Medusa for Halloween

So I have decided that Im going to try to pull together a Medusa costume for Halloween. That required an educaion in all things Medusa. I learned that there is a "Medusa" piercing, it when you pierce you lip right under your nose like this.....



Not exactly the snake haired lady I was after but interesting none the less.

Medusa was originally a beautiful maiden, "the jealous aspiration of many suitors," priestess in Athena's temple, but when she was raped, or seduced, by the "Lord of the Sea" Poseidon in Athena's temple, the enraged virgin goddess transformed her beautiful hair to serpents and made her face so terrible to behold that the mere sight of it would turn a man to stone. In Ovid's telling, Perseus describes Medusa's punishment by Athena as just and well-deserved.

Medusa and her two sisters were known as Gorgons. Of the three, Medusa was the only Mortal sister. In the majority of the versions of the story, while Medusa was pregnant by Poseidon, she was beheaded by the hero Perseus, who was sent to fetch her head by King Polydectes of Seriphus as a gift. With help from Athena and Hermes, who supplied him with winged sandals, Hades' cap of invisibility, a sword, and a mirrored shield, he accomplished his quest. The hero slew Medusa by looking at her harmless reflection in the mirror instead of directly at her to prevent being turned into stone. When the hero severed Medusa's head from her neck, two offspring sprang forth: the winged horse Pegasus and the giant Chrysaor who later became the hero wielding the golden sword.

So Medusa was punished for desicrating a temple which may or may not have agreed to, and eventually killed with the help of that Goddess....Jeeze....and people think being beautiful today is tough!

Medusa has also been adopted as a symbol of female rage; one of the first publications to express this idea was a 1978 issue of Women: A Journal of Liberation. The cover featured the image of a gorgon, which the editors explained "can be a map to guide us through our terrors, through the depths of our anger into the sources of our power as women."

So next time your boyfriend or Husband gets under your skin, warn him to back off or you'll go Medusa on him.

The costume search continues........and Im a little smarter for it!