G: Gadeiros to Gwyddno 125
Gorgons
In Greek myth, a trio of sisters: Euryale, the “Far-Flung,” or “Far Away”;
Stheino, “Strength”; and, most famous of all, Medusa, “Queen,” or possibly “Sea
Queen.” Their names imply that they were not always the monsters of classical
times, but originally titles of the triadic lunar goddess. Orphic mystics in fact
referred to the moon as “Gorgon Head.” The Gorgons’ unfortunate transformation
came about with the destruction of their Atlantean homeland.
To save Andromeda from being sacrificed for Poseidon, Perseus decapitates
Medusa’s head—writhing with snakes instead of hairs—for use as a weapon that
will turn his opponents to stone. Barbara Walker writes that this aspect of Medusa’s
power was perverted from its original function “to enforce taboos on secret
Mysteries of the Goddess, guarded by stone pillars formerly erected in honor of
her deceased lovers.” Its lethal potential may have been changed to reflect the
traumatic effects of the Atlantean cataclysm. Medusa’s parentage was Atlantean;
she was the offspring of Phorcys, “the Old Man of the Sea,” and Ceto, daughter of
Oceanus.
Gorgons were characteristically portrayed in Greek art as monstrous women
with exposed teeth, fangs, and tongue. Precisely the same figures appear at two
widely separated pre-Columbian American sites connected by common themes
to Atlantis: (1) at Colombia’s San Agustin, where the Atlantean kingdom of
Musaeus was located and the Muysica Indians preserved the story of a great flood,
and (2) at Peru’s Chavin de Huantar, a pre-Inca city built just when Atlantis was
destroyed, in 1198 B.C.
Even in Late Classical Times, the Canary Islands were known collectively as
“Gorgonia” by Greek and Roman geographers. The Gorgons were identified with
these Islands by the Iberian geographer, Pomponius Mela, who lived at Tingentera,
near the Pillars of Heracles, today’s Strait of Gibraltar, in 40 A.D. The Canary
Islands’ association with Gorgons finds additional historical foundation in the
names its original inhabitants, the Guanches, gave to different areas of their main
island, Tenerife—Gorgo and Gorgano. In the Posthomerica (Book X, 197), the
Atlantic provence of the Gorgons is explicit: “Gilded Perseus was killing fierce
Medusa, where the bathing place of the stars are, the ends of the Earth, and the
sources of deep flowing Oceanus, in the West, where night meets the timeless,
setting sun.”
Aethiopia, where Atlas was transformed into a mountain, was identified in
early classical times, not with Abyssinia, but North Africa’s Atlantic coast. The
Gorgons, “Daughters of Night,” were said to live in the western extremes of
Oceanus, a theme underscored first by Medusa’s marriage to Poseidon, and again
through her son, the monarch of Erytheia, the Atlantean kingdom of Gadeiros
(Cadiz) in Atlantic Spain. The Gorgons’ location in the Far West was reaffirmed
by Ovid, and placed specifically in the Atlantean realm by Hesiod, who wrote that
they “dwell beyond the glorious ocean, where are the clear-voiced Hesperides.”
Palaephastus recorded that Athena herself was worshiped as “Gorgo” in the