Supernatural creature of the week: Gorgons
By Rachel Roth
It’s Season 14 and the Winchester boys are pulling out the big guns with Gorgon hunting in this week’s episode of Supernatural.
After another long break between episodes, Supernatural returned this week with a brief restoration of their original plot, simple monster hunting with a decent sized side of angel drama. Normally it’s just vampires or ghosts but this time they go all the way back to Ancient Greek myth and battle a Gorgon, the same creature as the famous Medusa, only it’s a random guy named Noah.
Anyone who’s seen Clash of the Titans or read “Percy Jackson” or is a fan of Greek mythology probably knows the name Medusa. The most famous of the Gorgons, Medusa is an iconic figure in fiction and Greek myth for being the woman cursed with snake hair and the power to turn people into stone. Unfortunately, not as many people have heard of the Gorgons or even know that Medusa is one.
This one on Supernatural ate human flesh, had an affinity for snakes, could see the future, and was a demi-god. Though dramatized for entertainment purposes, this fictionalized version isn’t too far off. The real Gorgons weren’t much different. The children of sea gods had a fondness for snakes that paralyzed people and occasionally ate their victims alive.
Gorgon origins and depictions in culture
The name originates from the ancient Greek word “gorgós”, meaning “grim”, which possibly came from the same root as the Sanskrit word “garjana”, defined as a guttural sound like the growling of a beast. That says enough right there.
Gorgons were a popular image in Greek mythology, appearing in the earliest of written records of Ancient Greek religious beliefs dated back as early as 1194–1184 B.C. but they appeared in oral literature earlier than that. Gorgons were first mentioned by the poet Homer in the “Illiad” as a single monster from the underworld.
Later around 700 B.C. the poet Hesiod expanded the Gorgons into three monsters instead of one — Stheno (the Mighty), Euryale (the Far Springer), and Medusa (the Queen) — in his poem “Theogony”. The three monsters were the children of sea deities Phorcys and Ceto living at the world’s edge and for a reason that is never given, Medusa was born mortal while both her sisters were immortal.
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Years later around 800 B.C. is when Gorgons first appeared in Greek art portrayed as winged female creatures with living hair made of snakes. They were round-faced, flat-nosed with tongues lolling out and large projecting teeth. In later versions, swine tusks and flared nostrils and short beards were added.
Carved masks of the grotesque Gorgon heads were used as a protection against the evil eye, a tradition that could’ve translated over into the legend of Perseus cutting off Medusa’s head and using it to turn his enemies into stone. The image of the Gorgon also appeared on shields and artifacts dedicated to Goddesses, signifying their connection with powerful women.
Connection with snakes
Out of all the animals in the world to take on symbolic meaning, the snakes seem to be at the top of the popularity list. Though usually a symbol of death, corruption, and general evilness in Western cultures, the snake represented fertility, life, and wisdom in Greece (and many other places) on the account of their ability to shed their skin.
Snakes are rarely perceived negatively when appearing in Greek myth. Before Cronus and Rhea ruled the world and fathered the core six Olympians, the ruler of the world was Ophion a.k.a. Ophioneus, a giant serpent. Asclepius learned resurrection from snakes, and snakes were commonly used in healing rituals; Non-poisonous snakes were left to crawl on the floor in hospital dormitories.
Aeetes protected the Golden Fleece with a giant serpent, and Alexander the Great’s mother was a known snake handler who claimed Zeus fathered Alexander to her while in snake form. Needless to say, the Greeks held snakes in high prestige and the Gorgons were surrounded by them. If they didn’t have snakes for hair, the Gorgons often had other reptilian attributes such as a belt made of snakes or other scaly objects.
They weren’t the only ones with snake hair either. Images of snakes emanating from one’s head was likely from the early Greek religious concepts of Delphi where the dragon Delphyne lived and the priestess Pythia delivered oracles. The Gordons’ affiliation with them probably meant they maintained a powerful position in Greek culture.
Medusa
Though the Gorgons aren’t described to be all that good-looking, in Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”, Medusa was originally a beautiful maiden that caught the eye of Poseidon. The god chased her into Athena’s shrine where he raped her, though in some stories they got married instead. Either way, as punishment for her sexual power, Athena transformed Medusa’s hair into snakes so that anyone who gazed upon her would turn to stone.
Medusa met her death at the hands of Perseus when the hero was sent by King Polydectes to retrieve her decapitated head. Medusa was pregnant with Poseidon’s baby at the time, and when Perseus beheaded her, the winged horse Pegasus emerged from her body. In some stories, a whole truckload of monsters came falling out, but Pegasus’s birth is the one consistency.
Several classics scholars interpreted the myth of Medusa as a sublimated memory of an actual invasion around 1300 B.C. that scholars believed was so bad it left a remaining sociological trauma so powerful it transferred over into myth. Multiple civilizations collapsed during this time, the Mycenaean and Minoan civilizations, and “Sea People” begin their raids of the Eastern Mediterranean. The Trojan War supposedly took place in 1250 B.C. so there could be a connection there.
Knowing this, I think Supernatural could have done a lot more with the Gorgons, but the monster hunt was just filer for Jack’s condition and the impending angel battle.
Catch the next episode of Supernatural on Thursday at 8:00 p.m. on the CW.