getting stoned with medusa
new moon in taurus | may 16th, 2026 15:31 cst
A note before the poem: it speaks plainly about what we’re trained to swallow—coercion, compliance, gendered violence, the body’s survival math. twc.
assuming
you’d prefer not to turn to stone
(or be stoned)
what would you do?
when you can’t flee
do you fight
and later live with
unprocessed anxiety?
do you flee
rather than fight
and live with unprocessed rage?
do you freeze/fawn/fuh
(ck)
and forever process the lot?
it’s not a matter of style
in survival
it’s the cost.
we are creatures
confronted with power dynamics
and part of that power
is demanded compliance
we are conditioned to (not move)
we are conditioned to (not scream)
we are conditioned to take up less space
so someone else
might be seen
make yourself as small (disappear)
and convenient (you’re welcome)
and at some point
then what?
you’ve shrunk to a size zero
and your face is expressionless
from store-bought botulism
or a life of small
and gross
hijacks
to your nervous system
training
trained
that if you don’t comply
we will throw acid on your face
or cut off your head
and you may live in shame
or you may not live at all
and we decide this
so we better know whose child that is in your womb
(it better be mine)
because we cannot know the parent
except that it’s yours
because you built its bones and breath
with your core
woman should be outraged
humans should be outraged
yet here we are
burnt out
spending days soothing
what’s left of the frazzled mercurial membranes of our human electrical systems
from too much Doom in childhood
and heart-racing Mario levels
roller coasters
films
haunted houses
in pursuit
of controlled jump scares
our nervous systems
are designed to run
not sit
and watch the horrors
are we breeding out our sympathy
NO
but we have built our tolerance
like addicts
unknowingly
to pain
is that why we call it
getting stoned?
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT
VENMO @laurenkhickman CA$HAPP $bearhickman
this lunation…
Fixed stars are used in navigation. Planets move - they are in transit, they are in motion.
The Sun and Moon come into alignment (a conjunction) at 25’ Taurus. The Fixed Star (navigation point) is being activated like a portal, just two days after the Mercury-Sun conjunction on Thursday.
The mischief, my friends. It’s real. And mischief can itch or tickle… but it will stimulate a response.
I’ve included the Medusa legend as part of this lunation not because I had a look weeks ago and felt this Algol situation was of interest, but that Medusa symbolism has been in my nexus field more acutely these past weeks… new clients with tattoos, learning a fixed EYE GAZING technique, talking about the Roman Medusa heads in the underground cisterns beneath the city, scaffolding Istanbul (look this up, it’s fascinating).
Before I jump into that rant, I want to note the power of Taurus in its ability to stabilize and how that is done in the real world, in our bodies, through our labor, our belongings, and the sensory experience. The new moon in Taurus comes at the tail end of this season, resetting the astrological clock with Mercury and its higher octave, Uranus, within orb (proximity) of this lunation.
New Moons are the darkness, the potential point, a blank canvas, fertile soil, the pause before a new chapter begins.
If you’ve seen the original Clash of the Titans with Maggie Smith as Athena and clay stop-motion, you’ll remember the whole story centers on the shiny golden boy Perseus, son of Zeus, and a “golden shower” that impregnates Danaë. This seemingly non-consensual love affair ends with Danaë being SEALED IN A BOX and thrown into the sea.
Oh, the shame, my hot daughter is pregnant, she tells me it’s with a god, and I don’t dare to kill her myself, so I’ll just let fate (or, um, facts — starvation/dehydration/asphyxiation) handle the problem for me.
GROAN.
So another story starting with disbelief of a woman and than punishment having to do with sovereignty over her body. Love that we are still handling things the same way thousands of years since this myth was told, cool cool cool.
So then the Gods have mercy on Danaë, since it’s Zeus’ bun in the oven, and they wash them to a beautiful island. There, Danaë presumably gets some midwifery support and raises her son, who is only to be despised by Hera (because her husband is an entitled ass and she should probably have spent her sacred devotion on someone else who deserved it — note asteroid JUNO in the birth chart for this kind of nonsense that gets branded as jealousy and not betrayal at the deepest level).
So the gods start tossing bad ass tests at our young golden boy, Perseus, until he is met with the task that would hang him in the stars for me to tell you about in my overtly sarcastic and annoyed tone.
In Clash of the Titans, Medusa is a scary gorgon, half woman, half snake, her lower body being a serpent and her head wreathed with snakes instead of hair. The gods hook Perseus up with some helpers, a mechanical owl — not in the myth, but a dope gift from Haphasteus, Aphrodite’s hubby, all the same— and a shiny shiny shield that acts as a mirror so that Perseus, can you know, kill this lady without looking at her, which also has some way misogynistic undertones.
So blah blah, the Gorgon is evil, kill her, bring me her head.
I mean, what a hay day of symbolism is this, and how much lacking compassion for one of the versions of the myth where Medusa, a temple worker, is raped by Poseidon, and rather than getting some compassion, another God, a FEMALE Goddess, just punishes her by making it impossible for her to look on any person (men specifically) without turning him to stone.
Maybe this is a badass gift to say eff the patriarchy — but also, the eyes are our brain, externalized. This feels like a frozen-nervous-system analogy waiting to happen. And can you imagine not being able to look at a lover, or a friend? And how obnoxious to have snakes for hair. Like, that gives me anxiety just thinking about how navigating live creatures that are now attached to and dependent on me? Like, how do you feed them? And where is the end? How does this even work?
The snake symbolism is so on the nose, too, and the being stoned as being transformed, as well.
Medusa
the break down
There are multiple versions of this tale, but the one that matters psychologically is the arc:
Medusa as a violated figure: In later accounts, Medusa is assaulted by Poseidon in Athena’s temple.
Punishment displaced onto the victim: Athena transforms Medusa into a “monster.” This is the classic move of social/religious power punishing the one who was harmed because the system can’t hold the truth.
The gaze that petrifies: Medusa’s look turns people to stone. Symbolically, traumatic truth can freeze the nervous system; also, an uncompromising truth can stop predation in its tracks.
Decapitation by Perseus: Perseus kills Medusa using a mirror/shield—he can’t look directly. This is huge as a symbol: we often need indirect approaches to trauma (images, ritual, therapy structures, art, somatic work) rather than forcing direct exposure. Bonus side note: Venus’ glyph is the hand mirror — connections, relationships are revealed through the metaphor of gaze and seeing ourselves in others.
The Pegasus springs forth from the severed head, a wellspring of energy and power.
So: Medusa is not a “monster.” She’s a myth about violation, distortion by authority, demonization, transformation & protection.
SELF INQUIRY FOR THE TAURUS NEW MOON
Where was I “monstered” for having an accurate survival response? (anger, disgust, refusal, wanting to leave)
Where have I internalized the gaze of the punisher (Athena-as-institution) so that I blame myself for what happened to me?
What truth turns me to stone? (freeze response, dissociation, “I can’t move forward when I see that clearly”)
What would it look like to convert the petrifying gaze into a protective boundary?
What is the “head” I’m being asked to separate from the body?
Algol can describe the split between intellect/story and somatic truth. Healing often looks like reuniting them—or decisively choosing the body’s truth over the mind’s rationalizations.
Where have I demonized or scrutinized my fellows (femmes to the front here!) because of my conditioning?
tool: applying the myth
Name the distortion:
“Here’s where my story got rewritten against me.”
Honor the gaze:
“The part of me that freezes/petrifies is trying to protect me.”
Use the mirror method: indirect processing—write, draw, symbol, sigil, speak to a candle—don’t force direct contact if it floods you.
Decapitation as separation:
cut the cord to the punisher’s voice; separate your truth from their narrative.
Pegasus moment:
identify what gets born when you stop carrying shame that never belonged to you.
what i do→
the Mirror
Astrology Informed Consultation
the Portal
Absentia (Distance) Reiki Sessions
Support
1:1 co-regulatory transition support
uranus & her moons, c/o NASA JAMES WEBB TELESCOPE
Uranus’ part of this lunation has me thinking a lot about trauma and the body. With Chiron moving to Taurus soon, Uranus having left this sign, and the potent pack of the Mercury Cazimi and this new moon happening in Taurus, the body can teach us so much about what we want as well as what we are holding within us that may be holding us back.
This past week, I attended a twelve-hour training on Brainspotting. A technique that sprang from the EMDR method, where EMDR uses bilateral movement, Brainspotting uses a fixed gaze point (a ‘brainspot’) where the client is asked to loosely focus for nervous system processing.
What I love about this therapy is that it honors uncertainty. There is no protocol; essentially, nothing is “right or wrong” as the processing unfolds, it is just unfolding.
That sense of agency and trust in the client is what I’ve spent so many years developing as an energy worker, and getting to see a technique that reminded me of the work I do with a Reiki technique I called The Transformer, this psychology method fell right into alignment with my ethos and now, into my lap as a substantion of this lunation with the nervous system (Mercury cazimi, conjunction with the new moon and with Uranus) and the gaze (Algol, blinking fixed star) supporting safety in the body (Taurus).
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NOTES FROM THIS ONE
my dudes, i am out of spoons for this mailer.
I just know when people starte asking me about it last week, I said we need to stop policing each other.
And women have an opportunity to soften and stop inflicting the scrutiny and intergenerational trauma we’ve inherited. We have an opportunity to stop the lineage of pain.
I had serious femme issues when I was younger. All of my friends were guys in my teen years, or I was with independent femmes who had also been burned by other women and were inherently distrustful, but willing to support other outcasts.
By the time I arrived at college, I didn’t have much interest in interacting with women. By the time I was 12, I’d been bullied enough to know better, and by high school, I found it a moot point. Too painful.
So I joined a sorority.
I know — SHOCKING.
But it worked. But, I was hazed. I had been hazed in high school as well, and found it degrading.
So when I got to be the President of the Sorority (it was a small crew, and it just made sense at the time), I decided to change the rules.
I put daisies in every female-identifying student’s mailbox with a note that said “Have a beautiful day.”
I removed hazing and food waste.
And when I left, the alumni came back in and reinforced those traditions.
I can’t say if Alpha Delta Epsilon in Pella, Iowa is still around, but I tried to evolve what I touched, just as I tried to evolve my relationships with women.
At 42, relationships with femmes are the most wonderful, profound relationships of my life. No cap.
Femmes are incredible. Women are incredible.
We are resilient. We are kind… but we also reinforce a lot of our scarring onto one another, or police on another out of habit or conditioning, and it sucks.
Fortunately, there has been a mass of dialogue about this in the past ten years, and the decentering of men and the male gaze, though a slow journey, has been incredible to witness.
I know that the women in my family lineage have been shit on.
I hear the stories. And the stories are told by powerful women. I’d like to see us worshipping women in all the ways we can.
We all walked through the door of a womb. It’s incredible.
stay inspired,
ursidae
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