MEDUSA

Zygomnesis as Mythology

Reality in Disguise

The story of Medusa, the snake-haired woman of Greek mythology is known to all, and believed by none. It is a safe target of inquiry because it is held as harmless nonsense from the infancy of Western Civilization. Our home page has already made the case: The Medusa's snake coiffure represents the mature female ovum assailed by thousands of competing sperm only one of which can be victorious. The winning sperm, in this case, has a name: Perseus.

Now, let's review the steps our hero has taken in order to ascend to his place in the pantheon.

Perseus, in his quest to find the mysterious home of the Medusa, asks directions of three ladies whose chief idiosyncracy is that they have but one eye among them. They pass this eye from hand to hand in order to see their interrogator.

In order to see them, look below:

Reality Without a Disguise

The symbol-forming instinct of the ancient Greeks had no words to describe the mysterious image attempting to rise to the level of conscious mind. But here it is, to our right: note the fimbriae, described in the famous "Anatomy Coloring Book" by Kapit and Elson as "waiting fingers," and as "finger-like" in my Mosby Medical Dictionary. The egg is gently moved from "hand to hand" because it has no motive power of its own.

Ovum Erupting into the Waiting "Fingers" of the Fimbriae

Pause for a question: Does Zygomnesis make the claim that we remember conception? Or does it make the claim, as now seems evident, that we remember our haploid life in the ovary before conception.

Answer: All reproductive events at the cellular level are memorialized in our common inheritance of archetypes, from the stately descent of the mature oocyte to its rendezvous point with destiny in the fallopian tube, to the perilous journey of the sperm, an aggressive gamete invariably described in the most anthropomorphic terms even in our medical journals. Let's meet Perseus.

Mircea Eliade might recognize this handsome fellow, complete with sword and gruesome trophy of his heroic triumph as nothing more than secondary elaboration, overlying a simple reality: Medusa is the egg engulfed by competing sperm. The victorious sperm is Perseus.

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