la sainte de l’abîme @argentosmuse - Tumblr Blog

YOU CAN NEVER GO BACK! YOU CAN NEVER GO BACK! YOU CAN BITE AND SCRATCH AND BEG BUT YOU CAN NEVER GO BACK!

Steadily towards me, it moved, and now it appeared to be swimming, propelling itself by the writhing work of myriad red-tinted tentacles, gossamer and transparent tentacles, moving as if through water, as if it were a sea creature of innumerable translucent arms.

I couldn’t take my eyes off it. It seemed the mirror was just a piece of glass. It was traveling towards me from a vast dark and cloudy world in which it was purely at home.

Suddenly it resembled nothing so much as a reddish Medusa’s head [...]

Anne Rice, Prince Lestat

pissbataille

In this context, it is worth noting that there are some mythical connections between the Medusa and the female vampire. According to Philip Slater, the glance of a menstruating woman, like the glance of the Medusa or Gorgon, was once thought to turn men to stone. The origin of the word ‘Gorgon’ is from the phrase ‘the moon as it is terrible to behold’ (Shuttle and Redgrove, 1978, 262). The moon was associated with snakes and vampires for the reasons discussed above. Freud argued that the Medusa’s head represented the terrifying genitals of the mother. How much more terrifying would the Medusa’s head appear when her two long boar’s tusks were covered with blood! Her face would take on the appearance of the bleeding female genitals; in its horrifying aspect this would resemble not the castrated female genitals but the castrating genitals, the terrifying vagina dentata.