The Medea

Alternate Titles: Stepmother, Mother Earth, Smothering Mother

She may be a false mother, a stepmother, or a mother whose love is lavished only a single one of her children. This is a mother who is able to kill her own offspring. She may kill or abandon the less loved of her children in order to strengthen the child in whom she has bestowed all of her hope -- like a gardener thinning out weaker plants in order to make room for the roots of the stronger. Or she may even kill the child that she loves most, believing her murder to be an act of love.
If she has any children that she loves, she pours out her entire life into them, but hers is a disordered, clutching love. In her heart, she does not love her children for themselves -- she does not even see them for themselves -- but as an extension of her own goals and ambitions, which are concentrated entirely in them. She does not allow her beloved children to grow beyond her because she is certain that without her constant help and direction they would be unable to accomplish all that she believes them capable of. In many cases, she entirely thwarts and cripples the child that she loves in trying to force him, or her, to conform to her own ideals.
In fairy tales and children's literature, where this sort of complicated destructive love is difficult to handle, she often appears in the guise of a Stepmother who is out to exploit, abandon, bewitch, or otherwise thwart a poor Orphan or Disciple who has somehow ended up in her care.
Earth Goddesses are very often Medeas who bestow their special affection on particular human children and demand the sacrifice or destruction of others -- this is why so many polytheist religions have those creepy mother goddesses with skulls hanging about their necks, and also why many human sacrifice cults believe that they are returning the blood of human children to the hungry earth. In occult traditions that mix Catholicism with pagan rites or witchcraft, the Virgin Mother is sometimes reinterpreted as one of these goddesses.

Archetypal Events: Kill her Children, Play Favourites, Manipulate, Abandon

Common Plots:
The Favourite Child: The Medea has multiple children, but only loves one of them. She hurts, kills or neglects the lesser children -- usually Orphans or Disciples -- while adoring the beloved child -- usually a Parasite or Disgrace.

Stepmother: The Medea becomes romantically involved with a Magus in his aspect of Widower. She tries to convince him to abandon his children by his former marriage -- this can be watered down to "send them away to a boarding school," or it can be as extreme as demanding their deaths.

The Unwanted Children: The Medea is in some way responsible for a child or children whom she does not want. She locks them away and is increasingly cruel and abusive until the children either die, are rescued, or escape.

Gingerbread House: An outwardly tempting home, which conceals an oven where children may be cooked. May be a beautiful suburban home with a picket fence and the bones of babies hidden in the cellar.
Supply of Affection: The Medea sees love as a limited commodity, easily exhausted. She may try to steward this resource by concentrating all of her love in one child, or she may make a heroic show of being a loving mother at first, only revealing her true nature later.
Shears: The Medea wields a pair of scissors which she uses to metaphorically cut people off from her love. She may use to shear off the hair of a tearful child, or to cut the thread of a human life.
Clothing: A
Prize: A
Monument: A
Minor Symbols: Snakes, skulls and human hearts are often associated with Medea-type goddeses, however these are sometimes borrowed from other deities, so it is difficult to say which are rightly hers.

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