Medusa part of their religion. Medusa was beheaded by the hero Perseus, who thereafter used her head, which retained its ability to turn onlookers to stone, as a weapon until he gave it to the goddess Athena to place on her shield. In classical antiquity the image of the head of Medusa appeared in the evil-averting device known as the "Gorgoneion". The three Gorgon sisters—Medusa, Stheno, and Euryale—were all children of the ancient marine deities Phorcys (or "Phorkys") and his sister Ceto (or "Keto"), chthonic monsters from an archaic world. Their genealogy is shared with other sisters, the Graeae, as in
Astrocladus euryale Astrocladus euryale Astrocladus euryale, the basket star, or gorgon's head is a brittlestar of the family Gorgonocephalidae found in the coastal waters of South Africa from the west coast of the Cape Peninsula to about Algoa Bay. The 10 arms branch repeatedly in an alternating pattern into ever-finer tendrils, which can be extended to form a basket-like net for filter feeding, or rolled up compactly against the body disc when not feeding. The body is generally a pale grey studded with whitish knobs usually ringed with black. The pattern varies, and the colours can vary regionally. The arms are usually