Medusssaaa

Seen as it's almost Halloween, I'm gonna write a post on the figure I'm dressing up as (and putting an embarrassing amount of effort into)! So everybody knows about Medusa...well...you should know anyway. The snake-headed hag who can turn you to stone with one glance (maybe this is where my aversion to looking people in the eye originates). As a Grendel's Mother fan, it's probably unsurprising that I have quite an interest and soft-spot for Medusa too. It wasn't until recently though, that I started looking into her myth a bit further, and I realised it's a lot more complex than I had originally thought. Which means this post is not going to show every version. Partly because that would make this even more boring than it already is, and partly because I'm lazy.

So, despite general conceptions, Medusa did not actually originate in Greece, but rather was imported from other cultures, most likely from the Amazons in Libya and other North African countries, where she was the destroyer aspect, Anath (Athene) of the Great Triple Goddess

The Greek take on Medusa is sometimes associated with the vanquishing of the goddess religions for those associated with male Gods (namely Zeus and Jupiter), sometimes associated with Apollo's killing of Python, the son of Gaia the Earth Goddess. Consequently, former peaceful goddesses were turned into monstrous figures, and replaced by the warrior type gods of Olympus.This is just a theory of course!

Braaaaains

And so, Medusa was turned into a monster! However, even the Ancient Greek myth is not known by many people, and in fact there seems to be a few variations of the myth.

The most popular myth of Medusa tells of a girl who was renowned for her beauty, wanted by every man around, and the subject of many bitching sessions by those who were jealous of her. Medusa, however, being a priestess of Athena/Minerva, could not get married, and was expected to stay chaste for her life. Unfortunately, this did not stop Poseidon, God of the Sea, who raped Medusa in the temple of Athena. If this wasn't bad enough, the fact that Medusa was taken advantage of in a place of worship, made Athena a very unhappy bunny. Athena was so angry that she turned Medusa's hair to serpents, and made her face so hideous that anybody unlucky enough to look at it would be turned into their very own Greek statue. Which, in my opinion, kind of makes Athena (and of course Poseidon) out to be the bad guy? No? 

Thomas More's translation from Ovid's Metamorphoses:

Beyond all others she  

was famed for beauty, and the envious hope  

of many suitors. Words would fail to tell  

the glory of her hair, most wonderful  

of all her charms--A friend declared to me  

he saw its lovely splendour. Fame declares  

the Sovereign of the Sea attained her love  

in chaste Minerva's temple. While enraged  

she turned her head away and held her shield  

before her eyes. To punish that great crime  

Minerva changed the Gorgon's splendid hair  

to serpents horrible. And now to strike  

her foes with fear, she wears upon her breast  

those awful vipers--creatures of her rage. 

Other versions of the Medusa myth do exist - some say Medusa was born a gorgon, some say she wasn't raped, but took Poseidon willingly, others say Athena was just jealous of Medusa's beauty.

In the vast majority of retellings, Medusa is beheaded by Perseus, because her eyes still have the power to turn people (or krakens, as Sam Worthington and Harry Hamlin kindly show us in both versions of Clash of the Titans) to stone. As the story goes, Perseus used a mirrored shield to see Medusa without looking her in the eyes, clever fella that he was, and managed to chop her head off. As well as having a headful of snakes, it turned out that Medusa had a wombful of pretty unique children too - Pegasus, the winged horse, and Chrysaor, a sword-wielding giant. As ya do. And these children supposedly sprung from her blood-spurting neck. I'm not sure how exactly that would look, but according to Edward Burne Jones, it looked something like this:

According to Ovid, Persues then flew around a bit with his handy new sandals from Hermes, where he turned quite a number of individuals to stone, including the Titan Atlas, Cetus (who was about to Andromeda alive), and Phineus, whom Andromeda was promised to before Perseus flew in on his golden winged sandals (or on Pegasus in more western takes on the myth) and impressed the hell out of her. Last, but not least, Perseus flew to Seriphos where he rescued his mother from her forced marriage to King Polydectes (sounds like some sort of pterodactyl), who had sent Perseus for Medusa's head in the first place.

Also, while Medusa was dead, she still managed to spawn some more offspring, namely Amphisbaena, a serpent with a head on both ends, as her blood dripped onto the Libyan desert (where her myth originated, and in a way ended)! How nice.

An Amphisbaena in the Aberdeen Bestiary

Perseus by Aubrey Beardsley

Womyn and Archery

It would seem that archery has become quite popular in the last few years, resulting in (or because of?) tons of archery related films and tv series, especially with women for some reason - Merrida in Brave, Katniss in The Hunger Games, Arya Stark and Ygritte ("Raight foot, leff foot") from Game of Thrones, Natalie Portman (can't remember the character name) in that shite film that also starred Zooey Deschanel, Mulan in Mulan, Andromeda in Wrath of the Titans,  and probably more. And that's only mentioning the female archers, phew! I'm not quite sure what exactly my point was in listing them all out, but anyway...

Looking back on ancient history, it is tough to find any real proof that women were skilled in archery, except for one group that keeps popping up - the Amazons. The Amazons were a nation of all-female warriors in Greek and Classical antiquity. Amazons were first depicted in art around the 8th century, and in writing around the same time (or later) in Homer's Iliad, in scenes concerning the Trojan War. 

In the 5th Century BC, the poet Pindar describes the Amazons as horse-riding female archers. Strabo (a 1st Century Greek historian and philosopher) speaks of the Amazons having their right breast "cauterized at a tender age" (source) to more easily throw spears, and so that a bow could more easily be drawn (although this is questionable, unless they were left-handed) - Hippocrates also mentions the missing breast trend. 

Also included in Greek Mythology is the female archer Atalanta, and the goddess Artemis (Roman equivalent, Diana) - goddess of the hunt, wilderness, wild animals and virginity. One of her epithets was "of the golden shaft", another, "arrow-pouring" (and another, "mistress of the beasts" is pretty cool too) and the image of a golden (or silver?) bow and arrows is symbolic of her. According to Greek Mythology, Artemis' father, Zeus (you may have heard of him...), asked his daughter what she desired in the whole world, to which she responded that she would have a bow and arrows, a pack of hounds to hunt with, nymphs to accompany her, a tunic short enough for her to run in, mountains and wilderness as her own special places, and eternal chastity (isn't chastity one of the first things that pops into every three year old's mind when asked what they want?). And so, Zeus granted it, and she went beneath the sea to Cyclopes to forge her silver bow and arrows. And once she had collected her nymphs, and got her hounds from Pan (as you do), she couldn't wait to try out her bow, and so hunted by torchlight.

Dianna of Versailles - a first century marble statue of the goddess Diana (Greek: Artemis)

Returning somewhat closer to home, we have Skaði, a Norse goddess associated with winter, mountains, skiing (this brings pretty funny images to mind) and.... bowhunting! In all sources (Poetic Edda, Prose Edda, and more) Skaði, daughter of Þjazi, marries the god Njörðr as compensation provided by the gods for killing her father. In the Prose Edda, the figure of 'High' tells the story of how Skaði and Njörðr go their seperate ways due to him wanting to live by the sea, and her wanting to live in the mountains. High then mentions that Skaði returns to the mountains where she skis, wields a bow, and shoots wild animals, while Njörðr goes on to have two children, Freyr and Freyja.

Njörðr and Skaði on the way to Nóatún (1882) by Friedrich Wilhelm Heine

Oh ya know, just skiing and throwin' spears, the usual

As you can see, Skaði can draw a bow with both tits intact

That is all for now. Happy arching!