couldn't fully understand the sheila by just looking at her own cultural setting, you know, of Northern Europe.But I wanted to go back to the classical world.
And of course, any time you look at one of these figures, the roots are deep, right?I mean, I traced the sheilas back to the Paleolithic vulvas.And I guess you could really, in a way, trace Medusa back like that too.
Anyway, I wanted to see what her historical forebears would be in terms of image and function and purpose and how they look.And the Shilas and Medusa are really sisters of display.
They really are sisters in terms of their exhibition, their apotropaic magic, their powers of creation and destruction, much like Medusa is very beneficent and horrific.I mean, beautiful to us always. you know, powers of life and death.
And the Shilas have those too.So that they could be propitious and apotropaic, you know, that they had these dual functions.Medusa, Gorgon Medusa can be in a temple guarding an entrance, you know, which is, of course, what the Shilas do.
So because they were, because when you look at the powers of the vulva, and of course, these figures, both these figures, they're rooted in female sexuality.
They're rooted in the powers of the female, which of course is part of her demonization because of the fears of patriarchy, of the power and beauty of female sexuality.So I found such a link between them.
And of course, I know some of you will touch on earlier roots of her, but I started there and that's what took me to her.And like the Shelahs, of course, I fell in love with Medusa.
Wonderful, wonderful.Thank you, Star.Miriam, do you want to talk a little bit about how Medusa came into your life?
Yeah, she came into my life pretty early because I was a Greek and Latin undergraduate major, and so I've been working with the texts since the 60s.In the late 60s,
I started taking courses with Rhea Gabudis at UCLA, and by the mid-70s, when I had passed my comprehensive exams and was ready to write a dissertation, she had herself put on my dissertation committee, because I was going to write about Indo-European female figures.
In that dissertation, I had a chapter on female figures who were treated as witches and monsters, and I rewrote that in 1990 to be a chapter in Whence the Goddesses, and I was really thinking about witches and monsters at that time.
And I did, through the years, some presentations on Monstrous Goddesses, Witches and Monsters, and published some articles.Some years ago, Carol Crisp asked me to write about Medusa for the Journal of Feminist Studies and Religion, and I did.
Then, and they didn't give me a whole lot of room, so I couldn't use the Greek and Latin texts, but then Trista Hendren of Girl God Books published, she said it could be as long as I wanted, and I could have all the Latin and Greek I wanted, so I published a very long article on beautiful Medusa.
And, This was for an anthology.It was about Medusa and wisdom.And it was gorgeous.And it has poetry, art, academic articles, just everything.And so I got to, because of her and her fantastic editing, I got to publish.
I translated every passage I could find from Homer around 800 BCE through Lucian around the second century CE.So a lot of time passed, and I got a sense of who she was as her very well-rounded self in antiquity.
Yes, she was turned into a monster, but if you look at the iconography, for example, the fantastic nine foot tall Medusa in the museum in Corfu, the Kikiru Museum.Oh my God, she's gorgeous.
A couple snakes in her hair, a couple at her waist, and wings.So she is the bird snake goddess, and wings on her shins.And she's beautiful.And so many authors say that she was beautiful.She wasn't just monstrous.
There's a fullness to her that I want to honor. beyond the more recent depiction of rage.She also has the iconography of the Near Eastern Humbaba, and that mythology came into Greek myth in the 8th century BCE.
Humbaba was a guardian of the forest of the great goddess in Mesopotamia. Gilgamesh, the great king Gilgamesh, decapitated him.After that, his head was apotropaic, just as Medusa's.
So you can really see these two lines, Near Eastern and Neolithic, coming into Maria.And she's also shamanic.
Say a little bit more about that.
Well, she, in the Corfu Medusa.She's in the bent knee, the knee laufen pose, which is a shamanic pose and a pose taken by a lot of display goddesses such as the Kiltine and Shilinagig as Starnose.And so that's my connection with Medusa.And Joan
Can't you talk about having given all those conferences in Maria's tradition after Maria passed away?Because, oh my God, I got so much from those conferences.They were wonderful.
Well, that would be, you're asking me really to take up too much time here, but... No, go ahead.After the civilization, no, after... Things are kind of jumbling.
At a certain point, after Maria passed away, I realized that it would be important to have some kind of vehicle for continuing of her work, because all of us were doing things in our own way, and how can we come together?
And so I and a number of other people met in Greece on this beautiful island owned by the Valoritis family, Nanos Valoritis, a dear friend of mine who is a very, very venerated Greek poet.He allowed us to do a series of conferences there.
And one of them in 1998 was when the Institute of Archaeomythology was basically generated, you might say.And from that time on, especially in the early years of the Institute, we did a number of
events in what had been old Europe in that same, I thought, why not go there?
Why not meet the scholars that are in old Europe who are excavating, who are the archaeologists there, and find out what they see, what is their attitude about Maria's work?
And so one of the really wonderful conferences that we did was near Real Monastery in the mountains.And you were there.
Unfortunately, what I regret is that I didn't publish those articles because the event was called Female Mysteries of the Substratum.And there were some really great papers done.But I know that Miriam
You published a version of that paper that you did, right?Yeah, everything got published.In different places?Yeah.Yeah, including by you.Sorry, you weren't there.I don't know why, but I apologize for that.But anyway, so there are a number of
One publication I probably should mention, which I put together after Maria's death was called, what was it called?
Thank you.One of these moments when you can be a senior person in this world, having done a lot of different things, sometimes they kind of flee out of your awareness.From the Realm of the Ancestors, an anthology in honor of Maria Gimpetus.
And in that book, I tried to connect with, with scholars who are representing different aspects of not only her life, but also the range, the breadth of her scholarship.A number of you are in that book.So Joan, tell us how Medusa came into your life.
You know, I don't remember the exact moment when I became aware of Medusa, but as I mentioned earlier, working with Maria, and also becoming aware of what Starr was doing and what Miriam was doing and others.
She was a presence that kept becoming more and more powerful.And so I began writing about her myself and looking at her iconography.
And because of Maria's concept of the collision of cultures between what she called the old European earth-based sustainable societies in old Europe, That was a time before the demonization of women when the imagery of women was celebrated.
There's so many incredibly beautiful thousands and thousands of images of women often masked in the shamanic gesture of masking, having their bodies inscribed with signs and symbols and so on.Then after the collision of cultures,
of the warring people that came from the steppes, which has been basically venerated, not venerated.Validated.Has been shown to be.
Maria's theory that the people that came from the steppes were nomadic pastoralists and they were not farmers, but they were fighters.And they came in and changed the face of Europe over a 2,000 year period.
And during that time, she called that the collision of cultures. And then there was a template of a certain relationship with the earth and the sky and the veneration of the earth shifted to a veneration of the sky and warring gods.
And that became a template for many things that happened later that we are still working with.And we are inheritors, people of European origin in particular, in terms of old Europe and this collision of cultures.
that is expressed in the Gorgon imagery, we are all inheritors of that collision.And it's important for us to know about that so that we can identify those patterns within ourselves.
And so the Gorgon is rich, rich, multi-dimensional image of the Gorgon, beautiful and horrific, can I think only be understood when we know this collision and we know that she represents all of those powers together.
Could I ask on that note, for me, I thought was interesting about this and all the work that you've all done on it is, Melissa, can we place just kind of the Medusa we know, the historical, the mythological Medusa that we've received, that is the pop culture Medusa and how that ties to
what you just said, Joan, about how it represents this clash, the way we receive her and the way she may have existed prior to that, her antecedents.
Well, I'm basically with Miriam, and I don't know where a star fits in this, but not being so tuned to pop culture, although some of your work seems to reflect more of an awareness of what's going on in contemporary world.
In order to answer that question, I see that Medusa carries all of it within her.You know, I mean, that's why there's so many levels of her iconography to be understood.
I'm not sure that answers your question, but... What I meant was sort of, you know, we think of it, I think the general image we have is Medusa's head being held aloft
that the snakes coiled about Perseus' hands, that she's the evil face of that which must be slain so that he can have his great bounty.But that's what we have as our general notion of her.
Can maybe one of you talk to what that myth, how that myth arose and then just in relation to that antecedent she might have been something different for earlier people.
Sean, do you want to give a quick outline just for our listeners of the sort of current understanding of the myth of Medusa?
Well, just kind of what I've said.I mean, for me, the current understanding is that Medusa is this horrible evil gorgon.Perseus wanted to receive a bounty.I believe it was a marriage that he was going to be offered.
But he must, in order to win the bride, he would have to behead this monster.So it's kind of, you know, to me, as I hear that, I think of the iconography of it, and I think of that basic story, that she is that which must be slain.
He uses, of course, and the great part of the story is he uses the shield to reflect her own image against her, because her power was if you were the seer, you would turn to stone.She turns men to stone.
I thought that was really interesting about the myth that there's no recorded myth of her turning a woman to stone.Right, right.
So she turns men to stone and in order for the man to get his beautiful bounty of a bride, he must behead this horrible beast.
Sorry, Miriam, you wanted to add something there?
Yeah, two different classical authors said that she turned people and animals to stone, not just them.Ovid says that.Pindar says that. And Abed uses the word homines, which means people, rather than wires, which means dead.
Got it.OK.OK.So there is.
She turned everybody to stone.That was her glance.
Yeah.And everything.OK.Great.Her glance turned everything to stone. Yeah.
And then, of course, there is also the aspect of the myth that the reason that she became this horrible monster who had a glance that turned everyone and everything to stone was because she was, some sources say, seduced, other sources say sexually assaulted by Poseidon in a temple of Athena.
And so as revenge for desecrating Athena's temple, she curses Medusa to be this horrible monster that no one can look on without turning to stone.Yes, go ahead.We have some responses to that.Miriam, go ahead and then we'll go to Star.
I'm glad you brought that up because I wanted to ask both you and Joan about her, you know, turning that she didn't turn women to stone.
But I just think that Medusa maintained her connection to her ancient roots because she's an archetype and symbols penetrate beyond just whatever the contemporary consciousness is.
They're so rooted in our being and the display and the powers of the Medusa are timeless patterns of energy that, of course, we respond to.And I also think she kept that connection.
And why would she have been such a threat and so popular at the same time? Because from what I've read, she was so popular in the classical culture.And she was everywhere on, you know, from the sacred to the profane.She was, you know, in temples.
But also, she was on clothing and coins.And so, it just shows that you, Maria said to me one time, when my coven was on the cover of the LA Weekly, where she goes, they can't do away with it. They can't do away with it.
And that's what I feel about her, this resurgence of that she's so, she's speaking to us, whether it's just the rage against the patriarchy or whether it's something more beneficent, a celebration of female powers.
And I just want to talk about our beloved Pat Monaghan, who wrote on Medusa and saw her as a sun goddess is eminently solar, she's a circle with rays.
And this is the last paragraph of her book, she just says that, rather than being, and this addresses a little bit, Sean, what you were saying, rather than being a bleeding image of female disempowerment, Medusa can be read as an icon of rebirth, powerful mythic power and women's sanctity.
And this is what she said, She may be one of the most ancient symbols of women's spiritual abilities.And that's why I think if I did.
this before, and I was reading in the New York Times that Medusa tattoos are the most popular image for people, women to get tattoos.Oh, wow.
And she said that she's such an empowering image of female potential that, that she says, her body's gliding to heavenly wings, she calls for us to follow her.And this is how she ends her book.
So I just think that there's, I just wanted to touch on the joy of it.
Wonderful, wonderful.Thank you, Star.Miriam, you wanted to pitch in.
Okay, so not the joy of it.I think that, okay, if we picture old Europe, as Joe was talking about, probably the most important spiritual concept was that of birth, death, and regeneration.You go, you were born from the goddess's womb.
You go back there. when you die and you're reborn from her womb again.And the old Europeans had this concept of the great circle of birth, death, and regeneration.You get to patriarchy after the Indo-Europeans and it changes radically.
They're afraid of death.And they can't conceive of Medusa.This is totally theory.They can't conceive of Medusa as the great round because they don't understand the great round.So they fix on her death aspect.And death has to be murdered.
And so she ends up the dead head.
She has to be conquered.Yeah.
By the way, I don't see her ever having the chance to express her rage because she was beheaded.
That's the interesting thing.That's what I was kind of interested to hear in that sense, Maryam.What changed when you have this clash of cultures when the Indo-Europeans come?Do we have any sorts?
What in the historical record do we have in terms of her myth? prior to this particular one with Perseus?Are there others that we can draw on, or what do we have?
Yeah, I mean, all of these figures that, Miriam, you were specifically talking about, of, you know, the great round of her head and her as a shaman and all that sort of thing.Yeah, Star also has something to add.
I wanted to say something and then turn it over to Joan and Miriam, which, you know, this myth that she gets decapitated and then her children are born, this is from Joan, you know, in her upper womb, the vulva, her mouth.
But yet we see on the temple, the Corfu temple that Miriam mentioned, and the one from Syracuse, the tablet, she is completely embodied, and she has both her children with her.
It really decries that myth.
Yeah, there are different strings, aren't there?Yeah.Yeah.
Well, I would add to that that the Corfu temple, the temple to Artemis, the Artemis temple in which this full-bodied Medusa is at the apex of it, fully expressed, that that temple resides on the periphery of the Greek world.
I mean, it is in the Greek world, but it doesn't have that full power of the male hero.
what was taken over in terms of the project of making sure that the male project is not interrupted and what is an interruption to it are female powers that have to be subdued.
And right at the center of that, at the core of that, the root of all of that, as Miriam was speaking, I'm so glad you brought up this birth, death and regeneration aspect None of us get out of this world alive.
The question always in every society of the world and every human, every individual and every culture is what do you do with the inevitability of death?
If you see the inevitability of death as part of that great round and that death itself is the release of nutrients that gives forth new life, that's a very different
concept than if you see death as something to be destroyed, something to be devoured, something to be met with aggression.
And in the Greek world, with the rise of the heroes, one of the major things the heroes were doing was to fight against anything that would remind them of death.However, death in battle was heroic, but death in relationship, just a natural death,
and going into the underworld is something that is to absolutely, there's no heroism in that whatsoever.And it's not to be considered anything that you want.So when you have a figure like Medusa, who represents the whole range of it all, right?
Within the epicenter, basically, of the rise of the hero and the aggression against female powers and all of that, you're not going to have the beautiful Medusa.You're not going to have the celebration of all that she represents.
And I think I'm so glad that you, Miriam, initially brought up the temple on Corfu, because even though I haven't been there, but I saw the pictures that your dear husband, Gregory, made.
And so here she is, even though she was broken and had to be somewhat restored, but she's there in her full powers, her great wings, evidence of her great wings.She has the snakes coming out of her ears.What is she hearing?Her eyes are huge.
What is she seeing?She sees everything.What is she, you know, it's like all of her senses are exaggerated.
And around her waist are the copulating serpents that represent, later we know from, I'm sure you can cite verses within various works of different illustrious authors from the Greek period, who wrote about the blood, who wrote about one side, the left side being,
Her blood is death.Death is for regeneration.She carried that.Oh, you have it.I knew you would have it.Of course.
Apollodorus in the second century BCE wrote about the two kinds of blood, but also Pausanias around 150 CE wrote that Medusa's head was buried in the Agora in Argos.
So her head is protecting the Agora, the marketplace, and so she's protective and healing even in death.And you don't bury a head in the main part of a city if you're afraid of it, if it's negative.
I just wanted to add so many things.Often we're told that her head is given to Athena to put it on her aegis, but I think that's so interesting what Miriam's bringing up.But I wanted to say, to add to Joan, about the Medusa on that temple.
One, she's apotropaic.She's guarding the entrance.And I found this very amusing.There's a Zeus in the tableau, but he's no bigger than her big toe.
Thank you for pointing that out.That's really good.There's an afterthought, maybe.
Yeah.She is very beautiful in Corfu, but also throughout the text, beginning with Hesiod, she's also beautiful.From Hesiod all the way down through the first centuries CE, there's this conflict among the all-male authors about Well, is she beautiful?
If she's a monster, if she's death, how can she be beautiful?They never figured it out.
Yeah, there's conflicting reports all the way down through history.
Yeah.Well, I would just like to return to the iconography of this one rather rare.I mean, it's not the only one, but it's monumental, really, the expression of her full body with her children on either side, Pegasus and Creosaur.
She's in that nidlaf position, as you say, and it's like flying through the air.You know, there's, it's a shamanic position.She has access to all the realms.
And the Gorgons, you know, it's pointed out in some texts that the Gorgons, she's the only Gorgon that is in, lives in the,
present time, that's why she could be killed, although she has to be killed again and again and again, because she doesn't really, she seems to always reappear.
But this sense that her parents and the parents of the Gorgons were undersea creatures, you know. Their life began in the sea, just like all of us began in the great mother ocean.
So she has that ability to move into the great underworld, just like snakes.Snakes have that ability to be in all realms.And then you have the snakes that have wings, the winged snake, that then has to be killed over and over and over again.
You killed a dragon.What? Yeah, I'm sorry.Killed the dragon.
The dragon is the winged serpent.Right through the Middle Ages.
Well, that's to what Ken said, the central myth of Indo-European culture was slaying the dragon.Well, who's the dragon?
Right.Exactly.And the slaying in Mesopotamia, the slaying of Marduk, who's aspiring to be the great god of the universe, slaying Tiamat. Yeah.The great ocean being.The great ocean.Yeah.Yeah.
And always this thing, and they, to be the great guys, they have to, they can't bring it out of themselves.They can't, because they don't give it out.They don't create life out of themselves, basically.
They have to kill the female form that is wanted. to be the great Puba.So here she is.Here she is with her children under each arm.She has these huge wings that she flies into the upper realm.
She's there, of course, being able to move throughout the earth realm and then under the earth.So she's everywhere.She's the power of all that is.Yeah.
Fascinating. Fascinating.Oh, that was beautiful, Joan.Beautiful.Miriam, you wanted to add something?
Yeah, I did.I just wanted to give a sense of who she started out as.Her name means the ruling one.And she was supposed to have been a queen, a goddess become a queen in Libya, whom Hercules had to defeat.And not only that, he had
there couldn't possibly be a female leader.That would be the most horrible thing possible.But she definitely means the ruling one with a short E versus the long E in Medea.
Nice.Star, you wanted to add something to that?I just found what Joan said so moving, very moving.And it touched on what Pat said.We can soar up with her, but we can be grounded with her too. It's the whole continuum.
In looking at her too as a solar figure, the sun, that's very beneficent.Of course, the sun is a source of energy, but of course it can, too much sun, it can wither and you can die.
But that as a sun goddess, that she was often in sarcophagi with vegetation.So it shows her renewing.And for some of us who live in Los Angeles, if you ever go up to the Getty Villa,
They have a wonderful sarcophagus there with the Medusa head with wreaths, and cupids are holding up the wreaths.So it shows her connection, you know, with life and this beneficence, and she's on a sarcophagus.
So the great round, you know, the great round that she has these powers of life and death, and it's really beautiful.And of course, if you look at her, a circular face. with rays, and in terms, you know, you can't look at the sun without going blind.
So in some ways, you can.
That's good.I like that.Yeah.
Yeah.Well, getting back to the face, very often she's rendered just as a face or the decapitated head.Decapitate her so that she's, you know, she's not such a problem, but she still is a problem because look what's encoded in her face.
You have the serpents, or these little curls that really represent serpents, sometimes coming all the way down as though she's the bearded Medusa.People have, of course, written about the face as the upper womb.
Rather, there's the lower womb, and there's the upper womb.And when she was decapitated, she was pregnant.And her children were born out of her upper womb, the blood of her upper womb being exposed in that killing.
These huge eyes that see beyond appearances, you know, see through everything.She sees everything.And then these fangs.What about these fangs?And then there's the lolling tongue.
And I was thinking, the lolling tongue, it doesn't look like a serpent tongue.It looks more like the tongue of a dog, right?
Or a boar. Yeah, right.And the chewing.And it's like, what is it that dogs do?
What is it that all of the animals with these big teeth that are gnawing and chewing, they can be seen as part of those beings that are changing form from one form of life being gnawed and chewed and swallowed and into another.
What is it that that changes, you know, what is it that has to happen in order for regeneration to take place?you know old forms being Taken up for for new ones.
And so here she is as the ones with those teeth the boar that the fearsome ones and and yet Regeneration comes from her.So she's got it.She's got it all basically, but I
just really all the powers of life and death, which was like very continuous with the Sheilas and all figures of display.
Yeah.I wanted to, I was talking about regeneration and I wanted to tell one, what is to me, amazing example.In 2005, We were in Bulgaria.Joan was there, too.
And Joan and my friend, Ivan Marazov, took us to the Bulgarian Valley of the Thracian Kings to the Goliyama burial mound, which was just excavated in 2004.And there was a symbolic burial there.So in the third and farthest chamber,
There was a ritual bed molded out of the granite, and at its head was placed a piece of a door on which was sculpted a figure of Medusa.This door was covered with the snake skin.Oh, wow.Oh, wow is right.So even then, they really saw her.
Some saw her as regeneration.And that's why she's on sarcophagi, as you say.
We were doing something for... With vegetation, yeah.Dawn and I are gonna be doing something on Thracian goddesses, and so I just picked my ears up.
So for the Thracians, just for understanding, the concept of Medusa that the Greek mythology of Medusa, would that have been a similar, would they have taken that from the Greeks, or is that a cognate, a similar kind of a goddess that we look at the way we look at the Gorgons, or is that...
part of the same tradition, I guess is that question makes sense.Are the Thracian is the Thracian concept of Medusa the same concept that the Greeks had?Is it does it come from the same mythological source?I guess is what I'm asking.
Is it a similar goddess or is it the same goddess?
There are many stories of every goddess.Everyone has his own take.Hesia wrote that, I think it was after pursuing Medusa as a stallion, and I think she turned into a mare, they ended up making love in a beautiful pasture.
Well, by the time it gets to Ovid, Oh, it was Poseidon, sorry, who chased her and they made love.By the time of Ovid, and he translates the deities into Latin, Neptune and Medusa are having sex in Minerva's temple, except it's a rape.
And who is punished but the rapee, not the rapist.So typical of patriarchal cultures.
And punished by another woman, too.Of course.Yeah.So it reinforces this idea that women are clearly natural enemies to one another.Yes.
And another author said that, well, because she was so beautiful, Athena was jealous. and therefore turned her hair, her beautiful hair into snakes.Right, right.Always pitting women against each other.
Absolutely.Yeah, absolutely.This is a little tangential, but one thing that frosts my ass is that, you know, so-and-so was raped.The woman was raped.It's just like some passive thing.Not some man raped her.Right.Yeah.
The passive voice.You're right.Yeah.No subject.
And that's, again, part of our rage now.But also, if there's one thing I want to say about Matusa, she's a popular girl.Yes.She is really popular in all the ways that you two, Joan and Miriam, have been talking, all the ways.
And she appears throughout the Mediterranean, just that she's endured.I mean, what does it say that she's endured and that she's such a popular figure now?
and that she's all around, and again, on so many things, sacred temples, from, again, the sacred to the profane, to coins, cloths, ovens, but that she's just so speaks to us.You know, she so speaks to us.
And Sean wanted to ask about contemporary things.I just wanted to say, Medusa is everywhere in California.She's on the great seal of the state of California.One time I was having to,
serve on jury duty, dealing with some men and guards with guns, not my thing.And I looked up and there she was.I saw Medusa.She's on the seal of the great state of California.I did not realize that.Official document that she's in every courthouse.
She's on badges of law enforcement.And it's because it's the aegis or shield of Athena.So I just want to say she's there.
Thank you for that.Thank you for that.So we have to open up our great eyes and see where she is.And thank you for the day.Help me see her up there.See her up there.Thank you.
Well, I wanted to say how so many of the female goddesses within the Greek tradition actually have their roots in old Europe. and Athena as well as Athena.
In fact, as the story goes, as you know very well, Miriam, and I wouldn't be surprised if you haven't translated a section of the story about Metis and... Have you?Have you done any translation?Yes, wisdom.The wisdom of the earth, basically, right?
Am I correct to assume that?She's wisdom, period. Well, thank you for that clarification.Here she is, this goddess representing wisdom.
And so one thing that was all in vogue back in the Greek period, and it certainly seems not to have gone out of vogue even to our time, is the guys who are just in love with their own power, raping women, running after women and raping women.
And the analogy, at least the textual analogy, is always, generally speaking, unless I suppose, unless you're making the translation, Miriam, that they're marrying them, right?Yes, of course.
No, but raping them, they're tracing them as a sport and they're raping them, you know.
And what do you think happened when the Indo-Europeans came in?What did they do? Married.Well, they actually took wives, but by force and often killing the woman's family.
Right.Well, it's very, very fascinating and revealing what's happening in terms of the information coming from genetics showing that when they came in, there was a plummeting of the number of old European men.
males males males yes and women were ending up in the households of the of the conquerors and these are women who brought
You know, all of the knowledge of weaving, of ceramics, of everything that was old European, they knew it, it was alive in them.And they then, their work ended up 3,000 kilometers to the east in these burial mounds of the chieftains, right?
As prestige items made by the women of Europe who were abducted and brought in you know, to be, I mean, who know?
I mean, we could just think slaves, you know, so they were incorporated and they had children there and then, you know, this is how the change happens, basically.
And imagine the generations of horror, generations of, you know, having to go through that, that's happening, you know, in many places today, but it has had a tremendous influence on our world. this Indo-Europeanization, you might say.
Yes.And everywhere, even as far northeast as Chinese Turkestan, you do the DNA in a cemetery.The male DNA is very largely R1A, R1B, Indo-European.The female DNA is not, just isn't.The mitochondrial DNA is never Indo-European.
Joan, you were talking about the story of Metis and how that, Metis, sorry, Metis, and how that was, you were gonna tell us the story pre-Athena was born from Zeus's thigh.
From his head, excuse me, yeah.
There's so many ways to, the stories are so complicated and multi-layered, but I brought up Metis because as the mother of Athena.Metis was raped by Zeus, and then Metis became pregnant.
And then she was told that, by the way, oh, great God, the person that you raped is pregnant with somebody who will actually dethrone you, who is more powerful than you are.So of course, she was like, oh, OK.
So he had to go and find a way to capture her. And he finally ended up, because there was a lot of shape-shifting always going around when the goddesses were being pursued by the rapists, heroes, and so on.
So he finally reduced her to the size of a fly and swallowed her.So she, pregnant Metis, was in his system.And at a certain point,
As she continued to develop, he developed this enormously horrendous headache, and he called for his smith to crack his head open.And out came Athena, fully clothed for battle with a battle cry.
She had been born through his system, through his mentality, through the upper womb, of who he was, and she declared then that she had no mother, she only had a father, and she was devoting herself to his needs and also to the needs of the heroes.
So that was an expression of that change.
Yes, and that justifies all the mother killing, like, you know, in the story where... By Minestra and... Yeah, when he kills his mother. and the Furies are after him, then they have this trial, but then the mother line doesn't matter anymore.
It doesn't matter.And also, Perseus has a sort of similar story with Danae, that her father is somehow the offspring of the male.They're always so afraid of being usurped.And that's part of his story, too, that he gets sent off, you know, Danae.
in a box on the sea and the way it goes on.He gets sent to kill Medusa because they want to kill, because they think it's going to kill him.Therefore, he won't usurp the authority of the male.
I just had this thought that I wonder if the constant fear of being usurped by the son of his of his wife is because
as the remainder of the mother line, the son actually has more claim to the throne than he does, because the son is the child of the mother, where he is not.
So they had to change it to make the womb of the mother the passive vehicle for the sperm of the child to be realized, the sperm of the father to be realized.And that has come down.
And, you know, it's important for us to see those patterns and to see where they came from, that they are not from time immemorial.Right.
Even though they're being resurrected now with women losing control of their bodies and all of the, and one guy's running for governor or senator says women shouldn't even vote anymore.Yeah.Women are raped.These forces are a backlash.
Yeah, absolutely.I mean, the struggle continues, right?
Culture of a culture of connection instead of separation.All the murder all the time.You know, violence, violence, wars, wars, wars.What an unstable system.
How can we think that that women in the United States of America would lose their their ability to have abortions to control our own bodies? I mean, it was like, you know, this could never happen here.Now that 15 years.
And the incest and rape, you know, is still, is acceptable then.You know, they should, these little girls should basically.
Child marriage.Yeah.Child marriage also, you know, there's a shocking number of states that have either no or very low minimum ages for girls to be married.And I would say to be married off.Makes you want to get a Medusa tattoo.
Doesn't it, though?I've never thought of it.I've said, no, I'll never get a tattoo.But you know what?Maybe it's not a bad idea.Right here.
Yeah, we're all going to go out and get Medusa tattoos after this.Absolutely.Right on our breastplate.Rub on confidence. There you go.
So let's talk a little bit about modern sort of Medusa making this wonderful resurgence. I saw some literature that was talking about how in the late 70s, early 80s, Medusa started to be used often as a symbol of feminist movements.
There's a wonderful poetry book called, They Will Know Me by My Teeth. which is a 1976 collection of lesbian stories and poems.And it featured a picture of a gorgon on its cover.
And the purpose of that was to act as a guardian against men reading the book, that it was like, Women's wisdom.So we start to see this come in.
There are articles in women's magazines that start to appear in the 80s, specifically about Gorgans as a face for the feminist movement and also as a representation of women's rage and women's retribution.
this aspect of Medusa as the retribution and men getting their just desserts and being turned to stone.Yeah, Star, you wanted to add something?
Backstage before we started, I told you all about this new book called Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes, who is a classicist, but also calls herself a comedian.She's reframing the familiar myth of the two of them.
she says in the beginning, I see you, I see all those who call men monsters.And then And in the course of it, she calls Percy, you know, I really resent that he's called a hero.He's a vicious little thug.And she talks about her being assaulted.
This is just in the epigraph.And that she's the one that we should fear, that she's the monster.We'll see about that.Who's really the monster?That's what she's asking.Who's really the monster?
Yes yeah and there are there oh goodness I'm sorry I didn't write down the name but there is a famous um painting of Perseus uh cutting off the head of Medusa while she's asleep and and that's like he's a hero?
What about looking in a bronze mirror, a mirrored weapon or shield, that the mirror is a vehicle of the shaman, the shamanic woman, and he's taking that over.And how unheroic. He can't even look her in the face.
Well, as Maria was pointing out, there's so many stories, layers of stories, but as a composite, one of the things that, in terms of the Perseus myth, is that it's clear that he
he's just this bloke, you know, I mean, he doesn't really know where he doesn't know what she looks like, he doesn't know what she is.
I mean, and, and Athena has to come and, you know, she has to say, Okay, first of all, you have to, you know, here, let me give you the, the, the cap of invisibility.And here's the here's the
winged shoes from the air and everything that you need and the shield and the sword and and then she leads him there it's like okay you have to go we have to go now to the to where the Gorgons are are living and they're living on in this island in the far western ocean you know this place of liminal place between
death and life, between night and day, you know, in this place of liminality in which, I mean, he can't see anything.He doesn't know where he is.Up is down and down is up.And here's this, you know, the cave where they are, and she leads them in.
And, you know, when they're sleeping, and then holds his hand to guide his hand to cut off her head.And then he tells her, him beforehand, here is this special pouch that opens up to as big as you want.
You put her in there, put the head there, and then let's get out of here, right?So he doesn't know anything.It's not like he could have done that without her.No.He absolutely couldn't have done that without her.
Yeah, yeah.It was fascinating.Yeah, yeah.Fascinating, the different stories that arise. There was an episode of the reboot of the series, Charmed, that dealt with Medusa.
Yes, I watched every one.Yeah.
And the take that they did on it was not that when you looked into her eyes, men turned to stone, but when you could not meet her eyes.Because she had been, it was on a college campus and she had been sexually assaulted on the college campus.
And as is often the case, the campus would do nothing, you know, the college would do nothing to support her or to help her get justice.And so she was, you know, moving amongst her peers.
And when men met her eyes and then looked away out of guilt, that was when they turned to stone.But if you could really and hold her gaze, than you were safe.
So it was using the Medusa myth as a way of holding people accountable to facing up to the realities of injustice, the injustice of sexual assault against women.So it was a really interesting take on it.It's such a reclamation of her.Yeah.
Yeah.And then, of course, there is the two statues that Sean emailed the images out to y'all yesterday.
And so contrasting the 1554 Perseus with the head of Medusa by Benvenuto Cellini, which is that very famous image of the young, almost adolescent Perseus, he's very young, holding the head of the Medusa, with the Luciano Garabati,
And this was a statue from 2008, where it is Medusa who is holding the head of Perseus.
And it's this beautiful statue where she is standing, you know, just tall at ease.Her gaze is forward.She looks you in the eye.It's really an amazing sort of reversal of that classic image.
Yeah, Perseus in that, too, he has this stance with his hips thrust forward, like, aren't I glorious?Yeah, right.
It's so amazing that, first of all, she's beautiful, by the way.Yes, isn't she?He's holding her head up.And her body is exquisite.
And he's standing on her body.
And so this is his trophy. This is his, you know, he went hunting and he got her, you know.
But the fact that Cellini carved this incredible statue that was put in the, was put in at the center of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, it's sort of like, okay, this is what society is all about.
It is what is keeping this society from going to the dogs, basically, that there has to be this killing away of anything that's going to interrupt this project of society that is culture, that is,
everything that we aspire toward, and you cannot let those powers of women take over.So this is it.This is the ultimate.This is the ultimate.
And if anybody has anything to add to that, I would really appreciate it, you know, in terms of... Freud's evil.
She's just the apotheosis of evil. that the women, that's the image of the destruction because we can't have any sense of cooperation or connection, right?It's the individual slaughtering hero rampaging through culture and wars, wars, wars.
And again, the destruction of woman as independent, autonomous, powerful force. That must be crushed for patriarchy to be able to rule undisturbed, right?Because we are the destructive force in patriarchy.Women are, yeah.
The life force of this world.
Right.Yeah.Yeah.I also wanted to say a really brief give a brief nod to Sigmund Freud and his approach on the Medusa myth.Yeah.Joan, do you want to say something about that?Yeah.
Well, of course, he he waxed eloquent about the about the tooth vagina.Right. The upper womb and the mouth is a toothed vagina.And of course, that's the way she is rendered in the typical image of the Gorgon face.
And then he says all these snakes around, these are the remnants of the phalluses that Penises, yeah.Penises that she had decapitated and so on.
Yeah, and so they're erect, but he says that she makes a man lose his erection.So he doesn't even, he isn't even consistent.
And he says that her decapitation actually represents castration.Yes.So even the destruction of the female power is about the penis, like everything before.
Everything comes back, yeah.A lot more that can be said about it.
Definitely its own episode, yes, indeed.
All right, well, any final thoughts, anything left unsaid that you wanted to add?There are some
There are some paintings that appeared later.
I'm having one of these senior moments and forgetting the names of the painters, but a series of paintings done during the classical period in which there were women's heads cut off and with snakes squirming out.
And some of them looked very, very much like women you would recognize, like maybe your mother-in-law or some, you know, it's sort of like, oh, okay, you know, all women are that.
All women need to be silenced in that way and how ugly she is and, you know, anyway.
Yeah, Star, go ahead.I just want to say how inspired I feel by this talk and how grateful I feel to the living presence of Medusa who's here with us.So hail Medusa, long may you reign.
Oh, wonderful, wonderful.
Thank you so much, Dawn and Sean.This has just been fantastic.
Absolutely.Thank you so much to the three of you for sharing so openly all of this incredible knowledge about Medusa and sharing it with our listeners.This has been really wonderful, really wonderful.Thank you.
And thank you to our listeners.This has been the 34th Searcy Salon, the Make Matriarchy Great Again podcast.We'll be back again soon.Take care.
Take care, everyone, and blessed be.
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