QUOTE : Thus, there is an ambivalence here about the death-aspect of the Goddess. Clearly, she represents regeneration as well as death. Indeed, the venom of a snake can be both poison and antitoxin. As I will discuss on the pages that follow, Medusa holds here the functions of the prehistoric Goddess of the life continuum: birth, death, and then regeneration. She is multifunctional and multidimensional and she should be viewed in all of her complexity, through a non-patriarchal lens.