We are all familiar with the famous story of Jason and the Argonauts, how can we not be? They traveled far by boat seeking the Golden Fleece and they acquired it. It seems the tales of men are all about war and bloodshed, or finding of great riches. The poets sing of their heroic deeds of honor, no matter how much blood they spill or who's blood it is. When we are dealing with tales of the Trojan war, the "heroes" kill, not needing to care that the man they are killing is some mother's son.

Men are allowed to be violent and vengeful and it is deemed "justice." They are allowed to use trickery of the most malicious and violent nature and have it called "cunning", all For the simple reason that the poets are men. Men understand other men. But they don't understand women particularly well.

This story is going to be very difficult for me to write. Many of the things that happen, make me, a modern woman with modern values, sick to my stomach. But the story of Medea is an important one to all women. She has been demonized for so long by those that don't understand the way women reason or the true intent behind our actions. I had to really stop and consider the source of information on Medea long and hard to do this story justice. Poets throughout history are male. The voice of the feminine gets written out of the story when the tale is told by a man

So now a woman will tell the tale of Medea, Medea who killed her husband Jason's new wife, her own children as well as her little brother and a number of other people. I will start at the beginning, but before I do, I feel the need to stress certain things about this website. This is not a Christian website and it does not adhere to Christian morality.

This is a very disturbing story about a woman who killed her own children, among others. I am going to tell it with as little judgment as I can. That doesn't mean that I want people to go out and kill people, I am in no way encouraging such action. I find murder abhorrent. But as I said before, I am a modern woman with modern values. That doesn't mean I can't understand the reasoning of women from the ancient past, even those that do terrible things and who have already been judged and punished or rewarded by whatever gods they chose to entrust their soul to upon their death

Medea was a princess of Colchis, daughter of king Aeetes, granddaughter of Helios the sun god and a niece of the infamous witch Circe. Medea was also a priestess of Hekate, the Goddess of sorcery who was a triple Goddess. She took part in the rituals of Hekate, which is where Jason of the Argonauts (a ship full of heroes from Greece) first caught site of the beautiful dark haired and dark eyed woman he would make his wife and savior.

Jason had come to Colchis to steal the land's most sacred object, a golden fleece. The king declared out of fairness that Jason could take the golden fleece, provided he could earn it by doing three tasks. The first was to plough a field with a fire breathing oxen. The second task was to sow the teeth of a dragon in the ploughed field. What Aeetes left out about this task was that the teeth would sprout into a field of warriors and the way to defeat them was to throw a rock into the crowd.

It was Medea who saved the life of Jason of Iolcus by providing him with that bit of information. Unable to tell where the rock had come from, the sprouted warriors would turn on each other and kill each other off, leaving Jason unharmed and so he had passed two of the three tasks.

Aeetes was not pleased to see that not only had Jason passed the first two tasks but that he was still breathing. So he gave Jason the final task of killing the ever wakeful dragon that guarded the fleece. Once again, the sly princess of Colchis came to Jason's aid. She used her training in herbs to knock the beast out, making it oblivious to the fact that Jason was cutting it's head off and quite easy to kill.

Jason took the fleece and Medea, along with all of the heroes from Greece who had accompanied him to Cholchis and sailed away. But the fleets of Aeetes were approaching fast... To escape the wrath of the king of Colchis, the argonauts needed a distraction. Though it broke her heart, once again, Medea came through for them by killing her own brother, Apsyrtus. She dismembered his body and threw the parts into the sea, knowing that out of love her father would stop to retrieve every last piece, providing Jason and the Argonauts enough time to make an escape.

What kind of a man asks the woman he loves to murder and dismember her own baby brother? And what sort of a woman complies with such a request? A woman with a very broken heart and a very desperate man who stands to gain much. Medea gained only the loss of her beloved brother by her own hand.

Jason needed the fleece to gain the throne of his home Iolcus, but having met the requirements necessary to take over kingship (the theft of the fleece from Colchis), the old king still refused to vacate the throne. Once again, Jason went simpering to the woman he loved, Medea, for help and once again she helped him.

Love makes us do horrible things, at least in this case, if you could call it love. Medea conned the daughters of the man on the throne of Iolcus into murdering their own father. They boiled him alive, believing it was a spell of Medea's to return youth to the old man. Having killed the king of Iolcus, Medea and Jason fled to Corinth.

It was in Corinth that Jason left Medea and wed a daughter of the king. Her name was Glauce and Jason married her to inherit riches and wealth. Once again, a selfish man leads a woman into damnation and then leaves her when he is finished using her so that she can suffer alone the losses she took to provide him with all that he wanted. After she had given him two children and killed her own brother, it still wasn't enough...

Medea decided to give Jason's new bride a gift, the same gift she gave to her little brother. She sent her children, bearing a beautiful cape and a crown of gold, to Glauce, who of course put them on. It was the last gift she would receive. The cape and crown burst into flames, causing the death of Jason's new wife. Medea had only one thing, Jason, she had sacrificed everything else, her brother, her home, her humanity, all for him.

Now she would take..... she would take from him all that she had given to him. She would protect her children from learning the truth of their father, protect them from a life of misery at his hands. She was a priestess of the triple Goddess and as such she had an enormous amount of faith in the religious beliefs of her time. She believed her children would go somewhere beautiful, where they would be happy for eternity. She truly believed she would provide them with eternal life by killing them both.

We can say, my God how awful... But we lash out at our children all the time. What parent hasn't grounded a child for staying out past curfew? No parent does it out of hatred for the child. You do it to protect them from themselves and because we know that the whole world isn't sweetness and sunshine. There are bad people out there who will hurt our children if provided the opportunity so we must teach our children to never give them such a chance, which is really all Medea did in the most effective way possible.

After her children were dead, Medea went to Athens, without Jason. There she married again. Her marital bliss was again cut short. There is little told of her after that till it is mentioned that she was eventually murdered. Her head was severed from her body and her blood was permitted to drip into the ocean. The drips of blood were gathered by the Nereids who planted them in the ocean bed, growing from them a whole ocean forest of coral.

If Medea had been a man, she would have been praised as a hero for killing the enemies of the one she loved, for saving children and for cunningly killing an unlawful king. But she is not praised, only because she is a woman.

Nemaine/Macha
Nemaine is considered to be an aspect of Macha who is an aspect of the Morrigan or the goddess of war.

Branwen's Tragedy
In spring, a little bird, a pigeon, appeared with a broken wing in the castle and Branwen was lucky enough to find it.

The Swan Maiden
Their search ends at the home of Bruigh Mac, who claims Caer to be his enchanted daughter turned into a swan.

Medea's Tears
Medea was a princess of Colchis, daughter of king Aeetes, granddaughter of Helios the sun god and a niece of the infamous witch Circe.