Taking up the Aegis
The archetypal echoes of Medusa’s plight
have been stirring these past weeks,
alongside those of Pallas Athena
Having each played a significant role in the eclipses,
their asteroids are currently forming a trine to one other.
Two women
woven together long ago
through their shared mythology
***
It was by Athena’s hand that Medusa was persecuted
Whilst serving as a priestess in Athena’s temple
Medusa was raped by the God Poseidon.
Enraged by the defilement of her temple
Athena punished not Poseidon,
but Medusa
turning her into a monstrous Gorgon.
Her torment made manifest through her physical form;
venomous snakes became her hair
her gaze petrifying any who dared approach.
***
Athena was enshrined by the Greeks
as the Goddess of wisdom and rational thought.
Skilled in the strategy of war,
she held a rare authority amid a society
where women had no legal personhood.
But her mythology tells of a woman
whose feminine principle was consumed
by the structures of power that surrounded her.
Born a daughter of the patriarchy
Denied passage from her mother’s womb
Athena sprung instead, fully armoured
from the head of her Father.
For he had devoured her pregnant Mother Metis,
in fear she would birth a son to rival his power.
***
In various ways, shapes and forms
many of us have known the psyche’s
extradition of Medusa from Athena’s temple.
We’ve lingered in Medusa’s shame
disenfranchisement and isolation
entrapped within the echoes of trauma
it’s cycles of projection and victimisation
or within its frozen disassociation
unable to trace the
enlivening movement of rage
or the eruptive truth of hysteria.
Or perhaps we’ve sought safety and untouchability
in the Athenian island of our mind
Estranged from the body and her
serpentine power and wisdom
In denial of our own victimisation
- whether relational or systemic -
or the victimisation of others.
***
And while, at first glance, this myth
seems an illustration of dichotomic despair
If we look deeper
we see a beckoning pathway
to wholeness
Medusa’s slaying by sword of Perseus
spoke not of her demise,
but as an allegory for the integration
and liberation of her trauma.
Pegasus, the winged horse of
freedom and creative renewal
arose from her bleeding body.
Alongside Chrysoar, a warrior bearing
the golden sword of discernment
Medusa’s severed head was then
affixed to Athena’s shield
Forging the legendary Aegis -
A shield that endowed Athena
with profound power and protection
The English adoption of the word Aegis means:
“the power to support or protect”
For this is mandate born of the
re-union of these two powerful archetypes.
The impenetrable force of a woman
known to herself
A woman who has transformed the rage of injustice
into an inner furnace of vision and purpose
who commands an authority
born of lived wisdom and humanity
A woman who moves with revolutionary force
in the quietness of her ways
and through the ferocity
with which she touches the world.