Medea – My Shakti of the West

I am watching the yellow flowers blur into their green stalks, and the white houses with red roofs buzz by the bus windows as I travel across Western Asia—through Georgia along the Caucasus Mountains.
To travel is often to follow a whim, but I came here because years ago I was pierced by Medea. I came to Georgia, as that is where her story began.

She is love and rage embodied. Her story haunts me as I trace her edges in rivers or in stones. Her story lives within the play Medea by Euripides, a scandal when it was first presented. There, I was seared by her image—the story of the Colchian goddess, the granddaughter of the Titan sun god, rising in a sun chariot, blood on her hands, the city in flames.
Her children are dead at her feet and her rage without limit. Her name itself refers to infanticide. And still, she is not punished by the gods, but rescued.

So I rub her story between my fingers, a smooth stone, soft as a dog’s ear, fine as hair. My sense of her is that she is miscast—her power too intense for Greek mythographers; she had to be made into a villain. We know this—as this is what happened to all the witches of the Middle Ages.
I see Medea as Shakti: divine energy, life-giving. I begin to see what her exile mirrors in us Western women.
She is no villain.
She came to me as she wished to be remembered—for who she truly was: the sun goddess. Radiant. Serpentine. Sovereign.
Her name rooted in medicine. Med—medicine—Medea—healer.

I stand in her vanished city today and realize her dismissal is mirrored in us. There is barely a trace of the city—hidden among dogs, firewood, and ruined houses. Old temple stairs and piles of treasure remain from those who once worshiped a goddess named Medea. The air is crisp as the persimmons hanging from the trees. The oaks remember her name, grown from acorns that recall when these steps held a city, temples, and golden treasures. I taste her name on my tongue—as the rain follows me when I climb up these green hills.
Her absence is a reminder of the feminine in our own stories—the feminine that is warm, powerful, and divine.

I close my eyes; she still rises like flames, begging for her story to be repaired, brought to life—not to be known as the mad witch, but the goddess of fire and life.
It is my romance toward the past—toward rocks and cities that once were, toward gods whose names we forgot.
She is my symbol as she rises above that burning city, raging toward the imbalance we carry in the West, where there is no goddess, only the god sitting behind his desk counting sins.

Let’s tell the myths we need.

Let’s have Medea rise again—as Shakti, pierced by love when the prince Jason comes seeking gold and finds the goddess. He wanted gold and then learned she was the treasure.
Their names mean the same: medicine and healer. If we remove the drama between them, we can see the divine marriage.
She asks him—are you worthy?
Then he rises and meets her. He crawls into the serpent for her. When Jason emerges, there is magic—recognition of equals—they saw the god and goddess within each other.
Shiva and Shakti.
The bell that rings true.

In the West we forgot about harmony—the sacred polarity between the masculine and feminine.
The god of the West is male; his prophets, his son, his priests—all male. This screams imbalance, fury. Yes, it is part of Medea’s rage that we do not have the feminine in our mythology and theology.

Love, bodies, desire, rest, energy—these are not sins to hide. They are part of the fulcrum to be balanced. Jason of the old myth, like modern men, forgets reverence. His wife becomes a commodity—not a living, breathing goddess. Medea can bring us back to life.

We are Medea’s daughters, staying in the fire with her, seeking harmony. The stories of the gods we inherited fight like they are on reality shows. They do not offer sacred wisdom.

The masculine mythology has become hard and hollow. Zeus, Yahweh, and Jason are treasure seekers and thieves; they do not hold with warmth.
How men today ache to be able to tap into that, but come against their hardwiring—a refusal to soften. Our mythology lost the medicine of myth when the feminine was swallowed into drama.

The word witch became a brand when it once signified a woman of power. Yet our bones remember. A witch is one who knows what is sacred. She can speak to what is not seen and pull love from pain.

In Tantra, the great mother Shakti is divided into ten—the Mahāvidyās. Their names are medicine: Kali or Tara. Tantra honored the feminine, and the West forgot. Tantra remembers the feminine life force before it was suppressed. Their stories were never buried. The lesson of Tantra is that power and holiness merge.

Let us bring that wisdom back to the West. Let us retell myths so Medea can stand next to her sun chariot not as a madwoman, but as a teacher of what is sacred.

That soft glow of fire in her eyes is for us. Let us find these lost Shaktis of the West—Branwen, Cerridwen, Rhiannon, Helen, and Phaedra. They need stories not of madness, but of how they offer love and wisdom to help us be the women we are meant to be.

I am with Medea now, rising like a sun above the Black Sea. She unites with Jason in a marriage of harmony, between equals, as they see the god-light in each other’s eyes—his steadiness to her fire.
This is because Medea pierced me. When I remember Medea, I remember a wholeness that we can create again.
So when I leave the green hills of Georgia, her light is bright, her love endless, as she dips up from the hills—another day to shine on our waiting hands.