The Erinyes, to give them their Greek name, were avengers, who punished murders and other serious crimes, especially crimes against the family. Blood, both in the sense of blood spilled and kinship, was their concern.
Tag Archives: Gorgon
Sulis: the eye, the sun, the well
Athena, Medusa and the Sun-Goddess
During my research for my post on Medusa and the Gorgon, I constantly ran into the idea that the Gorgon was a faint echo of an early Mycenean sun-goddess, depicted face-front with radiating (snaky) hair. I could see how that idea might arise, but Athena as sun-goddess struck me as a bit of a reach. After all, Athena wears the Gorgon on her breast as a symbol of the triumph of cunning (metis) over elemental powers. (Deacy: 47)
It must be tempting, though, to invert the Greek beliefs that shaped patriarchal culture, with its binary of sun/reason/male vs. night/emotion/female. Especially in the form of its most complicit goddess, Athena, who upheld father-right against the Furies’s desire to avenge a matricide. (Although kicking Bachofen and his followers comes about 150 years too late.) Feminizing the Greek sun, and connecting it to those elemental powers, may feel like sweet revenge.
Medusa and the Gorgon
I was originally going to call this piece Poseidon’s Scary Girlfriends, with Demeter the Furious and an unnamed Harpy joining Medusa. But when I began researching Medusa I found so many layers of interpretation that it seemed worth going back to the original sources and seeing what went into the myth.
In fact, it seems like there are almost two different myths, one involving a headless demon that terrified all who saw it, and another about the mortal Medusa, who either was a snaky-headed monster or became one.
Capella: the little goat
In the next few months I plan to have an occasional series on the 20 brightest stars in the sky. Originally I was planning to start at 1 and work down, but I thought it made more sense to deal with them when they were most visible. So this month I’ll be writing about Capella, Sirius, Procyon, and Rigel.
Capella is the sixth brightest star in the sky, and third brightest in the northern hemisphere. It belongs to the constellation of Auriga, the Charioteer. As the title of this post indicates, the Charioteer is often shown cradling a goat in his arm, with the kids (or a whip). He also seems to have lost his chariot, which isn’t part of the constellation.
We Are Star Stuff 