The Gorgons: Three Sisters of Terror, Apotropaic Power, and Sacred Mystery
A bronze Gorgon Medusa applique — the frontal face of the Gorgon, with its wide eyes, protruding tongue, and terrifying gaze, one of the most ancient and powerful apotropaic symbols in human history. They are three sisters who live at the edge of the world — beyond the ocean, beyond the night, at the far boundary of the ordered cosmos. Two of them are immortal; one is not. Two of them have never been individually named in the great myths; one of them has given her name and her face to one of the most recognized images in the entire history of Western art. They are the Gorgons : Stheno (the Mighty), Euryale (the Far-Wanderer), and Medusa (the Queen, the Guardian) — the three daughters of the ancient sea-gods Phorcys and Ceto, sisters of the Graeae (the Grey Ones), cousins of the Hesperides and the Sirens, dwelling at the uttermost edge of the world in a landscape of eternal twilight. The Gorgon sisters are among the most ancient figures in Greek mythology — their roots go back ...