Dragons
WHAT ARE DRAGONS?
"Chinese cosmology teaches that the Ten Thousand Beings or Archetypes (the world) are born of the rhythmic conjunction
of the two complimentary eternal principles, the yin and the yang. Corresponding to the yin are concentration, darkness, passivity, even numbers, and cold; to the yang, growth, light, activity, odd numbers, and heat. Symbols of the yin are women, the earth, the color orange, valleys, riverbeds, and the tiger; of the yang, men, the sky, Blue Mountains, pillars, the dragon. "Chinese dragon has horns, claws, and scales, and its backbone prickles with spines. It is commonly pictured with a pearl, which it swallows or spits up. In this pearl lies its power; the Dragon is tamed if the pearl is taken from it."
"From the I Ching or Book of Changes, the dragon signifies wisdom. For centuries it was the imperial emblem.
The emperor's throne was called the Dragon Throne, his face the Dragon Face. On announcing the emperor's death,
it was said that he had ascended to heaven on the back of a dragon." "It was a Dragon which emerged from the Yellow
River to reveal to an emperor the famous circular diagram of the yang and yin. A certain king had in his stables saddle
Dragons and draft Dragons; one emperor fed on Dragons, and his kingdom prospered.
"The Chinese Dragon, the lung, is one of four magic animals. The others are the unicorn, the phoenix, and the tortoise. History traces the earliest emperor's back to the Dragons. Their teeth, bones, and saliva all possess medicinal qualities. According to its will, the Dragon can become visible or invisible. In the springtime it ascends into the skies; in the fall it dives down into the depths of the seas. Some Dragons lack wings and yet flies under their own impetus. The Celestial Dragon carries on its back the palaces of the gods that otherwise might fall to the earth, destroying the cities of men; the Divine Dragon makes the winds and rains for the benefit of mankind; the Terrestrial Dragon determines the course of the streams and rivers; the Subterranean Dragon watches over the treasures forbidden to men. The Buddhists affirm that Dragons are no fewer in numbers than the fishes of the many concentric seas; somewhere in the universe a secret cipher exists to express their exact number. The Chinese believe in Dragons more than in any other deities because Dragons are often seen in the changing formations of clouds. Similarly, Shakespeare has observed, "Somewhere we see a cloud that's dragonish.
"The Dragon rules over mountains, is linked to geomancy, dwells near tombs, is connected with the cult of Confucius, is the Neptune of the seas and appears also on the terra firma. The Sea-Dragon Kings live in resplendent underwater palaces and feed on opals and pearls. Of these Kings there are five: The chief is in the middle, the other four correspond to the cardinal points. Each stretch some three to four miles in length on changing position, they cause mountains to tumble. The are sheathed in the armor of yellow scales, and their muzzles are whiskered. Their legs and tail are shaggy, their forehead juts over their flaming eyes, their ears are small and thick, their mouths agape open, their tongues are long, and their teeth sharp. Their breath boils up and roasts whole shoals of fishes. When these Sea Dragons rise to the ocean surface, they cause whirlpools and typhoons; when they take to the air they blow up storms that rip the roofs of the houses of entire cities and flood the countryside.
The Dragon Kings are immortal and can communicate among themselves, without recourse to words, in spite of any distance that separates them. It is during the third month that they make their annual report to the upper heavens. In the eleventh book of the Iliad we read that there was a blue three-headed Dragon on Agamemnon's shield; centuries later Norse pirates painted Dragons on their shields and carved Dragon heads on the prows of their long ships. Among the Romans, the Dragon was the insignia of the cohort, as the eagle was of the legion; this is the origin of present-day dragoons. On the standards of the Saxon kings of England there were Dragons; the object of such images was to impart fear into the enemy ranks. In the ballad of Athis, we read: In the West, the Dragon was always thought of as evil. One of the stock exploits of heroes (Hercules, Sigrid, St. Michael, and St. George) was to overcome and slay a Dragon. In German myth, the Dragon kept watch over precious objects. And so in Beowulf, written in England in the seventh or eighth century, there is a Dragon that stands guard over a treasure for some three hundred years. A runaway slave hides in its lair and steals a cup. On waking, the Dragon notices the theft and resolves to kill the thief, but every once in a while goes back inside to make sure the cup has not been merely mislaid. The Dragon begins to ravage the kingdom; Beowulf searches it out, grapples with it, and kills it, dying himself soon after from a mortal wound inflicted by the Dragon's tusks.
People believed in the reality of the Dragon. In the middle of the sixteenth century, the Dragon is recorded in Conrad Gesture's History Animalium, a work of scientific nature.Time has notably worn away from the Dragon's prestige. We believe in the lion as reality and symbol; we believe in the Minotaur as symbol but no longer as reality. The Dragon is perhaps the best known but also the least fortunate of the fantastic animals. It seems childish to us and usually spoils the stories in which it appears. It is worth remembering, however, that we are dealing with a modern prejudice, due perhaps to a surfeit of Dragons in fairy tales. In the Revelations, St. John speaks twice of the Dragon, "that old serpent, called the Devil and Satan…" In the same spirit, St. Augustine writes that the Devil "is lion and dragon; lion for its rage, dragon for its cunning." Jung observes that in the Dragon are the reptile and the elements of earth and air.
This is My Growing Dragon ZEKE
he grow's alittle every time someone visits this site
