This writing has been in part supported by The Philosophical Research Society, more information of their work can be found here: https://www.prs.org/ - a place and unique forum for esoteric essays, poetry, and art.
Where I live in Sussex, UK, there are many local stories of lakes where dragons sleep. In a village in Lyminster, there is a story of a knucker (a Sussex word for dragon) who resides in a “knucker hole,” these are small lakes that are fed by spring waters and their depths are unknown. In 1524, two young men, both named Jim, wanted to test a knucker hole to find out how deep it was. In the middle of the night, they went into the local church and decided to “borrow” a church bell, then they brought two hundred yards of rope from the local shipyard. They lowered the bell into the water, but it never touched the bottom, the rope was tight even after all the two hundred yards had been coiled out. They stole another church bell (from the same church) and added another two hundred yards of rope, they kept lowering it, down and down. No luck, the rope never slacked, instead, it swiftly snapped and the bells were lost. The boys went home having failed in their undertaking to the cost of two church bells. A local storyteller, Michael O’Leary, writes that the church still only carries six bells instead of eight since that night. (the local pub is named the six bells pub to this day).
Something stirred in the water afterwards from the great below, a dragon had been awakened.
It’s been said that dragons in these parts of the world stir every 500 years.
In the deepest part of our psyche and in our deepest history, beyond the light of reason, a dragon lives. In Greek, “Derkesthai” is the root word for dragon. A renowned folklorist Olof Hylten-Cavallius (1818-1889) said: “in all the European cultures, we find stories of a legendary animal, a winged serpent” and we also know today that all cultures around the world has indistinguishable symbolic associations with dragons, wherever you look, it guards treasures, lives in enchanted caves, springs and waterfalls. In medieval times it was often an antagonistic force for the church, when reading hagiographies, saints are often battling dragons and heroes fight them in the cosmic myths and sagas. In the creation myths, the dragon represents a primordial chaos that has to be harnessed and subdued in order for the Gods to create a new world. In Mesopotamia, like I mentioned in the first essay, the storm-God Marduk fights against a Drakania: a rare she-dragon, named Goddess Tiamat. Tiamat personifies the seas of the original creation, where she is an immanence of the primeval waters.
In these primordial waters, the dragon glances its own reflection and pursues to devour itself - creating the image of the Ouroboros, the Midgard Serpent, which bites its own tail and forms a boundary of our world. In the northern myths, this boundary is the periphery of consciousness itself as the Midgard Serpent wraps itself around our world and contains it all.
Carl Jung saw the Ouroboros as one of the primal archetypes. A primal archetype is a mental dream image from our remotest human ancestor, these “primal” archetypes can be seen as psychological DNA that we inherit from the earliest of times - it is for this reason that the dragon can be found everywhere on Earth.
But is there an even older mythical origin to this scaly creature? Maybe looking back further to the neolithic period and much older cultures?
When looking into ancient mythic origins, I always find that we must define what a “myth” is properly. To help in our thinking, mythologist and professor Sean Keane defines a myth as: “the power of the land speaking,” he goes on to say that myths “have no author.” This means that myths cannot be written - it is the land that gives us a mythic voice.
It is with this thinking that I want to raise the question - what part of our landscape speak of dragons?
The standard view of the dragon myth is that it is a memory from fossils found of winged dinosaurs, which ancient cultures witnessed. To add to this, we also have exaggerated claims from travellers who may have witnessed a large crocodile, whale or a giant sturgeon that break the surface waters. These are animals and old fossils that carry dragon-like characteristics.
We have just the read the example of dragons coming from deep spring-fed lakes through a local story. Another observation happens when we move further back into the wider mythic imagination and we start to encounter myths that speak of dragons as weather patterns; such as clouds, rain and thunderbolts. For example, a Seneca legend tells us that a horned dragon lives behind the Niagara Falls and there is an annual pilgrimage in Haiti for those who practice the Voudon religion, where they seek the blessings of Ayida Wedo - the rainbow - who lives above the falls.
When we follow these origins, we arrive by the waters edge.
The element of water, when reading the folktales and myths, is revealed as the original mirror of the world, not the artificial mirror, which is there to flatter us, but instead, the mirror which shows us “what is.” Water is a mirror because it reflects all life, water reveals life, from the simple reflection of a tree, to the shape of continents. Water creates. This water-mirror is depicted, in many stories, as a “spring” that feeds the Tree of Life. When Sophia (wisdom) was looking for Bythos (The One), she had to seek the dark water at the deepest part of the well, there she entered, her descent into that darkness precipitated her ascent into wisdom.
In Carl Jung’s words:
“water is the commonest symbol of the unconscious.”
Around the world, stories abound of giant reptiles living underneath currents and river cascades. I witnessed this myself in South Africa when our local guide told us to be careful crossing and swimming in a certain river. Frazer himself said that when he visited caves and waterfalls, he was often told about a rainbow living by the springs and in the waters. Professor Robert Blust's linguistic work in the Pacific regions associates dragons with waterfalls.
If we follow the idea of the “voice of the landscape” that Sean Keane speaks about we find the sound of water.
And Blust says:
"The earliest example of a dragon is that it is an alter ego of the rainbow.”
Photo from @ludvighedenborg
A rainbow links Heaven and Earth. In the Poetic Edda its called the great rainbow bridge: Bifrost. This bridge joins and links all the nine worlds in the Tree of Life. Often this connection is not a bridge, but a giant serpent. A serpent that brings water and rainfall to Earth. Among the Chinese, the rainbow is a giant dragon that drinks from the sea and sprays it out to the land for crops and life to grow. In Java, the rainbow serpent is stretched all across the island where it drinks from the Javan sea.
We find that this rainbow serpent withholds rain, or gives rain and that it can be both a blessing to the land and a danger.
Phenomenologically, our eyes see the rainbow as a flat arc similar to the way we see the moon, or the sun as flat discs, but rainbows are actually bodies, just like the body of a large serpent, you need to be above the rainbow to see its true shape - either on an airplane or a mountain top, from that stand point the body is revealed.
The Rainbow Serpent, known by numerous names in different Australian Aboriginal languages by the many different Aboriginal peoples, is a common motif in the art and religion of many Aboriginal Australian peoples. Much like an archetypal Mother Goddess, the Rainbow Serpent creates land and also diversity for the Aboriginal people; but when disturbed can bring great chaos.
The rainbow is the primal being that arise from water. And when it interacts with light it gives the birth to the dragon.
One of the most enduring fairytale image is the dragon that guards treasure, sitting above the mound of gold.
Often as children we hear about the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
We can see that both of these images are one and the same, only the rainbow being a much older form.
Gold can be found at the end of the rainbow, as the rainbow rises from rivers where gold is carried downstream. Today, in psychological terms, the gold and the dragon is here to remind us that behind our fear, a treasure is waiting to be found.
But like the rainbow, dragons cannot be physically captured or found, even if science or medieval scholars have done their best in trying to fix them as either physical realities or fantasies, they elude us like rainbows and like water, the rainbow cannot be tamed, it has its own rhythms with life and lies beyond our human control.
When we hear of gold we are on alchemical ground where light and water transform into a iridescent form of colours binding the elements of sun (fire) and water. The dragon is positioned between worlds, the material and the non-material, that which is based on reality (bones of dinosaurs) and the symbolic.
The dragon oftens discloses that which is difficult to express, which is the fierce and scaly part of our psyche.
I visited a master rune stone carver in Sweden a few weeks ago and there he explained how the red dragon in the rune stones where there to actively guard the stone and the runic inscription, the dragon takes the form of “guarding treasure.” In this case the treasure of what the runes are conveying. The dragon ensures they are protected and that they can be read by our descendants thousands of years into the future.
I leave you with the short film here:
References:
Kane, S. (1998). Wisdom of the mythtellers. Broadview Press.
Blust, R. (2000). The Origin of Dragons. Anthropos, 95(2), 519–536. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40465957
Oleary, M. (2013). Sussex Folk Tales. The History Press Ltd.
—————————————————
Upcoming:
The School of Mythopoetics:
https://www.schoolofmythopoetics.com/sunandnorthstar
Join us in the next phase of this spiraling project, The Sun and the North Star. The first months will focus on the art of Skaldic storytelling, Ceremony, Blots, Poetic Metres, Storytelling performances, Runic Lores (especially singing the runes) and magic.
Throughout the course you will be supported and encouraged to work with stories, myths, and folktales to find the rituals and ceremonies hidden within, and bring those to life in your practice and community.
The Sun and the North Star is an ongoing journey. We will offer one teaching session per month, and will also hold a council once a quarter, lining up with the seasonal festivals. Sessions will continue throughout the year.
You can join anytime, and get up to date through listening to and learning from the recorded material to experience the Journey so far.
_______________________________________________
Thank you Andreas for this fantastic lens!
Thank you Andreas. I've been tracking the rainbow serpent as a core mythological figure for my work for some years, including a map that was given that I've worked with when leading vigils. I'm grateful to continue to learning.