Medusa Statue | 4 in, Serpent Crowned

Medusa at four inches, cold cast resin, serpent-crowned and rendered as a woman rather than a creature.

Worth getting the history straight, because the story most people know is the late version. In Hesiod, the oldest account we have, Medusa is born a Gorgon, one of three sisters and the only mortal one, and Poseidon lies with her in a soft meadow among spring flowers. So Poseidon is there from the beginning. What Ovid adds, writing around the year 8 of the common era and some seven centuries later, is everything that turns it: that she was beautiful first, that it happened in Athena's own temple, that it was an assault, and that Athena punished her for it by turning her hair to snakes. Nearly every modern reading of Medusa as a survivor rather than a monster rests on those additions. That does not make the reading wrong. It makes it a reading of one Roman poet, which is worth knowing when somebody tells you it is what the Greeks believed.

The part that is unambiguously ancient is what her face was for. The gorgoneion, the Medusa head, was one of the most common protective images in the Greek world from the middle of the seventh century BC onward. It went on shields, on armor, on coins, and on the roof tiles and pediments of temples, and the job was to turn harm back on whoever sent it. Her face is a ward. That is what she was for across some twenty-six centuries, long before anybody made her a metaphor.

Which means this is a protection piece with a documented pedigree rather than just a good-looking statue. Face her toward the door.

Good to Know

Approximately 4 inches tall. Cold cast resin, which holds fine detail and takes a painted finish well. It is not metal and we are not going to imply otherwise; the bronze look in the photographs is paint.

Try It With

The Medusa’s Protection aura spray is the obvious pairing and it is twelve dollars. Black salt at the threshold she is facing. More protection and warding.