#57 | Scorpio the Scorpion | Medusa

Today we're exploring the Scorpionic realm , the realm of the underworld associated with the 8th house , the sign after Libra , the constellation that comes after the scales of balance , and in fact , as I mentioned in the Libra podcast , the scales of Libra are actually the claws of the scorpion .

So the two , libra and Scorpio , are very much linked and if we think about this as chapter three of our story of the zodiac , it actually begins in Libra . It begins with this meeting of the other and then it goes into the next sign .

So as we enter through that air sign , through that cardinal sign , through that meeting of the other , we're inevitably then drawn into Scorpio and we're drawn into the next evolution of that , which is to go from that upper world into that underworld . And the next sign along will be Sagittarius , where we come up from the underworld and we discover meaning .

We discover , you know , that there was a purpose to it all and that it means something , and it has this journey principle to it , that it has philosophical underpinnings and all these things that Sagittarius will teach us about the journey that we were on .

But for today , we're not in Sagittarius and we're not in Libra , we're not in air , we're not in fire , we're in water and we're in the second of the water signs . And to help me explore these things , faye has come along for the journey again . Welcome back , faye .

And also , you know , as you just mentioned , you're on a call with a mentor and you just said the word grief , and that was enough to bring forward tears and bring forward emotion and bring forward deep feels .

And so I wanted to make sure that we start on the right tone and really call in those guides that we know as PsychoPomp , which is the guide of souls .

So call in those guides such as Hermes and such as Hikate , the ones we know in Greek anyway , and of course there's many more and but their role is to take us , take us to the other world and then bring us back .

And in this case , the role is to take us not to the other world but to the underworld and to bring us back , in which case it's a sort of like a , it's like a preparation for you , as the listener to , to know that that is where we're intentionally going today , in which case the images that we are exploring and the themes that we're exploring are going to

be , I guess some of them will be quite provocative and will bring forward but these images are in some ways designed to bring forward the deeper feeling states and the deeper , the deeper emotions and the more uncomfortable places .

The stories are designed for that and that's a beautiful thing , because in some way , you know , scorpio in a way is the at the very heart of it is to help us to go to those places , to experience those , those feelings , to not let them necessarily possess us or overcome us , but to get in contact with those parts .

So in a sense , we're looking to find that really sweet space . As the listener , you're trying to find that sweet space where you're coming up towards the edge but you're not going over the edge . You know you're sort of not getting too far behind the edge either , because then you might just get stuck in Libra and not enter Scorpio at all .

You know there's a few things that can happen with Scorpio , right ? Because I think our , our culture is not really well designed for grieving , for loss , for jealousy , for pain , for the words that come up is fuck you energy . You know this kind of thing Like it's just not designed very well for that .

So we kind of get a bit left in the lurch , culturally , story wise , you know , like themes it's just , it's hard to find things to help us to go in . We've got lots of things that can help us go out , especially these days . Right , we can get scrolling and we can go to all these different places .

We can go to all these different distractions and we can find loads of ways out . Or , you know , that may be to keep us in the Libra sphere of the air and not go into the water . Or we can find ways to jump over the underworld experience and jump straight into Sagittarius and it's like , well , you know , everything happens for a reason . It is what it is .

These are the sorts of things that it's like , you know , using Sagittarian meaning , making before you've even had the experience .

Before you've even gone there , right , and so you know it's that's what we kind of and I'm talking generally , I know , but yeah , generally we're given ways to either stay in the air or to jump to the fire , but not so many ways to actually linger in the water and to actually to actually go towards the edge and to actually spend time .

It's almost like , culturally , we're like , well , why bother , why do that ? Why would you do that ? You know you don't want to get stuck there , as though that's the only thing that can happen in the underworld is stuckness , and of course it's a risk . Yeah , stuckness is the risk of the underworld .

It is fixed energy , the scorpion sphere , but you know , there's there's value , there's inherent value there . Hence , some of the images that we'll get into is like the phoenix , and gold is often a part of a part of the imagery . So , yeah , what do you think , faye , if we go as we go , what ? How can you ?

Is there any way that you can help us with our preparation ? What do we need ? in preparation to go into the forest .

But if we're able to hold that space of the underworld , whether it's grief or jealousy or rage or envy or whatever , that that in itself is this transformative power , which is what Scorpio is about .

You know it's just oftentimes I feel that , as , like you said , as a culture , society we're not , it's not in encouraged to spend time in that that sort of liminal , transformational space . You know , if we think about like no , we respect the elderly now , or death or decay , you know it's , it's something that we're always trying .

Our society is trying to outrun or outbeat or anything , to not face that , those themes .

So you know what I would say to the listeners that there is a power and a potency in , in these descents , in these underworld journeys , and I can speak from my personal experience . Those underworld journeys have been the most transformative , powerful initiators in my life ever and I wouldn't trade them for anything . Wow , I didn't say that at the time .

Pluto is the . It's the ruler the new , the modern ruler of Scorpio , and Mars is the ancient ruler , and Pluto means wealth , and so that is that is why we mine , you know , these depths , that is why we go down there . It's literally also in the , in the earth , where the gold is .

If only we could think a little bit more figuratively , in a little less literally . We may , we may get more inner gold that comes bursting out into the world and less and less sort of bling , that is , that is literally mined at the cost of the earth . So you know interesting images that are all within this .

I wanted to , as always , you know , enter through the consensus reality . What is Scorpio about ? And so a few things again . I'm drawing from the Faculty of Astrological Studies , which I highly recommend as a as as somewhere to look into if people out there are wanting to study more astrology .

They have a really good faculty and you know this is where Melanie Reinhart teaches from and Brian Clark is often at their summer school and things like this , you know . So a very highly reputable spot . Yeah from their foundation course . They just have like the very basics of the science and I'm drawing from some of the information they have there .

You know the key phrase for Scorpio is a desire , so desire is the first word .

So , desire is a multifaceted you know . This is . I think what's probably going to happen with this sign is like each word that comes up is going to be a big word , it's going to be a felt word , it's not just going to be . So there's that word and move on . So the polarity in that there's positive and negative polarity in astrology .

So the positive is the fire and the air signs , which generally are going up , and the negative is the water and the air signs , of which generally are going down . We can take away any , if you can take away any , any judgment process around that , or whether it's good or bad , because it sounds good , it sounds like positive , good , negative , bad .

Of course that's what we have associated with those words . But think instead positive up , negative , down , so negative . It's a water sign , as Faye has mentioned already . It's a fixed sign . So it goes cardinal , fixed , mutable . That's the order of things Cardinal starts , fixed , maintains , mutable shares . This is a fixed sign , so it's in the maintenance world .

And then Mars and Pluto are the rulers . The traditional ruler was always Mars , which is interesting , I always think . First learning astrology . Firstly , I never knew that Scorpio was a water sign . Yeah , right .

Quite an easy one to see , given that Pluto is Hades and Hades , or Pluto , is the God of the underworld , and in the body , scorpio rules the productive organs . So , again , everywhere that we're going to look in , scorpio is going to be like , oh wow , that you know , we're going to be feeling these areas Because it is a bit like Hades .

He wears the helmet of invisibility and much of this will be kind of like the invisible places , the places that we tend to cover up and hide from the world and experience in our own very deeply personal way but not necessarily share with the world , you know . So we're going to be talking about taboo , we're going to be going into all these kinds of things .

So , yeah , the symbol is the scorpion , obviously , and I really enjoyed this at the beginning of their write up , that it's these three things that they say . Firstly , it's thought to have been the first anthropod to leave the ocean and adapt to land . It can withstand weeks of freezing temperatures and some species can also survive being buried for months .

And when it's further away , it becomes an ice ball and it literally thaws out as it comes closer to the sun , and then it'll freeze again as it goes further away from the sun . So it's kind of the perfect . Pluto becomes the perfect image for Pluto , so like underworld scorpion processes .

Resourceful as the first word , so it's like plugged into the resources . I guess it sort of picks up the tourist Scorpio access in a way as well and you know the resources that we sort of need . That's why I asked you know what do we need to prepare if we're going into the dark forest together ? We can't just go in there . You know what do we need ?

Intuitive , maybe the most intuitive of the signs , I don't know .

So it can just be like this deep knowing and that that that form of knowing , which is a watery kind of knowing , can be difficult actually to work with , because you know but you don't actually know the facts of the situation , but you know the emotion of the situation , and then you know the feeling and you know that you're right about something , but you don't

know exactly what that is , you know . So that can be something that , because of obviously , that can lead into paranoia and to you know , to this fear , because you can't quite get the facts of the matter . But you know , something has happened here , right .

Insightful obviously goes kind of along with intuition , but insightful , yeah , interesting because we talked about Therusia is the blind seer and having to sort of like not have the sight of the external world to have the sight of the internal world and , of course , oracles and seers are very much in this framework as well and determined that fixed energy that fixed

energy and ruled by Mars . And so it is like a detective I always think of the sleuth or the detective , and that's why they make really good detectives or psychotherapists or channels or mediums .

So in the passions , these passions range from love , money and politics through to sport , sex and comedy , and just kind of constantly pushing against the boundaries of what's comfortable and trying to get into the uncomfortable places , even if that's like , you know , the scorpion and the dinner party .

It's going to be like everybody's talking about the weather and things and very nice , pleasant things , and just sort of drop this , drop this little seed or something . I'm like . What do you guys think about this , though , you know ?

Like I don't want these niceties , like let's like I don't have time for how are you , how is your weekend ? I want to know that . You were just like on the floor in tears as your husband left you , or whatever .

Juicy , positive expressions . As I said , passionate , private is a positive expression . Feel that Sensitive , yeah , and powerful . It's quite a combination passionate , private , sensitive , powerful . It's quite a combination of energies .

So we can feel that the sensitivity I'd like to spend a little bit of time on there which can get overlooked within the power , you know , sensitive as powerful , which is obviously there's power and sensitivity , but often that can get overlooked .

Yeah , that intensity that goes along with that combination , because the Scorpion is feeling it all , you know . I think that's maybe why it's such a detective , because it is feeling the whole thing that's happening and it's like if nobody's going to talk about it .

That's when that sensitivity can become hardened , because it becomes lost in its own world and nobody's feeding it back . You know , nobody's .

I mean it's just the naming of the thing in the space is so relaxing to the Scorpion parts of ourselves , Even if it's horrific , terrifying stuff but if it's named , it's like well , good , you know , now that it's there , I don't have to sort of the Scorpion in the room doesn't have to take it all in .

And by the Scorpion in the room , of course I'm talking internally . We all have this part in us , and externally there's those more geared towards this and less geared towards this . But you know , nobody escapes the Scorpion experience . It's somewhere in all of our charts .

We all have something going on there and negative expressions Jealousy , secretive , secretive , unforgiving and overbearing yeah , unforgiving , I think can be one of the fixed components here . That we're , yeah , we get it to that stuckness . We just can't move on .

That is again the thing that Scorpio would love to talk about and most people really not like to talk about , particularly ones on jealousy , is something we try to hide and because it's very uncoming not very sexy to be jealous , but it is one of those core human experiences that and that is kind of where Scorpio takes us into the core human experiences that are

, yeah , we don't like to feel and we wouldn't want to be seen as that , we wouldn't want to have that as our part of our personality . But then if it is there , what are we to do ? That is how it is , okay . So I want to move from that layer and into the story of Medusa .

There were many stories I could have gone to today and one of the things I was looking at were all the different journeys to the underworld , all the different heroes and figures and characters that went there , all of the goddesses of the underworld or the people associated with the underworld gods and goddesses .

I suppose Many , many , many of those that we can get into . But we'll have to save that for those of you who join the course , which is going to happen sometime , someday , maybe at the end of this year of exploration . It will become , it will evolve into something else .

So , yeah , I want to say that I wanted to go to many places , but I'm reminded that Scorpio would like us to go to one place and to linger there and spend time there , rather than it's the queen conks to Gemini , right , like it's not Gemini , in that Gemini wants us to go to , like gather a little bit of information from lots of different places , and

Scorpio is like , no , let's just go like . Even if it's just like one image , I want to spend time in that image , one part of the story , right ? So what I've decided to go with is Medusa , who is just a fascinating figure .

There's I believe there was a book written about her more recently , maybe like Madeline Miller maybe it was Madeline Miller or someone like that that sort of brought forward and worked with some of this imagery . I have not read that book , but , going back to the source material , you know like her story is fascinating .

Most people have heard of Medusa and probably just know the basics of her story that she's got many snakes coming out of her head and if you look directly at her you turn to stone , both of which are very immediately Scorpio images . Actually , yeah , didn't you just find a snake , faye ?

You know that first fear as it slithered under my feet and then this sort of calming and then having to to stay with it and watch it and how it react to my presence . So you know , and I resonate a lot with snake imagery and you know the Scorpio , the transformation , the shedding of the skin .

I find it one of the most soothing images for underworld transformations . A friend told me this and I'm pretty sure it's true but I can't source it . But they said that when the snake is going to shed in its skin it goes temporarily blind and it's super agitated and it can't see and it thinks it's going to die .

And anybody who's gone through an underworld journey probably can relate to that feeling , that sense you don't know where you are , everything's tight and constricted . You feel like you might actually die until that release finally comes . So I thank the snake for that medicine today .

And usually in that moment I think of Pluto Trance and said , at least for a lot of clients and myself , it's that moment actually of I think I'm gonna die , that that's the moment of transformation , or the the , the ascent maybe , yeah .

Psyche is butterfly , so there is transformational process going on in the background . But of course it can become very literalized , like I'm actually going and die here and the the feeling can be very , very . It can feel very real , even though it's very figurative , it can feel very real well , so let's enter through Medusa .

So it's actually , she's born in a family full of monsters . She's one of three sisters called the Gorgons , and there's really monsters everywhere here . So she's , she's actually the sister of two other Gorgons , and she actually has two other sisters .

One's the echidna half nymph , half snake whoa yeah whoa , yeah , ladon , ladon is a dragon and ladon is actually the dragon that guards the golden apples for the hasperides . He's the he's the guard of the golden apples . He gets slain by Hercules when he needs to go on his task to get the golden apples .

But , in fact , my understanding of this figure , he's a , he's a protector of those golden apples and he gets slain by the hero , which may be one of those things that will show up a little bit in this , in this theming , because yeah heroes are around . Heroes are slaying monsters , you know and . Scorpio is the realm of the monster .

So we get , we get that kind of that interesting dichotomy , that interesting thing happening because the heroic , which would be more the leo process , which is a square to Scorpio , is trying to slay , trying to vanquish , trying to move out of and trying to it sometimes destroy these monsters that are there through the scorpion process .

So you can hear that she's got all these family members that are already monsters , but she's born as a maiden , she's born human , a beautiful human actually . So she comes up in a family of monsters , born as a beautiful human . It's quite a nice image to see we have right at the beginning here before we even get into the material right like . What is that ?

Where does that image take you fey ?

She is the goddess that Athens obviously is named after . She has , she's about justice and she's about , she's about rationality , actually born out of Zeus's head , right , she's . She's the , she's rational justice . She is a warrior goddess , very valuable to have on your side .

She loves heroes , she loves everything in the more masculine world and that's what she's the patron of .

But , interestingly enough , in the founding of Athens and I discovered this when in Athens there was this almost like I don't know what , I don't know what , if I want to call it a competition , but it was between Athena and Poseidon Poseidon , god of the ocean , who's Neptune , astrologically , to see who would be the patron god or the patron deity of the capital

right , and they both bring gifts . I find this story very funny . Actually , I've only just heard it recently . I find it intriguing . Athena brings the um olive branch right , so she brings olives , which , if you've been in Greece , you'll know how olives and olive oil . You know this whole culture around olives .

She brings olives and Poseidon brings salt water like a fountain of salt water , and the Greeks are like I want salt water no , we got there's salt water everywhere around us . We don't want salt water coming up from the middle of the city , so they choose Athena , which is an interesting thing . Right , poseidon brings what he knows . Right , he's like salt water .

Who wouldn't want that ?

So we got the beautiful maiden from a family of monsters that enters Athena's temple and wants to give votive and offerings to um , to Athena .

So essentially , she wants to give offerings to the , to the rational and to the sensible and to the logical , and and she's , she's bringing herself to that temple and in that temple Poseidon comes in and seduces her and rapes her in the temple of Athena .

And remember , athena is a virgin or goddess , and so this violation is this extreme moment where , so we can imagine , you know , if we think , obviously , if we come out of the literal of that and we think mythologically or we think figuratively , this maiden born from monsters , so at this point , is human , fully human , sort of trying to get away from all of

those monsters , praise to Athena , the rational , and gets overcome by the irrational force of the oceanic Poseidon . And to come back to . You know who she , who she was before . This is that she was .

You know that the the poets would say she was born with the most beautiful face and over praise , the glory of her hair , the most wondrous of all her charms was her hair . And then so she goes in there and Athena is so enraged by what's happened here that she transforms Medusa into this terrifying face .

So this most beautiful face and the most beautiful hair right now transforms into the most terrifying face , gives her coiling serpents in her hair and she becomes really one of the most terrifying of all of the monsters , so terrifying that if you even to look upon her face , you would turn to stone . So this becomes the curse that Medusa ends up with .

She's got a terrifying face . She's got snakes coming out , snakes instead of her head , her beautiful hair transformed into his coiled snakes and if you were to look directly at her , you would turn to stone from this moment . So that is the origin story of Medusa Can .

You know , if she needs that armor because she's been violated and you know has has the face that will , or the look that will turn people to stone , or the hair of snakes , you know , to keep off . Anybody who threatens her threatens her again . But I'm confused of why she ends up with that fate .

We're in the deep unfairness of this . Yeah .

Nothing like that yeah and this is us humans right . This is us humans . It's like what ? It's a trail that you know that I can't believe that person did this to me . I can't believe this . And then we do have those snakes we do out if the hair , in this sense , is our mind and our thoughts and our processes .

Now we've got coiled serpents up there , right ? So our mind is , is now fixed and fixated on this thing and that's all there is . Now we can start to get consumed by this , this one that violated , and you know we get , we get this . Yeah , this is the lived experience , right .

This is why we love the Greeks , because they give us the uncut , unedited lived experience . They don't try to sugarcoat it for us , they don't prep us for a happy ending and then it's all fine . It's like , no , it's not fine , it's we've come from we've come from beauty into complete chaos and despair and disorder in the myth . That's what we've come into .

You know , it's the Persephone moment , right , she's , she's picking that narcissist flower and she gets taken by Hades and raped and taken to the underworld . They don't , they can't , they don't sugarcoat that . They have no reason to sugarcoat that , that have no reason to prep us for the happy thing .

It's like no , this , this , we want to talk about this moment . We don't want to get into all , you know , we don't want to jump out of it , we want to get into it . And so she's , you know , in this form . And then enters the great hero , perseus , which is a generation back . I think Perseus is like a generation back from Hercules or Hercules , you know .

So we get this kind of earlier hero who's tasked by a certain king . He's sent on the great hero's quest , right , and ? And the quest is fetch me , the head of Medusa . That's the . That's the task that he set . So it's a great hero's quest . It's obviously whoever's given him the task thinks he's not going to be able to survive that .

Like any good hero's quest , it's like the impossible task . You know he's definitely going to turn himself to stone in the process , but but actually he gets the help of Athena , right . So Athena's still anti Medusa here and Hermes , and even I believe , like one of the stories that I read , is that he also gets the help of Hades himself .

So he's given by Hermes , he's given the wing sandals so you can get in and get out , and by and by Hades , he's given the helmet of invisibility . He's going to need that along the way on his journey , but Athena gives him the shield that works as the , as the reflection right , and that's the main thing that he has .

So when he enters this cave of this temple , where , where , where Medusa is I know I think she's relocated at this point in a cave and when , when he enters , he knows he can't look directly at , so he uses the reflection to look at Medusa and Medusa , at the time , is actually sleeping and he comes and he takes off her head with the sickle .

So , interesting , heroic moment . We can't look direct . We know that if we look direct at this thing we're going to freeze , you know . So we've got . I mean , this is , this is the language of trauma . No , in the heroic impulse is like what are we going to do ? Something has to happen .

If we take it out of literal and this kind of like beheading in the in that sense and take it more into like I need to do something about these snakes , something about this frozenness , I need to do something about it . If I look directly at it , I'm back in it . So I have to look through this reflection , I have to look .

You know , this is often the role of the therapist or the role of the guide , or the role of the dear friend or the role of the elder or whoever it might be that is able to reflect with us , so we can sort of sidle up next to painful experiences and not go so direct like as a hero .

He would have just gone direct if he didn't get this , if he didn't get this help , and that would have left him frozen .

He would have thought that he was bigger and better and more advanced than this traumatic thing that he's trying to come in contact with now , when the head comes off and , by the way , this is certainly not the end of Medusa's story , but when the head comes off , born out of her body , so through where the head was , basically almost like born out of the

decapitation or born out of the end of the mind or end of the head .

Two figures one is Pegasus , who becomes Percy's , is sort of chariot in a way . The other is Chrysor of the golden sword , and these two are therefore the children of Medusa and Poseidon and then become the ancestors of pretty much all the monsters of Greek mythology that you can , that you've heard of or can imagine .

And I'll just go through some of the monsters that become so . Basically , chrysor , pegasus becomes Perseus's flying horse , and then Chrysor gets together with an oceanid and they have these different children . One is actually a kidna , who I said was the sister .

That must often , must obviously not be , but that's somehow how Greek mythology works , where you've got a sister and then the granddaughter and who knows ? or the daughter and granddaughter , whatever , they come up in multiple different ways .

Now a kidna gets together with the typhon , and the descendants of a kidna and typhon are the hydra cerebrus , the three-headed dog that guards the underworld . Chimera , who's the multiple people like ? Chimera has the , the head of a lion , the body of a goat and the tail of a serpent , these hybrid creatures you know .

And then the next generation on come , the Namiyan lion , who is the lion of Leo , that that Heracles has to wrestle , and the , the Sphinx , the Theven Sphinx . That's part of the Oedipus story and other stories , where the Sphinx asks you riddle , and if you don't , if you can't answer it , you get turned to stone , or you you die , or whatever .

Whatever it might be right . So all of these monsters are the descendants of Medusa and Poseidon . There's so much in that that I can barely Right , and so you know what are we , what are psychologically , what are these monsters ? What is Poseidon ?

Poseidon is this Neptune , king of the Ocean , and so Really the , the one that takes us into these altered states , these other frames , and and gets us in touch with the sort of monstrous element of reality when we go into really kind of strange altered experiences and we can have no thought , forms , distortions , illusions , all of this kind of stuff on one side .

And Yet , if we're able to meet all of those distortions and work through it , work through that , we , we can actually arrive at the beautiful side of Neptune , which is bliss , which is ecstatic states , which is the feeling of unity , unity , consciousness , oneness , everything that that you know , many , many spiritual traditions are sort of born out of .

So , like all of these figures , they have their two-sidedness .

But the side that Scorpio , the Scorpio wants to Explore , rather than the bliss and the all , the joy and the top of the mountain experiences , is the deep , dark , often twisted , often very confusing Side of Poseidon that comes in because it's a water sign , so it's all born of the ocean in Through Scorpion experience .

It also comes in through the Kant , serian experience . It also , obviously , being Poseidon , comes in through the Pisces experience . So all of the water signs have this experience of being being opened up to the , the confusing realms of sensation and emotion and water and and feeling states that are the .

They're intense and full-on and hard to deal with , hard to manage . We try , let Medusa to pray to the temple of Athena , to the rational , to the sensible , to the logical . Maybe that will help me get away from the crazed and madness of of Poseidon . But actually , by entering that temple , that's where Poseidon enters , right .

So she's actually going towards the rational when the irrational comes up . So if we take it completely out of literal and just make it like that , it's like we're praying at the temple of Athena . Please , athena , make everything rational , logical and make it all make sense .

And In that prayer comes the opposite of that , right comes the completely irrational process . So part of what we're working with here psychologically is like as Brian said to me in my preparation session with him . He said quite simply the more you repress , the more monstrous it gets Right .

So the more you repress those emotions and the more you repress those things that you really , really don't want to feel , so the more that you're praying at the logical , rational temple , the more monstrous those things become because they're exiled and banished and you can't feel them .

But if we are like Percy is able to go and and re-experience that by using the mirror , you know , and reflecting and coming back , then we can actually cut off the head mythologically and come back to the body Right , like we cut off that mental process and we come back to body and sensation and we , and in that healing there's birth again .

You know , there's two beautiful beings that are birthed , one is the Pegasus and one is Christ or who's who has the golden sort . So there's something really , you know , potent and beautiful about that . So beauty is actually born , these twins , these hybrids , these creatures that are born , and we do get that golden experience .

Now , interestingly , this is not where the story ends . As I said , there's some really good images that come off of this . So , her two Gorgon sisters they're awoken by the noise of her , of this Perseus moment , of the cutting off overhead and everything , and they , they do their best to avenge the death of their sister .

But they couldn't see Perseus or catch him , because he was wearing Hades cap of invisibility and he was wearing Hermes's shoes , hermes's wings shoes , so he was able to get out of there .

So , given that they couldn't do anything about it , the sisters , they begin to wail and they begin to lament , and and they make this sound that is so intense and so powerful that Athena actually takes that sound and Creates music with it , because it's that beautiful to her . And and it's the mournful music of what's called the double pipe or the owls .

A , a u , los Aolos is an instrument that the Greeks had fashioned that takes us back to that wailing and that lamentation , and that that painful process like invites us back in To that space .

You know , and it's by that Alchemical process that that new life begins , which you know is we mentioned the phoenix you have to turn to ashes before you rise again type energy . And oftentimes you know my personal life , clients , life with little transits You're brought to your knees , yeah if not all the way down before you rise again .

And then when Perseus gets back , you know , to the king and everything , he actually uses the head of Medusa to turn these vicious people that are sort of attacking into stone . So he kind of uses Medusa's head as a weapon and then gives it to Athena as a gift and Athena puts it on a shield .

So she actually then becomes integrated with Medusa energy and uses Medusa's head as her shield , as Part of her world .

Now she's integrated Medusa , which we could say , you know , athena is attempting there to integrate the irrational process back into herself , but you know as back into some of her own , her own pieces or her own , you know , like taking it in and but using it as a shield .

So now there's this terrifying face on it and Athena's shield that will turn people to stone . I mean , we haven't even spent time really talking about the turning to stone process , right , which is in itself the freeze response and such a big part of the . You know what it's like to go through something really deep and traumatic and we do get turned to stone .

And part of us does get stuck In that fixed waterway right Like the emotions are stuck , Can't move , can't get out of it can't get into , it , can't get anywhere . So why we need that extra reflection ?

Or we may need the Iambi process of a little bit of dark , twisted Scorpio humor to start moving us , something that helps us to , you know , begin to move through these things . So then , the remaining blood of Medusa , she gives to Asclepius , healing .

So , from this side , this will kill you . From this side , you need it to come back to life . And then the final . There's two drops of blood left from Medusa , and Athena gave it to her adopted son , erectonius , and it says that one of the drops was a cure all , a cure all , panacea , a cure all , and the other one is a deadly poison .

So again and again , and again , we're going to get this in it right , like one drop is just like health and amazingness , and the other side is this right .

And the final thing is like a lock of Medusa's hair was given to Hercules , or Heracles , who gave it to a maiden , cepheus's daughter , basically and it was used to protect her hometown and although it didn't have the exact power of the gaze , it could still cast terror into any enemy , unfortunately enough to even accidentally behold it .

So , this lock of her , hair could just get you into this terror state . Wow , so you know how many different elements of Greek mythology this figure of Medusa ends up filtering into and kind of like integrating into that whole sort of section of mythology .

We've presented all that we can today , but it's one of those things . I know that a year from now I'm going to have like 15 more tales that Medusa will be part of . That I couldn't see today . But yeah , so that takes us in .

And now I guess , as we come out , just getting the sense of what it may have brought up for people , these stories and how that may have taken people to some places , and just inviting in the , as Hermes does , he takes us in and then he takes us back out , and so just inviting those that some of these stories may have taken you to certain places and

reminded you of certain things , and just giving a nice gentle yes to that , as we are in Scorpio season , we're also in Eclipse season , so all sorts of things coming up .

There's all sorts of Scorpio process happening in the world external as well , and ultimately what we're trying to do is look at the medicine that is there and also acknowledge that the medicine is right next to the poison . You know the medicine is right there , next to the poison . In order to get the medicine , you actually have to at least see the poison .

You have to know that it's there and then you have to choose the medicine .