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Gorgon Quotes

Browse 5 quotes about Gorgon.

Gorgon Quotes

“In ancient times, the Gorgon Medusa lived on the far side of Oceanus in the land of Night. She was an awesome dragonlike creature with bronze claws, great golden wings, and fierce eyes that turned her beholder to stone. At one time she had been a beautiful young woman who filled the world with joy, not death, but in a moment of foolish pride she had compared herself to Athena. Such arrogance enraged the noble goddess, and in revenge she turned Medusa's lush hair into a tangle of vile, hissing snakes. From that moment on, Medusa's stare brought the stillness of death to anyone who dared look into her eyes. Meanwhile Polydectes, King of Seriphos, wanted to destroy Perseus, so he sent him off to bring back Medusa's head, knowing that her gaze would kill the young hero. But Athena heard the king's command. Still angry with Medusa, she gave Perseus her bronze shield to defend himself when he attacked the Gorgon. Holding the shield as a mirror, Perseus saw only Medusa's reflection, and her deadly stare did not harm him. He cut off her head and put it into a cloth bag, then flew away with the aid of a pair of winged sandals given to him by Hermes. As Perseus soared over the African desert, blood seeped through the bag and fell to the hot sands below. As each drop hit the scorching ground, it turned to steam, and the rising vapors transformed into three dangerously beautiful nymphs.”

“Athena placed the apotropaic image of Medusa's severed head on her aegis or breastplate and on Zeus's shield. Other gorgoneia (images of Medusa's head) were installed on temples and other places to benefit from her protection, even after death. Ironically, gorgoneia were placed on heroes' shields, armor, and chariots to protect the Greek warriors engaged in destroying all threats to the new social order, including her own.”

“It is also the irrational instinct of religionism, the vague yearning for something to worship—a reflection or shadow of the true devotional principle—which prompts men to project a subjective image of the lower, personal mind, and to endow it with human attributes, and then to claim to receive "revelations" from it; and this—the image of the Beast, or unspiritual mind,—is their anthropomorphic God, a fabulous monster the worship of which has ever prompted men to fanaticism and persecution, and has inflicted untold misery and dread upon the masses of mankind, as well as physical torture and death in hideous forms upon the many martyrs who have refused to bend the knee to this Gorgonean phantom of the beast-mind of man. Truly, where the worshipers of this image of the Beast predominate, the man whose brow and hand are unbranded by this superstition, who neither thinks nor acts in accordance with it, suffers ostracism if not virulent persecution.”