Wednesday, March 28, 2012

GORGO

GORGO
"O friend and companion of night, thou who rejoicest in the baying of dogs and spilt blood, who wanderest in the midst of shades among the tombs, who longest for blood and bringest terror to mortals, Gorgo, Mormo, thousand-faced moon, look favourably on our sacrifices!"
H.P. Lovecraft, The Horror At Red Hook

"Gorgo may be a variation on Gorgon, the snake-haired female monster that could turn men to stone."
S.T. Joshi & Peter Cannon, More Annotated H.P. Lovecraft

"Reflection had given it charm, made it acceptable to sanity, just as reflection had made those snakes, and the one who wore them, picturesque and not petrifying. But no amount of reflection could have conceived seeing the thing itself, nor the state of being stone."
Thomas Ligotti, The Medusa

"And I should have seen still other of them that are gone before, whom I would fain have seen- Theseus and Pirithous glorious children of the gods, but so many thousands of ghosts came round me and uttered such appalling cries, that I was panic stricken lest Proserpine should send up from the house of Hades the head of that awful monster Gorgon."
Homer, The Odyssey

"They (Gorgons) were described as having the form of women but with wings on their backs, great tusks or fangs in huge gaping mouths from which their tongues lolled, heads full of writhing snakes in place of hair, and brazen clawed hands on their arms. Their most fearsome feature, however, was their eyes, for any mortal who was foolish enough to look at them was instantly turned to stone"

"Gorgon is also the name of a monster in the early mythology of Greece. It was said to be generated by Gaia as a creature that could assist the Gigantes in their struggle against the Olympian gods. It was dispatched by Athene, who decapitated the beast and placed it beneath the meeting place, or agora. The confusion of this early legend with the later classical myth involving the hero Perseus has let to the two being totally conflated and t he earlier version almost lost."
Carol Rose, Giants, Monsters and Dragons


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