The truth about dragon power
Is that we all possess it! A post for International Woman´s Day and part of the Daisy Chain Flower Crown
The truth about the dragon, feared feminine force and authentic compassion. What the eastern teachings of non duality, a german book and shadow work have in common and why women are the true initiators of life.
There is so much more to write but I attempted an inspiring, versatile and practical overview. Please let me know what resonated, where you would like to go more in depth and what (if) you were missing something here. I can´t wait to write more, especially when it is not past midnight.
If this inspired you, you might want to write your own post about what the dragons mean to you, how to harness their power or what the serpent unlocked within you. Use IWD - Daisy Chain Flower Crown in your subheading and tag me or the other co-creatrixes of this beautiful invitation to share our stories and let our voices be heard:
D R A G O N S
Slayed by some and ridden by others, feared by many and adored by the rest.
By dictionary definition a mythical monster resembling a giant reptile, sometimes shown as having wings. In European tradition the dragon is typically fire-breathing and tends to symbolise chaos or evil, whereas in East Asia it is usually a beneficent symbol of fertility, associated with water and the heavens.
Linguistically speaking, big reptiles such as crocodilians are dragons in a sense. And the Chinese word for dinosaur means terrible dragon.
Not so mythical after all.
Yet for my message today, it doesn´t matter if dragons were/are real or purely mythical. Because we associate them meaning and have done for centuries. Dragons evoke something powerful within us and ignite our imagination and childlike wonder.
And I believe that there is so much more that they can do for us than activate our galactic DNA, connect us to star systems or have us fantasising about drakainas (female serpent with humanlike features from Greek Mythology).
I believe we can enhance our personal development through mythopoetic inner work and empowerment with the dragons.
By looking at their symbology, meaning over time and the idea of power itself.
You know I love mythology and even more the research into the core origin of the distorted stories they became. Dragon lore is one of them: we have been told many stories about poor ladies being abducted by dragons, longingly awaiting their knight who ends up killing the “beast”.
The dragon however was never the enemy of the woman, nor did the man need to kill it. It is life force, kundalini, sexual serpent energy, creation and raw fierce and also feminine nature. Everything the church tried to kill.
Dragons have been suppressed, demonised, villainised. Like the shadow parts within ourselves.
We have been told to fear the dragons and to hunt them down. For they are often found in dark caves, protecting golden treasures of the earth and need to be killed in order to retrieve the bounty.
We have been taught to slay the dragons, and to unearth the treasures in order to become a hero, recognised by society and deemed worthy of love.
There may indeed - bohemians have suggested - be no more damning sign of a person´s ethical and imaginative limitation than a capacity for commercial success - Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety, 2004
Dragons, Serpents, Kundalini
Throughout *christian* history, serpents have gotten a similar bad rep as dragons.
Originally powerful beings of healing, transformation and wisdom, the snakes also refer to the infinity, the boundlessness of the imagination and the realm of fantasies. In many religions, the motif of the snake giving birth to itself signifies infinity and eternal return.
Like the Ouroboros, an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon swallowing its own tail and forming a circle.
Carl Jung interpreted the Ouroboros as having an archetypal significance to the human psyche. The Jungian psychologist Erich Neumann writes of it as a representation of the pre-ego "dawn state", depicting the undifferentiated infancy experience of both mankind and the individual child.1
You don´t have to understand all this but keep in mind the importance of these symbols for our subconscious mind and inner child work, as I will elaborate further down.
The feathered serpent god Quetzalcoatl is a Mesoamerican deity that brought knowledge to humans, not unlike the snake who tempted Eve with the apple but without the sin that followed. Quatzalcoatl actually took the punishment from other gods himself, for gifting humans with the most precious nurturing magic: theobroma cacao, the food of the gods. More about the dragon powered heart plant medicine here:
The Dragon of Happiness
In the german book, “Die Unendliche Geschichte”, 1979, by Michael Ende - known to english speakers mainly as the movie “The Neverending Story” (however, the author himself was very displeased with the movie, and I totally understand why, the book is full of meaning, literature art and depth) - we encounter a very different kind of dragon. One that glides through the air without wings, like the feathered serpent god or the Chinese dragons.
His name is Fuchur and he is a white dragon of happiness. A creature of the sky, light and warmth that understands all the languages of joy.
He is one of the rarest creatures in Phantásia, the otherworldly realm, parallel to the protagonist Bastian´s human world. Fuchur floats through the air as light as a cloud, and anyone who hears its voice sing like a bronze bell will never forget the sound. Having a “Glücksdrache” (lucky dragon/dragon of happiness) as a friend means no longer being alone with fear and never losing hope, even in the most hopeless of situations.
In order to save the childlike empress, Bastian has to give her a new name, which he refuses at first as he does not believe in his importance, denies his own powers and gets tempted by the evil to wish himself to be the most popular character of the story.
The realm of Phantásia exists like a subconscious parallel to Bastian´s real world, in which he is mobbed at school and feels lonely after his mother´s death and abandoned by his emotionally absent father. Bastian takes refuge in books and soon becomes part of the story. His choice of wishing to be someone he is not, proofs fatal as he starts loosing his memory and almost forgets why he set out to be in Phantasia in the first place: to follow the call of his best friend Atréju and the lucky dragon Fuchur to help save the life of the childlike empress.
Thanks to his friend´s help he overcomes his fear of being meaningless and unloved and accepts himself as who is is, which finally leads to him giving the ruler of Phantasia her new name and ends her suffering: Moonchild.
It is a story of facing our deepest fears and vulnerability instead of trying to escape our authentic self and put on a mask of pretended victory.
Another very beautiful message lies hidden in the power of the Auryn, the empress´s power symbol: An elliptic emblem with two snakes, who bite each others tail. Serpents are another form of the dragon and their skin shedding a revered symbol for rebirth and transformation. It was important to Michael Ende that Auryn is an ellipse because "an ellipse has two centers." - two worlds that cannot exist separately without each other: the human world and Phantásia.
Auryn is the sign of the Childlike Empress. It gives its bearer a power that every living creature in Phantásia respects. Those who dare not speak its name also call it "the glow" or "the pentacle". In magic, a pentacle is a pentagram enclosed in a circle and is regarded as a spell against evil. Like a pentacle, Auryn guides and protects those who wear it. At the same time, however, the wearer must accept everything he encounters. His own opinion no longer counts; like the Childlike Empress herself, good and evil must be equally important to him.
The engraving on the back of Auryn also refers to the fact that Phantásia is infinite, just like the imagination: "Do what you want."
Source: https://michaelende.de/die-unendliche-geschichte
This leads me to the Heart Sutra, as translated by Thich Nhat Hanh.2
A teaching in non-duality and emptiness of all things. Which (please refer to the commentary linked in the footnote) has nothing to do with bypassing our reality, on the contrary it is all about accepting our world and be in it fully.
Similarly to the empress´s power it teaches equality and connection between all that is, instead of separation (read dualism) and judgment of what is good and bad, or better and worse. All is equally empty and by truly understanding this we can reach ”the Other Shore” and in my opinion we can practice really effective and healing shadow work. Because as soon as we are aware of the dualism we are entrapping ourselves in and open our perception to a wider view, we can allow our resistance, fears or conditioning to surface. For that we need to be honest with ourselves. And in order for us to be honest with ourselves, we need to accept and be compassionate. Truly curios instead of judgmental.
The Heart Sutra, a Mahayana Buddhist Text, teaches emptiness through the epitome of compassion. It is often said that, in a sense, emptiness is the heart of the Mahayana, but the heart of emptiness is compassion.
Bodhisattvas who practice
the Insight that Brings Us to the Other Shore
see no more obstacles in their mind,
and because there
are no more obstacles in their mind,
they can overcome all fear,
destroy all wrong perceptions
and realize Perfect Nirvana.
https://plumvillage.org/about/thich-nhat-hanh/letters/thich-nhat-hanh-new-heart-sutra-translation
Compassion as a dragon power
Buddhism teaches that authentic compassion is offered without suffering - neither those of others now ones own.
This means when we cause ourselves pain or feel drained or burdened by an act that we deem compassionate - it is actually not compassion. But more so subtle manipulation, codependency or pity.
The dragon however doesn´t show compassion to proof herself, nor does the dragon need to save others or act from a superior place. Nor does the dragon want or need to position herself as bigger, better and bolder through an act of giving to the smaller, weaker and powerless (notice that all of these are dualistic ideas).
The dragon is not only aware of its undoubted power, I wouldn´t even call it aware and I don´t mean power as in something superior either. Because the dragon doesn´t judge its beingness, doesn´t compare its strength. Doesn´t need to believe in magic for it to be real. It just is.
Myths are things which never happened, but always are.
- Sallustius, 4th century
When we are honest with ourselves, we soon feel a difference between genuine intention & heart-led desire to create, do, give, be, act, not act - and the mental construction of should, could, would.
”I should, because it´s expected. I could do this in order to receive that. I would get better results if… “
Sounds familiar?
These moments are gold for inner alchemy.
Let me explain:
As soon as you become aware of a sense of urgency that is not driven by your values or your long term vision, your desired outcome or in service of what you stand for, but feels uneasy and contracted in your body, a mental “need” in order to protect an identity or state of being - it is time to not give into this urgency but observe and allow whatever feeling to come up that this urgency tries to distract (read: protect) you from.
Does it make you feel purposeless? Stupid? Lazy? Silly? Unworthy? Unloved? Undesirable? Unproductive?
Is survival fear kicking in already?
Hold it.
Create a container for yourself that feels safe for you to release or process. Practice your dragon breath (whatever this means to you!) to keep yourself present without regulating possible pain away.
Remember your dragon wings that can only expand when you allow your core strength to unfold them. And only by alchemising your innermost fears will you find this core strength.
It brings you into your centre.
The centre from which you know where you operating from.
The centre that tells you loud and clear what it is you need, even if you decide not to listen and go back to autopilot again.
But now you know, you have tasted the truth and you will return.
Remember the Auryn says: "Do what you want."
When you do great things for the world, you must do it in a way that feels like a `no big deal´ to you.
Your experience of it must be light, easy, and unstrained, even if it appears big and heavy to others.
-The Venerable Pomnyun Sunim
THIS is true dragon power.
Shadow & Inner Child Work:
We are connected to the dragon through our reptilian ancestors.
Yes, you read right, we have innate dragon heritage through, for example, our reptilian brain. The reptilian brain is our survival brain, our fight or flight brain.
By connecting to it, we are allowing ourselves to think that we all inhibit this planet and are not so separate than we often want to believe we are. It helps us to feel authentic compassion, practice awareness of when we are caught up in dualism - which often results out of survival fear - and can connec to our nature presence.
Put one hand on the back of your head: two fingers touch the hard part of brain and two fingers touch the soft part.
Therefore you can feel a connection to the hard and soft part at the same time and build capacity to hold duality, which helps you to accept different opinions and emotions. Practice paradox and explore the mystery of life.
Children love dragons and dragons love to remind us of our inner children.
Allow your childlike wonder to guide you. Ask yourself when you last believed in dragons and what they mean to you. Have you ever journeyed with a dragon as a spirit guide or thought of personifying your innermost shadow as a dragon? Scary but also powerful af? I would love to know:
When did you stop believing in the supernatural? The mystical?
What are the dragons within you?
I truly believe they are within us, both as our deepest fear and our most highest version of ourselves.
As our repressed shadow they spie fire and fight against their cave walls that keep them hidden from the world.
As our alchemised gifts they lift ourselves higher from the ground and remind us of our unlimited potential.
The dragons remind us that we gain meaning in our lives when we remain true to ourselves in a world where being different or imperfect is seen as an abnormality by those who believe in lies rather than in themselves.
The Rebirth of feminine wisdom
Eve got the apple from the snake and handed it to Adam. The woman is the visionary. She who initiates the man.
Sexual power, womb creation, matriarchy… All threats to a patriarchal religion such as Christianity. No wonder Saint George had to slay the dragon. Did he actually slay the pre-christian goddess culture?
The dragons remind us that we gain meaning in our lives when we remain true to ourselves in a world where being different or imperfect is seen as an abnormality by those who believe in lies rather than in themselves.
So many of us, like Bastian in the Neverending Story, have learned to behave and be good in order to be save, to be liked and loved. We fear being wrong, we fear being ugly, we fear being unpopular.
We hide our dragons in the deepest of our caves until we forget that they exist.
We extinguish our own power because of the fear that our surrounding will send dragon hunters to kill it.
After all, that´s what men are supposed to do: slay the dragon to “free” the helpless girl…
Being a “good girl” meant I was accepted, welcomed, and celebrated - something I believe all women want, but not at the cost of extracting ourselves, silencing our voices, and violating our own boundaries in the name of approval.
It was years later, long after my divorce and the subsequent abusive relationship I was in afterward, that I realized I had built my entire life around being “good” and living up to societal expectations cast upon me. My life wasn’t mine, it was the product of conditioning.
-
about her experience being raised as the good girl, written in her post for IWD
This is an ode to befriending the dragon within and reaching out our hands to the elemental dragons of nature all around us.
To receive and give in grateful reciprocity and life affirming fertility.
To conceive our intuitive creations and birth ourselves in authentic compassion.
The serpent is often depicted wrapping itself around a phallic symbol, such as a staff (Rod of Asclepius, god of healing in greek mythology) or a tree (Yggdrasil, the world tree in norse mythology).
Which remind us of the DNA strands and the depiction of the Kundalini - life force - energy. Moving up and down, interchanging, intertwining. Life force is sexual force and all too often have we compared the snake to the male sex, yet the tree it is wrapping itself around is also considered phallic. How are we to see sexual union and creation of polarities then?
Let me propose a different theory: The tree could be considered feminine, the many dryads and tree goddesses would lend themselves to this idea, with the snake being the masculine. On the other hand though, the tree being the constant stable masculine energy and the serpent the flowing, ever changing, skin shedding feminine. The one that initiates. The one that knows change is inevitable. The initiator of rebirth.
And: Could it be both and more?
I wrote about this in context of the earth´s dragon lines and the red and white springs here in Glastonbury, UK in this post, if you want to dive deeper into feminine and masculine symbolism:
I don´t think that it is about red = feminine and white = masculine or vice versa, I think that either can be helpful and distorted ways of looking at it. Much more interesting actually is what Wendy Berg proposes: Red being human, the blood and White being Faery, the Otherworld. So much more enchanting.
Nevertheless, it doesn´t matter, as the alchemy occurs when red and white intertwine, like the snakes (basically small dragons) on the Asclepius staff.
So it has and will always be about finding both within.
It is such a western mindset to put everything into a rational box, which again brings us into the realms of dualism. So let us learn once more from the teachings of the east and try to withstand the temptation to classify and categorise and instead embrace the mystery that truly, we are.
As we are the centre, the offspring of the snake and the tree. Our hearts are our centre. Our connection to the universe, our centre of creation.
The dragon is of the world but not in the world (anymore). As paradox as it sounds, this is also our nature, we are visible and invisible. We are our inner processes and outer manifestations.
And I chose my words intentionally. Unlike the Christian sentiment of wnating to be in the world but not of it as they see the world, our cosmos, as ruled by Satan - I believe it is time we return to our Mother. To not give in to the notion of Great Mother Nature being evil or sinful.
Dangerous, yes, that is life. But also full of beauty, of love, of acceptance, of reciprocity, of nonjudgment. Like a mother, our planet can be fierce and knows how to let her dragons loose if us children need a reminder of her power: Volcanoes, Thunderstorms, Tsunamis, Earthquakes.
We too have these forces within us. We too can destroy. But so can we create.
"Do what you want."
Allow your dragon to curl up on top of your treasures in your earthen cave until you are ready to face its power again.
And remember: it is not the shadow you are fearing, it is the damn bright light.
If this got you fired up about the dragons and you want more of it your life, I am really excited to present you with an incredible happening:
DRAGON Retreat, Sept 17th-22nd 2024
In Wales, Snowdonia, over the Autumn Equinox known as the time of Mabon, the divine child.
Immersed in nature, the country of the dragon, in the year of the dragon.
All I have been writing about will be put into practice in workshops, ceremonies, mythopoetic shadow and divine inner child work.
Waitlist is now open, comment or reply via email if you are interested.
It is going to be an epic ride, wild and fun, earthy & heavenly. And full of heart (cacao medicine & chocolate truffle making workshop included woop woop).
More on snake symbolism: http://faculty.sgsc.edu/rkelley/tree_serpent_motifs.htm
Read the beautiful and helpful commentary on the Heart Sutra here: https://plumvillage.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Thich-Nhat-Hanh-Commentary-on-new-Heart-Sutra-translation.pdf
Wow, Laura, thank you so much for all this wonderful dragon wisdom! The very first spirit guide that I met is a dragon. In fact, I love the image that we each have within us the intertwining serpents of fire and water (like the Caduceus) and we are the Aleph, the air, reconciling them. Oh my gosh, and The Neverending Story is one of my all time faves!
Interesting to read this article while i was just reading this one : https://phys.org/news/2024-02-paleontologists-million-year-chinese-dragon.html 🐉 ✨