Medusa
In Greek mythology, Medusa (Greek: Μέδουσα, Médousa, "guardian, protectress"), was a monstrous chthonic female character essentially an extension of an apotropaic mask, gazing upon whom could turn onlookers to stone. Secondarily, Medusa was tripled into a trio of sisters, the Gorgons.
Some classical references multiply her into three Gorgon sisters: Medusa, Stheno, and Euryale, monsters with goggling eyes, sharp protruding fangs and lolling tongues, brass hands, and hair of living, venomous snakes. The Gorgons were children of Phorcys and Ceto, or sometimes, Typhon and Echidna, in each case chthonic monsters from an archaic world. Their genealogy is shared with other sisters, the Graiae, as in Aeschylus' Prometheus Unbound, who places both trinities of sisters far off "on Kisthene's dreadful plain"
"Near them their sisters three, the Gorgons, winged With snakes for hair— hated of mortal man—" Perseus with the Head of Medusa.
In all the versions, while Medusa was pregnant by Poseidon, she was beheaded in her sleep by the hero Perseus, who was sent to fetch her head by King Polydectes of Seriphus. With help from Athena and Hermes, who supplied him with winged sandals, Hades' cap of invisibility, a sickle, and a mirrored shield, he accomplished his quest. The hero slew Medusa by looking at her reflection in the mirror instead of directly at her to prevent being turned into stone. When the hero severed Medusa's head, from her neck two offspring sprang forth: the winged horse Pegasus and the giant Chrysaor who later became the hero wielding the golden sword. Jane Ellen Harrison notes that "her potency only begins when her head is severed, and that potency resides in the head; she is in a word a mask with a body later appended ... the basis of the Gorgoneion is a cultus object, a ritual mask misunderstood." (Harrison 1922:187).In Odyssey xi, Homer does not specifically mention the Gorgon Medusa,