Paranormal
From China all the way to Britain, as far back as 7000 years ago, the dragon has often appeared in stories, mythologies and cultural references. Yet the dragon plays a benevolent role in the East and an evil one in the West; is it a psychological symbol of our struggles or is there a better explanation for the myth of dragons?
For centuries, the dragon has played a big role in art, myth and religion. "St. George and the Dragon" is one of the many legends about this symbolic creature. While there are several variations of this story, one version goes like this:
The people of Silene (Cyrene, in present day Libya) had lived for a long time in fear of an evil dragon outside their gates. At first they had placated it each day with several sheep but soon it was demanding both a man and a sheep for its meals. Then, not happy with the arrangement, it wanted more delectable flesh and insisted on the sacrifice of young virgins. The king decided that the young girls of the city should draw lots each day to determine who would be the next victim. One day, to his horror, the lot fell to his daughter, the beautiful Princess Sabra. In vain, the king pleaded with his subjects for her life. They were adamant. He must abide by the rule that he himself had made.
Against his wishes, but bound by his own law, the king saw his beloved daughter, dressed as a bride, led off to the spot where the dragon was eagerly waiting. But at that moment a strange knight appeared on horseback. It was George of Lydda, on his way to see the Roman Emperor Diocletian and plead for the lives of Christian slaves. Making the sign of the cross with his sword, he spurred his horse against the dragon. They fought until the beast fell wounded to the ground. George told the princess to fasten her belt around the dragon's neck and lead it into Silene. The people honored George as a hero and he told them that if they would consent to becoming Christians and be baptized, he would slay the dragon. The people agreed and George took his sword and cut the dragon's head off. By coincidence, the town of Silene is near the place that Perseus, a Greek hero, is said to have rescued Andromeda from a terrifying sea dragon.
St. George defeating the dragon
Aside from emphasizing the importance of the upper class over peasants, the fight between St. George and the dragon is usually interpreted as an allegory, showing the triumph of Christianity over the powers of darkness. But legends and traditions in different places show that this struggle had an earlier and more universal symbolic significance. In countries as far apart as China and England, we find that the dragon in earlier times represented the principle of fertility. The dragon would be born each spring from an egg underneath the water and grew and flourished. Each year as Nature waned, the old dragon had to be killed to make way for the new dragon that would be born the following spring. When the western Christian tradition made the dragon synonymous with evil, the killing came to symbolize not only the end of the year, but the victory of God over Satan. The slaying of the dragon, for this reason, has been associated with many Christian saints besides St. George.
Psychology
Modern psychology has another view on the myth of dragons. The struggle with the dragon in stories has been interpreted as symbolizing our own internal struggle between deep seated lusts and unconscious drives against the demands of conscience on the other. The fertility legend is likewise taken from a new view - the dragon is seen as an old man or father whose sexual potency has diminished and who must be killed so that the younger, potent sons can take over the sexual role and enable life to continue.Dragons have also had, in legends, the role as guardians of treasure. In this case, the treasure can be seen as the son's sexual drives with the dragon playing the restraining mother, or the daughter's virginity with the protective father played by the dragon.
In contrast to the West, the dragon in China is the embodiment of gentleness and goodwill. The Chinese dragon legends and interpretations differ greatly. Whatever the symbolism, why did these creatures exert such power and fascination over our minds? There are land dragons, water dragons, flying dragons, fierce and even timid dragons. There are dragons of many shapes from almost all parts of the world.
The creation of such mythical creatures seems to be attributed to the personification of inexplicable forces of nature, to provide explanations for arbitrary fates or events out of human control. However, both the Western aspects (dragons are evil) and Eastern aspects (dragons are kind) are equally incomprehensible and mysterious and lend themselves to interpretation by symbols that make them easier to understand for ordinary people.
Just as early ancestors gave the 'gods' a mixture of human and animal attributes to make them more powerful than humans, they may have imagined dragons as a mixture of different creatures to suggest their supernatural powers. And so we find that the appearance of the dragons varied from culture to culture, depending on the beasts which they found most significant.
In India, there is the elephant dragon, in China the stag dragon and in western Europe we find the ubiquitous reptilian dragon. The Western dragon is very reminiscent of prehistoric reptiles and this also raises the question as to whether the concept of dragons stems from tribal or folk memories of giant dinosaur fossils or even the unlikely survival of a prehistoric dinosaur species.
Sumeria
One of the first dragons ever to appear in mythology is thought to be Zu (or Anzu); he is a 'more-than-bird' but 'less-than-dragon' creature that arises in the legends of Sumerians who settled in Mesopotamia around 5000 BC. Keep in mind that by their summaries, the dragon had become part of their legend at that time, implying that the dragon existed a long time ago. The dragon Zu was said to have stolen the Tablets of Destinies created by the chief Sumerian god Enlil. The tablets had been written to set out the laws of the Universe.Enlil was enraged by this action and called a meeting among all the gods to find a champion who would fight against Anzu, regain the Tablet of Destinies, and set the word right again. After a number of gods refused the task, believing it to be impossible, Ninurta agreed to the mission. A battle ensued between Ninurta and the dragon Zu. Ninurta called upon "The Seven Winds" and used it to shoot arrows at Zu. However, Zu had the tablets which protected him against all such attacks. So Ninurta went after Zu's feathers or scales, cutting them up. He then pierced Zu's heart with an arrow and gave the tablets back to Enlil.
Ninurta battles Zu, depiction
The myth of the battle between the dragon and the sun god is repeated in stories in many later civilizations and symbolizes the struggle between light and darkness or good and evil.
Babylon
When in around 1800 BC the Babylonians gradually replaced the Sumerians, they took over the Sumerian myths too; the Babylonian creation myth went on to include dragons. As the story goes, in the beginning were only Apsu, the male spirit of water, and Tiamat, the sea goddess who had adopted the dragon for her symbol. Apsu and Tiamat represented the forces of chaos and destruction. They gave birth to all the gods and goddesses. Apsu, upon looking upon the children was not pleased and decided to kill them. The younger gods and goddesses learned of this and killed Apsu before he could do anything.
Marduk battling Tiamat
When Tiamat learned of this, she was enraged at the killing of her husband. She led a fierce army that included serpents and dragons with crowns of flame and attacked the gods, who stood for order. The chief god Marduk, god of the Sun, was determined to fight Tiamat in single combat. He used the winds as his main weapon. When Tiamat opened her mouth to consume him, he drove the winds right into her mouth and body. Her body became bloated and distended and she was unable to close her mouth. Marduk shot an arrow down her throat, killed her and severed her body in half. One half became the earth and the other became the heavens.
Egypt
Babylonian and Sumerian ideas spread to Egypt and probably inspired the legend of Apophis - enemy of the Egyptian sun god Ra. The myth started out as Apophis being the oceans, which held the world together but constantly threatened to destroy it. Over time, the myth changed and developed into the struggle between night and day. In some versions, the serpent or dragon, representing night, swalled the sun at sunset and disgorged it the next morning. In others, the sun went down each night into the underworld to fight the dragon and having each time succeeded in hacking him to pieces, came up to earth again in the morning. Solar eclipses were explained by Apophis succeeding in swallowing the Sun god, but with Ra always escaping.Medieval Scholars
Throughout the West and Middle East, dragons were generally regarded as carriers of evil and bad luck. They might vary greatly in appearance - some resembling serpents, others being formed from such unlikely combinations as a lion, crocodile and hippopotamus - but they nearly all have a common endless hostility against human beings.Western Medieval "scholars" believed that the majority of dragons lived beneath the earth in an area honeycombed with caves. Dragons preferred to be underground and the only ones seen above ground were those that had somehow become lost and strayed into the world of sky and sunshine. Unable to find their way back, they vented their frustration on any person nearby. In psychological terms, the dragons from the dark depths become the evil thoughts dwelling in all of us which, once they are allowed out into the open, bring trouble, pain and sometimes death to our fellow beings.
Greece
While the concept of dragons living in caves was widespread and common, the concept of dragons guarding treasure was first mentioned by the Greek author Artemidorus. He believed that dragons were to be found where treasure was hidden and therefore, dreams about dragons signified treasure and wealth. This is apparent in the Greek myths involving dragons - and there are too many to mention here; Jason and the Argos capturing the Golden Fleece, Hercules slaying Hydra as part of his 12 labors, Apollo killing Typhon and even one of the oldest tales of dragons in the Western world - Draco vs. Cadmus.Several Greek legends about dragons involved the sowing of teeth into the ground to produce soldiers or other powers. Whle it seems to be out of place and meaningless, this becomes an important part of several Egyptian, Greek and Dogon cults.
Germany/Scandinavia
The concept of dragons guarding treasure or mystical powers, as mentioned above, soon became extremely popular in European mythology as is exemplified in the legend of Siegfried.A dwarf named Regin once told Siegfried that he could gain wealth and power by slaying a dragon named Fafnir, who lived in a cave. Fafnir guarded a huge mound of treasure and that they could share it. Siegfried took interest in this case and together they rode to the cave where the dragon was living. What Siegfried didn't know was that Fafnir the dragon was actually Regin's brother. Fafnir was originally a dwarf but had become so greedy and protective of his wealth that he turned into a dragon.
Siegfried vs. Fafnir
Once outside the cave, they dug a pit in which Siegfried hid with his sword at the ready; the pit was covered in leaves. Siegfried waited and when the dragon Fafnir passed overhead on its way to the watering hole, he lunged upwards with his sword and pierced the belly of the dragon. The dragon died and Regin took out the dragon's heart to roast and eat. He shared the roasted heart with Siegfried. Moments after biting into it, he heard chattering. Looking up, he realized that he could understand the language of the birds (new understanding of Nature). He learned the truth of the dwarf Regin's story from the birds and also that Regin was planning to kill Siegfried to claim the treasure as his own. Siegfried saw the truth of this in Regin's eyes, killed him, and went in to claim the treasure as his own. He then bathed in the dragon's blood and gained invulnerability.
In many other legends such as this, heroes gain new kinds of power from killing and eating parts of the dragon.
Britain - The Dragons in London
One of the earliest tales of dragons in Britain concerns the legendary British monarch King Lludd, who lived happily in the city he had built in the southeast of the island - a city later called Londinium by the Romans and which is today the little known town of London. As the story goes, Britain was struck by three plagues. Of these, the second plague was a shriek that was heard all around Britain every May over every hearth in the Island of Britain. Suddenly, the peace would be destroyed by an evil that went through people's hearts and so scared them that the men lost their hue and strength, and the women their children, and the young men and the maidens lost their senses, and all the animals and trees and earth were left barren.King Lludd sought the advice of his older brother, King Llevelys of France. "The plague in your kingdom is caused by a Red Dragon," King Llevelys said. "Another dragon of a foreign race (the White Dragon of the Saxons) is fighting with it, and striving to overcome it. And therefore does your dragon make a fearful outcry." King Llevelys gave King Lludd careful instructions about how to rid his land of the monsters. king Llud returned home and, following his brother's directions, had a pit dug in the exact center of his domain. As Llevelys had predicted, the dragons grew tired of battling one night and fell
exhausted into the pit. They drank the mead that had been poured in and fell asleep. This made it easy to take them in two stone chests to the Welsh mountain of Snowdon for burial.
Saxon white dragon
Red Dragon on the Welsh Flag
The red dragon later became one of the wary symbols of the ancient Britons and Welsh and today is one of the symbols of Wales. You can read the full version of the story here.
Britain - The Lambton Worm
England is rich in stories of such creatures. Among the many of Britain's dragon legends are those in which the monster takes the form of a giant worm. Of these, the most famous is that of the Lambton Worm, a legend from as 'recent' a time as the 1300s.It was a Sunday and John de Lambton should have been attending church. Instead, he defiantly went fishing. It was not much fun for him when he hooked a great worm with nine holes on either side of its mouth. Foot by foot he dragged the huge, grotesque monster onto dry land, cursing the thing's size and ugliness. He thought he had caught 'the Devil himself,' and to get rid of it he threw it into a deep well nearby. He then went back home hoping that he had seen and heard the last of the worm. He shortly resumed his 'God-defying' habit of Sunday fishing.
Lambton forgot about the worm soon and years passed by. Lambton decided that he wanted to redeem himself, so he joined the Crusades and went to the Holy Land for seven years. Unknown to him, the wicked worm he caught years before grew in the well. The gigantic worm, now so huge it could wrap itself around a hill nine times, crawled out of its hiding place and terrorized the town. It killed cows, chickens, and even the townsfolk. Some brave townsmen tried to kill it, and once even sliced it in half, but to their amazement and dismay, the dragon would just join together again. The towns people then tried calming the great creature with milk (knowing the other legends of placating beasts). They filled a cow-trough with 20 gallons of milk. When the worm smelled this, it came out to drink, then sluggishly went back to its place in the hills, thought to be Penshaw Hills.
Lambton Worm
When Lambton came back to England, he learned from his father of what had happened. Horrified at knowing that he was responsible for the plight of the village, he consulted a local sage, the Wise Woman of Brugeford, to get advice on how to win the battle. "You will succeed," she told him, "but remember this. You must vow to kill the first being or person you meet as you recross the threshold of Lambton Hall. If you fail to do so, then none of the Lambtons for the next nine generations will die on his bed."
Lambton agreed to the condition and put on a special suit of armor studded with blades and went out to face the worm. A desperate battle ensued. After an hour or more of savage fighting, the worm wound itself around Lambton, but the blades cut the worm up badly, giving Lambton the advantage. He slew the monster. He then waded ashore and walked wearily to Lambton Hall. To his horror he saw that the first living being was none other than his own father. He instead killed his favorite dog hoping to sacrifice the dog to the curse placed by the Wise Woman. It did not work; the Wise Woman's prediction came true and nine generations of Lambton men died away from their beds. The first to die was John de Lambton himself, who died while on another crusade. The ninth Lambtom to meet an unnatural death was Henry Lambton, Member of Parliament who represented the City of Durham; he was killed in June 1761 when his coach was in an accident on a bridge of the Wear River.
China
The Chinese affection for the beasts was made clear in this dictionary definition of around 1600 which stated, "The dragon is... the largest of scaled creatures. Its head is like a camel's its horns like a deer's, its yees like a hare's its ears like a bull's, its neck like a snake's, its belly like a frog's, its scales like a carp's, its claws like an eagle's, and its paws like a tiger's. Its scales number 81, being nine by nine, the extreme odd andlucky number. Its voice is like the beating of the gong... when it breathes the breath forms clouds, sometimes changing into rain, at other times into fire... it is fond of beautiful gems and jade. It is extremely fond of swallow's flesh; it dreads iron, the mong plant, the centipede, the leaves of the Pride of India tree and silk dyed in five different colors. When rain is wanted, a swallow should be offered; when floods are to be restrained, then iron; to stir up the dragon, the mong plant should be employed."Unfortunately, there are far too many dragons in Chinese mythology to mention. However, a generalized summary would be prudent: the dragons that stalked the land created no need for heroes to kill them, eat their hearts or drink their blood. Dragons were regarded as benevolent rather than baleful; they brought happiness and plenty. It was said that they could be found in rivers, lakes, oceans and even raindrops. They were also honored as the makers of the humanitarian laws and were held in particular esteem during the Ch'ing dynasty (1644-1912).
In spite of the help the dragons gave, they were occasionally used for food and medicine. According to legend, a tasty soup was made of one particular dragon that fell into the palace grounds of the Emperor Hwo during a heavy shower around 100 BC and the hot liquid was served to the emperor's ministers. In parts of China today, pharmacies sell powdered and dried alligators (said to be descended from dragons) to cure anything from warts to lovesickness. You can read more about the astronomically numerous Chinese dragons here.
Philippines
The Philippines is an example of how a significant period of cultural isolation can amend the legend or symbolism of dragons.The Bakonawa is a Filipino dragon; it lives in the sea and at certain times of the year leaves his watery home to consume the moon. When this happens the natives create a lot of noise to frighten Bakonawa so he spits out the moon and returns it to the sky (this is a tradition followed in a loose form even today). There’s an alternate story to this myth based around Bakonawa’s sister, who is represented as a sea turtle. She would lay her eggs on one of the islands, but every time she came ashore the water would follow her, and the island seemed to grow smaller. The worried residents, thinking their island would disappear, killed the sea turtle. On hearing of his sister’s demise, the grieving Bakonawa ate the moon and disappeared into the sea. The terrified locals asked their god Bathala to intervene. He refused, telling the people instead to make a great noise to disturb Bakonawa. They complied, banging their pots and pans to frighten the dragon. It worked – he regurgitated the moon and disappeared into the sea, never again to be seen.
Other countries
A thorough study will reveal that dragons can be found in religions and cultures the world over except, it is disputed, North and South America as the context of 'dragons' over the millennia of isolation does not allow it to match the common underlying symbolism for dragons as present in other cultures. Stories of dragons range from the Spanish (Cuelebres), Turkish (Evren), Portugal (Coca, who is supposed to have lost to St. George as well), Italy (Ascultone), India (Nagas), Armenia, to various African (Amphisbaena), Korean (Yo and Kyo), Maori, Slavs (Zmey Gorynych) and Siberia (Yilbegan).Dragons in the Modern Age
One of the most startling of dragon reports from more recent times came from the small island of Komodo in the Malay Archipelago as recently as 1912. The pilot of a plane that crash landed on Komodo afterward spoke of the 'giant, lizard like creatures' he had encountered. Although most of the people dismissed his story as 'preposterous', the curator of the Botanical Gardens on Java decided to investigate the aviator's claims. He asked the Dutch Civil Administrator of the district to visit Komodo and see what he could find out. The administrator came back with the skin of a seven foot long creature,reporting that the local people swore there were similar beats of up to 30 feet in length. On receipt of the skin and the information, the curator sent a Malay animal hunter to the island in search of a live monster. A local rajah provided special assistants and dogs. The hunt party captured four dragon-like animals, the biggest of them almost 10 feet long. They were later classified as belonging to a new species of giant monitor lizard and are now known popularly as Komodo dragons.
In the summer of 1960, dragons again made the news. The place was New Guinea. The story was that local residents in an area of the island under Australian administration had been attacked by dragons some 20 feet long. Rumors flew that the monsters belched smoke and fire and sucked the blood from their victims' bodies. Some corpses also had wounds of more than a foot in length, said to have been made by the dragons' claws. There was so much panic that the government authorities moved people into police stockades and posted a substantial reward for the capture of one of the beasts, dead or alive. Perhaps not surprisingly, no one tried to collect the reward. Whether from boredom or overfeeding, the dragons themselves appeared no more.
In 1963, the most convincing evidence of the existence of dragons was reported. This dragon was said to have lived by the sea and its favorite activity involved frolicking in the autumn mist. The dragon, fondly known as Puff, was sighted in and around the area of Honah Lee. However, further reports indicated that the dragon had sadly slipped into his cave after the loss of a friend; no further reports came of this.
In conclusion, the dragon is now considered by most people as a purely mythical beast. Its history and symbolism are so rich and diverse that the creature still continues to fascinate us more than any real animal and this is expected to continue. To find out more about dragons from around the world, you can visit any of the following resources:
The Serene Dragon - Collection of dragon descriptions and stories from around the world.
ThinkQuest Library - Dragons Around the World.
Reptilian Agenda - Dragons of History Around the World.
About.Com - Dragons in Classic Literature
