Medusa Painting

Medusa. Who was she before the invading sea god supposedly defiled her? She appears on the pediment of Artemis's Temple at Corfu, flanked by leopards. Large cats, like those associated with Artemis of Ephesus, the Great Mother Goddess, are sometimes considered to be guardians between worlds. Her snakes are a symbol of rebirth. I've read that she may be a chthonic aspect of Artemis, much like Ereshkigal was the underworld aspect of Inanna. Or is she a Moon Goddess? Robert Graves in The Greek Myths writes, "The Gorgons' names--Stheino ('strong'), Euryale ('wide roaming'), and Medusa ('cunning one')--are titles of the Moon-goddess; the Orphics called the moon's face 'the Gorgon's head'. "Poseidon's fathering of Pegasus on Medusa recalls his fathering of the horse Arion on Demeter..; both myths describe how Poseidon's Hellenes forcibly married the Moon-priestesses, disregarding their Gorgon masks, and took over the rain-making rites of the sacred horse cult." She was clearly a powerful Goddess, remaining such a prominent mythological figure despite millennia of slander.