Medusa

I. The Threshold

Enter the Temple

What we exiled did not disappear. It learned to live beyond the walls.

Every family, culture, religious faith, and institution teaches us what is acceptable and what is not. In time, those judgments become internalized. We learn which parts of ourselves are welcome, and which must be hidden, softened, silenced, or abandoned in order to belong.

The same thing happens with power.

What cannot be controlled is often named dangerous or evil. What will not submit is called excessive. Just look at how the Crone, no longer under such a spell, is marginalized and discarded in our society. What cannot be easily controlled or assimilated becomes suspect, forbidden, even monstrous.

Medusa stands at that crossing point.

Her face was not only an image of terror. The Gorgon was also placed at thresholds, on shields, temples, graves, and doorways, where something needed protection.

So the question changes.

What if the monster is not what threatens the sacred?
What if the monster is what guards it?

And if that is true, then perhaps the parts of us we learned to fear are not simply problems to overcome. Perhaps some of them have been standing watch over something we were not yet ready to reclaim.

What if the face we fear is also the face that guards what is sacred?

• What did you learn to exile in order to belong?
• Who did you become to remain safe, loved, or accepted?
• And what in you has been waiting beyond the walls?

Medusa is not the subject of the evening. She is the reflection gazing back at us.