RE: Medusa, the subversion of the Triple-Moon Goddess, and #metoo
I love your sculpture; it is both beautiful and disturbing.
I'm still working to assimilate the information about older myths being subverted by those that came to dominate later. You've done your research and it makes sense, but I think anyone from a modern culture risks looking at these stories through a modern (or post-modern?) lens and drawing different conclusions.
If Medusa fell from her position as a powerful goddess of chaos and destruction to be forgotten as some lesser monster, that does seem like a loss. But my interpretation of the nature of that loss might be different from yours.
Medusa falling victim to the rapey male gods and becoming terrible is part of who she is. That sounds heartless if you think in human terms, but she is a goddess. She's not the part of the trinity that's young and beautiful, not the nurturing mother. She represents the destruction that is necessary for life to continue, and you can only deny that aspect of life for so long. Humans get to be all three. Bad things happen and we don't have to become Medusa. But surely we feel her terrible presence.
I don't think it's fair to conclude that the monstrous aspects of this deity were caused by subversion from a patriarchal system. If she isn't terrible, she isn't powerful. I think it's an error to resurrect feminine deities as 100% positive images with no negative. If Medusa bears the bad things that happen to her with dignity, grace, and wisdom, who are humans supposed to relate to when terrible things happen? We have to go through grief and come out the other side before we can find grace and wisdom.
I don't know you aside from reading your blog, but I know you've experienced some of the terrible things I allude to here. This isn't meant as a message to you, only a way to clarify the thoughts you've provoked with your piece. Thank you for writing it!
Thank you for your careful response.
So we are clear, mythologies are just stories. However, if I was in a position to be rewriting myths that would be assimilated, preserved, and passed down to progeny, you would have to wonder why I changed a story. To use a modern example, the North Korean government has its people believe that Kim Jung Un was born atop a sacred mountain and that the event created a new star and turned winter to spring; also: that he doesn't need to poop. Also: that the internet is a myth and no such thing exists.
Sure, with the right perspective, life lessons can be gathered from the most tragic of stories.
However, I chose to pursue the origins of this myth deeper to demonstrate a historical incident and older myth that is all but lost.
It's a fair issue to be speculative of. But also a fair issue to consider as plausible.
In prehistoric times, the victors rewrote the history of the conquered, destroyed their temples, destroyed historical records and monuments, and punished any attempts to preserve them. It might not have been a concerted effort to assert a patriarchy, but it was part of a patriarchy's larger effort to erase the identity of what used to be a matriarchy.