Underarm snakes occurred to me right after. I’m not sure if that’s less scary or more.
Also, can they be shaved? Is it painful for them? Do they scream? And is Nair more or less painful for them than shaving or waxing? Does threading work on a snake? Hmmm.
Now I have an image of a woman donning a blindfold, brandishing threads and defeating Medusa.
Is Catoblepas pronounced exactly the way it sounds? I pronounce it “Cat-tall-blay-pas”
Oh, we know that hot oil treatments will turn the snakes into beautiful hair. I’m on dial up, but I’m sure somebody can link to the gorgeous VO5 commercial that proves this.
I’m sure it’s pronounced exactly as it sounds. I don’t know if it’s pronounced the way it’s spelled, though. I’m still having trouble with Cthulhu.
Damned if I know how you pronounce it. I’ve never heard it come up in conversation. I always say “cat -oh-BLEP-ahss”, myself. No one’s corrected me, yet. One of these days I’ll meet someone to whom this is incredibly important, and there’ll be hell to pay.
According to Lovecraft, the proper way was to make a ‘klootl klootl’ noise in the back of your throat.
I usually pronounce it “ca-TOBLE-pass”. But I’m pretty sure that’s wrong. I also like to think of it as “cat-o’-BLEP-ass” because that’s funny.
What a great thread!
This started off as me and my girl having fun with the idea of snakes as hair (and, yes she does understand reality vs. fiction).
Thank you all so much for this great information. I find it fascinating.
I love this age we are in, where you can as a question and get all this information. Viewing movie clips, pictures, etc, at whim is great!
Since we have been looking up Medusa, we have come across pictures of her with a snake tail. This has made her much more interesting because now she is like a “land mermaid”.
Again, we realize it is fiction and there are no right answers. I just thought it would be fun to see typical Doper off the wall ideas. My favorite has got to be the snakes as body hair. Now I am wondering if she has teeeeeny tiiiiiiny snakes for eyelashes.
Reminds me of bibliophage’s “The Aztecs, who kept domesticated turkeys for hundreds of years before the Europeans arrived, had a perfectly good word for the bird in their Nahuatl language: xuehxolotl, which, of course, is pronounced. Don’t ask me how it’s pronounced, but I’m sure it can be done.”
I think pubic is slightly worse. Also eyebrows are more actively annoying.
But what about vermiform vellus? Tiny but a multitude…
I think every snake is the guile of the woman. Her eyes, Her Hair… “turns”… uhhhmmm… me to stone, every time. It’s a sidreal tale to Pandora.
The Apple story could very well be derivative.
snip.
Terry Pratchett.
I need to read your book. As a sculptor I view the images from a design perspective coupled with a pretty good grip of world zoology (especially herpetology). Though any of the similar images could be viewed as a chimerical construction, I find it difficult to believe that the features would become arranged in the same pattern over and over again. What connotates a candidate for me would be: Flattened dish-shaped face, bulging staring eyes, flattened nose, curving tusks/fangs arranged only at the corners of the mouth, coupled with flattened human teeth in the front; a “mane or beard”, protruded tongue (optional).
One thing I just thought of though is that in all the areas where this face occurs, lions were known to have lived at one time. perhaps it is chimerical combination of human and lion leftover from prehistory.
The reason I find repeated independent innovation so unlikely is that all of those cultures are quite good at depicting other local fauna and chimeras with such authenticity. When I was viewing the maya work I was easily able to identify the local wildlife, even the species of certain serpents. That came as a surprise to one of the archeologists who was good enough to give us a personal tour of an active site. I guess it had been assumed that the patterning on the carvings was more decorative than anything else.
You certainly do need to read the book – that’s very nearly the way I phrased it there. Only the protruding tongue isn’t really optional among the Medusa analogues – only Humbaba really lacks it. one other feature you left out is the Forward Facing aspect – the Archaic Gorgon and it’s cross-cultural analogues are invariably depicted looking outward, directly at the viewer. this is true even when the prevailing fashion is to show faces in profile. Most characters on Greek vase-paintings are shown in profile, but the gorgons are only shown looking out at the viewer (at least until late examples). Egyptian art is stereotyped as “all in profile”, but Bes in invariably shown only straight-on. Another feature is that the figures often appear only as heads (the Gorgoneion is the circular head of the Gorgon, familiar from shields, antefixes, and other circular designs. small ceramic “Bes heads” were carried in Egypt, as were “Humbaba heads” in Mesopotamia. Kirtimukkha often appeared as only a head atop an archway or doorway. In many cases there is one or more explicit myths explaining how the head came to be removed from the body – we have this for Medusa, Humbaba, Rahu, and Kirtimukkha.
Fascinating. I’m going to acquire a copy and see what there is to be seen.
This has been suggested more than once. One of the names for Kirtimukkha is a variation on “Lion Head”, and it seems likely that the lion-headed god of Mithraism is derived from Medusa, according to David Ulansey in his Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries.
But again, contrarian that I am, I disagree. There certainly aren’t lions in the Americas, where there are parallels from the pacific Northwest through Central America to the Incas. There aren’t any lions in Japan or Northern Europe, where analogues also appear. You could argue that many of these places have large felines, but not all. Certainly the lack of appropriate animals in all the places the ubiquitous Staring Face that is the gorgoneion shows up is my objection to identifying its source as being animals like the the octopus/squid (what did the Aztec, living a mile above sea level inland care about cephalopods?) or gorillas (only found in equatorial Africa, with no significant apes or monkeys in many of the places the Gorgon face appears).
slight hijack/
The Japanese wind and thunder gods take the form of Oni which share the face in almost all it’s characteristics. They are known to be taken from Chinese deities that were in turned borrowed from Hindu lore. Hindu depictions of the same gods are quite human. However, Vayu the Hindu wind god is the father of Hanuman the monkey god. early depctions of HIM share the medusa characteristics. Could this be a case of dispersion?
Early humans coexisted with the American Lion Whose range extended in western North and South America from Alaska to Peru.
also the Beringian Lion fills in the northern gaps.
If you think that the American lion from 11,000 years ago affected myths in historic times, you’re more forgiving than I am. Ditto for the Beringian lion. I’d be more willing to spot you cougars as a source for the appropriate feline features. But, of course, that’s something I myself don’t think to be the case.
I’m not arguing the point really, but I’ve no idea how long an image can endure in our collective conciousness. It would certainly be possible to me that a chimerical demon or guardian spirit image might well endure, changing in meaning as it goes. If it is something that has arisen time and again in disparate cultures then the image must trigger something deep in our shared humanity. It’s a long way to get from an accurate depiction of a lion, to the monstrous human image we are discussing. In Africa, for example, lion masks can be extremely abstract and someone from outside the culture would never guess at the correct meaning if we weren’t told by the natives.