Goddess bless Rihanna and her constant referencing of iconic feminine symbology, like everywhere. The name Medusa means ‘sovereign female wisdom’ btw. That turning to stone scenario? Patriarchal propaganda. Ditto the story of her demise.
Like so many stories of women and goddesses, it was altered to create both a villainess and a victim.
Barbara Walker in The Woman’s Encylopedia Of Myths and Secrets says the story of Perseus beheading Medusa (originally a Libyan Snake Goddess) was to “account for the appearance of Medusa’s face on the shield of Athene…A female face surrounded by serpent hair was an ancient widely recognized symbol of divine female wisdom, and equally of the ‘wise blood’ that supposedly gave women their divine powers.”
Snakes pertain to Mercury – think of his wand and the two snakes entwined around it. In pre-patriarchal times, people saw women’s monthly Moon-inspired period blood as magic, the source of intuition and strength.
The book Shaman Pathways – Trees of the Goddess: A New Way of Working With the Ogham mentions it thus: “Samhain is the Crone Time; the old one, long past her menstrual years. Now the wise blood no longer needs to flow each month but is turned into the poetry of lore. The red berries of the guelder rose give the crone the ink she needs to scribe her poetry, the ancestral wisdom.
The goddess cycle is maiden, mother and crone. Inspiration from the Upperworld rises within the maiden, feeding off the lorestories. The wise blood begins to flow at puberty so she may learn the wisdom of the Middleworld. When the wise blood ceases to flow, she may become a wise crone, exploring deeply with the ancestors and bringing more of the lore to light.”
Wow.
Boo
Iloved ABC good stuff!
I think there is more to Ri Ri than meets the eye….you don’t just go getting Isis tattoos and posing as Medusa on a whim…
I haven’t heard of this before. I have Pluto 13 Libra in critical degree cardinal.
Wow that makes so much sense.
Also, it’s a GREAT photo!
ABC News Australia has reported:
American rapper Chris Brown has been arrested and charged with assault after a fight in Washington.
Police spokesman Anthony Clay said Brown was arrested “around 4:25 (Sunday) morning (local time) in front of the W Hotel,” a chic establishment near the White House.
Brown, along with a male companion, got into an altercation with a third man and the incident became violent, according to police.
Brown, 24, and his companion “were arrested and charged with a felony assault”, Mr Clay said.
“A victim was taken to the hospital and treated for his injuries,” he said, adding that the beating victim “had injuries to his face”.
Reports suggest Brown’s bodyguard was also charged over the incident.
Brown is the ex-boyfriend of pop singer Rihanna, with whom he has had a tempestuous on-again, off-again relationship.
He was arrested in February 2009 after getting involved in a physical confrontation with Rihanna that left her with a bruised and battered face.
He was required, after pleading guilty in court to the assault, to take part in domestic violence counselling and sentenced to five years’ probation and community service.
Under bust tattoo will not age well. Guess pop currency can pay for a plastic surgeon. They don’t make pop stars like they used to.
yeah, see now, i would have chosen Patti Smith. Legend. Goddess.
YES!! absolutely!!!! Now we’re talking !! 😀
Any ‘one’ can channel the goddess or should I say any woman.
It’s a free channel.
No special skills required other than knowing how to surrender.
I seek her out in everywoman. She is always there somewhere.
And as a lover she loves me like no other.
I am a priest of the goddess.
Mystic, you are such a wide clear channel of her.
Love you for that x
Beautiful David.. This humble channel is sure the Great One/s approves. 😉
Mystic, you rock the wise blood of Medusa better than any overrated pop star. Xxx
Rhianna’s no ‘coloured girl going do da do da do do’, now is she?
Personally she irks me, like Miley..too much money too soon and yes yes great body, close to being wildly overexposed, but her Isis tattoo is magnificent and in a superb place to do it justice. What if it rubs off onto a baby if she breast-feeds, bubba comes face to face with Isis.
Her starting time for her performances leave a lot to be desired from a professional aspect. She is not an artist i listen to or Gaga or Miley or Taylor……prefer Bonnie, Stevie, Joni, Billie, Nina (as a comparison).
Been doing much Mozart lately 🙂 for brain help.
HELP!
How did you trace your ancestry back that far?
That’s a nice story of heritage.
I was thinking to get my child’s DNA done so we can trace it.
Quite a genetic medley the kids.
Doubt there’ll be any Uncle Ptolomey – maybe Uncle Kublai Kahn, or Auntie Marie Antoinette.
Has anyone traced Gautama’s line? Didn’t be have kids pre-enlightenment?
Andy, would assume he had children, probably hidden from scriptures as Christ’s offspring were.
My family passed down a genealogy book to me, (lots of record keeper types in my family since the 300BC) with the bloodlines and then confirmed with DNA.
You’d be surprised to who you are related, it’s absolutely quite fascinating.
Thank you! I will look into this at some point!
I am not much of a sleuth, I wish those whodoyouthinkyouare people would call up!
Medusa is my all time favorite and most powerful goddess/gorgon.
That’s how I found your blog searching for illustrations, paintings of Medusa for a tattoo concept.
I researched my family roots on my mother’s side all the way back to Alexander the Great and the Medusa symbol on the macedonian shields. My great-uncle is Ptolemy (explains my interest in astrology and the occult, it literally flows through my blood) No wonder as a young child I was not repulsed my Medusa but felt she was misunderstood.
I’ve written and performed and even painted many images of Medusa throughout my life. Powerful energy.
Although, I am not a fan of Rihanna’s music because it’s mainstream r&b pop, I like my music more underground and experimental, artsy and just plain weird, I do like her photo shoot.
She’s been through abuse by Chris Brown’s hands, maybe tapping into a powerful femme fatale goddess will help protect her energy from these types of narcissist baby-men and their abusive tantrums.
Soz that was for you below!
Wow……yes, how do you do that?
Have a Sicilian father who was green eyed and dirty blonde.
That side have a family crest is all i know and they wanted a DNA test to prove he had a child. Never bothered, too far away, too complicated, too long ago.
Research genealogy/family tree?
My family has a genealogy book that has been in the family for generations, plus with ancestry.com you can find other ancestors through record searches, plus libraries in England.
Plus, DNA .
I’ve been into this as a child since, it is tradition to teach the children at an early age through folk stories and fairy tales of King Arthur and melusine.
My great grand uncle King Richard the Lionheart liked to tell tall tales of being a direct descendent of melusine (freshwater French mermaid) as the son of the Devil, herself.
It’s all steeped with freemasonry and secret symbolgology.
.
Multiple times this year I have dreamed of snakes. I don’t have a phobia of snakes in waking life, but I do have an aversion to them as they can be dangerous. In the dreams I am never afraid of the snakes, even if other people are screaming their heads off. In the most recent dream, a snake was striking at my face and before it did, I caught it with my hand right behind the head.
This makes a lot of sense to me. Since that dream, I have had an aura reading in which I was told that I had the most balanced aura/chakra system the psychic had seen all day (this was at a paranormal exposition). I laughed with surprise and relief – I’ve been working on balancing my chakras for so long! He also said I had strong healing energy, and when I started to ask what type of healing I would be best at (because I’ve sense that calling before), he said, “Reiki,” before I could even finish. That night when I started reading a little about it, I read and learned about Kundalini!
I’ve very excited about tapping into this energy and wisdom; trying to figure out how I should use it to help others.
I think maybe I’m afraid of being dismissed, but so far my close friends have been very open and responsive to my semi-spiritual astrological advice, gifts of crystals and incense, dream interpretation, etc. So I guess I have a good start so far.
Oh no. I’ve blown my cover! 😀
Haha, I have no idea. I’m a pretty new user. Subscribed in August.
The most detailed book on the Kundalini is called:
The Serpent Power-the secrets of tantric and shaktic yoga by Arthur Avalon aka
Sir John Woodrooffe, if you can lay your hands on it. Its a sanscrit translation that’s ALMOST understandable.
I have this fantastic book!!! I worked in abook sop in the early 90’s and have treasured it ever since!!
I still want to kiss her
I’m always trying to understand who is winning on this planet, man camp or woman camp. Been trying to figure this out since my parents got divorced nearly 15 years ago. I’ve been fully convinced of the patriarchy, but then equally disappointed with feminine energy. Just tonight my mom reinjured my arm by throwing a tantrum over my “entitlement” to $38 of groceries. I don’t know how to understand this. Its a shame that men in her life have left her wanting so bad that this amount of money matters, but then again she has refused to embrace her power to keep those men interested, and choose to focus on working like a man instead. Plus its not about the money as much as her need to have control over me. I guess I should be grateful to her, since I’m not even welcome to live with my dad, but part of me is happy that he doesn’t have to live with her. Go figure.
yikes. reinjured your arm? is that bad? are you ok?
your clarity there seems like a good start. strikes me that where you say ‘i don’t know how to understand this’ you’ve almost given yourself a place to start understanding in the subsequent sentences.
maybe don’t see it as a winning / losing thing but a more closely-infused power dynamic .. others here have way more developed perspectives on this than i do, maybe someone else has something to add too. but yes it’s strange, i see a lot of mothers somehow lock themselves into a sense of disempowerment that seems impossible for them to see their way out of. This is not to say that they are deficient in any way or whatever – but it strikes me that as a gender, women and girls are – or at least were, as maybe this is changing in some parts of the world – generally not exposed to the same kinds of role modelling and social conditioning as boys/men. So, submitting to difficulty instead of smashing the crap out of it, metaphorically speaking. Even if that submission means self-effacement and all the anger at everything that that eventually generates. I could be tired and rambling, but that’s sort of how I see it.
Hope your home life gets a bit smoother dude(ette). x
also by ‘a lot of mothers’ i just mean aunts, friends, friends of friends, situations i read about, etc.
lastly – it’s always different from the inside so of course your mum has her own story that may be impossible to see from the outside. x
sounds like nobody winning in that dynamic orion, hope you find your way into another one xx
SPIDERS! They keep showing up. In my hair, in my car.
symbol for working hard, meticulousness 😉
Big huntsman spiders!
I’m generally meticulous and hard working – so maybe I need to show more patience, another trait I have heard they are a symbol for. I definitely do not have much patience. In fact, I could reasonably say I feel like I’m going crazy with impatience!
I have been thinking a lot about Medusa lately and how she is just another symbol of misunderstood feminism. Perhaps the reclaiming of such a powerful figure in popular culture is another sign that the divine feminine energy that is so needed is coming. Coming out and cannot be stopped.
Also the cutting off of her head and claiming of that energy by a man symbolizes exactly what has happened to women. The energy removed from the living body. Time to take it back.
yes 🙂
Ps it’s not my blog! Just a pic from I Fucking Love Science 🙂
Me too
Some styles just last forever
“There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.” Audre Lorde
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audre_Lorde
According to some conspiracy theorists, all these celebs doing Goddess themes in their music, movies, modelling, etc are nothing but Satanic, Illuminati puppets being used for mass scale Satanic style rituals which power their misogynistic agenda. I’d rather not believe this, but I get a bit of insider info that makes me wonder sometimes…
None of the celebs doing the Goddess themes strike me as particularly enlightened or spiritually inclined when I see them interviewed. I’m more inclined to believe doing the Goddess thing is more of a trendy fad than anything of depth. (A lot of mainstream trends get ripped from alt scene culture, and there was a phase of fetish performers and models doing Goddess themes a few years ago, next thing you see half the mainstream musicians and performers are doing it.)
I agree. Rihanna may just have a cool clued-in stylist. Beyonce is another one who’s used archaic occult symbolism to push her image but whether or not she’s actually Illuminati is another thing… Not buying either of their shtick.
Sometimes we doubt the choice of messenger but the message is on point? Useful vessels? Hard not to be clear eyed re: icons of pop culture…
It’s a fabulous image to be sure. Shame about the vessel and what she has represented thus far ie. a punching bag.
Agree. It’s just a fad. Can’t stand Rihanna’s music. And didn’t she go back to that boyfriend of hers who beat her up?
What’s so Goddess-ey about that?!
All the pop stars have stylists who jump on the bandwagon.
Yeah exactly!
Not that I know anything about her personal life and choices or your reasons for questioning them but forgiveness is for sure a goddess trait.
I couldn’t forgive anyone who bashed my face!!
Call me unforgiving. Don’t care.
I’m not calling you anything scorpbot I’m saying forgiveness is for sure a goddess trait.
Yes it is, but some things are unforgivable.
I’m in a cranky bitched up mood Saturn 1° off my Sun and approaching solar eclipse in my sign with a cluster of planets in my 10th. Didn’t feel the last eclipse, I suspect this one is going to be a doozy 🙂
… and in any case, forgiveness does not necessarily mean returning to the scene of the crime.
*Some* goddesses! Yes, Kuan Yin, Bridget, Isis, all about the forgiveness. But Hecate (her priestess was Medea!), Nemesis, Juno, Artemis? Not so much.
Errrrrrr peeps lets not forget she is a human being.
We all have our Achilles heel and with Uber strong women their downfall is often bad boys who they are compulsively drawn to.
It’s a great image.
Venus envy Deluxe and I want to kiss her!
uber strong women fall for bad boys. Really???? I DON”T
Me neither! Yin power is my preference in masculine housing. 😉
Bad boys are cracked.
Bad boys are fuqed up. Don’t want one of those either. Who needs the drama? I’ll have one that respects me and treats me well, thank you. 🙂
I don’t either. My policy is ‘treat me like the Goddess I am, or fuck off’.
To my way of thinking, uber strong female = female with self-respect, not female who loses plot over hot bad boy who treats her like shit.
Err – dont shoot me for saying this – but strong is not necessarily smart, and smart is not necessarily wise.
Thats why even Lilith, she appears in 3 forms: Maiden, Adult and Crone. Diff types and levels of wisdom and being.
Does maiden Lilith have co-dependence/love zombie issues or something?
I see a lot of strong women out there that are still growing into their full potential. We arent perfect growing up(knowing everything), we all have our weak spots…Along the way, you deal with the ugly side of things – you learn and grow – that takes you to the next level of wisdom. So that is what meant by maiden, adult and crone wisdom. I think the essence of strength is there, but maturity bestows its gifts upon those that have earned it.
And btw, my 2 responses above are in response to the entire thread here – I didnt check to see where it started so sorry about any confusion/miscommunication(was on phone, sorry), so Im not just saying it in response to you Saturnalien. I think all points are valid, but I think they are just all different levels of the same thing we are speaking of, imo.
look, ideally speaking, I agree with you but I think things are complicated and karma sometimes gets played out through challenging channels. Good for you if that’s not your path 🙂
Given my family history and what I’ve learnt of relationships from my parents, it could so easily be my path, but I chose for it not to be. That’s my point really. Strength is an illusion if it based on anything other than the foundation of self-respect.
I’m not denying this shit is complicated, I’ve just been putting forward my personal view on what I view as a strong woman and what I don’t.
Also, I don’t think karma or astrological placements are any excuse for one person to physical, mentally, emotionally or spiritually abuse another person. Free will and living through shit consciously is my philosophy.
you’re more enlightened than a lot of people Satcat, and can I throw in that sometimes it is the difficult experiences that bring us to a point of strength and self-respect. for example, for those who didn’t develop self respect before adulthood because of early experiences of abuse.
I agree with you 100% That has been my experience.
and like you, I hope that through those things, whether they are borne with strength or not, we can learn respect, so I’m with you 100% on your philosophy xx
Well said Saturnalien and CS.
Respect for yourself, the other person and what you have together. If you don’t have that happening your disrespecting yourself.
Wow, if I had a penny for everytime I encountered someone who thought they had the karmic green light to be able to hurt someone else and get away with it because some psychic/fortune teller/astro chart “said so”…. Who are they fooling, seriously?
Well said.
I’m not judging one way or the other but she has Mars int he 8th house don’t she? I think that’s often the way it rolls. Doesn’t mean it’s not something to learn from though!
hmm. how would highly public personality using goddess imagery power a misogynistic agenda??
maybe they also simply appreciate its role and the connections to myth / history, and like to use it in their imagery. I mean do they need to be priestesses of or goddess or another, or talk about it in depth in mainstream magazines to prove their worthiness of adopting / adapting the symbols? Maybe they’re just learning, like us, or maybe they’re too flat out being busy / famous to delve into the esoterica… I mean I do get your point SA xx – but sometimes I wonder if we just expect way too much of people who are otherwise often more like you and me .. instead of those conspiracy theorists loading them up with judgement that they are acolytes of lizard peeps, y’know…
well, I certainly don’t expect anything from pop stars. Don’t understand the worship.
Same here. I hadn’t even heard of half of these pop stars until I started reading this blog. I don’t get the whole celeb worship shizz either.
It’s too complex to explain here. It’s to do with mind-control, mass hypnosis, black magic and apparently those running the show are miso bastards, bla bla. Nothing to do with reptiles though (as far as I’m aware).
Please note, I am the biggest piss-taker of whacked out conspiracy theories, and couldn’t really give a rats arse about celebs or the so called Illuminati, but growing up surrounded by occultists, I know some weird shit that conspiracy theorists speculate on is actually quite possible, as far out as it seems.
dammit! can’t we meet over a jug of gin / elderflower cordial so you can explain more? aagh the typing THE TYPING it’s too much :\
no srsly yes i do get that you’re not the conspiracy theorist type 🙂 .. and i was also joking re lizard people but i suppose I just lump them all into the same basket.. meta-controlling types, whatever species they identify as
We can discuss it over gin at Mystics Halloween party! 😛
BHClow says that as reptilian peeps access through the 4th dimensional reality, the layer of reality in which ideas are created, so they are always to do with the press, illuminati, oppression through mind control, symbols, mass hypnosis.
At least I thought that she said that, maybe I understood wrong? 🙂
I have no idea sorry! I’ve never read her stuff, she’s far too new agey for my brain to deal with. 😀
aH OK , SO MAYBE I WAS onto something
oops soz caps lock
Ha! Yes Pi, maybe you wuz! 😀
Power structures, peeps with influence etc, they like. They don’t engage with the unwashed masses as much I believe. Prols!
I love Clow. But then I think, maybe she is describing some alternate parallel reality’s history with unerring accuracy & none of this is at all useful? Anyway it’s a good yarn she spins with some lovely myths & astro entwined. Can’t pass me up the stuff, too fun.
My conspiracy theory loving, scorp moon twin (who is a crystal fiend like you) loves Clow too.
I’ve got too much Cappy to have Clow in my priority reading que!
Funnily enough Clow is a Capricorn.. 😉 . Lol!
But no matter.
Been exploring her friend Drunvalo Melchizadek’s books, woo woo as all get out, but have had a couple similar experiences to him & so I let it wash over me.
I read a lot about therapy for autism, so that stuff is my light relief.
She’s aquarian according to astro-databank…
😯
Too right!
I remembered her talking about her Cap summat, must’ve been her Mercury/Mars.
Aye, Aquarian then.. 🙂
Yeah, Interesting! Her latest concert here in Melbourne was drenched in ‘illuminati’esq references .. & lots of hand gestures reiterating those themes ie: hand held over one eye, & fingers held in triangle form, ad nauseum!
oh! .. My last comment was referring to Beyonce’s latest concert.
You could take a Jungian pscyhologist’s view point and say that regardless of her conscious intention it may show a recognition of the collective unconscious, both in the use of the imagery by Rihanna and/or her stylist, and our reaction to it. They may not know the exact origins of the imagery and may not be up to speed on the precise meaning of the imagery and/or iconography (then again they may be), but somewhere, somehow they recognise its power and use it in their own up-to-date-pop-culture way. I think that makes the symbols/myths/icons even more powerful than if they were sequestered away and only allowed to be trotted out by a select few. She wanted a powerful image and she got one: the magnificent Medusa is not forgotten!
Yes I’m feeling this, Jen Scorpio. The collective unconscious is always there; sometimes it bubbles up to the surface. Bloop bloop & here we are. Bubble bubble toil & trouble.
I see what I want to see. When I see a snake, I see kundalini & unwavering strength; when I see a tangle of such coming from a woman’s crown chakra, I see nothing but the rise of female power. I’ve always seen this, from the time I was a wee lass in Mass every Sunday, before I could read or articulate such questions re power. My wiring to the collective unconscious.
Like space, the scope of the collective unconscious is unfathomable. It contains the psyche essence of every experience of every soul across every time. It is not surprising to me then that symbols like snakes & the feminine evoke such powerful emo (be it fear or ecstasy or rage, etc) in us now: it is a testament to just how powerful these symbols have always been to us! Also, a testament of our infinite existance.
But what does it mean? Rhianna medusa’d out on the cover of GQ? It means lots of things, always has. These kinds of symbols are so powerful & evocative/invocative, it’s complicated. We have all experienced power, both the forces for good & those who corrupted it. Many of us on the surface, like here, in the blog comments, appear to be at differences of opinion or visceral reactions to Rhianna Medusa, but really we are all on the same page, recalling all of our collective experiences & shared psyches, around two very powerful, infinite symbols: The Feminine & the Snake.
The old story of the devil meeting the ambitious at the crossroads at midnight so as to garner fame is ubiquitous in the art world! I suppose it is an old idea.
So true that Rhianna hardly strikes one as spiritually oriented. I wonder where Rhianna gets her inspirations as at best it looks more like power symbol plagiarism & appropriation.
As old as us, that story. Same is true for misappropriation & “power symbol plagiarism, ” as you say– which I love, Andro 😉
Damien Hirst doing a Caravaggio with Rihanna – wicked!
yes i think it would be interesting to read DH interview (?) with her. Or did he just “style” the shoot? or both? not sure.
listening to an interview with Lorde the other day she loosely mentioned songwriting for others incl Rihanna…. love this. a big yummy music / creative community sharing awesomeness. <3
yummy awesomeness! yes, I’d like to read that magazine.
But Medusa 10 degrees Aries conjunct Sun 11, so I get it…And why no man will ever be strong enough for me.
Much more I could say but will be in my book!
Awaiting patiently 🙂
I have Algol as a setting/culminating star.
Wonder how similar/different that might be from the fixed star as conjunct a planet as well as the asteroid Medusa… But yes any thoughts on Algol in general have my interest. Thanks xxxx
Fuq
She is incredible.
Wow.
Brilliant.
Going to check out that book you mentioned now.
Wow wow wow
You will LOVE that book, it is a must have for you.
ANother one that is unique ‘Webster’s First New Intergalactic
Wickedary of the English Language…conjured by Mary Daly. A wicktionary instead of a dicktionary.
As a wordsmith you could be intrigued by the new words & phrases in it.