THE DRAGON ARCHETYPE
AN EXISTENTIAL REVELATION
Spiritual & Cultural Archetype
Enki Means Archetype


If one waits long enough, one sees how the Gods all change into serpents and underworld dragons in the end. This is also the fate of the Logos: in the end it poisons us all. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 280.

BEHOLD, OH LANOO! THE RADIANT CHILD OF THE TWO, THE UNPARALLELED REFULGENT GLORY: BRIGHT SPACE SON OF DARK SPACE, WHICH EMERGES FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE GREAT DARK WATERS. IT IS OEAOHOO THE YOUNGER, THE * * * HE SHINES FORTH AS THE SON; HE IS THE BLAZING DIVINE DRAGON OF WISDOM.
--HPB, The Stanzas of Dzyan

Alas, he is my dearest, most beautiful friend, he who rushes across, pursuing the sun and wanting to marry himself with the immeasurable mother as the sun does. How closely akin, indeed how completely one are the serpent and the God! The word which was our deliverer has become a deadly weapon, a serpent that secretly stabs. ~Carl Jung on Izdubar, Liber Novus, Page 280.

Some have their reason in thinking, others in feeling. Both are servants of Logos, and
in secret become worshipers of the serpent. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 280

The dragon is very much our raw psychic energy within the unconscious
(The cave where dragons live). The fire breathing kundalini Serpent that
is at first asleep is vile and woe unto him who does not know the process
of its purification when it is passed through the alchemical process,
uniting cosmic masculine and feminine.

The serpent/dragon archetype is world-wide and relates to a number of human concerns--death, rebirth, healing, immortality, knowledge, wisdom, wealth, and finally water, which has much the same symbolism.  Joseph Campbell, in one of his less inspired moments, claimed that Eastern dragons were different than Western ones, but in fact they are not, though the attitude toward them is somewhat different. 

Like in the west, dragons are associated with water in the form of weather, streams, bodies of water, and the primal cosmic ocean.  The oldest and most purely mythic dragon stories deal with creation and the primal oceanic chaos which is a great dragon.  In other stories the dragon withholds the waters causing drought until defeated by a champion.  In legendary, as opposed to mythic, stories the dragon guards a treasure and often has an appetite for women, especially virgins.

The image of the Greater Dragon evokes in our consciousness the concepts of Awesome Power, of Magistery, of Splendor, Terrible Beauty, and Mystery.

In the human psyche dragons can symbolize a meeting ground in the imaginable world of the unlimited power and possibilities of the Creation Magic of which universes are born-- together with the need to overcome, individually and collectively, the lower aspects of our nature while developing high moral character, integrity, honor, and nobility of motive.

The ancient Zoroastrians and magi who started a tradition of chivalry more than 7,000 years ago used fire as a symbol representing the One Light, the Truth, and the Will to Goodness or “Nobility” that is inherent in the fabric of every soul. They knew Dragons and the fire elementals as living conscious beings who represented primarily Truth and Annihilation.

Annihilation of what you ask? Of the false ego, the false self concept that is limiting the current possibilities of what you can become. The obstacle between us and what we are becoming is physical death. The dragon reminds one that ultimately what remains after an encounter with one of their kind is what spirit wills, that which is eternal. But often not the physical body which rarely survives this encounter.

To face the dragon means to be prepared to let go of the truly unreal, of the false. For it is the spirit alone which can prevail over the dragons. There are many types of dragons in our consciousness now. We see them in movies, as the mainstay of books of fiction or fantasy, in art, and, and even in religious ceremonies. What do all these dragon archetypes mean?

The Sufi Master Inayat Khan called the Chinese dragon a representation “of power and at the same time a conception of the Almighty.” And further he comments that the dragon is also a symbol of unity for it combines the features and talents of many beings in oneness and wholeness. William Shakespeare wrote about the Western dragon in unflattering terms in several of his plays. North American Indians used it as a symbol for the supernatural while Central Amerinds called it a teacher of how to overcome the lower nature of ones beastman. Meeting one was always considered a dangerous and life changing adventure by all and sought after by only those who wished to progress upon their lives pathway.

The serpent/dragon archetype is world-wide and relates to a number of human concerns--death, rebirth, healing, immortality, knowledge, wisdom, wealth, and finally water, which has much the same symbolism.  Joseph Campbell, in one of his less inspired moments, claimed that Eastern dragons were different than Western ones, but in fact they are not, though the attitude toward them is somewhat different.  Like in the west, dragons are associated with water in the form of weather, streams, bodies of water, and the primal cosmic ocean. 

The oldest and most purely mythic dragon stories deal with creation and the primal oceanic chaos which is a great dragon.  In other stories the dragon withholds the waters causing drought until defeated by a champion.  In legendary, as opposed to mythic, stories the dragon guards a treasure and often has an appetite for women, especially virgins.

Whether your experience of dragons is purely symbolical or whether it is your reality- the experience itself is meant for your benefit. Toward the One. Toward the real Truth. Let us explore the many facets of the Dragon.

On wings of thunder
Honor bound
Search me out,
I drum the sound
Twist and turn in the night
Dragon come, my guiding light.
Protector, guardian, friend not foe
Come to me, see my sigil glow.
Strong and true this friendship charm
I beckon thee, keep me from harm.
Around and about your magick swirls
Come to me
Your wings unfurled.
--© 2000 Bill Wescott


DRAGONS OF CREATION, DESTRUCTION, REGENERATION, WISDOM, GNOSIS & ENLIGHTENMENT

Dragons are "real" and the basis of scientific priesthood and royal lineage. The sacred past is a story of sacred dragon or serpent worship. The triangular Dragon Book is essentially a magical astronomical text. Civilization was originally rooted in ancient prehistoric observations of the order of the stars. It tracked time and created calendars, and most importantly allowed predictions of eclipses rooted in the GREAT CYCLE of PRECESSION of the Zodiac, the serpentine ring of the Ecliptic.

Dragons that 'fought with the Sun' probably described the celestial upheaval of large fearsome comets that streaked across the sky with their long tails. They appeared cyclically and broke up upon nearing the sun, some of which collided with Earth. Eclipses were also considered celestial battles between the dark and light. In ancient times the cataclysmic forces of nature were personified as a great cosmic dragon or serpent.

Many ancient mythologies, and many god-like characters who appear in world myth, owe their existence to cosmic disasters that occurred in our solar system and which were witnessed by the inhabitants of the Earth. The cataclysmic events (involving comets and exploding planets) were permanently archived in what we nowadays refer to as the "collective unconscious." They were deeply etched in the racial memory of all mankind.

Decoding the sky meant connecting the dots of the starry constellations, making star maps, reproducing that heaven on earth in the form of sacred sites, and embodying it in sacred royal lineage. The most ancient lines are symbolically related to the circumpolar constellation Draco, the great Dragon or Serpent. The winged serpent was a symbol of the Gods of Egypt, Phoenicia, China, Persia, and Hindustan.

The serpent is set in the symbol of the "Chalice," or downward pointing triangle, that has long been a womb symbol. In the Far East, this symbol is known as the Yoni. The word "one" derives from this word denoting the female womb. The title-page of St. Germain's triangular DRAGON BOOK mimics this Dragon in the downward-pointing triangle and describes magic, treasures and immortality. Ritual swallowing by the snake in the underworld led to the symbolic return to the embryonic state, rejuvenation and rebirth in the mystery schools.

Roughly 3000 BC, the heavens revolved around the Great Dragon, and so did earthly civilization.  Dragons became synonymous with immortality because the celestial dragon was exempt from the cycle of time and because the dragon lineage did not die but was preserved in the noble bloodline. The point of circumpolar rotation, inhabited by the star Thuban or not, became the "Eye of the Dragon". Egyptian rulers wore the Uraeus serpent (Wadjet) as their crown symbol of sovereignty (serpent of life), a link to the celestial Ouroborous.

The serpent cult worshipped the esoteric or inner sun, manifested as the biophotonic energy body. This inner light is the realization of our own hyperdimensional connection to the greater universe, of our own inner balance and our own growth toward attunement to or resonance with the world around us (flow state). It is also the part of ourselves and our outer world, which gives life, sustains and gives growth. The dragon and serpent cults inspired megalithic monuments, global dragon and serpent mounds. The most ancient initiatory and healing symbols, the circumpunct, a dot within a circle and/or a cross within a circle symbolize this inner sun.

DRAGON CODE

Dragon history is extensive and wide-spread, as almost every mythology has unique styles of dragon. The Sumerian word for dragon is "ushum". Chinese dragons date back to around 5,000 BCE. The Chinese believed that they were the "descendants of the dragons," too. Like comets, they could rise to the heavens or go to the bottom of the seas. Like Mesopotamian and Egyptian rulers, Chinese emperors were said to be sons of the dragons and wore special robes. The sign of the celestial dragon could only be worn by the emperor, and it was the sign of the ultimate power.

The venom of the snake was used as an Elixir to help prevent disease through boosting the immune system with high levels of protein. And secondly mixing the neurotoxic venom with the blood of the snake or mammalian host such as a horse brings on altered states of consciousness much akin to certain drugs used by shaman across the world from ancient times. Visions of ‘otherworlds’ seen in such trances are often depicted as tombs, wombs or caves, within which sometimes benevolent, sometimes terrible, serpents are encountered.

In any discussion of serpent wisdom we cannot fail to also mention the ancient Hindu Kundalini practice. Kundalini means simply "coiled serpent" and in the Indian system the ida and pingala energy (through serpent channels) are raised up and down the spine to raise the consciousness of the adept. The dual serpentine caduceus is known to all health practitioners the world over.


Dragon [from Greek drakon, serpent, the watchful]

Known to scholarship as a mythical monster, a huge lizard, winged, scaly, fire-breathing, doubtless originating in the memory of an actual prehistoric animal. Dragon is often synonymous with serpent. The dragon and serpent, whether high or low, are types of various events in cosmic or world history, or of various terrestrial or human qualities, for either one can at different times signify spiritual immortality, wisdom, reimbodiment, or regeneration. In the triad of sun, moon, and serpent or cross, it denotes the manifested Logos, and hence is often said to be seven-headed. As such it is in conflict with the sun, and sometimes with the moon; but this conflict is merely the duality of contrary forces essential to cosmic stability.

The dragon itself is often dual, and it may be paired with the serpent, as with Agathodaimon and Kakodaimon, the good and evil serpents, seen in the caduceus. Again the dragon is two-poled as having a head and a tail, Rahu and Ketu in India, commonly described as being the moon’s north and south nodes, the moon thus being a triple symbol in which a unity conflicts with a duality.

A universal myth is that of the sun god fighting the dragon and eventually worsting it, which represents the descent of spirit into matter and the eventual sublimation of matter by spirit in the ascending arc of evolution. There are Bel (and later Merodach) and the dragon Tiamat in Babylonia and with the Hebrews; Fafnir in Scandinavia; Chozzar with the Peratae Gnostics; among the Greeks Python conquered by Apollo and the two serpents killed by Hercules at his birth; the fight between Ahti and the evil serpent in the Kalevala; and many other such stories.

In the Christian Apocalypse the dragon plays a great part, but it has been often misinterpreted as evil just as Satan or the Devil has been imagined as the foe of divinity and humanity. Cosmologically, all dragons and serpents slain by their adversaries are the unregulated or chaotic cosmic principles bought to order by the spiritual sun gods or formative cosmic powers. The dragon is the demiurge, the establisher or former of our planet and of all that pertains to it — neither good nor bad, but its differentiated aspects in nature make it assume one or the other character.

The dragon symbol, then, is both cosmic and human in its applications: it may stand for powers of nature, which first overcome man, but which he must eventually overcome, as well as the monad atma-buddhi, which seeks embodiment, but needs the help of the still lower principles in order to effect a union with the principles of earth.

Cosmologically analogies are drawn between the north polar constellation Draco and one or the other of the great floods, and the word dragon is sometimes used to denote such a flood; for the position of this constellation relative to that of the earth’s axis of rotation is intimately connected with cataclysms. The dragon in its higher or superior sense means among other things divine wisdom, especially where the serpent is used for terrestrial wisdom; and adepts or initiates were frequently called dragons. The dragon may be the symbol of a cycle; and the sevenfold dragon may mean the seven minor cycles in a great cycle.

Dragon of Wisdom

Commonly an adept, one of the wise; also popularly a skilled magician — whether of the right or left path. Referring to the earliest stages of cosmogony, dragon is a term often used for the sun in its various cosmologic functions, also for the One or Logos. An important significance of the phrase is that the real initiator of humanity, or of the individual neophyte, is the person’s own higher ego.

In Chinese Buddhism the term is used for the genii of the four quarters, called in China the Black Warrior, the White Tiger, the Vermilion Bird, and the Azure Dragon — the Four Hidden Dragons of Wisdom. In her rendering of the Stanzas of Dzyan, Blavatsky uses Dragon of Wisdom as an equivalent of Oeaohoo the Younger — the germ and overseer of all things to the end of the life cycle.

THE PRIMORDIAL SEVEN, THE FIRST SEVEN BREATHS OF THE DRAGON OF WISDOM, PRODUCE IN THEIR TURN FROM THEIR HOLY CIRCUMGYRATING BREATHS THE FIERY WHIRLWIND.

The Stanzas of Dzyan

    Out of the whirlwind spoke the voice that ignites, that sounds like no voice ever heard. It is, instead, a flame that swirls down out of yawning darkness and scorches the flanks of the trembling world. Amongst the clouds gathered in storm, its fiery curves are sometimes glimpsed and the scraping of its taloned feet echo up the blackened caverns leading to the bowels of the earth. These are aspects of its voice . . . extensions of its flaming breath. They shine like glittering scales spiralling through the atmosphere. They project forth in the wake of that thunderous tone which issues from the depths of the very source of sound, from the primordial throat which opens out to another world. Thus it is that dragons float at the edge of the universe and near the apertures leading to unknown but frightening realms. Their fiery breath resounds and their reptilian form expands and contracts into myriad shapes described in thousands of stories the world over. But their exact nature remains a mystery and, despite their legendary reputation, for many persons they have never existed. --Blavatsky

'Dragon' and naga were names given to wise and holy men. That 'dragon' need not designate only what is evil is suggested in the etymology of the word, which comes from the Greek δρακων, meaning a dragon, a huge serpent or python. This word is closely related to the verb διρομαοι, which means 'to see clearly' and which explains why the dragon, though so often feared, was in the oldest traditions associated with prophecy and wisdom and made the guardian of temples.

In fact, the dragon is a multi-levelled symbol related to the highest level of spirituality, the intermediary planes of phenomenal life and the lower inferior and telluric forces. It was enthroned and almost deified by the Manchu Chinese, Phoenicians and Saxons, who saw the dragon as a grand intermediary between heaven and earth. The common winged dragon which combines the elements of bird and serpent, spirit and matter, is well exemplified by Quetzalcoatl, who brought all that is beneficent to the Nahuatl people of Mexico. The Chinese perceived a link between it as the Upper Waters and the earth and said that "the Earth joins up with the Dragon" when it rained. http://www.theosophytrust.org/705-dragon

Dragon Dreaming
Dragons are the most universal of all mythical creatures

The dragon is probably the most universal of all mythical creatures. It is most frequently described as a great flying reptile, a ferocious and untamed (but not necessarily evil) beast which embodies in many cultures the elemental forces of chaos and cosmic order. Dwelling in the dark caverns of the earth, with lungs of fire, wings of a bird and scales of a fish, the dragon epitomizes the four elements of the ancient world, unifying them into a single presence that can inspire the imagination and haunt our dreams.

The Dragon Paradox

The dragon carries opposite meanings representing the paradox at the heart of our being – the mutual dependence of light and dark, creation and destruction, male and female. But more than any other symbol, the dragon also embodies the unifying force underlying these opposites. In itself it is neither good or bad, but symbolizes the primal energy upholding the material world, which can be turned to either good or evil purposes.

Dragons the positive aspects of primal energy

In the Orient, the emphasis has traditionally been on the positive aspects of this primal energy. The dragon is depicted as a union of the beneficial powers of the elements. Uniting water (the serpent) with air (the bird, the breath of life), it represents the coming together of matter and spirit. This positive force was thought to be capable of animating the earth through the dragon pathways – symbolic arteries through which earth energy flows.

In pagan times the emphasis in the West, as in the East, was on the beneficent aspects of dragon energy – as the Welsh flag, with its proud red dragon, still testifies. However, in the Christian era, with the relegation of the serpent to the symbolic role of Satan the tempter, the dragon came increasingly to represent chaos, raw destructive power, the evil inherent in the world of matter. Sometimes it is shown as coming between ourselves and hidden treasure (spiritual wisdom) or carrying off a virgin (purity) to its underground lair.

By an obvious logic, the dragon also came to symbolize the inner world of the emotions and the unconscious. In the West, it was the animal that lurks within us, the primitive energies which, left unbridled, can reduce us to the level of beasts.

Dragons – Winged Serpents 

Dragons, Snakes, and Pearls are symbols for human DNA,

Fire representing soul sparks of light emanating from the flame of creation.

Dragons are winged beings portrayed in the ancient mythologies of most cultures. They link with winged gods from the heavens who came to Earth to create the human race and are very important symbology in the creational blueprint of our reality.

Much of dragon lore tells us that dragons were loathsome beasts and evil enemies to humankind. But dragons were born of a time other than men; a time of chaos; a time of creation out of destruction. The dragon is a fabulous and universal symbolic figure found in most cultures thought the world.

Some examples of the symbology of the dragon are:

Gnostics: “The way through all things.”

Alchemy: “A winged dragon – the volatile elements; without wings – the fixed elements.”

Chinese: “The spirit of the way”‘ bringing eternal change.

Guardian of the ‘Flaming Pearl” symbol of spiritual perfection and powerful amulet of luck.

China: The Dragon, the Phoenix, the Tortoise and the Unicorn

The early Chinese believed in four magical, spiritual and benevolent animals; the Dragon, the Phoenix, the Tortoise and the Unicorn. The Dragon was the most revered of all. In it’s claws it holds an enormous magical pearl, which has the power to multiply whatever it touches. The ancients believed the “pearl” symbolized the most precious treasure; Wisdom.

Many legends say they were fabulous animals usually represented as a monstrous winged and scaly serpent or saurian with a crested head and enormous claws. – also – a monster, represented usually as a gigantic reptile breathing fire and having a lion’s claws, the tail of a serpent, wings and scaly skin.

The various figures now called dragons most likely have no single origin, but spontaneously came to be in several different cultures around the world, based loosely on the appearance of a snake and possibly fossilized dinosaur remains. Mythology about dragons appear in the traditions of virtually all peoples back to the beginning of time – though dragons appeared in various forms.

Egypt: The Great Mother, The Water God and The Warrior Sun God

Among their earliest forms, dragons were associated with the Great Mother, the water god and the warrior sun god. In these capacities they had the power to be both beneficent and destructive and were all-powerful creatures in the universe. Because of these qualities, dragons assumed the roles taken by Osiris and Set in Egyptian mythology.

By the time of the early Egyptian period a considerable dragon- and serpent-worshipping cult had developed. This cult gradually spread to Babylon, India, the Orient, the Pacific Islands, and finally the North American continent, as more and more cultures began to recognize and appreciate the special powers and intelligence of dragons. The cult reached its peak during the days of the Roman Empire and disappeared with the advent of Christianity.

The dragon’s form arose from his particular power of control over the waters of the earth and gave rise to many of the attributes singled out by different peoples as the whole myth developed.

They were believed to live at the bottom of the sea, where they guarded vast treasure hoards, very frequently of pearls.

Rain clouds and thunder and lightning were believed to be the dragon’s breath, hence the fire-breathing monster.

The significance of the dragon was its control over the destiny of mankind.

Dragons – Chaos and Struggle

As the myth developed in the western world, dragons came to represent the chaos of original matter with the result that with man’s awakening conscience a struggle arose, and the created order constantly challenged the dragon’s power. This type of dragon was considered by many to be the intermediate stage between a demon and the Devil and as such came into Christian belief.

Dragons in the East 

However, in the Eastern world the dragon adopted a rather different significance. He was essentially benevolent, son of heaven, and controlled the watery elements of the universe.

Dragons have been an integral part of the culture of the Chinese, Koreans and Japanese peoples since the beginning of recorded history. In China they are used to mark the stairways over which only the Emperor could be carried. In Japan they are used in Buddhist temples both as decoration and as fountain heads for purification before worship. In many cases the dragon is combined with the phoenix to symbolize long life and prosperity. It is also combined with the tiger to represent heaven and earth or inyo (Yin and Yang).

The male dragon holds a war club in its tail while the female dragon holds a sensu or fan in its tail. One of the problems lies in that you cannot always see the tail or tell the difference between the fan or the war club.

The Chinese dragon is a central figure of both good and evil in their fables and legends. According to the Chinese the dragon originated in their middle kingdom and has always had five toes. The dragon by nature is a gregarious creature who wanders the earth.

However, the farther it goes from China, the more toes it loses. Hence, when it reached Korea it only had four toes and by the time it got to Japan it only had three. This also explains why it never made it to Europe or the Americas in that by the time it got that far it had lost all of its toes and could not walk.

The Japanese account of the dragon is very similar to that of the Chinese. The Japanese also believe that the dragon had its origins in their country. Again they know that the dragon has a tendency to travel and the farther it travels, the more toes it grows. By the time it reached Korea it had four and by the time it got to China it had five. Again this is the reason it never made it much farther than China. It kept growing toes and could not walk any further.

The Koreans tell a similar story of the dragon. They of course know that the dragon began with them. Probably just like they know that karate began in Korea. The Korean dragon has always had four toes. When the dragon travels East or North, it loses toes. When it travels South or West it gains toes. This explains why the Japanese dragon has three toes and the Chinese dragon has five toes. It also explains why the dragon never made it to Europe or the Americas. As it traveled West to Europe, it grew so many toes that it could no longer walk. As it traveled East to the Americas, it lost all of its toes and could no longer walk.

Dragons in the West

The Western type of dragon has been variously described, and individual dragons had their own unique forms. They appeared to be created from parts of various creatures, with the result that in general, they were described as having eagle’s feet and wings, lion’s forelimbs and head, fish’s scales, antelope’s horns and a serpentine form of trunk and tail, which occasionally extended to the head.

Dragons in Africa

In parts of Africa where the dragon is also considered as an evil power, the monster was believed to be the result of the unnatural union of an eagle and a she-wolf.

The destructive powers of the dragon derived from it’s fiery breath, which can devastate whole countries. Dragon’s eyes also have this fiery red quality, sometimes believed to reflect the treasures they guarded.

Later traditions believed that misers would assume the form of dragons by constantly gloating over their treasure.

The dragon fears nothing except the elephant with whom he will engage in battle, entwining himself around the elephant and inflicting fatal blows. However, as the elephant finally collapses, his fall crushes the dragon to death.

The dragon is supposedly the enemy of the sun and the moon, both in Eastern and Western mythology, and is believed to be responsible for eclipses. These occur when the dragon is attempting to swallow either of the heavenly bodies; which accounts for the dragon’s appearance in primitive astronomy.

In Armenian traditions, the fire and lightning god had powers to stay the dragon’s control of the heavens, as could thunderbolts in Macedonian myth. A dead man was thought to become a dragon, while dragons were believed to be the guardians of treasures in burial chambers.

Because the dragon was the natural enemy of man, his death became the ultimate goal, consequently there are innumerable battles between gods and dragons, saints and dragons, and in the medieval world, knights and dragons.

In Greek legends, the dragon fought on the side of the Titans and attacked Athena, who flung him into the heavens, where he became a constellation around the Pole Star.

Hercules encountered, and killed the dragon Ladon while fulfilling his eleventh labor.

In Scandinavian literature, Beowulf was slain by a dragon.

The Dragon Vortex
Dragons, Vampires & the Primordial Vortex

The Ouroboros or Uroborus is an ancient mystical circle depicting a serpent-dragon of Primordial Unity. It represents eternity, the Milky Way, cyclic processes like Precession, and the “circle of life.” In self-referential dynamic motion, it becomes the Vortex, the primary icon of the Dragon peoples from time immemorial. It is the first glyph in the universal language of symbols, encompassing all others — the threshold of symbol and substance. It is the “Mother of all symbols”. Rose windows in medieval cathedrals were Christian depictions of the cosmic vortex. The esoteric view of this vortex of Being’s internal logic, is raw Feminine power.

Originally creator god-kings and queens, Dragons became the model of sovereignty for later human rulers. The Dragon King was known as the King of Kings and his symbol, the “central” constellation Draco, represented his succession. Dragon ancestry traces through the proto-Scythians, Sumerians, Egyptian pharaohs, the Egyptian Therapeutae, the Qumran Essenes to the Royal Ashinas of Eurasia and Merovingian kings of Europe. The Merovingians trace their kingly succession to the original Dragon King, which was Cain. The Druidic Dragon King or Pendragon was chosen by a Council of Elders to rule over all the kingdoms. The Druidic Pendragon was passed on to the Merovingian kings.

The Dragons were called “rulers” because they knew the mystery of ancient metrology. Metrology was the basis for development of both philosophic and scientific attitudes. The divine order of the universe was the central idea of the ancient world, and all belief-systems were enmeshed with it. Metrology provided the foundation of the systematic rational vision of the world.

Cosmic order embodied in metrology was the fundamental aspect of ancient thought. Number mysticism and alphanumerics was the essential basis of knowledge. Ancient religions emphasized astrological elements, which defined precessional ages from Taurus yo Pisces, through today’s imminent Age of Aquarius. Ancient state temples functioned as permanent repositories of standards of measures. Gods, (to whom the temples were dedicated) had characteristic numbers, from which they were indistinguishable.

Only god-kings who claimed the Mandate of Heaven were considered emperors in Asia. Anunnaki means “Sons of the Heavenly Prince”, according to Prof. Tenney of the Sumerian Dictionary Project. Nicholas de Vere claims the Grail bloodline arose in an antediluvian civilization, with a super-human, red-haired race of Grail kings that conquered and ruled over the ancient world, with tribes on each continent. It provided the royal houses which guided the destiny of civilization.

The Dragons were overseers, “navigators”, directing the affairs of the world with transcendent wisdom inherent in their blood. Religion relates life choices to divine models, while Mythology creates narratives that contextualize experience by relating a history that took place in Primordial Time. Creation stories relate to what is sacred in a society.

Jung states that both myth and science reveal truths, however mythic realities are understood in a different method than scientific truths. He also states that both myths and the elemental world are naturally occurring phenomena. In many instances mythology and religion function simultaneously. However, a major distinction between the two traditions is that mythology is defined as an adaptive narration, while dogmatic perspective restricts religion to a lived mythic model. As a lived mythology, religion is a lens or paradigm through which to view the world.

Specific examples of the relationship between myth and religion are better understood through the narratives surrounding the mystic arts, such as Qabalah, Magick, and Alchemy. The science-art of alchemy metaphorically relates physical phenomenon to the sacred, uniting objective and subjective apprehension. It generates and regenerates myth and symbolic experience.

The residue of the alchemical tradition is found in science, mythology, religion, art, literature, psychology, politics, and multidisciplinary intellectual thought and cultural experience. Symbols and models are employed by them all, and the nondual Vortex, or “First Swirlings” (Primum Mobile) is the prime symbol — the commencement of whirling motions of pure potential. As the root of existence, this primal Glory is the Light-giving power of comprehension of the First Principle. In Qabalah, Kether — the Crown of Creation — stands for the Fount of Creation, welling up from the depths of the Great Unmanifest. This Crown is reflected on Earth in the royal crowned head. Metaphor and matter merge in the vortex and in the hereditary ruler.

The idea of reincarnation, or transmigration of souls, known as ‘gilgul’ (meaning revolving or swirling) was integral to Qabalistic belief, an ancient oral tradition first published in the Bahirin the late thirteenth century. In Qabalah, the heaven of Kether is called Rashith ha-Gilgalim (the first swirlings). The soul aspires to its highest aspect, the Yechidah, seeking to elevate the lower aspects so they may be united with the highest and then re-merge with the ultimate divine. The Dragon god-kings were exemplars of this process of “uniting Heaven and Earth”.

Speaking of rebirth, Tibetan Buddhism suggests that the third bardo consists of a series of images determined by the soul’s karma that lead to psychic vortices that draw the soul into a womb. The soul’s reaction to the images (attraction or repulsion) determines which vortex the soul enters and in which womb the soul ends up. The Tibetan tradition gives detailed advice on which representations to choose and which to avoid in order to gain a desirable rebirth.

A dragon glyph, the Crux Dissimulata — an ancient swastika — symbolized the four winds or directions and their corresponding spirits. It was also an Asian and Germanic fire and sun symbol. The cross inscribed in a circle mediates between the square and the circle, emphasizing the “joining of heaven and earth” and “the perfected human being”. It encodes dynamic dragon energy in minimal graphic form.

Thus, the Dragon Tradition is a meta-mythology, resonating through history, woven by metaphor to give lived experience a universal purpose. A Ruler with royal ancestry is deified as King or Queen, dependent on gender. In Sumerian culture ‘kingship’ was identical with ‘kinship’ – and ‘kin’ means ‘blood relative’.

In its original form, ‘kinship’ was ‘Kainship’. And the first King of the Messianic Dragon succession was the biblical ‘C(Kain)’, head of the Sumerian House of Kish. A Ruler without royal ancestry may also be called an Overlord. The Sumerian word for ruler, “excellence” is lugal, which etymologically means “big person.” Vampire or oupere is Old European and uber is Turkish and thus from Upari, we discover that originally Uber – Vampire – meant Overlord.

Dragon Civilization did not begin in Sumeria. Far older societies have been revealed in Transylvania and Central Asia. Such terms originally arose in Paleolithic Transylviania (Central Balkans). According to Nicholas de Vere, the term for a witch was Uber meaning Overlord. In practical terms and suggested by the term “uber” itself, a Scythian druid was an overlord, and so originally a vampire was an overlord. A guardian – a “Watcher” – is an overseer, and from this meaning we obtain the Scythian word uber, meaning a vampire or Overlord. By association, we also obtain from “watcher” the word Nefilim, which relates to the Anunnagi or Anunnaki.

The Anunnaki descended from thousands of unknown years of human culture in Old Europe, prior to the Mesopotamian flowering (Gimbutas; Eisler, 1988) of the cult of the serpent-dragon sun. Between 7000-3500 B.C.E. the early Europeans (Vinca, Varna, Butmir, Petresti, Cucuteni, Kurgan, etc.) developed a complex social organization involving craft specialization. Spiral motifs and meanders adorned their Neolithic to post-glacial pottery.
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Natural phenomena are related to social institutions. If we are driven to search for immortality and desire foreknowledge of the future it is because we know death awaits as our certain fate. The comet cult of the chaos Dragon Tiamat remains a powerful magical force in part because it is the worst fate imaginable.

The root of the word serpent, NHSH, means "to solve or reveal secrets." And those secrets belong to Enki, of the single all-seeing eye who rides in on the great and terrible storm of heaven, the worst catastrophe of historical times, then creates mankind, mystery schools, technology, oracular omens, and kingship. Even the immortality of the gods lies largely in their progeny.

The serpent-god Enki brought the Flood. This is the esoteric secret "hidden since before the Great Flood"…when spells and spelling were intimately and alpha-numerically related, a dual secret of mythic immortality and divine lineage recorded by one of the first literate civilizations. At first these cryptic statements might seem strictly alchemical, but alchemy has many layers of meaning. Magical seals and ciphers conceal and reveal more. Nothing is simply what it seems because Enki is the Lord of Magicians.

DEEP BACKGROUND - DEEP IMPACT
Many mythical elements have their origins in real events lost to the mists of history. For example, we now know that ancient Greek myths of Titans and winged Griffins likely arose from common discoveries of gigantic dinosaur bones. Many fossils were found in temples but largely ignored by archaeologists who failed to realize their importance in the archaic context. Then no one knew that dinosaurs met their fate from a celestial hammer.

Another massive impactor, 12,900 years ago, wiped out Ice Age megafauna and Early-American Clovis people and set the whole North American continent ablaze. The significance of the dragon has always been its control over the destiny of mankind.
The “return of the dragon” always had profound consequences on human survival and civilization. Near earth objects (NEOs) continue to pose a threat. We now know of a least 27 land-based impacts in the last 11,000 years. We can expect to find more deep water submerged evidence of immense disaster.

Tiamat was the great cosmic dragon of Sumeria and Babylonian myth who gave birth to a horde of serpentine monsters. The comet Schumacher-Levy showed us this description is more than a metaphor before the serpentine fragments slammed into Jupiter in 1993. The vast cosmic drama riveted the attention of an astonished world. It deeply changed how we thought about ourselves and our planet. It was visible proof of the unthinkable.

Comets orbit around the sun, then head back toward Earth orbit with the solar wind pushing the material stream of the comet in front of the more dense central core. As it rounds the sun, solar gravity can pull the entire comet in, destroying it utterly or breaking off a part of the comet stream, launching it on a new slower path. Swinging around the sun towards Earth, the comet is scattered. Deflected fragments of it passing near to Earth's gravitation may be pulled in. All the cometary matter is now more susceptible to Earth's gravitational pull.
 
When it comes to celestial phenomena, the more we look at mythology, the less mythological it seems. Pre-scientific myths use supernatural language to encode impressive, unexplainable events. Without engaging in present-day comet mythology, we can examine the nature of this fearsome dragon.

Cataclysmic Cosmic Drama

The winged dragon has been a mythic figure since Sumerian times. Arguably, it may have arisen from the highly visible passages of the periodic comet Encke and the debris field it left behind as it broke up. Did a solar hurricane, a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) rip off the plasma tail of the huge post-perihelion mother-comet Encke/Tiamat as it did in 2007?

Science now knows when meteorites or comets strike the Earth, they can start massive fires. Conflagrations can also occur as Earth sweeps through cometary debris. Is this the origin of tales of fire-breathing flying dragons? Does it shed some light on the Bible’s Great Flood or other Bronze Age Catastrophes? During the first millennium B.C. up to the time of Christ, the orbit of this comet or that of its associated dust trail intersected Earth’s orbit, leading to annual fireball storms of amazing intensity and perhaps Tunguska-like explosions.

A statistically significant number of Earth-crossing asteroids are part of the Taurid Complex of interplanetary objects. In 1984, Clube and Napier warned, "the last Ice Age could have been caused by the progenitor of comet Encke, part of which was the Tunguska meteorite, an interstellar object. It is estimated that further debris from the zodiacal cloud will intersect earth during the period 2000-2400 AD."

The dragon is the symbolic superstar of Saint Germain’s TRIANGLE BOOK, which says its wisdom comes from Egypt and Asia, then it urges us to look to the Flood and offers a ritual of immortality. But how is the Dragon related to the Great Flood? How was life different before the Deluge? Both the Dragon and the Flood are clues that contextualize one another. Likewise Egypt and Asia.

A relief impression from the Mesopotamian Holy Grail, the ritual Libation Cup of King Gudea of Lagash (2100 BC.) portrays the ancient Sumerian lion-serpent-dragon Tiamat. It stands guard over the terrestrial Tree Of Life, which is entwined with a serpent, one of the oldest known images of the snake and the caduceus. [see below]

Astronomers suggest a series of cosmic disasters shaped Earth in prehistoric times. This threatening sky also shaped cultures and religions. A ‘giant comet’ theory is now backed by climatological and archaeological evidence. Geomythology is the name of the discipline that mines ancient mythologies for evidence of physical events.

Ancient man witnessed cataclysms, including Proto-Encke events, and created theories of the beginning of the world and the origins of life. The most literary of these were the Sumerians and Egyptians. Not surprisingly, they were sky-watchers, religiously obsessed with heavenly events.

In 1940, Harvard Astronomer F.L. Whipple identified Encke as a remnant of a large mother comet that broke apart as long ago as 80,000 years, creating the still-active Taurid meteor showers. In 1999 a mighty Beta-Taurid meteor shook the New Zealand landscape and was described "as bright as the sun." The previous year a dazzling orange bolide fell in Turkmenistan with smaller meteorites reported in Nashville, Tennessee and in New Mexico.

Coinciding with the Vela X supernova, astronomers date a massive break up of Encke to about 12,000 years ago, with secondary break ups 4,500 and 1,500 years ago. Earth passes through this dense comet debris field roughly every 3000 years. Is this doomsday comet the root of the word “disaster,” literally, ‘dis’ (evil) and ‘aster’ (star) – a malevolent celestial force? Unlike meteorites, comets can be viewed long before inflicting catastrophe and cataclysm.

The Sumerians told of vast wars in the sky between the mother comet they called Tiamat, and other gods, such as the water god Enki. Is it just one of those weird synchronicities that the comet named for its discoverer, Johann Franz Encke, echoes the ancient god names?

As early as 5000 years ago it began raining a barrage of material on Earth. The mysterious 1908 Tunguska explosion occurred at the peak of the Beta Taurid meteor shower and provided a warning of the power of such disasters. Linked to destruction in the Fertile Crescent, Encke made its first historical close pass in 3100 B.C.

Lake Umm al Binni, near the confluence of the Tigris-Euphrates in Southern Iraq, is a suspected 3000-5000 year old bolide meteorite crater from the late Holocene Era when the area was 10 meters under the Persian Gulf. According to Sharad Master (2002), "A wet impact would have generated huge tsunamis, which would have lashed all the port cities of Mesopotamia, such as Ur, Uruk, Shurrupak, etc." Estimates rate the impact equivalent to 1000 Hiroshima bombs. Periodic destruction continued through the Bronze Age.

Another modern discovery is a candidate for catastrophes.

THE HEAVENS RAIN DEADLY FIRE

In the New York Times, Nov 14, 2006, scientist Dallas Abbott identified the site of a massive asteroid impact (Burckle Crater) off of the island of Madagascar that struck the earth around 2800 BC. Collating cross-culural myths, including eclipse descriptions, Thomas F. King has calculated the disaster occurred on May 10, 2807 B.C.

This 3-mile wide asteroid landed in the seabed, and sent a 600-900 foot high wall of water - a megatsunami - around the Indian Ocean, impacting land as far away as Australia, and crashing onto the coast of Africa, up the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, and quite possibly into the Mediterranean Sea as well.

The radiant fireball would have created shock waves, scorched air, sonic blasts, violent mega-lightning and torrential rain. This asteroidal impact would have sent a huge surge of water into the mouth of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, flooding the ancient land of Sumeria, the source of the Biblical flood legend. Sir Leonard Wooley, the archaeologist who discovered the city of Ur, found 30 feet of flood-deposited sand that separated the most ancient levels of the city from newer habitation levels on top of the flood debris. Half the population or more died.

Abbott's findings of deep-sea strike craters indicate that large-scale cosmic strikes hit the earth much more frequently than scientists have previously suspected - perhaps every 1 to 3 thousand years, instead of every hundred thousand or so. Large asteroid strikes also produce weather alterations, and many more global phenomena. Interestingly, the period 2800 B.C. is when the first dynasty of Egypt started.

Imagine you are an inhabitant of one of the first bustling but overcrowded cities on earth, a bountiful economy of agriculturalists and traders. Your priests bring the attention of all to a new star in the sky that seems to grow brighter and “hairier” in surprisingly short order. This evil eye in the sky is intuitively considered malevolent, upsetting the order of the heavens. It stirs something deep within racial memory which cannot quite be identified but is felt as primal awe and fear.

The comet wags its growing tail as it nears the sun and becomes ever more threatening as it nears earth, ever more foreboding as it increases in size and brightness, perhaps even rivaling sun and moon. Then one day that disturbing presence falls to earth and in an instant everything is profoundly changed – changed back to primeval chaos where survivors can’t tell sky from earth because terra firma has literally disappeared in an inundation of unbelievable scale immensely beyond their human memories of disasters.

But before the Flood actually arrives, a new sun seems to arise from the South Storm. Meteor showers of debris pepper the air even before the enormous fireball flares into instantaneous destruction. That fire is followed by the hot electrical breath of a sonic boom, which trails electromagnetic chaos in the wake of the massive impactor.

Plasma auroras ripple, writhe and coil like serpents throughout the darkened sky. Megalightning rends the sky and jolts the ground and ignites fires that crackle and roar incessantly. The earth groans, shifts and buckles. The flood wind blows as the south-storm strikes the land – and strikes it hard, like a relentless Dragon with wave upon wave of assaults for six days and nights that never seem to end. It sounds like a mighty battle of titanic scope, of the Gods themselves.

This is no cross-cultural myth, but a real, if legendary event that exceeds the most fertile imagination. Ancient superstitions are the result, not the cause of the epics that came down to us as the beginning of history since all else was virtually destroyed. The priesthood consolidated its hold on the people, gazing at the heavens incessantly lest another such cosmic sojourner threaten their existence. The fact is, then, as now – real life disasters were an immanent threat, from the cosmos, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis and climatic havoc.

The valley of Mesopotamia is dominated by two major rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, and numerous smaller ones. It was a land in which catastrophic floods were not unusual in ancient times, and it is unsurprising that stories about a major flood arose within the mythology of this area. Such stories might simply reflect an understandable preoccupation with flooding in an area where flood disasters were an important reality. But, according to rediscovered tales, this storm came from the South – from the Indian Ocean -- not upriver to the North.

TALES WORTH WRITING: MASSIVE ABYSSAL IMPACT

The relationship of Dragon and Deluge is lost in the mist of time. The sole survivors of the Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian and Biblical versions of the tale report the abject terror that rained down on humanity, virtually obliterating it, destroying their old world. The oldest timelines of the event are likely the most accurate. Note, again, this is a South Storm, not the flooding of the northern Black Sea of an earlier era:

Tsunamis would have devastated Sumerian cities and possibly inspired the world’s oldest written story, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the root tale of Sumerian deluge (dated between 2750 and 2500 BCE). Its original cuneiform title was He Who Saw the Deep, referring to “Unknown Mysteries.” The king Gilgamesh is the first cultural icon obsessed with immortality. Utnapishtim, the hero of the Flood myth, tells his story to Gilgamesh.

'That stated time had arrived:
'He who orders unease at night, showers down a rain of blight.
'I watched the appearance of the weather.
The weather was awesome to behold.I boarded the ship and battened up the entrance.
With the first glow of dawn,
A black cloud rose up from the horizon.
Inside it Adad (the storm god) thunders,
While Shullat and Hanish (the heralds) go in front,
Moving as heralds over hill and plain.
Erragal (god of the underworld) tears out the posts (of the world dam);
Forth comes Ninurta and causes the dikes to follow.
The Anunnaki (gods of judgment) lift up the torches,
Setting the land ablaze with their glare.
Consternation over Adad reaches to the heavens,
Who turned to blackness all that had been light.
[That wide] land was shattered like [a pot]!
For one day the south-storm blew, [submerging the mountains],
Overtaking the [people] like a battle.
No one can see his fellow,
Nor can the people be recognized from heaven.
The gods were frightened by the deluge,
And, shrinking back, they ascended to the heaven of Anu (the father of
the other gods, who lived in the highest heaven).
The gods cowered like dogs
Crouched against the outer wall.
Ishtar (goddess of passion) cried out like a woman in travail,
The sweet-voiced mistress of the [gods] moans aloud:
'The olden days are alas turned to clay,
Six days and [six] nights
Blows the flood wind, as the south-storm sweeps the land.
When the seventh day arrived,
The flood(-carrying) south-storm subsided in the battle,
Which it had fought like an army.
The sea grew quiet, the tempest was still, the flood ceased.
I looked at the weather: stillness had set in,
And all of mankind had returned to clay.
The landscape was as level as a flat roof.
Seven days later, the waters began to subside:
I sat and wept,
Tears running down on my face.
I looked about for coast lines in the expanse of the sea:
In each of fourteen (regions)
There emerged a region(-mountain).
--EPIC OF GILGAMESH

These chaotic events of earth, sky and sea, inspired the Babylonian creation story, the Enuma Elish. There are several versions based on older tales, but basically Tiamat was goddess of the ocean but also primordial chaos, the celestial deep or abyss existing before Earth formed. She predated Enki (meaning “archetype”) as god of the sea. Notably, she is described as having a tail, as comets do.

The Enuma Elish says Tiamat gave birth to dragons and serpents. Enki's symbol was two entwined serpents, the caduceus. Tiamat and Enki engaged in a complicated war of storms and destruction, perhaps depicting the break up of Tiamat. Enki’s son, Marduk (the Sun God) sliced Tiamat in half, “smashing her skull.” Could this describe a coronal mass ejection or even the gravitational drag of the sun cleaving the mother-comet?

Hebrew versions of the Creation and the Deluge emphasize connections between the Semitic Babylonians and themselves. They increased the rain to forty days, noting that "the fountains of the deep" and "the windows of heaven" opened, which echos the horrendous effects of a massive impact.

Local rain cannot account for the magnitude of catastrophe. Mega-tsunamis are orders of magnitude beyond local flood. Excavations at Ashur reveal a tablet describing a true dragon with legs, implying it crawls up onto land. A god announces the presence of the dragon, saying "In the sea he lies...." Then he describes its humongous size.

In the sea was the Serpent cre[ated].
Sixty /bêru/ is his length;
Thirty /bêru/ high is his he[ad].
For half (a /bêru/) each stretches the surface of his ey[es];
For twenty /bêru/ go [his feet].
He devours fish, the creatures [of the sea],
He devours birds, the creatures [of the heaven],
He devours wild asses, the creatures [of the field],
He devours men…

There are ample grounds, then, for assuming the independent existence of the Babylonian Dragon-myth, though there is no doubt that the myth itself existed among the Sumerians. The dragon motif recurs constantly in Sumerian sacred-decoration.

The twin dragons of Ningishzida on Gudea's libation-vase, carved in green steatite and inlaid with shell, are a notable product of Sumerian art. The very names borne by Tiamat's brood of monsters in the "Seven Tablets" are stamped in most cases with their Sumerian descent. It would be strange indeed if the Sumerians had not evolved a Dragon myth, for the Dragon combat is the most obvious of nature myths and is found in most mythologies of Europe and the Near East. The trailing storm-clouds suggest the serpent form, whose fiery tongue is seen in the forked lightning. Though the dragon may darken the world for a time, the Sun-god will always be victorious. In Egypt the myth of "the Overthrowing of Apep, the enemy of Ra" presents a close parallel to that of Tiamat.

Texts of Sethos II (1215-1210) tell that "Sekhmet was a circling star which spreaed out his fire in flames, a fire-flame in his storm." From Ugarit we hear, "The star Anat has fallen from the heavens; he slew the peopleof the Syrian land and confused the two twilights and the seats of the constellations." The Zoroastrians claimed it unleashed first terrible fire and then a flood called Tistrya. Widespread peoples described it burning and flooding. The old Sumerian tale is thus not the only lengend of comet-fall but is perhaps the oldest.

HERE THERE BE DRAGONS

The Sumerians explained environmental hardships came from displeased gods. Enki granted the Sumerians access to the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life. Enki set up the escape strategy during the Flood, and Enki passed over the Tables of Destiny - tables of scientific law, which became the bedrock of the early mystery schools in Egypt.

Enki allowed humans to survive the deluge. Thus, Sumerian texts are divided into two epochs before and after the Great Deluge, after which the gods departed, but not before “watering the Tree of Life” and creating a royal bloodline. The Dragon bloodline is also the “Grail bloodline" of Grail kings, including Merovingians.

Perhaps a long-hidden rare manuscript written by Saint Germain himself can shed some light on the subject bridging the past and present day reports of terrifying dragons in the sky and lineaged Dragon Societies with rituals of immortality.

We ride on the back of the Winged Dragon to the birth of myths that described cosmological changes and brought incomprehensible catastrophe to our ancestors but led to the rebirth of modern civilization. These events contain the common root of the mysteries of qabalah, alchemy, magic, hermetics, tantra, The Bible, the Tree of Life, immortality, and more.

This winged dragon is the symbolic superstar of Saint Germain’s Triangle Book. In the classic alchemical Book of Lambspring it represents the Anima Mundi, or Soul of the World, which is the sum total of planetary existence. This is the holographic blueprint on which form is based, the informational level or primal source of being - Zero Point. It is said that medicine providing the gift of youth can be made from the dragon's venom.

The dragon is a healing power. The spiritual food of immortality signifies the ability of the ego to assimilate the previously unconscious aspects of the Self. This is the elixir of youth that creates the immortal body, equivalent to the Philosopher's Stone. In the Triangle Book, the invocation with powerful godnames is combined with the dragon emblem to initiate the current. The rite couldn't be practiced without the Emblems and Sigils and perhaps the bloodline of a born seer.

In legend, the alchemical Philosopher's Stone is kept in the custody of the reawakened Dragon, the Adept who inhabits his or her Body of Light. Alchemy itself is a triple process of uniting the physical, psychological and spiritual. In Masonry, each line of the triangle itself symbolizes a kingdom of nature -- mineral, vegetable and animal. They stand for explorations the Master Mason needs for a complete education.

All these points may be clues to the nature of the "winged dragon" of the title page of The Triangle Book. In alchemy it is a symbol of the volatile elements. The winged dragon appears as a symbol of coagulatio in other alchemy texts, suggesting the pandemonium of psychic images.

Psychologically, the dragon is the union of ordinary human reality with the Transpersonal Self and a passion for transformation. Some now say it is a symbol of DNA or the kundalini energy. Thus, it is a symbol of the Great Work.

Defining the archetypal Dragon in Jungian terms first requires we understand Jung's notion of the archetype. Jung refers to the Archetype as the 'type' in the psyche, an inner mental image (type being derived from the Greek tupos meaning imprint or blow). Though an archetype as an imprint presupposes that there was an imprinter in the first place, Jung  concentrates on the image within the collective unconscious that dominates when there are no other rational thoughts.

Thus, we can equates the dragon with primordial awareness, but also with the inner effective power of matter, immanence or the subtle body -- vacuum potential -- the internal aspects of matter and mankind -- the energy body or psychophysical self. The dragon as universe symbolizes the wholeness of relationships. As Above; So Below.

The unconscious modifies the conscious. Jung's idea of the archetype as a Primordial Image required that it was at least common to entire races, or entire epochs, the most powerful archetypes being common to all peoples at all times. It also required that the image was in close accord to the ancient myths and symbols. The ancient symbols were supposedly created from the collective unconscious to explain certain phenomena of the world, rational thought being impossible at that time.

Jung referred to Dragons in a number of his works. He initially cites it as the arch-enemy of the Hero archetype, drawing mainly from the New Testament and Gnosticism. Viewing it as the mother Dragon which threatens to overwhelm the birth of the God, thus the Hero must defeat the Dragon before becoming the Hero. He later views the Tiamat-Marduk myth as the basis of the Mercurial Serpent image - the Dragon that both destroys and creates itself and represents the Prime Material (or Philosopher's Stone).

However Jung does fall back on his Mother Dragon theory in stating that the father figure triumphs over the matriarch thus signifying the transition of the world towards the masculine. He identifies the Dragon directly with the unconscious, which in being vanquished by the Hero indicates the natural state of the conscious. In a sense, both the mother Dragon and the Mercurial Serpent are closely linked, both being creators.

Considers the various ancient myths, however, we find problems with Jung's rather simplistic, and overtly Christian, notion. Third generation Jungian psychology, called archetypal psychology, rejects the primacy of the hero. Identification with the over-striving ego has gotten us into our modern dilemma that is destroying our planet. Many less heroic approaches to life and the Dragon are equally valid points of view. For those of dragon blood, the dragon is not something to be tamed and controlled, but that to which we naturally submit.

Tiamat is indeed the mother of creation, however she created the mushussu which was later tamed by Marduk. No doubt Jung would again describe this as the victory of the conscious Hero over the unconscious extension of the matriarch, but the mushussu is not a matriarchal figure nor is it vanquished. Instead it is more of a guardian image, tamed by the Hero and protecting the Hero.

The Egyptian serpentine Dragons bear even less resemblance to Jung's archetype. Though they are identified as being in conflict with the Gods in a parallel of the Hero myth, yet they do not represent the feminine, nor are they anything to do with the Prime Material - identified in both Osiris and Re. Indeed the conflict between brothers, which is prominent in Egyptian tales (primarily Seth slaying Osiris), also falls contrary to Jung's ideal of the mother-son conflict.

Even more at conflict with Jung are the Chinese Lung, who are identified as life-givers in that they bring the spring rains. Although this could be though of as a matriarchal figure, and the association with water as a representation of the Prime Material - said to be a form of water, there is no conflict and it does not play a part in the creation. The Aztec images also fall contrary to the Hero's adversary. If one can salvage anything from the Jungian archetype, it is that the Dragon may be a representation of the life-giving mother, though this is not true for all civilizations.

Unable to justify the cross-cultural Mother Dragon archetype, we fall back on Jung's statement that an archetype is something shared (at least) by the collective unconsciousness of cultural groups. We can then ascribe the matriarchal figure with the Babylonian Tiamat, and as an archetype of the Sumerians. The Egyptian archetype is that of the snake which destroys life and has to be defeated before life is reborn - in other words the Prime Material. Whereas the Chinese archetype is that of the life-giver, the lizard which emerges with the onset of the spring rains.

These archetypes continue influencing consciousness. The Chinese archetype has remained intact throughout the centuries, it is still the life-giver. The Christians, however, took on the notion of the Dragon as the Hero's adversary identifying it with the alleged Satanic connotations of Pagan religions. It does surface as the matriarchal figure, and as that of the Prime Material, through the writings of the early philosophers however these were eventually denounced by the mainstream - frightened that the old Pagan religions might surface again. The Christian teachings show the domination of the conscious over the unconscious. All in all, though there is evidence to support separate archetypal Dragons, there is none to support a single archetype for the whole human race.