Serpentine Life Force: Divine Medusa

Serpentine Life Force: Divine

How shall we ready for the journey? There is an inclination to transform...

She was one of three sisters: wise and strong, yet mortal. The god Poseidon lusted for her.

He took her by force in the holy temple of Athena.

He was made impure, not she.

But Athena did not see it that way.

She cursed the maiden. She twisted her hair into writhing snakes and made her appear as a Monster.

A Divine Monster.

It is said she was from the African continent: from Libya. Though portrayed as white, if is oft believed she was a Black woman.

A Black Queen.

She was raped by the white man god and cursed by the white woman goddess.

She was made to live in the darkness, her petrifying gaze was feared by all, destroying all who

approached her.

The white male, Perseus, was sent to kill her. To be cursed was not enough. With the help of the white Goddess, they destroyed her. They cut off her head.

Her wisdom was disembodied.

But the gaze that petrified and destroyed was also a potent force.

Her gaze became Apotropaic and would protect the bearer or the space within.

So generous, she gave of her power even in death.

Be Medusa.

She lives in your curls.

What wisdom arises from the embodiment of Her dark coiled skin?

Meditate on her. Sharpen your gaze. Grow your intuition. Your imagination.

There is an inclination to transform. How shall you ready for the journey?

Medusa Book, by Angie Follensbee-Hall, 2019

I represented this poem in a handmade book. Images of Medusa are collaged and drawn throughout the pages. I intended for the reader of this book to view Medusa in a new light, an unearthing of a truth in history, of the rise of patriarchy, of the subjugation of women of color by white men and white women, and how such acts disembody the wisdom of all humanity. Snake-like textures were intentionally embedded in the paper and in the collage format, and the whole book is a kind of eerie green color. For me, this is a work of art that finally begins to bring together messages of justice through the connection of natural materials.

I began to research the work of Marija Gimbutas during the creation of this handmade story, for her work on practices in Old Europe and how her research might relate to my own ancestry, lineage, tradition, and connection to place. Gimbutas was an archaeologist from Lithuania. She was known for her research into the Neolithic and Bronze age era of “Old Europe.” She was a somewhat controversial figure in archaeology. Gimbutas was a woman working in the predominantly male field of archaeology. As such, she ran into continual resistance for support for her work, and although she had a Ph.D. degree, she was initially hired to work at Harvard in an unpaid position. Gimbutas put forth a theory that contested migration theories of Old Europe. Gimbutas introduced the “Kurgan Hypothesis,” stating that the original Indigenous Peoples of Old Europe were conquered by migrating groups from the Asian Steppes, Eastern Europeans north of the Black Sea, known as the Kurgan for their unique burial mounds. She believed this invasion brought the peaceful and Indigenous practices of Old Europe to an end (Gimbutas, 1995).

Evidence for this hypothesis of invasion was based on archaeological and linguistic research. There was some resistance to this theory when she first proposed it in 1956. But in 2015, her theory was vindicated when DNA evidence revealed proof of her Kurgan Hypothesis (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmv3J55bdZc). Gimbutas was also criticized for work and writing towards the end of her life. She proclaimed that Old Europe was a peaceful, matrilinear, woman-centered, and goddess worshipping society. She wrote that the Kurgan invasion replaced this matrilinear goddess society with a patriarchal culture, imposing hierarchy, male rule, and sky-god worship (Gimbutas, 1995). Evidence for this worship is presented in the many thousands of artifacts that she unearthed, indicating a worship of the feminine. Her archaeological excavations at these sites did not find evidence of weapons or war until the time period of Kurgan invasions. There were many male archaeologists who denounced her later books and theories on a goddess-worshipping Old Europe. It will remain difficult to ever know the full truth of what has transpired thousands of years ago. But as I ponder truth and reality, I am drawn to these words by writer Sylvia Linsteadt, author of Our Lady of The Dark Country:

We have come to an epistemic crossroads, a crisis of the “real.” I will not be able to win an argument with an archaeologist, an academic, a businessman, or possibly an old friend, by trying to state facts about the Indigenous female traditions of Europe, about the Neolithic, about the work of Marija Gimbutas, about war, about peace, about menstruation, about sexuality, about freedom, about truth, about the heart, about the reality of magic, because facts have become slippery things and it seems that these days what matters is who fears what, and who gains what, not What Is True. A fact is not What Is True. A fact is only an arrow that points toward who has the power and what story they want to tell. (Linsteadt, 2017: p. vii)

My research findings into Gimbutas echoed the story of Medusa. History and myth is only told by the victors of war. We must dig deep to unearth the truth, and sometimes that truth exists deep within our own psyche. As Sylvia Linsteadt claims, facts can be “slippery things.” Story and “his-story” is not a fact. It is a narrative told through the perspective of the storyteller. So, one must always consider who is telling the story in relation to what is being revealed through the story. Gimbutas story of the past was told through her perspective of a woman growing up in early twentieth century Europe, both before and after WWII. She viewed her discoveries through the perspective of her relationship with her matrilinear ancestry. What her story tells me is that I belong in place. I belong to the story of Old Europe. These roots of Old Europe and its connection to the earth and to the feminine are still seen in Sicilian culture. They are evident in the myths, the legends, and the beliefs that show up as daily practice in the worship of the Mother Mary, St. Febronia, St. Agatha, and the many, many other female Saints that represent each city, each town, the very land and earth itself.

The writer Sharon Blackie speaks to those of us who claim ancestry from Europe. She tells white people of European descent that we must do the work of decolonizing by looking to our own ancestral stories (Blackie, Sharon, 2018). So many of us, myself included, have looked to the lands of the far East, in Hinduism, Buddhism, Yoga, and to Indigenous cultures from around the world, to find truth and meaning. She says that it is not wrong to learn from these paths, as they possess a wealth of great knowledge that can offer healing. But we cannot only look to those cultures and ignore our own roots. We cannot shy away from the past because of the awful atrocities that our ancestors committed; We must acknowledge the past, and we must sit with it. We must see how it still affects us. Then once we have done that work, we must look further back. We must dig deep into the earth and discover our ancient roots and ancestral wisdom. When we go deep enough, we find that we have all descended from migrants, wanderers, and Indigenous People of Old Europe and an ancient Earth. We must go far enough back to a time when our ancestors still lived in ways that were very close to the earth. We must remember this time. In this process, we will uncover stories rooted in ancient wisdom. Resmaa Menakem also gives this call to white people of European descent to understand their own ancestry and lineage, to rediscover the stories of self to undo oppression and white supremacy:

Study yourself, your ancestors, and your people. What are their stories, both in America and before they arrived here? How did they end up in the New World? When you can, extend that privilege to others. Also study the world. In particular, study history, so that your understanding of white body supremacy becomes part of a larger context. (Menakem, 2017)

The practice of understanding and honoring the ancestral stories of our own lineage is rich and rewarding. Sharon Blackie reminds us that if we go far enough back in time, we can all find ancestors that could hear the language of the Earth. We must look past the colonial atrocities, past the witch-burnings, past all the movements with religions that disassociated us with the natural world. We must do the work to find these stories of our land and lineages that are buried under many layers, and claim a new narrative: a narrative that does not seek to control other humans, other creatures, and the animate world, but one that recognizes our place within the story of the world through a language of wonder.

This is the work I have only just begun with the Medusa book, and it is the work I hope to continue to do in artistic creation, and in guiding others in their creative process.