We are Gisèle
To Live in Growing Orbits, Vol. IV: The Rape of Medusa
Note: Please be advised this essay contains details about sexual assault that may be triggering. These stories are nothing you won’t find in the daily news, but I want to give sensitive readers a heads-up in case they want to stop reading here.
Catching the Story
I began the series “To Live in Growing Orbits,” several months ago. The intent was to explore each of the eighteen stories I told in the ceremony that became my book, Piko: A Return to the Dreaming. I thought I would be done by now, but I’ve only covered three stories!
Once again, just like in the ceremony, the stories are the boss of me, and I’ve honored my commitment to them by not rushing them down the line to extract their wisdom before they have decided they’re ready to reveal themselves.
Why? I wonder. What have they been waiting for? An answer comes—collectively, we have not been prepared to receive the next one, The Rape of Medusa. Maybe a few people are, maybe more than a few trees, and way more than a few stones, but Medusa wants more than a few. Medusa wants to be heard. After centuries of lies told about her, she’s insisting everyone hear what really happened to turn her into a monster with snakes, instead of hair. A monster who turned everyone who met her eyes into stone. You will hear me! She howls. Otherwise, she’s staying silent.
I told myself after finishing the Titans essay on recovering from patriarchy, that current events would show me when it was time to write about Medusa. I knew the news was going to have to get really loud, because to be honest, elements of her story that should disturb are daily headlines. If you read or watch the news, you know rape and sexual assault of women is daily news.
It takes stories like the ones coming to light about rap mogul, Diddy, accused or assaulting women and men, stories about storerooms full of lube to be used in “freak-offs,” (Diddy’s term for the sex parties he hosted), stories of underage boys being assaulted, and video evidence of a girlfriend being knocked to the ground and kicked, for people to notice, and I bet, if Diddy wasn’t a celebrity, that a lot less people would notice.
The everyday stories of your average sexual assaults, for the most part, don't penetrate our emotional bodies. We require genuine shock to let anything it at this point. Some, unable to feel horror or outrage, may feel sad or depressed, but many women, if asked, would say they are resigned to this violence. The violation of women’s physical, mental, and emotional boundaries through harassment, overt and subtle, is just something most women I know realize we have to deal with. Hopefully, it won’t go too far, I hear people say. I have said this myself. The subtext is hopefully we can keep our jobs or the partners who help us pay the bills. Hopefully the discomfort won’t escalate into physical violence.
This week, I caught the headlines Medusa wanted me to hear. Game is on! she shrieked. Get thee to a keyboard!
There are three of them. Three stories who did not permit me to skim over their surface so I could keep my false sense of security. They demanded to be read because they are in service to safety, which is beyond security. Safety, which can only come from within, gifts us with the knowing that no matter what happens, we will be anchored in faith and be able to maintain our link to the great processes of life, exhilarating and painful, without giving up on ourselves or the world.
Security is something else. In a way, it’s a privilege. Being born doesn’t guarantee we’ll be provided with food and shelter. Those things are part of the contracts humans make to sustain each other. The fact that security is so difficult for so many on our planet right now, has caused many to confuse security and safety.
I remember listening to two poets years ago, Ilya Kaminsky and Valzhyna Mort, from Ukraine and Belarus respectively. The passion in their poems was born from genuine hardship, a passion lacking in most of the esteemed American poetry of the time. These poems were the products of privileged writers, approved by academia, and often took an ironic stance to their subjects because their authors were either unable to feel, uncomfortable with feeling, or wanted to express the lack of feeling they witnessed in American culture. Billy Collins and Tony Hoagland are two poets like this that come to mind, although Hoagland’s work changed when he was faced with dying from cancer.
I am not totally knocking privilege, by the way. In America, privilege has also allowed people the freedom to go on deep journeys of the soul, witness Mary Oliver. What kind of poet would Oliver have been if she’d come of age in the Velvet Revolution of Belarus? Perhaps her natural introspection would have been crushed in the revolutionary fervor and we never would have been graced with her poems.
How do we catch fire, ignite ourselves from within to burn away the heavy dross of industrialization and endless doom without being forced to become political refugees?
One way, is to choose and commit to witnessing as much of the suffering on our planet as we can without our minds shattering. This requires genuine risk, because we can’t always predict when that line will be crossed.
I am not here to accuse anyone. I am here to help usher in the next world, the fifth world spoken of by so many native cultures like the Hopi and the Maya, what comes after the Kali Yuga of Hinduism. I recognize that those of us who track the news, and those of us who look away, share something in common that is more important, a degree of numbness without which it would be impossible to function in today’s world where only the fittest thrive.
“Survival of the fittest” was the phrase Darwin adopted to define his hypothesis of natural selection, but things have changed a lot since 1869 when The Origin of Species, was published. For those in privilege culture, survival isn’t enough. We want to thrive, and are judged if we don’t. We judge ourselves as well. Just being alive on Earth isn’t enough any more. We demand more and more of life, failing to see it’s a gift. Because of this, we fail to give back to life, hoarding ourselves like greedy dragons sitting atop piles of gold that are symbols for our unexpressed gratitude that we were born in the first place.
Hoarding, which implies wealth, is not thriving. It’s a symptom of a deeply sick society without faith in itself, and no real appreciation for life.
Those of us downstream from the dragons may not think we are hoarding because we don’t have giant piles of gold, but so many of us are. Caught in the struggle to gain security, we fail to give our gifts, either because the market doesn’t value them financially, or because we are too exhausted from our jobs to do anything but collapse in front of Netflix at the end of the day.
A few bright-souled humans give no matter what their circumstances. These are our modern saints, and are the people we should be modeling ourselves on, not the greedy dragons at the top. I hope you know some people like that. I do. And I also know people with little security who are thriving because they give their gifts. I bless the years I lived on Block Island where I rubbed elbows with everyone in the 9 square miles. I knew a lot of everyday saints there, a lot who looked like sinners, many of them oracles who would have been institutionalized on the mainland. The human contract was strong there. People looked after each other. People saw beyond the labels because they knew each others’ stories. This gives me hope for us humans, by the way. Even if it happened because we were all together on a small island, you could even stay stuck some days if the ferry didn’t run, people knew thriving really didn’t have to do with financial wealth. It had to do with accepting each other in community.
Trial by Fire
Our society does not want us to thrive, not in a genuine way. Because of that, boldness is required. To thrive in a way that supports our souls, and the souls of our communities and countries, and the world’s soul, we will be tested. We will have to stand up for ourselves through the worst the world can throw at us, expose ourselves, and claim our right to belong just because we were born.
Too often, my caffeinated, anxious, ADHD brain scanning the headlines, has moved on to the next atrocity or outrage. I miss the opportunity to be moved into completing the outrages and the losses, keeping myself in a perpetual state of frustration, and like so many caught in the grinding wheel of trying to survive in late-stage capitalism, I opt to consume more than I receive.
Do you understand what I’m saying? I deny the gifts the world wants to give me, the painful experiences that are inviting me to truly feel what it means to be alive.
Too worried about my own day-to-day problems, I am not always catching the stories that want me to tell them, stories that could change a mind, open a heart, deepen a soul; stories that would free me from the fear-induced hoarding of myself that would allow me to genuinely thrive.
Not this week.
I don’t know what changed. Maybe it was the death of my friend Kate on October 3rd. Since she passed—so young, so open, so bold in the way she loved—I’ve been finding it harder to look away from the hard things, the hardest being death, which takes us out of this astonishing, beautiful world that breaks our hearts over and over again. So. Much. Love. One of my friends wrote in the days Kate lay dying. Yes, and also, so much pain.
They are the same. Pain and love. There’s no getting around it. We have to look in order to see. We have to see in order to love, and always, when we truly see, there will be losses. There is no getting around that. Kate is gone. She will never dance again in a red dress and red heels like a living flame on this side of the veil.
On this side, the side without Kate, we are still dealing with the wreckage from Medusa’s rape launched into the sea of the collective consciousness like dumpsters filled with plastic bottles and bags that drown and poison life.
So used to viewing her as a monster, it’s easy to forget Medusa’s story began as the copper-haired daughter of two sea nymphs. We are told she was one of three sisters, called the Gorgons, and that she was the beautiful one. The other two were ugly. In radiant beauty, she served in the temple of Athena, goddess of wisdom, war, weaving, and reason, a strange mix, yet not so strange if you see Athena as representative of a mind divided from its body, like our minds, able to reason our way out of the overwhelming injustice of our times. We are a people who use our skills to weave stories to justify war, even those of us who oppose it in our hearts. If we weren't, all of us would be down on our knees right now, refusing to participate in a society that kills and kills and kills, that will keep killing until there is nothing left to die—unless we change. If you think that isn’t true, I’ll tell you something about yourself. You worship in Athena’s temple.
It was in that very temple, that Medusa’s stunning looks caught the eye of the sea god Poseidon, who was so overcome with desire he had to have her.
In this instance, have is a euphemism for rape, but the word says so much more about how we view and participate with the world.
Have is an English word., English is the language of conquerors. We speakers of English are not the first conquerors, but we are the first to conquer the world, infecting the entire planet with eminent domain that goes far beyond any government edict. Possession is the real pandemic.
We aren’t told if Poseidon asked and Medusa refused, or if he just decided rape was the easiest, or most thrilling way, to get what he wanted, but that’s what happened. She lost her innocence, and by that I don’t mean virginity. I mean she lost her purity of spirit, her faith in the goodness of life.
Athena, whom she served, didn’t stand up for her. She blamed her. Poseidon got off scot free to go on consuming and destroying whatever he wanted. Athena blamed Medusa. She had desecrated the temple just for being so beautiful she was irresistible to a god.
I’m going to tell you those stories now, stories that pierced my dreams like scorpions.
Headline: The Guardian, October 23, 2024
“Donald Trump groped me in what felt like a ‘twisted game’ with Jeffrey Epstein, former model alleges”
This is the story told by Stacey Williams, a former model who dated Jeffrey Epstein in the 1990s. As she tells it, one day in 1993, Jeffrey, took her to visit his friend Donald Trump.
“Moments after they arrived, she alleges, Trump greeted Williams, pulled her toward him and started groping her. She said he put his hands “all over my breasts” as well as her waist and her buttocks. She said she froze because she was “deeply confused” about what was happening. At the same time, she said she believed she saw the two men smiling at each other.”
Headline: Vanity Fair, October 25, 2024
Shiori Itō’s Viral Sexual Assault Case Got Shut Down. She Made a Movie to Solve It
I discovered Shiori Itō In a Vanity Fair article. Her film The Black Box Diaries chronicles the story of her sexual assault by Noriyuki Yamaguchi, a prominent broadcast journalist, who at the time of the assault was the biographer of then prime minister Shinzo Abe. To be clear, like Trump and Epstein, we’re talking powerful men at the top.
Itō, an aspiring journalist, was invited to dinner by Yamaguchi after inquiring about an internship. She was drugged, taken to a hotel room, and assaulted by him. Although there was plenty of evidence to support her accusation, the case was mysteriously dropped.
After this happened, she went public in 2017, an extraordinary step in Japan. She called a press conference and stated what happened. People were incredulous and prosecutors refused to launch an investigation. She filed a civil suit, and recorded herself throughout the process in a video diary on her iPhone, telling the story of her trauma and resilience, throughout the trial. These diaries became her film The Black Box Diaries.
“One thing Itō knew: Even though she had no experience in movies, even though she was the movie’s subject, she needed to direct it herself. “Especially with sexual violence stories, there are amazing films I’ve watched, but it’s been always told in the third person,” Itō says. “I just wanted to be able to tell my own story from my own point of view—not just as a filmmaker, but as a survivor…. I wanted the audience to experience what was happening day by day. I couldn’t believe what I was experiencing.”
Itō captures the isolation of a woman stepping forward with her truth, only to meet resistance, hatred, and indifference. She constructs a rigorous procedural out of navigating a rigidly patriarchal system. At one point an investigator, who seems to finally be drawn to her side, abruptly—and with unsettling entitlement—tries to engage her romantically. Things like this happened so regularly that Itō often forgot about them until she edited the film. “I think it was too shocking,” she says. “It really resonates with other sexual violence cases, when you face up to and speak up against the power.”
In the article Itō tells the Vanity Fair writer:
“Being in the press conference, in the same room with him, was the greatest revenge. That moment, was for me, a really big victory, that I could stay there and let him know I’m still there.”
On the same day in 2022, when the Japanese Supreme Court ruled in her favor, former prime minister Abe was shot and killed.
Medusa’s dark justice? No one can say that for sure, and if so, it’s not the kind of justice I’m seeking. I want Medusa to be freed of the rage that causes her to kill in retribution.
Both Stacey Williams and Shiori Itō were violated by men of power. You could even say they were men many perceive as gods. They were granted, by the starstruck public, the right to get away with abusing their power like Zeus and Poseidon.
A Normal Woman
The last story is different. This is not a story about a woman batted back and forth between Titans, or the story of a woman slipped a drug so that when she was raped she thought maybe it was a swan, like Leda thought when Zeus raped her, the blow softened by white feathers.
This is the story of a woman described as “normal.” In other words, unlike Williams and Itō, she is not young and beautiful. She is not a model, has never dated a celebrity, or even someone wealthy as far as we know. She is not seeking an internship to help her make her way in the world.
Her name is Gisèle Pelicot. She is 71 years old. She is the mother of three, and the grandmother of seven, and her husband of 50 years, Dominique Pelicot, has admitted to drugging her, for a period of ten years, and inviting men into their home to rape her unconscious body. He, and 50 men, are on trial now in a courtroom in Avignon, France. He was caught because another women filed a complaint against him for up-skirting her in a supermarket (taking photos or filming with a phone under her skirt). The complaint led police to his home, where they found thousands of videos on his electronic devices of men having sex with a woman who appeared to be unconscious on their bed.
She was unconscious. Until she saw those videos, Gisèle Pelicot had no idea what her husband of 50 years was doing to her.
Gisėle could have opted to remain anonymous. She did not. She chose a public trial, and since September 2nd when the trial began, she has shown up every day in the courtroom in Avignon where the videos of her being raped are shown to the jury and all assembled.
"I've decided not to be ashamed, I've done nothing wrong," Gisèle has said.
Since September, 50 men on trial have shuffled into the courtroom wearing masks, hats, and scarves, to hide their identities.
“Most of the accused told the court they have been manipulated by Dominique Pelicot, projecting the blame on him. Only a few have admitted to raping Gisele Pelicot.
Some have apologised.
"I hear those apologies, but they are inaudible," she told the court. "By apologising, they are trying to excuse themselves."
Saying her husband's betrayal of her trust was beyond measure, Gisele Pelicot told the court: "I'm a woman who's totally destroyed."
She had thought he was the perfect husband, she told the court, before adding: "My life has tumbled into nothingness."
Gisėle has also said:
"They (rapists) are the ones who must be ashamed," she said, adding that having videos, filmed by her husband, of some of her rapes, shown during the trial, was "very difficult but necessary."
"I'm not expressing hatred or hate, but I am determined that things change in this society," said Gisele Pelicot.
"It's not courage. It's determination to change things," she said. "This is not just my battle, but that of all rape victims."
She has chosen to expose herself, so that one day, maybe we won’t have to.
People from all over France have gathered outside the court. Women stand with signs and wear t-shirts: “Je Suis, Gisèle.” I am Gisèle.
Anne Bouillon, a lawyer specializing in women’s rights and domestic violence, was quoted in The Guardian saying, “Rape is committed in a structural manner in our society by ordinary men.”
And the men, shuffling past Gisèle each day for the past two months, are ordinary. They are husbands, fathers, workers, boyfriends; they have children. They are not gods. Why did they act like they think they are? And who decided being a god meant you got to rape as you pleased?
I am Gisèle. I hear millions of women speaking these words, a righteous tsunami containing all the pent up rage, helplessness, resentment, and despair of women who have been raped, not by gods, but by human men, since the beginning of time. I cry, for Gisèle and for the thrilling possibility that this may actually change something, that Gisèle’s suffering might not be in vain, her story so horrific, it has to not just be heard, but received, in the very bodies of those who violated her, those shuffling men hiding their faces with scarves and hats.
“She is a symbolic figure because she is irreproachable,” Anne-Cécile Mailfert, founder of the Fondation des Femmes, said.
“She does not have the profile of a woman who was ‘looking for it’, an accusation often levelled at rape victims. As she appears exemplary and cannot be reproved for anything, we see only the violence of the men. And the courage she shows gives millions of other women courage.”
I thrill because maybe this time Medusa will get her revenge, but I also know…
these men are our brothers.
And that makes me cry even more.
How could they do it? Many said they thought it was a game Gisèle was in on, that she was pretending to be passed out.
Still…
Why do men want to have sex with a woman who is passed out while her own husband watches? I write this in the present tense, because even though it has stopped for Gisèle, I’m sure there are other women for whom this is still happening.
Perseus Was a Nepo Baby (Or Death by Reflection)
Athena sent Perseus on a quest to kill Medusa. She was a fearsome opponent, and probably would have killed him, but those same gods, those rapists who thought they could have whatever they wanted with no consequence, came together and gave Perseus gifts to help him slay the monster.
Hades gave him a Cloak of Invisibility so he could sneak up on her.
Hermes, a pair of winged sandals.
Hephaestus a magical sword.
But it was Athena’s gift that ensured his victory.
Athena gave him a bronze shield that Perseus used to track Medusa in her lair by its reflection. He drove that sword into her throat. Hacked at her spine until her head fell off.
Perseus took her head as a war prize. They say blood dripped from it onto the land we now know as Libya and that’s why that land is infested with snakes.
He brought the head to Athena who set Medusa’s head in a shield and gave it to Zeus. Sometimes she would use the shield, too. They used Medusa’s stone-turning gaze to shore up their own power. Without the shield, maybe the patriarchy would have collapsed a long time ago.
Men in Crisis
I have written about how patriarchy developed in the aftermath of ancient catastrophes in a previous article, The King Must Die: Taking a Mythic Lens to the Presidential Debates, because we needed to control every aspect of our existence in order for the humans species to survive. As a mentor, I focus on establishing people in their internal feminine and masculine, and I am always very careful to state that my body of work is not an attack against men. I know many very good men who I know would never have participated in raping an unconscious woman, or any woman. I also know some that I think might have. They might have been on one of those chat boards where Dominique Pelicot recruited men to rape his wife. They might have gone for kicks, or thought it was a game Gisèle was in on, like the accused are saying in that court in Avignon.
I know that everyone, no matter what gender, is a victim of patriarchy, and I also know that we keep choosing it, even those of us whose lives are not in danger.
Why? What are we so afraid of?
Even though it looks like we are bound for more catastrophes like the ones that almost wiped out our ancestors if we don’t rapidly change, most of us are not yet truly in danger. Most of us are just watching it on TV. Humans are occupied most of Earth, decimated ecosystems, and wiped out other species at record rates. As a species, we’re on top, even those of us without the power of gods.
Why do we still choose competition over cooperation?
What hold do these gods have over us?
Isn’t it time to throw the fucking gods out?
Donald Trump is not a god.
Jeffrey Epstein is not a god.
Noriyuki Yamaguchi is not a god.
Shinzo Abe is not a god.
They, like Dominique Pelicot, and the 50 men now on trial for “having",” Gisèle, for raping her, are human beings.
Elon Musk, a Trump supporter, father of 12 children, may be trying to make himself immortal through AI, but today, October 28, 2024, he is still a human being like you and me.
His body will still decay and rot, and could make good soil as compost for new life, as writer
suggests as a way to give back to Earth when we die.Donald, Jeffery, Yamaguchi, Shinzo, Dominique, Musk, even though they act like gods, are all normal men.
Which chills my blood.
Calling something “normal” is how fascism overtakes good humans—good husbands and fathers and sons; and yes, I know there are women supporters, modern Athenas who would send Perseus out to kill Medusa and bring her head back to embed in a shield to protect their fathers, but we all know that the majority of the violence is perpetuated by men.
There’s a time for compassion, and there’s a time for the sword. I am not asking anyone to take up a physical weapon and actually harm someone, or even commit violence by hurling insults at those who disagree with them.
What I ask, is that we take up the sword of truth and cut away our own delusions, that we realize the only control the small capital “g” gods have over us, the modern-day Titans like Trump and Epstein, is because we give it to them.
At one time we needed an absolute authority so we could survive, but we are OK now. We survived. We could, like Earth, claim the brilliance of our resiliency and thrive. We could take Chernobyl into out hearts and model our inner ecosystems, poisoned by the lies we have told for so long we believe them, on this city that experienced nuclear meltdown, now a forest where wolves roam through abandoned beings and trees split concrete.
The next catastrophe does not have to occur. We need to stop looking at Medusa’s reflection in Athena’s shield and face her eye to eye.
Holding the Vision
Last week I wrote about true ho’oponopono as taught by Ke’oni Hanalei, of Pōhala Hawaiian Botanicals. In this version, conflict resolution begins with everyone recognizing the highest potential of the parties in discord. From that point, forgiveness is negotiated, hopefully leading to apologies and corrective actions that lead to gratitude, love, and peace.
I know this is idealistic, but with the election a week away, I can’t help wondering about Trump’s highest potential.
What would he say if called to a ho’oponopono circle? Based on evidence so far, probably something like, “My highest potential is to forever rule a gold-plated world.”
But since I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t show up if invited to said circle, we don’t know, so I’m going to speculate.
Many people support Trump because they think he’s here to “drain the swamp” and tear down the corrupt system, but that is not his highest potential. It’s laughable to think that he would do that when you look at the evidence of the last presidency and his entire life before and since his four years in office, only I don’t want to mock anyone. The fact that people can’t see that he won’t do this based on what he has already done, shows how deeply they are deluded. What if Trump’s highest potential, at least as a public figure, is to get us to realize our lives are not truly in danger while we still can, and to begin to make the collective changes that will shift our culture into one that sustains life instead of kills.
Idealistic. Unrealistic. I know. But as William Stafford wrote in his great poem, “A Ritual to Read to Each Other,” the darkness around us is deep. We need to release our bitterness, cynicism, and hopelessness, and offer a vision that includes the greatest potential of all organic human beings. Then we need to formulate a plan to make that vision happen, one small act at a time.
I am an enchantress here to inspire. The magical incantations I create with words, may not be enough, but I create them anyway, because that is my highest potential.
If you disagree with me, I’m asking you—right now—come into your heart. Think of Gisèle. Think of all the normal women. Say to yourselves until your hearts break, I am Gisèle, I am Gisèle, I am Gisèle, until the words shapeshift beyond their limits and you find yourself chanting with a chorus of others:
Nous sommes Gisèle. Nous sommes Gisèle. Nous sommes Gisèle. We are Gisele.
Sister Wounds
It’s hard to understand why Athena, a woman, would turn against her acolyte, the beautiful copper-haired Medusa, who served in her temple. But this still happens in today’s world all the time. Melania could be Hera, the philandering Zeus’s wife, and Ivanka, Athena. Both these women, though silence, are complicit in their husband and father’s crimes.
Athena has never appealed to me. I prefer to follow Artemis into the wild, but I learned something about her recently that helped me understand her more.
Athena was a mother, a virgin in fact, like the mother of Jesus, only her conception was far more traumatic than the immaculate conception announced by the Angel Gabriel.
One day Athena went to visit Hephaestus, a blacksmith and her brother, for a new sword. He was so overcome with her beauty he attempted to “seduce” her. When she declined, he ejaculated on her leg and she conceived a son.
She named that son Erichthonius, and when he was born, she hid him in a small wood box she gave to the King of Athens, along with a warning never to open it.
The King obeyed her command, but his daughters did not.
Nobody can say for sure what they saw when they opened the lid of that box. Some say it was an infant with two snakes wrapped around it, some a creature half boy, half snake. What we do know is the daughters threw themselves off the Acropolis in madness and died.
Erichthonius, out of the box, grew up to become the King of Athens and married the naiad Praxithea. They had a son named Pandion who taught his people to smelt silver, and till earth with a plough, and to yoke horses to a chariot.
Erichthonius was such a great chariot racer, Zeus lifted him into the sky to become Auriga, the constellation of the charioteer.
Up in the sky above us all right now, the whole tragic arc of the patriarchy plays itself out in this one constellation. An unwanted child, born from the sexual assault of his mother, a child who was somehow so monstrous he caused women to kill themselves just from looking at him, who somehow managed to have a “normal” life marrying a woman who was probably very attractive, you know sea nymphs, and a son who made valuable contributions to his people, is lionized, immortalized in the stars, because he was a great competitor.
Erichthonius, aren’t you tired of racing? Drop the reins. Don’t worry if you fall out of the stars. Come down to Earth. We’ll catch you. It’s ok to be fragile and old. We’ll take care of you, and when you die, we’ll celebrate you as one of the good men who chose to stop racing, who accepted the limits of a human life and shared the best of who he was.
The Children of Rape
Athena, please forgive me for judging you. I’m sorry, I know your life hasn’t been easy. I mean, come on, you are the goddess of war! But that is not your highest potential. Thank you, we love you, but it’s time to be accountable for all the suffering you’ve wrought. Why was Odysseus more deserving of your favor than Priam and Hector? Why should you get to decide who lives or dies?
We, in the ho’oponopono circle, ask you to say the words that will free you. You can evolve from war to another one of your birthrights, wisdom.
But this story today, isn’t meant to end with you. I suspect it might take quite awhile for you to put down your sword. No pressure. But just know, time is running out. There are only so many mountaintops left to blow up and the rivers are poisoned. The day of reckoning is coming. Soon. If you don’t change, choose weaving and wisdom over war, Medusa’s going to get the last word, because that’s how war works. Someone creates a monster, the monster gets revenge, and another monster is created. We need you to help us transmute this pattern that’s poisoning us.
As goddess of wisdom we invite you into the ho’oponono circle to ask Medusa to tell us, what is her highest potential is.
Ah, you’re not ready. I understand, change is terrifying. So many unknowns. I’l leave you at the poisoned river and take your place.
Medusa, what is your highest potential? Maybe it’s because I look right at her, but she tells me.
It’s not what you think, she says.
I don’t want to think, I tell her. I want to hear your story.
I had a child. Two…children. Only one looked like human. The giant Chrysaor. Perhaps you’ve heard of his golden sword?
I haven’t, I admit. I didn’t know you were a mother. They didn’t show that in The Clash of the Titans.
Medusa grimaces or smirks. It’s hard to tell, but the snakes seem to be laughing at the absurdity of the movie where I’d first encountered her as a youth. Who was your other child?
Pegasus.
The Winged Horse? Wow.
She goes onto tell me how she became pregnant from Poseidon’s. Not wanting to birth the children of rape, she kept them inside her, until Perseus slashed her throat with Hephaestus’s sword. Out spilled Chrysaor and Pegasus.
And I am a grandmother. Medusa goes on.
Not by Chrysaor the giant, by Pegasus, whose hooves touched down on Mount Atticus and caused a spring to gush forth, a spring named Hippocrene that became sacred to the Muses, and gave poetic inspiration to all who drank its waters.
Medusa was the grandmother of poetry.
That is her highest potential. To give us inspiration to express the terror and beauty of being born, knowing all our possessions will be taken away, even our very bodies themselves, by death.
But wait, you’ve got it wrong. Yes, I love poetry and am honored to be lauded at its grandmother, but that’s not my highest potential!
It’s not? Well then, tell us yourself, Medusa.
I’ll need your help. Are you up for it?
Well, I never say myself as a hero. I’m just a poet.
Then you are my granddaughter and here to carry forward my true legacy. Poets are the heroes I need.
Well, I guess if you put it that way, yes, I’ll help.
You must free me from Athena’s bronze shield. Pull me out by the snakes—I promise they won’t bite—so she and Zeus can no longer use me to protect the gods. Without me in the mirror, you’ll be able to look into it without being turned to stone.
What will we see in the shield, Medusa?
Yourselves, just as you are. You’ll see you are enough.
Is this how we throw out the fucking gods?
Yep. Only without me in the shield they’ll be defenseless, so you probably won’t have to.
What will happen to them?
You don’t have to worry about that. Everything that comes around goes around.
But what about you? What will happen to you?
I’ll be standing outside a court in Avignon with a bunch of roaring women wearing a t-shirt that says…
Je suis Gisèle?
Yes. And one more thing.
What’s that grandmother?
My sisters, the other two Gorgons—they weren’t ugly. They may not have been as beautiful as me. They were just…
Normal?
Yes, normal.
What happened to them?
I don’t know. They were supposed to be immortal, but I never saw them again. I miss them.
I’m sorry.
Maybe I’ll find them in the Underworld when I’m free from the shield. No more showing humanity its worse traits. No more turning anyone to stone. I’m heading there soon as I can, but first I’m headed to the south of France, to Avignon.
The trial’s not over, I say.
Medusa and I look at each other. Neither of us turn to stone. Our mouths open and the same words pour out:
Nous Sommes Gisèle.
We are Gisèle.
References & Resources
Kirchgaessner and Osborne, “Donald Trump groped me in what felt like a ‘twisted game’ with Jeffrey Epstein, former model alleges,” The Guardian, Octopus, 23, 2024.
Canfield, “Shiori Itō’s Viral Sexual Assault Case Got Shut Down. She Made a Movie to Settle It,” Vanity Fair, October 25, 2024.
Leras, Gisele Pelicot, “French victim of mass rape, hopes trial will help other women,” Reuters, October 25, 2024.
Willser, “After Pelicot: how one woman’s courage has pushed France to a turning point,” The Guardian, October 26, 2024.
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