A Walk With Gorgons

Or, why you want to wear one on your back

In the photo from yesterday’s post, you can see a black denim jacket hanging in the middle of the airspace above my press. It’s the twin of the one Greta is wearing in the pic above:

The image on the jacket is an archaic Greek gorgon. We’re used to seeing the “beautiful” gorgon, like the Versace logo, much more often—but this is how she used to look. I probably did myself a disservice by re-reading the wiki entry on gorgons just now, so I’ll try to keep this personal and relevant. If you’re interested in the history of Medusa (and her two immortal sisters we never hear about), and the Freudian and feminist implications of the various myths about her, there are much better resources out there than this one.

So, for me, why gorgons?

If you scrape away all the narrative, they are apotropaic devices. They turn aside the evil eye. The ancient Greeks put gorgon faces on their shields to scare the fuck out of their enemies. They put gorgons on the outside of buildings to protect the inhabitants. The gorgon is, basically, a mashup of a dragon and a woman, and she’s a deadly powerful chaos-monger…the average ancient Greek dude’s worst nightmare and therefore a subject of endless fascination by him, and I’m fascinated by what fascinates people. This is the engine of my mind: Tell me what fascinates you—I really want to know.

So I never really got into the myths too much, but I was struck by the imagery of the archaic gorgon the first time I saw her, and right away I wanted to make my own version. At the time I was making block prints, so that’s what I did—I made a few short runs of a block I carved myself. I gave away most of them, sold a few, and one still hangs in the entryway of our house.

It is a good thing to invest a little of your personal belief system in outsourcing spiritual protection. It doesn’t much matter how you do it, but the idea that something other than your conscious mind has your back is key to getting out of constant, physically draining hypervigilance, especially in an age of chaos like this one. The gorgon at our entryway serves this function for me.

So, the gorgon on the back of the jackets serves this function for the wearer. Greeks used to put gorgons on the outside bottom of their drinking vessels, so that you could be protected at the most vulnerable moment—just as you were draining the last drops of wine from the cup. The gorgon sees what you can’t see, and she’ll actually turn your enemies to stone if they persist in pestering you!

Image swiped from Wikipedia. The gorgon is a bearded lady, flanked by apotropaic eyes. Drink all you want from this kylix, nobody’s gonna fuck with you…

OK OK, here’s the damn link…https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgons