Medusa: Ferocious and Beautiful, Petrifying and Healing by Miriam Robbins Dexter, Ph.D.

Painting by Arna Baartz

Philologically, the name Medusa means the “ruling one.”1 But by the time of the earliest Greek texts which contain myth, those of Homer, Medusa was not a ruler but a monster, associated with the land of Hades. In the poetry of Hesiod, Medusa became the only mortal among three Gorgon sisters. The adjective gorgos (γοργός) means “terrible,” “fierce,” and “frightful.” That is, she was considered to be monstrous. However, as we will learn from the Classical texts, it is important to see all facets of what male-centered cultures have labeled a “feminine monster.” Medusa was viewed very ambivalently, and she was very deeply faceted.

Modern Western culture has tended to dwell too much on the character of her “anger.” For example, a misogynist trend in psychoanalysis focuses upon her paralyzing qualities, viewing her as a deflator of masculine strength, while curiously, at other times, seeing her snaky persona as phallic. Radical feminists also often dwell upon her anger, identifying it with a fiercely liberating women’s rage. That surely helps many women, but it doesn't effectively disrupt the misogyny involved in labeling a female figure as “monstrous.” Thus, a historical and cross-cultural exploration of Medusa can contribute to a feminist effort to honor and articulate the complexity of the divine female.

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. Although Medusa is still sexual in the Greek material—she has sex with Poseidon in a meadow and gives birth to twins—she becomes more closely associated with death than with life. She becomes feared and she therefore must be murdered. Perhaps if one kills death, then the living somehow won’t have to die—at least in mythical time.

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.

An excerpt from the extensive paper, ''Medusa: Ferocious and Beautiful, Petrifying and Healing: Through the Words of the Ancients,'' featured in Re-visioning Medusa: from Monster to Divine Wisdom.

Miriam Robbins Dexter holds a Ph.D. in ancient Indo-European languages, archaeology, and comparative mythology, from UCLA. Her first book, Whence the Goddesses: A Source Book (1990), in which she translated texts from thirteen languages, was used for courses she taught at UCLA for a decade and a half. She completed and supplemented the final book of Marija Gimbutas, The Living Goddesses (1999). Her 2010 book, coauthored with Victor Mair, Sacred Display: Divine and Magical Female Figures of Eurasia, won the 2012 Association for the Study of Women and Mythology Sarasvati award for best nonfiction book on women and mythology. In 2013, Miriam and Victor published a new monograph, “Sacred Display: New Findings” in the University of Pennsylvania's online series, Sino-Platonic Papers. With Vicki Noble, she edited the anthology, Foremothers of the Women’s Spirituality Movement: Elders and Visionaries (2015); winner of the Susan Koppelman award for best edited feminist anthology, 2016. Miriam is the author of more than 30 scholarly articles and 11 encyclopedia articles on ancient female figures. She has edited and co-edited 16 scholarly volumes. For 13 years, she taught courses in Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit languages in the department of Classics at USC. She has guest-lectured at the New Bulgarian University (Sophia, Bulgaria) and “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University (Iaşi, Moldavia, Romania).

Footnote:
1 This is the present participle of the Greek verb μέδω, “I rule.” Medusa, or Medousa, is spelled with a short -e- in Greek, as opposed to the long ē found in Mēdea.