The Medusa Touch - Part 4

Alright, well this is Part 4, the last part of the series, continued from Part 3. Up until now I've basically been concentrating on mythological figures who are similar to Medusa, and trying to convince you that the reason for the similarities is that they all represent a similar archytype, whether or not the Greeks were even aware of it when they were carving Medusa heads into the pediments of their temples. Solon, the Greek sage, went to Egypt to question the priests in Egypt about the past. One day, as Solon discussed the history of the first man known on earth and the last flood, a wise old priest replied to Solon:

Solon you Greeks are mentally like children Is there not an aged sage among you ? You all too young in spirit and have no ideas handed down from ancient traditions, no knowledge from ancient times. Many disasters have befallen humanity and many more will do so, the worst from water and fire, and the least by asteroids and meteorites, which spin around the sky and the earth.

Every time you (Greeks) or other nations start to write and gather together the first rudiments of civilization, the furies of the sky crash down on you. The only ones who escape are the illiterate and the ignorant. So you must relearn everything whilst forgetting your past completely!

Egypt had a fairly stable civilization for quite a while, and were still able to remember most of their past. As a result, they were aware of where their myths came from and what they originally meant. The Greeks, however, lived in a part of the world which was frequently overcome with war and cataclysm. Therefore the Greeks had no idea where their myths came from and focused on only the exoteric stories. As Medusaesque deities can be found around the world, I believe that they represent a real event, and later a more sublime symbol, recorded around the world as an anthropomorphized figure. There was almost certainly another more esoteric level of meaning attatched to whatever event this new figure now represented (which I touched on in Part 1). Then a third level of meaning, which was just the soap-opera acts of the gods, which is what the Greeks focused on.

So, if the Egyptians had the older religion compared to the Greeks, where is Medusa in Egypt? Well, probably split into several different deities, as their religion is older and more refined, with specialized gods and their specific aspects. The Greeks probably combined a few mythological figures into Medusa from memory. In Egypt, there's the snake headed goddess Kauket "who ruled over the darkness with her husband. Her name also meant darkness, as did her husband's name, but with a feminine ending." If the Egyptians weren't obsessed with duality, they may have combined Kek and Kauket into one he-she like Medusa and Tlaltecuhtli. She was called "the bringer of night." There may be some connection to Medusa from the Egyptan Mafdet, the "slayer of serpents." She is actually a feline goddess (as well as a mongoose) because cats, and leopards, killed snakes and scorpions. Her hair was braided to reflect the sectioned body of a scorpion, and the braids ended in scorpion tails. She also wore a headress of snakes. And incase that wasn't enough, there's even mention of her ripping out the hearts of wrong-doers. Now it may seem contradictory for me to try and connect a feline snake-killing goddess with Medusa if it wasn't for Medusa being represented with her own leopards in the Corfu Pediment.

There is the scorpion goddess, Serqet, who "could punish those with the poison of a scorpion or snake, causing breathlessness and death, or she could protect against the same venom. Yet just as she could kill, she was thought to give breath to the justified dead, helping them be reborn in the afterlife." This is similar to the blood taken from Medusa's left side which was a poison, and from the right side which could bring the dead back to life. And we have the cobra goddess Wadjet who took the form of a lioness. Moving on, there is the moon god (male) Khonsu, associated with knowledge and time; and as such often represented along with the ever present Thoth. Khonsu "appears in the well known 'Cannibal Hymn' (Utt. 173-4) as a bloodthirsty deity who assists the deceased king in catching and slaying those gods that the king 'feeds upon' in order to absorb their strength. Specifically, it refers to him as 'Khonsu who slew the lords, who strangles them for the King, and extracts for him what is in their bodies.' Though only mentioned once in the Pyramid Texts, he is also referred to in Spell 258 of the Coffin Texts, where he is 'Khonsu who lives on hearts'." Like Medusa with her wings, Khonsu, as a sky deity is sometimes shown with the head of a falcon, though differentiated from Horus by the crescent moon (similar to Kali) on his head. And finally there is Apep, the great serpent, the Destroyer; patron of evil and darkness. Apep is of course way more powerful than Medusa, but I still see a similarity as Apep attacks the sun boat of Ra, and when successful, the world would be plunged into total darkness - a solar eclipse.

I believe that Medusa represents the moon, but more specifically, the moon during an eclispe; along with whatever feelings that event must have aroused in early man, and the resulting spiritual symbolism encoded therein. I think that the way Mesusa or other figures were represented might give us some clues at to whether this is true or not. Going back to Aztec mythology, we have the moon goddess Coyolxauhqui (pictured above as a serpent). "She was a powerful magician and led her siblings in an attack on their mother, Coatlicue, because she became pregnant in a shameful way (by a ball of feathers). Coatlicue's fetus, Huitzilopochtli, sprang from her womb in full war armour and killed Coyolxauhqui, along with many of the brothers and sisters. He cut off her limbs, then tossed her head into the sky where it became the moon, so that his mother would be comforted in seeing her daughter in the sky every night." Medusa became pregnant in a shameful way (like Coatlicue)and was beheaded (like Coyolxauhqui). Coyolxauhqui lost her head which became the moon, and Medusa is basically just a head, which happens to be depicted in the same way as other solar/lunar deities. "A shield-shaped stone frieze reflecting this story was found at the base of the stairs on the Templo Mayor. In this frieze, Coyolxauhqui is shown spread out on her side, with her head, arms and legs chopped away from her body. ... Scholars also believe that the decapitation and destruction of Coyolxauhqui is reflected in the pattern of warrior ritual sacrifice. First, captive's hearts were cut out, then they were decapitated, their limbs chopped off, and finally their bodies were cast from the temple, to lie, perhaps, on the great Coyolxauhqui stone." Again we have the blood or heart sacrifice theme. Medusa was never appeased with bloody hearts, only decapitated, but as I've already stated, I think the mythology surrounding her may be incomplete due to the lack of historical knowledge by the Greeks.

Here is the stone frieze of Coyolxauhqui compared to the Corfu Pediment. Notice the limbs are in similar poses. I think that the "rotation" depicted by the arms and the legs represents a rotating disc in the sky, a wheel that is turning, similar to the swastica symbol as a symbol for the sun or the movement of the heavens.

The arms and legs appear to be rotating in opposite directions, possibly representing two different things (sun and moon?). Medusa and Coyolxauhqui are oddly reminicent of the female vampires of the Phillipines, those night-time bloodsuckers, the Visayan manananggal ("self-segmenters") who would detach their upper bodies and fly through the night looking for victims. Infact looking at the picture at the top of this page, it's hard not to see Medusa as a vampire, at least all her counterparts seem to have a blood lust. Perhaps there's some parallel with Lillith, the disgraced first wife of Adam, and original vampire/succubus? The Corfu Pediment is a depiction of Medusa already having been decapitated, while it might not look it, her children who sprang from her neck wound are seen with her - either an indication of her death, or a continuity error. There's the winged horse Pegasus (missing due to damage to the sculpture) and the boy Chrysaor "Golden Sword." Not wanting to get into the mythology of Medusa's offspring, but as a small sidetrack, perhaps the "golden sword" which sprang from Medusas severed head is the first ray of light which is seen when a solar eclipse is ending.

Keeping with the symbolism of the bent-limb, there is another more telling sculpture of Medusa (holding Pegasus), shown with 3 limbs bent in the same direction, and we can more clearly see her wings which remind us that she belongs up there.

The moon makes 12 and a third lunations, or lunar months, a year. It takes three years for the moon to make a complete number of lunations (37), and as a result the number three is associated with the moon. Also the "triple goddess" of the moon is a familiar theme, as the moon has three phases, the waxing, full and waning. Note that there were three Gorgons, and many times there are three witches in mythology (like the Graeae), and in books and movies. (The Graeae were known as the Stygian Witches, no wonder I like writing about their conterparts the Gorgons. The Graeae, like the Gorgons, had one eye and one tooth among them (thanks Adam*), and were the offspring of the "old man of the sea.") Notice in the pictures below, Medusa ringed with serpents, and the moon's cycle depicted as a serpent. Infact in the Medusa picture, the serpent splits the circle into two halves with Medusa's head in the center, possibly indicating a waxing, full, and waning motif.

Medusa can even be seen as the now extremely interesting Trinacria. The trinacria is an ancient symbol and name for Sicily; due apparently to the triangular shape of the island.

My art history teacher said that Medusa was depicted with bent limbs on the Corfu pediment because the artists couldn't fit her standing because she was too big. How this makes sense I don't know. If they wanted her to fit, they would have made her smaller. She is constantly depicted in the squatting-running fashion for a reason. Even if the artists were so inept as to not be able to fit her in the Corfu pediment, it doesn't explain why in other sculptures she remains in a bent-limb pose. No, there is some reason, possibly unknown even to the Greeks, that she had to be shown in that pose. The Aztec deities I've presented were also shown in bent-limb poses, but it was probably because of their connection to childbirth. Medusa, like the moon, is male and female. She is basically a head with a body later thought up for her to fill in the blanks of her mythology. Something about seeing her paralyzes people with fear - turns them to stone. People cannot look at her directly, as we are all told to avoid direct eye contact with an eclispe. But what of the serpents? Why always at least two snakes beside her head? Well, I think that they represent the serpent-path of the eclispe. The invisible path in the sky which swollows the sun every now and again (shown above as the lunation cycle), when Apep temporarily overcomes Ra's sun-boat. Medusa has a relationship with Poseiden as well, linking her to the chaotic waters out of which, in some versions, her children are born from her blood falling into the water.

Apep, "water snake-demon of chaos," was a demon of the underworld, in the form of a giant water snake. It was believed that he was created when Nit spat into the primeval waters of Nun. He was the enemy of the sun god, trying to stop him as he travelled on his barque through the underworld each night. He was so powerful that little could defeat him, and even then, he was back again the following evening to threaten Ra. He was a demon outside of ma'at, the opposite of order, a demon of darkness and chaos.

Apep was never worshiped, but the ancient Egyptians protected themselves against him - he was a threat not only against people and the gods, but against ma'at and creation itself. As a demon of the unknown and related to frightening events such as unexplained darkness (solar eclipses were interpreted as a victory of Apep over Ra as he swallowed the solar barque), rituals were followed to ensure he could do no harm. In this, he was linked to Set, who also had eclipses, thunderstorms and earthquakes attributed to him.

The eight pages of the Moon table of the Dresden Codex are a chain of numbers across the bottom line of each page translates into a time packet of lunar synodic intervals. There are clumpings of six lunar synodic months (178 days) followed by one set of five (148 days). Each bunch of five moons is followed by a picture. A close look at all of the pictures together gives very strong clues about what the Mayas would do, parcel out a chain of 405 full moons over more than three decades. The answer is that Mayan astronomers were attempting, apparently quite successfully, to predict eclipses. Some of these illustrations depict half-light, half-dark disks with lunar crescents opposing the kin glyph, symbol of the Sun ( kin means sun and day as well as time in the Mayan language). A serpent devouring the Sun and a dead lunar goddess hanging by her hair from a segmented serpent who represents the sky also appear in the pictorial portion of the table.

Stonehenge is quite the famous astronomical clock:

Every year on the first day of summer, the Sun rises at a point that is farther north than on any other day of the year. At the ruins of Stonehenge in England, this solstice sunrise appears on the horizon in direct alignment with the massive heel stone. This is the most outstanding feature of this ancient monument, built during the same era as the Great Pyramid of Egypt. There is little doubt that the builders of Stonehenge used it to mark this special day as the beginning of each year. By counting the number of days between these annual alignments, they could determine the length of the year. This could serve as a practical calendar to mark holidays and seasonal festivals and to ensure the timely planting and harvesting of crops.

But to predict eclipses, knowledge of two other cycles is required. One of these -- the length of the lunar month -- is easily determined. It is simply the number of days between one full Moon and the next. This cycle of 29-1/2 days is marked at Stonehenge by two rings of 29 and 30 holes, which together average 29-1/2. The other cycle, however, is of an altogether different character: it is a cycle of rotation of two invisible points in space (the two serpents always beside Medusa?). The evidence shows that the builders of Stonehenge probably discovered this cycle and could have used it to predict eclipses.

British antiquarian Dr. William Stukeley, who in 1740 was the first to note the summer solstice alignment at Stonehenge, advanced the notion that the monument was built by Druids to worship the serpent. He claimed that Stonehenge and similar stone circles had been serpent temples, which he called "Dracontia." Could this serpent symbolism be related to eclipses? Recall that the key to eclipses is the position of the lunar nodes. The length of time for the Moon to return to a node (about 27.2 days) astronomers call the draconic month. (Draco is the Latin word for "serpent" or "dragon.) Perhaps the mythical serpents of Stonehenge and the legendary dragon that eats the Sun are symbols of the same thing: the invisible presence in time and space that eclipses the Sun and the Moon.

This is, I believe, the first attribute which can be associated with Medusa - the frightening aspect of the moon during an eclipse. However once everyone was quite aware of the possibility of an eclipe it woud have become less worysome. It was then they higher ideas could be fitted to the already existing symbolism. To the Greeks, Medusa-Eclispe was probably just a boogyman bedtime story for all we know. Clearly the other figures with their blood lusts and connection to death would have been representations of the unkown, death, and nightime (relating to vampiric activity perhaps). And maybe it's because I've been reading about alchemy lately, but I think there is some important idea behind the power of Medusa to turn a person into Stone. First of all, this is quite reminicent of Lot's wife being turned into a pillar of Salt when she looked at Gods destruction of Soddom and Gommorrah.

Genesis 19:23
"The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered into Zoar. (24) Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven; (25) And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground. (26) But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt."

Luke 17:28-33
"Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; (29) But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. (30) Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed. (31) In that day, he which shall be upon the housetop, and his stuff in the house, let him not come down to take it away: and he that is in the field, let him likewise not return back. (32) Remember Lot's wife. (33)Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it."

To look upon it would instantly change you into Stone or Salt, similar to Midas and his touch, as I've said in Part 1 of this series. I'm being reminded also of that old Batman episode (the series with Adam West), where one of the arch-villans (the Joker or Penguin?) invents a gun which vaporizes all the water in a persons body, reducing them to a small pile of salt. Interestingly this device is in the most recent Batman movie where the Scarecrow uses it to vaporize Gotham's waer supply to activate his hallucinogenic chemical.

The first phase of alchemy is called Nigredo, the Black Phase, and is represented as Philospher's Lead, a Black Dragon, or Black Crows. In Alchemy, Salt is the body, Sulfur the soul and Mercury the spirit. These three substances make up the Three Essential of all things. A substance is reduced to it's salt during the first process of alchemy - Calcination. Salt is represented by a cube, and this stage is depicted by a skull (as are many of the Medusaesqe deities revealed in the previous parts of this series). Salt is the beginning and end of alchemy. It represents the imperfect matter which is then dissolved and refined until it's essences are reconstituted in a more perfect form at the end. Salt is seen as the child of the alchemical marriage between the King (Sulfur) and Queen (Mercury), the Sun and the Moon.

Medusa represents an initial transformative power which if not controlled will leave us as a lifeless as a stone - a pillar of Salt without the firey soul of Sulfur, or animating spirit of Mercury. Perseus, the heroic slayer of Medusa was aided on his quest by Athena (Goddess of heroic endeavour), Hermes (Mercury), and Hades (Sulfur).

The Medusa Touch - Part 3

The Medusa Touch (part 3), continued from part 2.

Continuing on the theme of deities that I think are similar to Medusa, here are a couple more of interest. Here is the goddess Kali as her associated god Durga:

Kālī is the feminine of kāla "black, dark coloured." ... The homonymous kāla "appointed time", which depending on context can mean "death", is distinct from kāla "black", but became associated through popular etymology. The association is seen in a passage from the Mahābhārata, depicting a female figure who carries away the spirits of slain warriors and animals. She is called kālarātri (which Thomas Coburn, a historian of Sanskrit Goddess literature, translates as "night of death") and also kālī (which, as Coburn notes, can be read here either as a proper name or as a description "the black one"). Kali's association with blackness stands in contrast to her consort, Shiva, whose body is covered by the white ashes of the cremation ground (Sanskrit: śmaśāna) in which he meditates, and with which Kali is also associated, as śmaśāna-kālī.

In the above picture Kali/Durga is seen with the typical dishevled hair of other Medusa related figures. Durga is translated as "the invincible," which is interesting when considering that although Medusa was mortal, her sister Gorgons were invincible.

This is a more telling picture of Kali. Here she is more blue than black, but we can also see the parallels to Medusa more clearly. Kali holds the severed head of a slain warrior, which she decapitated with her sword. This should remind anyone familiar with the Medusa tale that Medusa was decapitated by Perseus, shown here in a very similar pose (with an identical sword).

Kali holds the Trident, the weapon of choice for Neptune who is the Roman version of Medusa's 'lover' (and/or rapist), Poseiden. She is sticking out her tongue, has four arms to Medusas four wings, and snakes are seen on the ground around Shiva. More importantly her pitch black and wild hair is eclipsing the sun. Even more telling is the crescent moon (a shared symbol with Sin) on her crown which is placed over the sun as well. Kali, who becomes drunk on the blood of her victims on the battlefield, dances with destructive frenzy. Blood drinking seems to be part of each of the deities I've presented, except oddly enough Medusa herself.

In Greek mythology, blood taken from the right side of a Gorgon could bring the dead back to life, yet blood taken from the left side was an instantly fatal poison.

Moving on the South America, here is an Incan figure (with "Medusa" face) with an inset picture of an eclispe to compare to the drawings on it's face. During the time that the Nazca Lines were being scratched out in the martian surface of Peru there were many total eclipses visible in that region. It is thought that the Inca viewed the eclispe as the eye of God and drew the pictures to appease him. Just for fun, here is a famous Nazca drawing, a monkey with a labyrinth spiral tail. (Hmm a primate and a stargate, why does that seem familiar?)

Medusa the Gorgon.
According to Ovid (Metamorphoses), Medusa alone had serpents in her hair, and this was due to Athena (Roman Minerva) cursing her. Medusa had copulated with Poseidon (Roman Neptune), who was aroused by the golden color of Medusa's hair, in a temple of Athena. Athena therefore changed the enticing golden locks into serpents. Aeschylus says that the three Gorgons had only one tooth and one eye among them, which they had to swap among themselves.

Medusa was a stunning blond bombshell until Athena got a hold of her. Reminds me of the old movie about cavemen tribes. The “good” cavemen were all blond and the “evil” cavemen all had dark hair. Anyways, the single eye is quite provocative (as is the single TooTH but I’ll skip that), as single eye’d deities are quite common. Usually a single eye'd god is... well is God. Associated with the single orb of the Sun, his bright eye, and having some story as to why the Moon isn’t quite as bright; having been lost or pecked out or donated to a fountain of wisdom, etc. Focusing on Medusa, it’s quite fortuitous that after having written about single eyed figures so many times I find that Medusa is one as well. Anyways the hair turning from light to dark, and the single eye basically clinches the moon symbolism for me.

But the moon and sun are quite similar, and even overlap in the awsome display of an eclipse. Being able to predict the cycle of eclipses would be a show of power for any society, who could then claim to be able to predict the future. Once they figured out the moons orbit, and the sometimes erratic eclispe cycle, they could use the portent in the sky to amaze their subjects; similar to Apocalypto where the eclispe (which was almost certainly known in advance) was ended when the god was appeased with blood sacrifice. One such famous calendar from South America is the Aztec Sun Stone, or Aztec Calendar.

Historically, the Aztec name for the huge basaltic monolith is Cuauhxicalli Eagle Bowl, but it is universally known as the Aztec Calendar or Sun Stone. It was during the reign of the 6th Aztec monarch in 1479 that this stone was carved and dedicated to the principal Aztec deity: the sun. The stone has both mythological and astronomical significance. It weighs almost 25 tons, has a diameter of just under 12 feet, and a thickness of 3 feet.

This calendar is basically the same as the famous Mayan calendar. By now you should be able to pick out all the familiar symbols. There's the face with wide-open eyes, and the open mouth showing the teeth with the tongue sticking out. "The tongue, stuck out is the form of an obsidian knife, indicates that the diety demands to be fed with blood and human hearts." This head has golden hair, as it is the sun god's face, Tonatiuh, or Lord of Heaven. On either side of the bodyless head is what appears to be two serpents. Described as the "claws of the sun god which are suspended in space," these beings have a single eye and eyebrow and a human heart in their teeth/claws. Instead of the four wings of Medusa or the four arms of Kali, there are the four Suns of the four previous epochs around the face.

Continued in the last article, part 4.

The Medusa Touch

The Medusa Touch: "Psychological thriller about a novelist, a telekinetic, who causes disasters simply by thinking about them."

Plot Summary from Wikipedia:
A French detective, Brunel (Ventura), is on an exchange scheme in London. He is assigned to investigate the murder of novelist John Morlar (Burton). As they examine the crime scene, the policemen find that the victim is actually still alive in spite of his heavy injuries and have him rushed to hospital.

With the help of Morlar's journals and Dr Zonfeld (Remick), a psychiatrist whom the author had started visiting, Brunel reconstructs Morlar's past life, which (seen in flashback) is full of inexplicable catastrophes, including the tragic deaths of people he disliked or who offended him.

Morlar is, in fact, a psychic with powerful telekinetic abilities. Disgusted at the world (in his 1988 book Nightmare Movies, Kim Newman described Morlar's dialogue as "incredibly misanthropic"), Morlar has caused two recent disasters: an airliner crash and the loss of a manned spacecraft.

From his hospital bed he manages to bring down a cathedral on the "unworthy heads" of a VIP congregation giving thanks for the building's preservation; and he seems able to keep himself alive by sheer willpower. An enraged Brunel himself tries in vain to finish Morlar off and fails. The man has written on a pad the name of his next target - the nuclear power station at Windscale.

Medusa represents the archetypal chthonic entity of darkness and chaos which comes when the sun loses it’s power, or alternatively when a person is drained of their life force and ‘turned to stone.’ Most Medusa mythology seems to have just been interpreted by people who really had no complete understanding for what she was, and she probably started off as a very simple symbol:

Jane Ellen Harrison argues that "her potency only begins when her head is severed, and that potency resides in the head; she is in a word a mask with a body later appended... the basis of the Gorgoneion is a cultus object, a ritual mask misunderstood." (Harrison 1922:187). In Odyssey xi, Homer does not specifically mention the Gorgon Medusa,
"lest for my daring Persephone the dread :From Hades should send up an awful monster's grizzly head"
Harrison's translation states "the Gorgon was made out of the terror, not the terror out of the Gorgon (Harrison 1922: 187, note 3).

I’m sure there are many more equally interesting interpretations of the Gorgon, but let us ignore what other people think and just focus on my own extrapolations.

If the Medusa Touch (or rather gaze) can bring chaos, destruction and death (as symbolic darkness), then the opposite must exist. This would be the golden touch of Midas, which could make any object achieve the alchemical state of Gold. Strangely enough, King Midas is said to have discovered lead, which alchemically represents the first state of whatever it is that needs to be elevated to a golden state. There’s some other interesting tid-bits such as Midas having a prized rose garden and a daughter named Zoe ("life"). Midas recieved his "golden touch" as a gift from Dionysus. King Midas soon learned that if everything he touched turned to gold, he couldn’t really eat or drink; and he even accidentally turned his own daughter into a statue. (statue - sounds like the Medusa effect) If Medusa could touch the whole world, there would be only death, stillness, and darkness. Without the animating effect of the struggle between opposites, the universe would cease to exist; as it will one day when the temperature is evenly distributed accross the entire universe, no temperature difference = no reactions. The same is true for Midas and his golden touch. If everything were to be brought to a state of perfection - there would be no need (or even ability) for the universe to continue to function. As much as we would like everything to be perfect (a veritable garden of eden), it can never be that way. As Agent Smith said in the first Matrix movie: the first attempt at the Matrix was perfect - a perfect failure. Humans need suffering to define their existance. For as any dominatrix can tell you: you can’t know pleasure without pain.

Midas, and Medusa, could tap into an object or persons Quintessence; the life force, fifth element, chi, kundalini, prana, pneuma and rauch. Issac Newton wrote: "The quintessence is a thing that is spiritual, penetrating, tingeing, and incorruptable, which emerged anew from the Four Elements when the are bound together."

The Quintessence is the fifth element with which the alchemists could work. It was the essential presence of something or someone, the living thing itself that animated or gave something its deepest characteristics. The Quintessence partakes of both the Above and the Below, the mental as well as the material. It can be thought of as the ethereal embodiment of the life force that we encounter in dreams and altered states of consciousness. It is the purest individual essence of something that we must unveil and understand in order to transform it.

The quintessence was also known as Aether/Ether. "Plato and Aristotle referred to Aether as 'Idea,' and in this sense, it may be regarded as that which exists outside the material world (i.e. thought processes, mathematical algorithms, etc.)." An interesting note which I just noticed on Wikipedia is that Aether was associated with the most important and secret Platonic Solid - the Dodecahedron. This shape was also associated with the Universe. And on an interesting twist, the universe my actually have this shape:

An infinite Universe would contain waves of all sizes. The WMAP did not see any very large waves. This points to space being finite - for the same reasons that you don't see breakers in your bathtub.

The best explanation for these observations is that the cosmos is a Poincaré dodecahedral space, says a team led by Jeffrey Weeks, an independent mathematician based in Canton, New York. Mathematical models of a spherical, solid Universe edged by 12 curved pentagons produce the patterns seen in the background radiation without any special fine-tuning. "It fits the data surprisingly well," says Weeks.

This is also apparently what Salvador Dali thought:

There, now I’ve gone and got sidetracked as usual! Anyways, where was I... In an unusual stroke of clarity, Wikipedia’s author for the Aether section notes:

In the world of cyberspace, the term ethernet is often widely used to describe a network that runs over physical connections. Thus even though the connections and connectors, such as an ethernet jack are made of solid matter ("Earth"), the concept of ethernet and cyberspace transcends the physical world of matter (solid, liquid, gas, and plasma), making necessary a fifth element beyond the material world.

Thus it is via this shared quintessence which I transmit my thoughts and hopefully manifest a higher level of thought about Medusa and her symbolism. Alas, it is bedtime for me. I'll have to continue on another night, possibly tomarrow, but no promises!

The Medusa Touch series continues in Part 2.