By Nancy Nesvet
We need a dragon now, a powerful, frightful, strongly scaled, fire-breathing dragon to defend those who need might to make right. Or maybe we would do better with a dragon in the Asian mode, who brings good luck and is benevolent. Although I would like to believe that was the motivation for those who adopted the dragon as their symbol, it is more likely that then as now, at least in the west and in dragon myth and popular adaptations, families desiring power needed a dragon to symbolize the power they had over their enemies and constituents. As we begin to exit the Asian Year of the Dragon, witnessing the chaos in the world and hardly defeating it, we honor the Dragon, tell its history and question whether or not its reputation as chaos and evil-mongering is deserved, or if it uses its power to carry good into the world, as Asian dragon myth, children’s literature and those with good intentions, as in HBO’s World of the Dragon portrays.
From Eve, who was motivated by a serpent, which may have inspired the form of the dragon, to entice Adam to eat the apple, relegating women thereafter to experience the pain of childbirth and humans to work rather than just chill in the Garden of Eden, mythologies and legends worldwide have framed fire-breathing, scaly, flying serpentine dragons as creators of chaos, enemies of saints, defenders of their compatriots, and in numerous other roles.
In one of the earliest iterations of the dragon role we encounter, Dreq, from Draco, Greek for serpent, an Albanian name for Satan, leads to the Babylonian (and Persian) myth of the dragon. This story of Bel and the Dragon, an apocryphal myth tells of Daniel killing the Dragon Bel, derived from the Mesopotamia word for Lord, the Mesopotamian God of the City of Babylon, that Babylonians revere as a living God. The dragon Bel is immortalized in carvings on the Ishtar Gate. Ur, King of the Mandaeist world of darkness is also portrayed as a dragon. In Zoroastrian sagas, in One thousand and One Nights, Alif Laylah, and in the Zoroastrian myth, Avesta, the yellow dragon is killed by the hero, Kirsap (middle Persian) while the Red Dragon was conceived to bring about the daeva-induced winter. In Avestas generally, daevas bring about chaos, whereas in the Zoroastrian Gothas, Davas are gods to be rejected. Scythian gods see daevas as malevolent as well.
The later apocryphal addition to the story of Daniel, the deuterocanonical story in the Roman canon, tells of Daniel’s successful struggle with the dragon. Mordecai, in the Book of Esther, (11.6) dreams of two dragons ready to fight who he interprets as Haman, the evil Shushan prime minister and himself, the heroic Jew, whose niece Esther saves her people. One of the dreamed dragons is on the good side, and a savior for the Jews, while the other is evil and destructive. In the Anglo-Saxon saga of Beowulf, the dragon, Wormhill, who emerges from a volcanic vent, is defeated by heroic Beowulf and Wiglaf.
The motif of the dragon in visual art is not new, nor relegated to the European and British worlds. Greek pottery features a motif of dragon slayers including Jason fighting the Colchian dragon and Cadmus killing the Ismenian dragon. But this visual mythology of dragons reaches a crescendo with the many depictions of the story of St. George and the Dragon. St. George is most famous as a Christian warrior saint who lived in the Roman Empire. Allegedly, a dragon had besieged a pagan city and devoured a child each day in return for not destroying the town. Heading to her death, the king’s daughter was next in line when St. George arrived, made the sign of the cross, killed the dragon and saved her and the city causing the town to convert to Christianity but also beginning the legend of the courageous knight saving the king’s daughter and the city.
In Portuguese mythology, Coca, a female dragon, fights with St. George, later patron saint of England, Portugal, Germany, Lithuania, Georgia, Russia and Palestine, and of the Order of the Garter. The dragon loses strength when St. George cuts off one of her ears, and in Book 11 of Idylls of the King, Guinevere, The Dragon of the Great Pendragonship appears on King Arthur’s Shield and Crest. Indeed, the best- known dragon augury was the vision of two dragons that appeared in a dream of Arthur’s father, Uthur, foretelling Arthur’s rise to the Round Table. Prior to this, Merlin prophesizes Britain’s history beginning with Vortigern’s rule and the succession of Uther Pendragon, so named after he saw a comet in the shape of a dragon when marching to war. Arthur’s basically peaceful reign follows but then, Geoffrey of Worcester’s time, replete with dragons, brings chaos for Britain in the following years, as the Red Dragon, foretold by Merlin, tears itself apart. Whereas the Welsh Red dragon may be inspired by the Roman draconarius cavalry who dominated Britain from 1350 CE, the Welsh white dragon, Y Draig Wen, is associated with the Anglo-Saxons. Whereas the white dragon is Vortigorn, the white dragon is Satan. Both are depicted in battle in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain where the white dragon is denoted as English as shown in the accompanying image. In a society where most, excepting those in the church, were illiterate, visual art conveyed the battles of good against evil, Christian against dragon.
The great artist Raphael might have found the story of St. George killing the dragon in an Italian collection of hagiographies, The Golden Legend. A favorite theme of Raphael’s, his 1506 St. George and the Dragon depicts St. George using his wooden blade to slay the dragon. One might wonder how such a thin wooden blade would so easily kill the tremendous creature, and impale between his scales, until one knows that a dragon can be killed easily if impaled in a certain point of the throat. Tintoretto painted the struggle of St. George and the Dragon in 1558, and Bernat Mortorelli in 1434-5 for the Chapel of the Palace of the Catalan Government in Barcelona. Continuing the medieval tradition of depictions of St. George and the Dragon, the National Gallery’s medieval armored knight on a horse killing the dragon, now lying on the ground underneath, lance still implanted, features the English river and church spires behind and a medieval-dressed woman, probably Princess Sabra, with hands in prayer clearly praying for the dragon’s murder. Similarly, the armorless St. George at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, steps over the felled dragon, his horse careful not to step on its bared teeth. Unlike Sodoma, the Sienese artist who painted St. George in 1518, now at the National Gallery in Washington, DC, has his St. George navigate from a mound of earth, to avoid stepping on the dead dragon below, while a crowned woman, undoubtedly Princess Sabra, from whom St. George has saved from the dragon, looks heavenward with hands open in a gesture of prayer fulfilled.
Edward Burne Jones painted at least two versions of St. George and the Dragon’s story, including St. George, the Dragon and Princess Sabra, tied to a tree, in all of her anti-feminist, protected glory, and the fight in which St. George kills the dragon for her survival, not unlike the King Arthur Story in Tennyson’s Idylls of the King Chapter 1, Guinevere, who also survived a dragon’s wrath, defended by a knight in shining armor. Lucas Cranach painted at least two versions of St. George, armored in both. The Orthodox Church honored St. George as well, with the Italo-Byzantine School producing a painting of St. Michael between St. Cosmos and St. Damian and another, the Beast of St. Mark, the Evangelist, both owned by England’s National Trust.
In China, the dragon is considered immortal and omnipresent, representing monarchy and supreme power but also belonging to the people, as we can see in the dragon dance participation by communities during Chinese New Year celebrations. Considered a beneficial beast until the Buddhists introduced the concept that there were also evil dragons, dragons’ noble spiritual qualities were seen as unconquerable. The word, derived from the character for long, has come to mean dragon because of its shape, Chinese historians of the Shang period believed dragons with upturned noses were called kui, those with downturned noses were called guaizi. Owing to a homophone of guaizi meaning noble sons, the guaizi dragon was used to wish for a blessing. Kui dragons are indicative of the source of life, pure water, from which perfection and purity sprang, indicating that corruption would never accompany kui dragons. Indeed, images of kui are on the bases of the arches in Ming dynasty tombs honoring the emperor and wishing him peace and good fortune. Dragons are so benevolent that the green candle dragon lights the way for travelers to a mountain in the far north, during the dark winter months, according to the official records of the Jin dynasty (265-420 BCE). The I Ching calls the flying dragon symbolic of the emperor.
There are multiple dragons in the Chinese compendium illustrated in the Ming encyclopedia, Collected Illustrations of the Three Realms (Sancai tuhui) compiled by Wang Qi and his son, Wang Siyi (1607-9 CE) including the winged dragon, ying long (there it is, the long character from which the word dragon derives ), a flying fish type called fei yu, used as a badge of honor on garments, several winged dragons of the seas, including pai fang, with fish bodies and dragon heads used on archways denoted to honor individuals or communities. Fish dragons are used on gateways to honor, due to the legend of the carp that leaped over the Yellow River’s rapids at the Dragon’s gate in Hejing. A student passing their ex- ams bore the symbol of a carp with a dragon’s face, having achieved something for which he long struggled. Dragons in Chinese legend could change form and size, could rise up to the clouds and dive low to the seas. Some believed the dragon to be the primary image of creation. Dragons could bring rain. Often, sighting of a dragon brought a great rainstorm. The Green Dragon, or shen long, spirit dragon, who identified with the spring is depicted on an unearthed slab from 55 BCE on display at the Ancient Observatory in Beijing. Clay images of dragons were sacrificed to bring rain, with Daoist philosophers writing in 100 BCE in the Masters of the Kingdom of Huainan that ‘the dragon regulates rain”. The white dragon ruled the western regions and identified with fall, the black with the north, symbolizing winter. During a severe drought during the Xing dynasty, in Beijing, people would throw a piece of iron into the Pool of the Black Dragon, as dragons fear iron. According to the Chinese philosophy of the five elements, metal produces water. Two dragons in the south, Red and Yellow, divided rule during the summer. The Song Dynasty in 1110 CE granted princely titles to these dragons.
Dragons were male in early tales, as the best presents to give a dragon to get him to do something for you would be nubile young virginal girls. Only later did female dragons come to exist, as necessary for procreation, with later legends telling of laying eggs on hillsides, near water, to incubate for 1,000 years, first hatching into a lizard or water snake and taking another 1,000 years to fully mature into a dragon. Even today, as on August 23, 1913. The Gushan Monastery in Fujian province offered prayers to the Great Dragon, Lord Buddha of the Five Laes and Four Seas, which produces rain with a gilded bronze image featuring the characters of that message. With a bow to the World of the Dragon, currently on HBO and reviewed further in this issue, the Rain Master rode on a dragon through the sky and even the king of the state of Guizi subdued a vicious dragon and thereafter used it as his mount. Although the legends are Buddhist-influenced, Daoists had dragon legends including the Daoist priest who subdued a black dragon and made him his mount.
Mainly, art objects existed from small clay figures of dragons found in tombs and large sculptures in stone, clay and bronze in tombs of the Tang dynasty 618-907 CE), with one of pure gold in a tomb in Shaanxi province. Bronze castings shaped as imperial dragons are found at the Ancient Observatory in Beijing. In Beijing’s Palace Museum in the Forbidden City are two bronze-casted dragons each holding a flaming pearl. Four more long dragon sculptures are in the Forbidden City. Relief carvings of dragons are found as old as Kublai Khan’s Round Fort (from 1265) allegedly seen by Marco Polo. In Tiananmen, a dragon relief curves around the pillars on either side of the Gate of Heavenly Peace. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has a painting of dragons by the Southern Song artist, Chen Rong, and several examples of dragons on ceramics are in China and beyond. In the Forbidden City, two huge, gilded dragons guard the southern entrance to the Imperial Garden’s Gate of Tranquil Longevity. Fearsome dragons with spiky claws and mane, it is meant to be frightening: If the emperor was virtuous, following the Dao or right way, the zhayu residing in the yin world would be tranquil but if he did not, it would protest vehemently. These dragons and their zhayu served as a warning to the emperor to follow the right path, being protectors of virtue, quite different from the western attackers. Perhaps we could use dragons now in our world, to protect virtue, rule the right way, and ensure that the ruler makes decisions beneficial to the people.
At least, in other traditions, and often in contemporary times, the dragon is not seen as evil. Haku, in Spirited Away, is a good East Asian dragon, who like other Chinese dragons, are one of a group of four benevolent animals, that, with creators and destroyers, control the elements. The Asian dragon, a composite of fish, serpent and winged bird, able to fly has 117 scales and balanced yin and yang, calm and angered. According to Buddhist and later Shinto iconography, from the 7th century CE, the Green Dragon was present at the creation of the world, while the Golden Dragon swallowed the sun, and then became trees, grass, wind, animals and more living flora, fauna and beings. The Golden Dragon bears emperors, the progeny of a human mother and a dragon. Dragons promised wisdom, equated with goodness as a wise man could not be an evil one. These traits coming together in one man gave power over others, so dragons did not attend all births of rulers, only those in which wisdom and power were balanced. A great azure dragon appeared over the house where Confucius was born. A papyrus of Padiu-Khous shows the deceased offering the heart to the winged serpent, as the Egyptian heart, cut out before the body was mummified and sent down the river Styx was the center of the spirit. Allegedly, dragon bones have been found in Sichuan province.
Apep – also known as Apophis, was the Egyptian god of darkness and disorder and represented at a serpent seen here as the archetypical dragon.
As peaceful and good as Chinese dragons were, Bronze Age and Iron Age early Chinese art are described and visualized in the western, Irish 10th century Book of Lismore as water monsters or dragons, including the Great Worm of Connemara, similar to those purportedly observed in Loch Ness, in Scotland and in bodies of water in Ireland as “Repulsive, outlandish, fierce and very terrifying was the beast that arose there . Its front end was like a horse with a blazing eye in its head…two hideous thick legs under it in front. Iron claws on it which struck showers of fire from the stony rocks which they trod across…It had a fiery breath which burned like embers …the tail fins of a whale on it behind… it could travel over sea and land alike.” (author unknown). Whether repulsive, wormlike, fishlike, serpentlike, of fiery breath, flying and forbidding, as written about and visualized in the west, especially Britain, or, as in China, responsible for keeping in check the rulers or choosing those to ride them who were deserving of the honor, ethical, brave, and of good moral character, ruling benevolently for their people, we need dragons now, or at least the concept of a dragon to keep us in check, before we ruin the planet; the seas and heavens that are the dragon’s realms. And maybe, just maybe, as broached in World of the Dragons, the rulers, better at compromise and diplomacy, willing to fuse families for the greater good, should be women. There were female dragons, and hopefully, with dragon’s good judgment of those they serve, dragons could again rule the skies, the seas, and the land.