Gurgles and Mischief

The snake manifested from the dirt as I lay staring up at the stars. Long before I saw snakes speak to me in the desert sky, it surfaced from the mud of the lowlands where I was born. Rather than observing the snake, I became it — slithering over ground, fierce and slippery, then draping myself over a branch in utter stillness. I sensed my power: horniness, supple muscle, deathly venom. Slowly, body, tree and soil dissolved into all the women, creatures and land that had ever been, falling through the Earth until we floated among the stars.

Years later, in the dry desert of Egypt, a layer of Greek patriarchy was scraped off the sky. It revealed a universe where female power seeped through mythical bodies and constellations. Cassiopeia's breasts leaked milk and rain, the blood of Medusa's snake head melted monsters, and the head of Andromeda was the severed neck of Medusa and the cock of a flying horse, all at once.

Al Ghul — the Mischief Maker. Shapeshifting ghoul of the desert in Arab. In Greek, the eye of Medusa, one of the Gorgons — gurglers, noise makers, with blood that heals and destroys.

This force lives in two ceramic ritual vessels, coupled with a video of a Medusa bust by Quellenius — the 17th century Dutch sculptor whose studio furnished the Royal Palace in Amsterdam. He rendered her as pure evil: eyes mad, breasts shrivelled, snakes biting her own flesh. She stands surrounded by gods, gold, and maps of a world Dutch merchants believed was theirs.

Algol asks us to remember what came before — when snakes symbolised not sin, but wisdom, transformation and fertility.