The myth of Medusa is one of my favorites. When people try to translate this into a volcanic eruption, it’s a guess at best. The snake and serpent are all over the ancient world. The serpent has to do with wisdom and the snake is your thoughts. The snake represents wise thoughts because it moves in the same way as your thoughts, like a wave. Medusa symbolized a conscious, wise woman. Ancient Greece was an extreme patriarchy. In Ancient Greece an awake, wise, conscious woman was feared. She could stop a patriarchal mind(ego) in its tracks. Turn it to stone. The other piece to this myth is the reflection. The ancients believed when you looked at your reflection, you were seeing your consciousness, your higher self, your soul or your true self. You can tell a lot about someone by the way they look at themselves in the mirror. If you are truly awake or enlightened, you will see yourself as perfect.
So back to the myth. You have Medusa and her sisters walking around with all this knowledge and wise thoughts (that’s why they are portrayed as evil). Perseus, a demigod, can’t learn enlightenment by just memorizing facts and accepting any information that’s true or false. This is a fanciful story about him being sent to Medusa to learn true knowledge. He has to use her reflection to get at the true knowledge. The true matriarchal, perfect, higher self knowledge. Him getting the knowledge from her is symbolized by cutting her head off and putting it in a bag. Anytime he needs that knowledge he can pull Medusa out and freeze any left brain person in their tracks. I think this myth is as valid today as it was in Ancient Greece.
The birth of the pegasus and chrysaor shows this interpretation is correct. Pegasus symbolizes mastery over your emotions and intellect. Chrysaor took me a little longer to decipher. Most interpretations say the chrysaor is a flying boar, however, it means one with golden sword. This is interesting because while the sword is masculine(Perseus being a male) it is symbolic of mastery over your thoughts. Cutting lose the physical bondage to release a path to enlightenment.
secretsoftheserpent 
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Reblogged this on The Feed By Our Pantheons Way.
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Reblogged this on Tiffany Belle Harper.
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Beautiful, open, love of everything 🙂
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Thanks. 😊
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Hmmm. You starting out. I don’t know what changes you make over time. This one feels inadequate. It’s been too many years since I last read Medusa, and I wish I knew what version you were using for your backstory. I don’t remember Pegasus’s part in this myth, and I do not remember chrysaor at all, ever. Your symbology is different from anything in my experience, but that means nothing. I am open to all possibilities.
A funny story from my past. My Englush Lit professor at university tried to tell me myths were stories that people in Classical Greece and Rome believed literally. Fiction, maybe, but that these kinds of things were believed as real experiences. It wasn’t until christianity swept over the region that people stopped believing in such stories, and finally got to see Truth. I’m lucky that discussion was in his office, not on an exam or in a paper. I would have failed his course.
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I try to get as close to the original versions as possible, but I also try to consolidate several versions. Chrysaor and Pegasus are in Hesiod’s Theogony.
Maybe the ignorant masses there believed them literally just like the ignorant masses of today. For your professor to say Christianity is the truth, well that’s just ignorant. I would have failed it too.
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I tested him on it, and he truly had faith. But I also scared him. When he asked how I survived believing something few if any at all believed. The strongest number in the world is 1, I said, and I needed no one to agree with me. He looked in my eyes and shivered. He was used to people who had fears. He saw none in me.
I’m still that way. I believe my experiences, even if there were made available through LSD. I have never experienced evidence of a god. How anyone can believe, I don’t know. But I’m told there are over three billion of them in the world, and billions more that believe in other gods or superbeings. I prefer believing in me.
Hesiod’s Theogony. Never heard of it. I live a sheltered life, I guess.
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Interesting how my journey into magick, astrology, self learning and healing started just as greek mythology caught my attention and I was reading a book by Jean-Pierre Vernant “L’univers, els déus, els homes”. One thing I remember though is that Perseus ,after returning to Argos and killing his father, gifted Medusa’s head to Athenea, which now is the central piece of her shield (like a Gorgoneion amulet). What is the meaning behind this?
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The shield represents the feminine. Putting Medusa’s head on her shield makes it stronger. Gives it the true matriarchal protection.
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after killing his grandpa, not his father*, sry
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