Medea and Healing Our Personal Shadow

Keeping Her Keys: At The Crossroads of Modern Life and the Deeper World

Medea is a challenging companion, who teaches us both what to do, and what not to do. She is central to the practice of Hekatean Witchcraft, representing the healing and destructive power of The Poison Path. She is a central figure in Entering Hekate's Garden, in fact she wrote the introduction. Medea will have her way.

Medea, that mythical sorceress whose magic built a king and then destroyed him. For over 2,000 years she has captivated our attention. Reviled by some for her unspeakable actions, understood by others as a woman robbed of any personal agency. Medea operated in the shadows, often crafting her spells in secret, and she can also be seen as being in the grips of the shadow self. Her longing for her prince, and perhaps power, possessed her above all. In this episode, Angela Natividad and I explore the themes of Medea, then find examples of her in contemporary society (Amber Heard, for example). We draw from both art and literature to discuss how Medea, as a symbol of the dangerous woman, is entwined with both the systemic disempowerment of women and capitalism. The central question we used was borrowed from Margaret Atwood's introduction to Christina Wolf's contemporary retelling of Medea's story: "Like a tunnel full of mirrors, it both reflects and echoes. The question it asks the reader, through many voices and in many different ways, is: What would you be willing to believe, to accept, to conceal, to do, to save your own skin, or simply to stay close to power? Who would you be willing to sacrifice?" You can watch this video with closed captioning and view the transcript here: https://app.searchie.io/watch/AYDazg63NQ Access the PDF of the slides we used to frame the discussion here: https://keepingherkeys.com/downloads You can watch this on YouTube. Make sure to subscribe to Keeping Her Keys while you're there.

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