If someone shouts, ‘don’t look’ or ‘don’t look back,’ the natural instinct is to Turn and have a good look.

When the Sea God Poseidon caught a glimpse of Medusa, it was a disaster. She was a beautiful young priestess with golden curls falling over her pretty shoulders and served in the temple of Athena in Athens. She had taken a vow of chastity.

Poseidon watched Medusa passing through the marble columns of the Acropolis and couldn’t take his eyes off her. He rose from the waves with uncontrollable lust and took her in an embrace.

Did he rape her? Or was she willing? She was never given the chance to explain. Her chastity was broken and Athena in a fit of pique turned the girl’s golden curls to slithering snakes. Her features became so ugly that anyone who looked upon Medusa would turn to stone and Medusa’s gaze would turn others to stone.

Medusa’s curse was a warning to Greek men that to be enthralled by a beautiful young woman was, potentially, to condemn oneself to death, symbolised by turning to stone. The myth also warned Greek women that being tempted by the advances of a man can lead – well, anywhere.

From Barbie to Snake Queen, after been ravaged by Poseidon, Medusa is decapitated by the Greek hero Perseus, who uses her head to turn his enemies to stone. Why did he slaughter Medusa? He had been sent to fetch her head by King Polydectes of Seriphus because the King wanted to marry Perseus’s mother. It’s a long story.

The mere act of ‘looking’ in myths and folk tales often leads to unfortunate circumstances. In Genesis, Lot’s wife famously looked back at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and turned into a pillar of salt. Orpheus was about to lead his beloved Eurydice from the Underworld. He glanced back over his shoulder a second too early and was condemned to a lifetime in Purgatory.

Don’t Look Back Bob

Salvador Dali gives the don’t look back warning a surreal twist. He was voyeur who enjoyed watching others in the sexual act without wishing to participate except in the privacy of masturbation, something he projected on canvas in The Great Masturbator, a brilliant oil that when first hung in New York in 1930s inspired many viewers to ask: what does that mean?

In Bob Dylan’s She Belong to Me we learn about a beautiful woman who appears to have everything, but there is a feeling in the subtext that she is heading for a fall – like Medusa.

She’s got everything she needs, she’s an artist
She don’t look back
She’s got everything she needs, she’s an artist
She don’t look back
She can take the dark out of the nighttime
And paint the daytime black