One of the great things that modern scholars are perplexed by is why does everyone
have a dragon? Like there's not a single human culture anywhere in the world
that doesn't have a dragon, including people who live in places that don't have
snakes. This is Jonathan Pegel, Welcome to the Symbolic World. So hello
everyone. We are back with Richard Rowland for another Universal History episode, and
this week we are going to talk about dragons, which I'm sure is going
to be of interest to everybody that I know around the Symbolic World. So
Richard, go ahead. So many people have been asking for this for so
long, that's right, And we already had a little bit of the dragon
discussion in the Beywolf course that we've talked about quite a bit, and so
you can check that out for sure. But so when Jonathan says a little
bit, what he means is that we actually talked about dragons for about seven
hours. So I just really want to make sure that I want to properly
sell you on the beoolf class if you haven't already signed up for that bought
that. I know it's a little pricey, but it's literally like twenty something
hours of Jonathan and I talking about Beowolf like total, you know, and
along with handouts and everything else. And we literally spent at least seven hours
talking about the dragon between the last two classes, right, And if you
want to know the secret connection between the dragon and the grendel Kin, for
instance, it's not what Neil Gayman thinks it is. But if you want
to know what it is and there is a secret connection, then sign up
for that class. And a lot of the things that we're going to say
about dragons today we cover in significantly more depth in the class. So what
I really want to happen over the course of the next few years is to
do some more of these kinds of classes where I get to go really deep
on things that I'm trying to summarize in forty five minutes. And you know,
the really frustrating thing about making these videos, Jonathan, is that we'll
record something and then later on I'll think, oh, I said that wrong,
I need to go back. And you know, so like when we
do the coursework, not only do we get to go deeper and you know,
we got eighteen to twenty hours instead of one hour, right for a
subject, but also I get to like do a lot more in the in
terms of like research, footnotes, editing, and also you get all of
my presentation like slides and notes and stuff like that for those classes. So
the bail class was the first one. I hope we have some more to
introduce next year. Oh yeah, for sure. Dante the Comedy is going
to probably be the next one we're going to do, because I'm excited about
doing that as well. So I think that that will be the next one,
and then we'll see from there on. So, Richard, how are
you going to start us off with dragons? Like? We don't even know
where to start. So I should have expected this, given that they're dragon,
you know, but they turned out to be very difficult to pin down,
as it were. One of my there's this great line from a scholar
that I was reading on the subject of dragons in like ancient the ancient Near
East and ancient into European legends, which is probably where we'll start, and
she says that you're expecting it to be like, oh, it's a it's
a thread, and I'll start pulling this thread and I'll just be able to
chase it from beginning to the end. But it's not like that. It's
like a spider web and you're looking at all of the threads and you're like,
well, did this come from this? Or did this come from this?
And did this come from this? And it's very difficult to sort of
trace, like even nail down what a dragon is because there are certain general
things and that's where we're going to start in a second. There's certain general
things you could say are true about dragons, but then there are always exceptions
to that. So like you could say, you know, if there's ten
things that make a dragon, like all dragons have seven out of ten of
these things, right, different seven out of ten, But then but then
there are various dragons that are like little weird exceptions to these rules. And
I think that this is going to go a lot towards the way that we
think about the dragon as as a monster, right, as a monster as
very often something of a shape shifter, right, something that's got the ability
capacity to kind of change its shape and actually takes on different roles in different
societies. And then maybe what that means for us again, you know,
as always, I'm coming at this from the perspective of a Christian who you
know, and and and so for us as Christians. The idea of a
serpent or a dragon means something in particular, although it also means other things
that maybe most people haven't thought about. So we'll get into that now.
For sure, That's been the way that I would approach it mostly, you
know, for those who have read I've read few articles about it. Is.
I wrote an article called The Dragons That Almost Exist, where I discussed
the relations to between the dragon and the monster, and that it seems to
be the key in in in you know, the idea of something which is
not fully identified is exactly what a dragon is, and so because of that,
it has that shape shifting quality. Yeah. Yeah, So the let
me just go over some things that all dragons or lets most dragons seem to
have in common. Right. The first is that a dragon is a serpent.
Now, when I say a dragon is a serpent, I mean the
the word dragon itself probably comes from a very old, like early Latin word
which means just a serpent, right or sorry, from a Greek word that
means just a serpent, and it's got it's from a proto Indo European root
word which has to do with the glance, right, like the like the
idea of like a piercing glance or a deadly glance. Right, that's the
that's the root of that word. And and of course there are there even
to this day, there are plenty of dragon like creatures, right, dragons
or dragon like creatures whose gaze is one of the most deadly things about them,
right, the basilisk for instance, and so on. Now, something
to say here is that we have to be really careful about when we're going
back and looking at dragons for our purposes. We're not going to really we're
not. You have to be really careful about not treating them as like different
species. Right. There's a kind of like a modern tendency that has its
you know, as it's apog like the the D and D Monster Manual,
right, where it's like you've got all these different kinds of dragons and then
these other kinds of like dragon like creatures, and they're all sort of different,
a different species with a different stat block and a different you know,
and so that sometimes if you if you come at this stuff from that modern
perspective, you end up getting a little tripped up on things that really would
just not have been a difficult thing for somebody in the ancient world. So,
for instance, if you look at and I'll will have some images to
put up on the screen. Here, if you look at a a Persian
dragon, right, if you look at artwork of a Persian dragon, it
looks exactly like a Chinese dragon. Yeah. Now, if you're coming out
this from a modern perspective, you'd say, well that Persians had one word
for dragons and the Chinese have this other word that we translate as dragon,
and so are they really the same creature? But you can just look at
the artwork like contemporary Persian Chinese artwork can say yeah, it's definitely the same
same creature. Like no Chinese person traveling in Persia, which is a thing
that happened, by the way, no Chinese person traveling in Persia in the
Iron Age would have looked at a picture of it of a Persian dragon and
said, oh, I don't know what that is, and then it just
that it's not how it goes. So most dragons seem to be composite creatures.
Now I said that all dragons are serpents, right, or at least
most dragons are serpent. Actually, most dragons seem to be composite creature,
but what the main ingredient is always serpent to put it that way. Yeah,
well that's because, by the way, that's important to state, because
first of all, that's what makes it a monster, right. A monster
is a hybrid because it doesn't have a category attributed only to itself. So
when you look at a hybrid or when you look at a monster, what
you're seeing is things that in your estimation don't have are taken from other places
and are stuck together into one thing. That's actually an experience of hybridity in
general. It's not just related to monsters. It can help us understand what
monsters are, but that is also what its snake is. A snake is
a being that can be in two places at once. It's one of the
only ones, right because it does this. Yeah, it's and it's it's
a being that also transforms itself by shedding its outer appearance and kind of reconstituting
its its outer appearance. So the idea of the of the snake that sheds
its skin means that there's a relationship between hybridity, monstrosity, and change,
because change is exactly when something loses its identity, especially transformational change, loses
its identity and then is in the process of becoming something else. And in
that middle space between what it used to be and what it's becoming now,
there's a kind of fluidity that appears. And that is what accounts for monsters.
That's why we used to say that the word monster means a sign,
right, It's a sign that something that's happing, Yeah, something's happening like
that, that things are not going to be the same anymore. And that's
what the sign of hybridity reveals to us. And this is precisely why it's
so difficult to talk about a dragon or even to trace like In twenty twenty
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Warrior on Kickstarter today. One of the great things that modern scholars are perplexed
by is why does everyone have a dragon? Like there's not a single human
culture anywhere in the world that has a that doesn't have a dragon, including
people who live in places that don't have snakes, right, And so it's
one of these things where you know, people are always trying to sort of
answer the question like why does everybody have a dragon? And yeah, the
dragons they're all a little bit different depending on where you live. If you
live near the water, maybe it's a sea serpent see dragon kind of a
thing, right, But you know, if you live you know, so
what's going on there? And so modern scholars have these a bunch of fun
different theories for this, say, oh, well it's dinosaur bones. Now.
To be completely fair, every time before the nineteenth century, anybody ever
dug up dinosaur bones, which happened all the time. For instance, lots
of dinosaur bones in China. When people dug up dinosaur bones in China,
what did they call them? They said, these are dragon bones. And
in fact that dragon bone, like powdered dragon bone, is an important element
ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine. You know, it's just like fossilized dinosaur bones,
right, dragon bones, and same thing, same thing in the British
Isles, same thing in anywhere that somebody's dug up dragon dinosaur bones. They've
said, oh, these objects. I know, I know, I'm trying
to I'm trying to bring people along with us, Jonathan trying to commentate the
moden world. I understand, Yeah, I'm trying to bring people along with
us. It's actually it's much easier just to say the dragon bones. Right.
So and actually what's really fun is that all of these, like some
of the more recent reconstructions of what these various different dinosaurs might have actually looked
like. They're like, well, maybe they had feathers, and maybe they
had this, maybe they had this, and they start they keep looking more
and more like dragon and I'm like just waiting. I'm just waiting for somebody
to notice, you know, that's right, that is actually I noted that
too. I thought, you know, they used to make fun of the
Medievals for their dragon category, and now you look at a medieval manuscript and
you look at modern reconstructions and they're like, eh, they got it better
than a lot of the you know, early twentieth century gray like those gray
lizards. They yeah, that they did. Yeah, okay. So anyway,
all this to say, I just want to say one thing about the
dragon bones. Actually, so this is important. This is important that are
sending in a meta way, is that the fact that the dragon manifests itself
as a residue of something which is forgotten is also part of what a dragon
is manifesting, like an ancient world that we no longer have access to.
And that is and it's kind of manifesting itself as a kind of chaos,
broken residue, remainder of an ancient world. These are all the types of
symbolism that we need to gather together when we think of what a dragon is.
There's a one of my other favorite theories from modern scholars about this,
you know, people who like to think of things in predominantly like evolutionary terms.
This is the Jordan Peterston strategy. Is the idea that the idea that
well, maybe it's because we're descended from monkeys, and the monkeys we're afraid
of snakes, and so now we're afraid of like I don't know, just
like goofy goofy stuff. This is really Jans Jordan's theory. Like is that
that that is that it's a in some ways, our fear of snakes is
a predetermined thing, Like it's not something learned, it's actually biologically inscribed in
us and so and so that's why we have a mythological image of a snake
that keeps manifesting itself. So the big challenge to this is is that of
course many people are not afraid of snakes, a lot of people like them,
but also like not every like not everybody is afraid of dragons either,
Like, well, we'll get to that, right, Different cultures have kind
of different ways of encountering or dealing with dragons. So like, I don't
know, Yeah, I'm not totally I'm not totally satisfied by that theory for
lots of reasons, I guess. But let me let me give the devil
it's due as Jordan himself. Yeah, is that he said that the relationship
between the snake is not just the fear. It's fear and fascination. It
has to be both because when the ape sees the snake, it will be
afraid of it, but it will stare at it, like it will start
it for like hours because it's trying to figure out what's going on. And
so this relationship between fear and fascination is one that that he talks about.
But the thing is that, let's say, how can I say this The
best description of a dragon, Like the best a discussion about dragon has to
do with our experience of the category rather than the mechanical description of how it
mechanically came about. Whatever. That is, Like, we're not aches and
we don't have to deal with we don't live in trees and we don't have
to deal with snakes, and so the idea that you would tell me that
that's the origin of this, it's like, that doesn't mean anything. It
doesn't, it doesn't it doesn't enter into my category is a meaning. It
doesn't enter into the fact that that you know, a child will will will
draw a snake like that, that's something there's something primordial about and that it
happens in every culture like that's there are better ways to approach that, and
I think the universal history approach is a better one that to make sense of
it. So yeah, there you go. Yeah, that was good,
and I appreciate you explaining that side of things to me a little more because
actually, I don't know if you've ever seen like a weasel or a ferret
hunt a rabbit or some kind of a rodent, but theyally do like sort
of like a little dance that hypnotizes the the rabbit where the rabbits like fascinated,
can't look away, and then the weasel kills it. So anyway,
so it's like Mowgli the snake in Mowgli. That was a great Yeah,
yeah it yeah, that was that was a wonderful insight because it's not in
the book, but it's like a wonderful it is. Well, it is
in the book. Is that Kai Kai the rock python in the in the
book is is Mowgli's friend. Yeah, and so actually in the in the
book, he's in the like the city of the band alog the monkeys,
right, and this the snake is the one that saves him from the monkeys.
But he saves him from the monkeys by basically hypnotizing the monkeys until they
basically walk into his jaws. But he's Mowgli's friend in the friend in the
books. So that's the that's the big difference. But anyway, I love
rodgerd Kipling. Okay, so let's give it to dragons. So dragons are
serpents. This is the first thing we can say about them, but that
they have this element of hybridity. So dragons are very rarely I won't say
never, but they're very rarely just a serpent. And in fact, if
you go and look at mythological carbons, we'll talk about some of these these
dragons that are killed by thunder gods in Indo European and then later in Semitic
mythologies and Shineeri's mythologies. But if you go look at iconographic depictions of the
serpent, the serpent is almost never actually shown. Almost so Ritra the serpent
in the in the rig Veda, right, who is killed by Indra.
That the sort of the great hero of the epic. He's almost never depicted
as just a serpent. He's usually like a some kind of a serpent human
hybrid, and that's pretty normal. Like the farther back you go, the
oldest dragon myths are usually actually depicting some kind of a serpent human hybrid.
There's a Persian variant of this where he has it's a man, but he
has three heads and two of the heads are serpent heads, and you know,
and then of course you're various like you know, human upper body,
serpentine lower half or vice versa. Right, you have that, as you
have that as well. So yeah, everyone, But it's important to understand,
though that this manifestation has to be extended, for example, into the
serpent in the garden, because a serpent that speaks is already a serpent that's
not quite a serpent, is already something that is human. Like you could
say right, even if though it doesn't necessarily physically appear that way. Yeah,
And so a lot of times you'll have various dragons or dragon like creatures
which we're just going to call dragons for purposes of what we're doing today,
that will have serpentine features. But then they also have features from a lion
or very commonly in Chinese dragons, which I'm going to blow everybody's mind about
in a moment, So just stay tuned for that, people, But Chinese
dragons often have the almost always have antlers like a deers, feet like a
lion, and all these other parts. And actually there's a lot of traditional
accounts and depictions of Chinese and other Asian dragons, far Eastern dragons. There's
a lot of symbolism that's you know that they read a lot of symbolism into
the numbers of the scales or the numbers of the dots on the back of
you know, and so on. So like, all of these features are
actually very important for understanding those creatures and that the dragons in those cultures.
But so the second thing we could say about dragons is that dragons are almost
always a guardian of some kind, and the things that dragons traditionally guard or
you could say hoarde, because hoarding is like the dark side of guarding something.
But the things that dragons almost are always guarding or hoarding is water in
almost every culture, and then everything else that you have a dragon hoarding later
on. I'm famously in Western Europe dragons sit on treasure, right, but
that's that's because of certain developments a little bit later on, which we'll talk
about. Yeah, they also kidnap women, yes, yeah, you know
they say yorde story, so you have to think of it as a kind
of hoarding where he takes the virgin and keeps her and then if she has
to be freed well, and but also the keeping of the woman is associated
with so this is the thing they guard water. But if you really think
about the significance of guarding water, it actually goes back to this idea of
the serpent as the guardian of paradise. So if people want to get more
into this side of things, you can go listen to the Lord of Spirits
episode on the Serpent and the Devil and all that stuff. One of the
things they talk about is the relationship of the serpent in Genesis to the idea
of the seraf, the seraf which is, you know, a winged,
fiery serpent, also a category of angel. Right, But the fiery,
the fiery, it is a really old word, I think it. Well,
it's a really old word. And the fiery originally has to do with
like the the sting, like the poison, the venom, the venom of
the of the serpent. But this idea that this idea that the serpent,
you know, was supposed to be sort of the guardian of paradise, and
then that becomes obviously corrupted. But some other places that this manifest just for
instance, is well, okay, so the thing to say about paradise is
that paradise is a place where water comes from. Right. Actually, the
first and foremost is the first thing that we know about Eden is that it
has four rivers coming out of it, right. And so if you think
about, well, how do you have four rivers coming out of it in
four different cardinal directions, Well, the only way you can do that is
if you're at elevation and there's a spring, and then the water's flowing in
each direction from the spring. Right. So that's what that's what paradise is.
Right. There's a place where water flows from. Right, And so
the idea of kind of like guarding paradise or is related to this idea of
up guarding the water or hoarding the water. And so this this shows up
in most most famously, for instance, all the Greek dragons are are water
guardians. So the the the python that Apollo kills, uh, the the
the Nimian hydra, I mean, I mean hydra itself. Like, it's
just means water, right, So a hydra if you're looking at things,
they're like a modern again I hate to rag on D and D here,
but like through that modern D and D lens, you're like, oh,
a hydra that's a different creature than a dragon. No, it's it's just
a dragon, right, But this particular dragon has multiple heads and but reguards
this particular body of water, right. And uh, but yes, all
the all the all the biggest uh Greek culture heroes, starting with Apollo and
Orpheus are famous for killing monsters. But but the like the original monster,
you know, starting with Apollo and Orpheus, is this dragon or the serpent
that guards a body of water. Right, And we can think about the
importance of water in the ancient world, and actually it's still its importance in
our world today. It's easy to take for granted because I turn on the
tap and the water comes out, although actually they had the water shut off
for us to our street earlier this week because they were doing some some repairs
to a pipe down the road, and that that sense of like turning on
the tap and the water doesn't come out, and that just like moment of
like really primordial panic that sets in. It's like, wait, why don't
we want of water? Why don't we have water? You know? And
it was all fine, it was good, and but it's one of those
things where water is so essential, it's so completely essential to life, right,
and that you know, again, that's the most important feature. We
always think of like the garden of the fruit and the trees and everything for
all these reasons, but the most important, you know, feature of Paradise
is the fact that this is a source of water. This is where the
water comes from, and this is why the whole the whole idea the water
coming from the throne of God in the apocalypse, right, That's that's what
that's about it. And in sant Ephraim and in a lot of the medieval
cosmology, the idea was in some ways that all the water came from Eden,
you know, like that the four rivers basically watered the entire world until
they ran into the ocean. So yeah, for people who don't know stint
Afrom who is a fourth century church Father, Syrian poet, definitely one of
my favorite church fathers. But he's very clear and his hymns on Paradise and
his commentary and Genesis, he's very very clear that he doesn't believe that Eden
is like a terrestrial site. It's not on Earth, that's sort of above
the earth, and you have all the waters of the world. I mean,
those four rivers mentioned in Genesis, as most people probably know, are
are the four great rivers of ancient civilization. That's that's what's significant about them,
is like those those four rivers in the in the understanding of the ancient
eies like Mesopotamia and the Levant, those four rivers are the source of life
and civilization in the ancient world. So you've got those four rivers kind of
flowing down from Paradise into the terrestrial world. Yeah. So yeah, so
dragons usually guard watch over protect bodies of water, and they can either do
this in a friendly, helpful way. So there are such things as I'm
not gonna say safe dragons, but sometimes helpful or friendly dragons. Right,
Sometimes you can actually get what you want from a dragon under certain circumstances.
But and and then other cases they hoard all of the waters so that nobody
gets them. So then the third thing that we could say about dragons is
that they and there are This is where we start getting into some more exceptions.
But typically speaking, the dragon has an enemy, and the original enemy,
the sort of primordial enemy of the dragon is the bull, the bull
or really the thunder god, right, who's usually associated with a bull.
And I'll give some examples of this. At this point, it is probably
a good chance to go into them in the oldest And one of the things
that we talked about in the Bewolf class is that there are there are scholars
who believe so for instance, there is a there's a book by Calvert Watkins
called How to Kill a Dragon, which is a really deep study in Indo
European poetics. We read from some of it in the Beowolf class. And
I would just say, if anybody out there wants to understand what philology is
and how it works in which you would use it for, and the way
that you kind of follow formulas and words as they develop and get reused again
over and over again in stories over a really long period of time. That
book is a really good it's a really good introduction to the subject. But
basically what he argues in there is that the is that the original story,
at least for Indo European languages, the original story is hero slay serpent.
Right, the hero slays a serpent, and the hero in these really old
stories is almost always a either a thunder god or the son of a thunder
god. Now as as dragon slang stories kind of reproduce themselves, they don't
know how it's to say it, you know, then eventually, eventually,
you know, the thunder god part will kind of will kind of drop out.
But even then, the idea of like a father and son pair or
an uncle nephew pair sometimes being involved in the slaying of the dragon is still
kind of the typical yeah, the typical k don't know the story so yeah,
which gets carried by the way all that, which gets carried all the
way into the story of Saint Michael killing the dragon in a kind of transformed
way. But this idea that you know, some principality from heaven, like
a kind of war principality from heaven, will it will be the one to
finally slay the big dragon. Yeah. Yeah, So let me give some
examples real quick from some really old Indo European stories. So for people who
don't know, into European languages are the languages of with some exceptions, some
some some things like that we could ask her is that are not into European
languages. But almost every language that you find in India and in what is
now Iran, like the sort of the Iranian step, and then in Europe
are into European languages. That is, they are descended from the same group,
the same family of languages that go kind of go all the way back.
And there are certain elements of Indo European society which in places as far
apart as Ireland and India develop in the same way because they have the same
roots, right and that and that's why, so there is kind of a
common uh language group and and and then because of that a common culture.
So one of the earliest Indo European dragons or serpents that we have is uh
I mentioned a moment ago Ritra. Vritra is a dragon or a demon in
the form of a dragon who in the rig Veda takes all of the waters
of all the rivers in the world and hoards them under a mountain. Right,
so this is of course does ASTs for the world. There's no fresh
water, no fertile river valleys. And this means that the ancient hero Indra,
who are sorry, this means that ancient aggraeent societies of the Indian subcontinent
would be would have completely collapsed. Right. Without water, you don't have
anythings. So he's slain by the hero Indra, who slays him with a
thunderbolt crafted for him by the craft god to vashtrie I think, and that
that name to vashtrie Is has a lot of permutations. It shows up in
like Hittite stuff for instance, also an Indo European language, but in every
kind of permutation that he's the guy usually that makes the thunderbolt. Not always,
but in most cases. Let's say, is that the weapon you see
in Indian culture, like the double trident kind of weapons. Yeah, so
I should explain that a trident is a thunderbolt. Yeah, I don't know
how people how many people know this sort of thought about this, And I
think that it's because thanks to Disney and other things, we like, we
associallycily a trident with the sidon, you know, and the sea. But
a trident is a it's it's lightning, right, that forest branches, right.
That's so a trident is a thunderbolt, and and the typical weapon of
the storm god is a trident slash thunderbolt. Yeah, so that's what Zeus
used. The Greek version of this is when Zeus kills Typhon, who's the
Greek titan, who is a serpent, monster, father, monsters, et
cetera, it uses the thunderbolt. But the thunderbolt is really a trident.
Like if you're imagining, you know, Poseidon has a trident, and then
Zeus has like this jagged thing, you know that looks like a piece of
cartoon lightning. That's not actually that's not actually how they depicted it. So
anyway, so, uh so he kills uh, he kills uh Ritra,
and this, you know, and this is the this is the basic pattern
of the myth and uh it shows up in the myth, the Hittite story
actually is probably the oldest recorded version that we have of this particular myth is
the myth of the Hittite god Iliyanka. And it's a little tenuous. Like
I said, when you try to trace dragon stories and how they develop over
time, you think it's going to be like I'll just start pulling this thread
and see where it goes. But it's the spider web. But we just
say that the oldest dragon slanging stories that we have are found in kuneo form,
that they're they're written in Hittite or in Luian, which would have been
like the language probably spoken by the Trojans. Right, the Trojans were essentially
Hittites and who had a very who had a vast empire, and some of
these these stories go back to I think the earliest ones that we have we
can relively date to something like a sixteenth be a century BC, something like
that, like really old, or maybe a little bit older than that.
And they seem to have made their way era via kind of contact with the
north of the Levant. They seem to have made their way eventually into Mesopotamia.
So in Mesopotamia legend you have enema Elish, which is the Mesopotamian creation
myth, and it famously of course, you've got you know, sue Marian
and Aikadian versions of it, but more recent research has those as being maybe
slightly younger by a couple of hundred years than the Hitti version. So some
people will say that it's originally a Semitic myth that travels west and nor like
Northwest, and then other people say it's actually into European myth that originally traveled
into the Near East somehow. It's probably impossible to say definitively, and that
doesn't really matter. But a lot of these stories have in common, not
all of them. But what a lot of these stories have in common is
this idea of that it is tying it somehow into the idea of creation,
right, so that the storm god, when he kills the chaos serpent,
right, he's able to separate the land from the sea, right, separate
the land from the sea. So this has this manifests a lot later on
in basically every other dragon slaying myth that you find that you'll encounter in either
the ancient Near East or Europe. And so, for instance, the most
famous Norse dragon is Fathnir. Fathnir is actually a dwarf. He's a son
of a powerful sorcerer, and after essentially after his family comes into the possession
of a horde of cursed gold, Fathnir drives his brother off, turns himself
into a dragon, and guards the horde himself right, and eventually along comes
a guy named Sigurd the Volsung, or in the earlier versions of the story,
his father Siemund. So there's that father son pair that's or sometimes uncle
nephew pair that's really important in these kinds of stories. He slays the dragon
with some help, usually from a son or from a nephew, or from
somebody who's both a son and a nephew in the case of in the case
of incest and uh. He kills the dragon the way that the dragon is
almost always killed in the Western European version, which is, instead of being
struck by a thunderbolt from above, he is stabbed from below, right,
So that's how Fafnir is killed. That's how Beowolf's Bane. Although if you
want to know the the name of Beowolf's Baine, like the name of the
dragon and be Wolf, you can you can go but listen to the classes.
But but yeah, that dragon. Uh. It's so this seems to
be kind of like a theme in in the sort of like the western Northwestern
European version of the story. Is that the way that you kill a dragon
as you stab it from below. Yeah, And the significance of faft near
hoarding gold instead of waters is actually pretty simple to understand. It's that it's
that the the the culture of the Iron Age Germanic North was not a grariant.
It was essentially what what I've described elsewhere in the Bao wolf class as
a pirate economy. Right, So it works on it works by going in
raiding somebody, taking their gold, and then using that goal, that's a
pirate gift economy, using that goal to give gifts to your retainers, which
is not the same thing as paying them. It's a it's a there's a
difference. But you use it to give gifts to your retainers, who then
give you service. Right, So there's this reciprocity reciprocble generosity. But you're
you have to have gold to be generous with, and there are no gold
mines in in uh in Norway, right, so you've got to go get
some other way, right, so you go raid, you know, you
go do your Christmas shopping at Linda's far and then you that's it. That's
a joke. Yeah, you're the horrible joke. I know. I'm really
sorry. I'm really sorry. I'm really sorry. Yeah. See, I
see your northern roots are coming out. Trying really hard to hide all of
that. But yeah, so you go, you go raid England, or
you go raid like northern France before the Normans set, who were essentially Vikings
right before they settled there. Right, you go, you raid somebody civilized
and then you get their gold and then use that gold to keep your economy
going. So this is why Beowulf. We talk about this in the class,
but there's this huge focus on Beowolf on generosity, the king's role as
ring giver and hero mode. Who's the worst king, right, He's the
archetypical evil man, evil king. Right. The example that gets brought up
over and over again in the poem. His whole deal is that he's stingy
because he's like afraid of what's going to happen in the future, Like if
I give us a way that I won't have it for later kind of thing,
right, And so because of that, his kingdom collapses, right.
And so if you're not generous, then society collapses. So a way to
think about what a dragon is is that it, at least in some permutations,
it hoards whatever is necessary for you to exist as a society. Now,
this is where we get to the kind of like the boat what abouts,
right? And so one of the things that you can say definitively is
that all the oldest versions of dragon stories, in all the oldest versions of
dragon stories, dragon the dragon has an enemy. The enemy is usually a
thunder god or somebody that's associated in some way with the thunder god. Obviously,
all of this eventually shows up much later from the perspective like the Hittite
stories shows up much later in like the bail cycle and so on. And
I will just I will hear inveigh against modern scholars of the ancient Near East.
So I hope you're listening, folks. Sometimes when you read accounts of
this and you're reading about all these thunder gods and the dragons they killed and
everything, you'll get something like so these six lines of canea form allow us
to say all of these things with great certainty about the ancient Louian storm God.
But then there's this guy in this god in the Southern Levant Yahweh,
and we just don't know anything about him. He's so perplexing. But he
seems to have been some kind of a bold deity, you know, but
unfortunately nothing helpful has ever been written about Yahweh, you know, like nothing
that we can rely on. It's just very aggravating. It's like you get
six lines of caneo form, you say all these things with absolute certainty,
but when it comes to the God of the Bible, well, obviously we
can't trust the Bible, so we got to go to non biblical sources for
Yeah, we need to find some line of cuneiform and a broken tablet somewhere
that we don't know what the context is, right, Yeah, So anyway,
that's my that's my deep frustration, which I was feeling as I was
putting together the notes for our conversation. But yeah, but it's anyway,
and by the way, it's important for Christians. At some point we've understood
that it's like that for everything Christian. It's like, you know, every
everything Christian has this. Well, the people who told you this is the
story, must be lying because they knew him. Yeah, okay, how
the hell, Like, how the hell didn't we get the story. It's
like, so the people who wrote it, because they're close to it,
they must be lying. Be good, they're trying to make it look good
and so anyways, yeah, so but this brings up an important point because
the main thing that we've been doing in universal history from the very start is
actually trying to look at these things like through the eyes of the people who
wrote them, Like yeah, take those people seriously, right, And I
mean to go back to our last video about Christmas. One of the things
we we kind of mentioned a little bit and then probably didn't elaborate on enough
for some people is talking about the date of Christmas. Right, So this
you know, so if you look at if you look at a lot of
early like third century on Christian authors, right who are putting together chronologies,
December the twenty fifth is the date that they signed to the birth of Christ.
Right And this is even before we have reliable dates for like some of
those pagan winter celebrations. Yeah, like like soul in victors and things like
that. So, so if we just look at it from the perspective of
the early Church. This is when everybody believed Chris, Chris was born right.
And so the only reason to reject that, as we said, is
this idea that it just makes too much sense, right, or this idea,
and this is really what it comes down to, is this idea that
if you find something in Christianity that is similar to something in some other religions,
other religions, has to always have been the source. That's right,
right, It can never it could never have happened the other way. Yeah,
because you see the same with the Northern uh, you know, with
the with the Scandinavian stories, which is that if there's a resemblance between Christianity,
even though Christians wrote this down, if there's a resemblance between Christianity and
these stories, it must be the Day influenced Christianity, which is just so
hilarious. I once had somebody really argue, very sincerely with me that that
the story of christ Crucifixion had never happened. It was just based on the
myths of myth of Othan hanging himself on the world tree. I know,
okay, but that myth. Nobody even came up with that story, like
no one had even heard of Othen in the first century a d Like he's
a late god, you know, like he's a very late god in the
Norse pantheon. Like like there's no way that could be the case. And
it was literally written a thousand years later, but by Christians, right,
by Christians. But but this this person just could not accept the idea that
if there was a similarity, that Christianity might have been like the original the
origin of it. So anyway, all of us to say, all of
us to say, what were we talking, We need to get back to
dragons. I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. But uh so all of
us to say it is it is really important to actually point out that if
you read the Bible, you will find that there's a lot of Yahweh killing
the dragon kind of stuff going on in the Old Testament, and by the
way, also in the New Testament. Right, and and this is really
deliberate, This is really really deliberate, right, because so many of those
passages in the Psalms, or for instance, in the Book of Isaiah,
which talks about Christ, talks about Yahweh killing lo Tan or Leviathan. Right,
all of those passages. They they're a they have a sort of polemical
point they're trying to make, which is that all these things that you think
about Bail, right or Bail hate at in particular, right, who who's
like sort of the storm god, and that in that cycle, all these
things that you think are true about him or his sister or whoever is supposed
to kill Leviathan, and the different versions of that story or that you think
are true about Marduk if it's the Babylonian version or whatever, like, all
those things are actually true about the God of Israel, but they're more true
about the God of Israel, right, because bail is swallowed by death.
But you know, but but our God will swallow up death. That that
kind of a thing, right, And so when you come across this this
you could say, like really cosmological, I don't know the right word for
it, imagery of Yahweh sort of you know, writing the clouds and scattering
the light lightning like his arrows and all this different stuff in the Psalms,
which is incredibly cool. There's no need to be alarmed as that at that
as a Christian, right, there's no need to be alarmed at it because
of course, this is his world, this is the world that he made.
These things belonged to him, and those particular passages they do have a
certain purpose, right, they had a purpose, then they also have a
purpose now, right in sort of showing his dominant, his supremacy over creation,
over the waters. And many of Christ's miracles are actually aimed at in
his own lifetime. I think that we talked, you and I talked recently
about this, not in a record of conversation with him, but we were
talking about some new miracles and talking about something like walking on water, right,
And we think of that as like kind of in English, when when
you say so and so could walk on water, we're saying, is that
person is so holy? They're just like usually it's a way of like it's
a little pejorative. It's like saying they're kind of a goody goody two shoes
kind of a thing. But the whole idea of walking on waters is that
is that chaos itself is under his feet. Right. You know that the
Lord who established the earth upon the waters, as it says in the Psalms,
right, it has total dominance over the waves, His total dominance over
the elements, right, these these things that are the abode of death and
chaos, and the serpent, all these different things, all those things are
under Christ's feet. And this is the idea in the icon of Theophany where
we show him crushing the head of the serpent in the waters. This is
in the liturgy in the Orthodox Church. I mean, if you want dragons
in church, like go to baptism and or or like the Great Blessing of
the waters right in Theophany. Right, and here just listen to the prayers
talking about asking asking God, right, the God of Israel, Jesus Christ,
to come down and crush the heads of the serpents in the waters,
right and in any dragon, any unclean spirit, any of those things that
are lurking in water as the sort of like primordial source of chaos and instead
reveal that the creative potential, like the good, the good site, the
good potential of water to create and give life and cleanse. Yeah. Yeah,
there's so many images of Christ with if you understand the relationship between the
dragon and water, and you know, you can see it obviously has Orthodox
it's easier to see because it's all there and the prayers is there in the
icon and he kind of get it. But once you understand that, then
you'll understand some of the images. For example, that Christ always has these
two aspects to him. On the one hand, he is dominating over chaos
and on that's on one hand, and on the other hand, he is
also, let's say, giving himself to the chaos to dominate it in the
surprise. Right, So when in the story where Christ goes and sleeps in
the boat h and then comes out to master the waters, like all of
that is relating to Jonah, it's relating to all these imagery, and it's
obviously, you know, showing what's going to happen in terms of the death
and resurrection. That he can descend into the he can go into the dragon's
mouth, basically enter into the dragon. You know that image that we have
of the warrior that sacrifices himself and goes into the beast and then cuts it
up from the inside. You see that in the iconography of Saint Margaret.
You know, that's it, Like, that's the image of Christianity. But
it is related to the waters and the dragon all comes together and death,
all these images come together. That's also the ending of shark Nado. By
the way, Oh, I haven't seen Charlot. I'm really sorry to even
bring this up. But there's this movie that came out many years ago.
I think it was like two houses ago or something. For us, so
a long time ago. I had way fewer children, But this movie came
out, and it was like the idea was like just mash up to nineties,
you know, like mash up Jaws with Knight of the Twisters or something
like that kind of a thing. And so like there's this big tornado and
it starts dumping sharks everywhere, and the sharks are eating everybody. It's a
terrible movie. It's really dumb, really bad, but it was funny,
how like in the end. So I sat down with my brother in law
to watch it as like kind of like a Mystery Science Theater three thousand,
like like mockt kind of thing, and it was really interesting. Like at
the end of the movie, the main character gets swallowed by a shark and
then he chainsaws his way out. And I even remember at the time thinking
like, man, you know, even making a goofy movie. That's that
that was that was not made with any intention of it being good. They
just made this to make a dumb movie just for the memes. But you
know, even even at the end, like they couldn't get away from the
Christian symbolism, right, like cutting your way out of the monster. So
yeah, yeah, really sorry everybody. I didn't know I was going to
talk about that today. But I mean, actually, I mean the movie
Jaws, right, is a great example of really what is the dragon story?
Yeah? Right? The idea of like the dragon lurking in the depths.
Now, you could say that, well, a shark isn't a dragon,
thighteven a reptile, you know, what are you going on about,
et cetera, et cetera. Right, But but it's functioning. It's functioning
in that story. It's functioning as a dragon. Yeah. Well, we
can see like that the representation of the mantra that swallowed up Jonah in in
tradition, even from like the second century image we have one of the earliest
images in Christianity we have is of Jonah being swallowed by that that uh,
that fish. But it's a basically a sea monster. It's a dragon.
Really, it's a sea dragon. Man. There's some crazy stuff about the
about Jonah in the services of the Orthodox Church as well, Like if you
go to Mattins, one of the cannons at Mattens like always says the theme
of Jonah. Yeah, Jonah matt cannon like every morning. If you're at
a place where they're doing Mattens every day, right, or you know,
at least every Sunday at your church, right, there will be at least
one verse or set of verses that on the theme of the feast. But
but it will work Jonah in there's some somehow and you know this idea of
of you know, the sea monster spewing out Jonah like a babe from the
womb ryea Christ like as from as from a bridal chamber like stuff like that
is is wild stuff crazy? Yeah so so yeah. Uh. The the
other thing that I want to say, though, is that there is a
there is a positive aspect to drag ends, or at least this idea that
you can take some of the aspects of the dragon. It's it's so like
to go back to the hybrid. Right. Hybrids are dangerous, right because
of for various different reasons, Right, But they're also hybrids have a certain
like resilience to them, right, And in fact, in animal husband dry
and things like that, or this is the whole horticulture. The whole idea
of like hybrid resilience is like if you get a strain, like a species
or a breed that's like too pure bread. This happened with fruit trees.
It also happens with like modern like dog breeds. You know, if you
look at what a German shepherd looks like now as opposed to what would look
like even one hundred years ago, you know, it's really dramatic difference where
you selectively breed too long for these very specific features, right, and then
what you lose as a result is everything that made the breed strong and actually
capable of doing work right. And so then the question of well, how
do I get take one of these? You know, you probably can't take
your cocker spaniel hunting, for instance, right, even though he's a bird
dog, right, probably not gonna probably not gonna work out because he's too
fragile. My parents own mini cocker Spaniels when I was a kid, and
I could just tell you they're very fragile, very neurotic animals, right,
But it wasn't always so, and so, you know, so there is
a kind of like a strength and a resilience to the idea of the hybrid.
Also the dragon's capacity as a guardian, right, if you're guarding something,
you're only a threat to what's on the outside. But if you're on
the inside, then you actually want that, right. And so, lots
and lots of cultures, and I mean lots and lots of cultures. Pretty
much every drag culture that has a dragon story, which is all of them,
will use dragons in this kind of apotrophaic way. Welsh culture is a
great example. It's my favorite example because of course, you know it's right
on the flag, it's right on the coat of arms. It goes back
to like the oldest art stuff. I mean our himself, right, penn
dragon right, head of a dragon, right, like like he's Arthur himself
is associated with dragon imagery over and against right the Saxons, right, and
that that's that that early story like generation or two before Arthur, right of
you know, the the white dragon the red dragon fighting right, you know,
beneath the castle, and eventually the red dragon is, which is the
Welsh or the Brythonic dragon, is going to win the fight, right.
And so, but also lots of lots of dragon stuff going on in uh
Germanic iron Age culture, Old English, Old Norse, et cetera. Very
common to to put dragons on things like the crest of a helmet or the
face of a shield, or the prow of a ship. Right, And
this is stuff that just sort of like came naturally to people, like if
I want this to be scary to my enemies, what would I put on
it? The scariest thing that anybody could imagine? Yeah? Right? Which
which is a dragon? Right? And he's playing with very this is playing
a very very deep symbolism that ends up in the medical symbolism as well,
you know, the idea of you know, I think I might have mentioned
this before, the in the the symbol of the serpent on the on the
rod, the what's his name, what's the name of the god? No,
it's not the Cadusius, It's I'm going to think about it later.
It's going to come to me anyways. So the Roman god of the basically
the Roman god of healing. He the story is that he he kills the
gorgon, which is this dragon kind of see serpent monster, and and he
takes the blood from the right side of the serpent and makes it's it's it's
hermes, but it's it's called the cadus that it's not. No, this
is it's not the same. This is this is a different this is the
different healing god with Yes it is. I'm sorry. I don't know why.
I I don't know why. I don't know why his name has been
coming to me. I usually I've written about this and it doesn't matter.
Uh. And so he takes the blood from the right side of the serpent
to make healing. But then the idea is that the blood from the left
side of the serpent basically is the poison. And so this idea of this
apotropic function of poison, right as that which kills you that which saves you,
is that is the very symbolism of of medicine itself. Right, it's
a it's a it's using the poison to create a cure out of the poison.
Right, This idea of of of trampling death by death, basically,
of using death against itself, it's always been weird to me. As the
side how if you look at a lot of ancient abstract imagery of the Cadusius
or you know, Anyway, the rod you're talking about that it has a
lot It's the rod of Asclepius. Okay, such an idiot. I'm like,
it's going to come. Just send the Google search on come to it's
all right, so uh uh yeah, buffering, yes. But but when
you look at when you look at abstract versions of it, you find in
like Sumerian imagery, because it's there, and it's in India as well,
right that a lot of times abstract it looks like it looks like a DNA
helix. Yeah, which I've always thought is a very interesting That's a good
way to represent it, Like the Sclepian the rod of the Cadusian rod is
a good way to represent it. Instead of just one you have two snakes.
Basically that's a right snake and a left snake. One that two are
facing each other, like in in conflict. Uh and in the in the
case of Hermes, it really has to do with the bridge. It has
to do with it in between space that is a double sided space, right,
This is the Yeah, the problems Esclippias has the one snake, the
Cadusius has the two. Yeah, guys, you're watching us, just like
figure this out, figuring it out, but escape its is directly related there
to healings in Roman mythology because hermis is is in someone seen as this mess
in your figure. It's related because the messenger or the in between or the
bridge or the this is the problem of the hybrid. Right, It's like
this between space that goes both ways. It's like it can either uh,
it can either be a guardian or you're right, it can either be something
which is defining or something which is going to bring bring chaos. Right,
that's the beau is also associated with rhetoric, was also associated with like rhetoric.
It was the symbol of rhetoric in the ancient world, I think for
the same for the same reason, right, you know, the capacity of
rhetorics to sort of hal or hurt you know. Yeah, yeah, so
dragging, Yes, integrating, I'm sorry, guys, it's hard because dragons
will bring you all over the place, That's exactly what they do. Because
the very the symbolm is quite is quite big. So so when are we're
talking about like integrating the aspects of the serpent or integrating the aspects of the
dragon. Right, this is where this is why basically everybody that I've ever
talked to about doing this video the we're doing right now, we'll say something
like, oh, I'm really looking forward to your Symbolic World video on and
I've had like ten people say this to me, really looking forward to the
Symbolic World video on dragons, because I don't understand what's going on with Asian
dragons and why they're different, you know, because they're obviously they're very different,
because they're like good luck and all these different things. Well, folks,
here it is. They're the same. That's it. They're the same
thing. If you go back and look at really early like Bronze Age Chinese
dragons, they're usually sometimes called pig dragons or pig headed dragons because basically it's
like a serpent, usually kind of curled up in a sort of a fetal
position, but it's a serpent with the head of a pig. And then
it seems like contact with the with the like the Persian world via the Silk
Road. Right, So, anytime we're talking about anything actually from this period,
you have to understand there there was a very very heavily used trade route
between China and Baghdad, you know, and and uh, you know,
even before Baghdad was Baghdad like very heavily used trade route between the ancient Near
East and and therefore eventually the Roman world when that comes to developed. But
anyway, very very well used trade route between the ancient Near East and the
Far East. And what this means is that if if if you think of
these things to be like totally different worlds, it's not totally accurate. They
are in some ways, but but but they actually share a lot more than
you would think. So it seems like because of by the Iron Age,
because of contact with dragon imagery and Persia and elsewhere, that eventually the the
the Chinese version of the dragon comes into much greater alignment with That's why I
was saying earlier. If you look at a picture of a Persian dragon,
which we'll put up here on this screen, it looks just like a Chinese
dragon essentially, right, And so then whatever actually happens in China's that you
get two forms. They have two different names, but basically the main difference
is one has wings and the other one doesn't. And then eventually the wingless
version it becomes predominant. But if you go back and you look at the
very earliest Chinese dragon stories which we have recorded, and we have some very
old ones because they were an incredibly literate society even from you very early time.
Their water, they're their guardian. There they are. They are serpentine
spirits or deities or beings who guard bodies of water, and and then sometimes
this is what's interesting to make also control the rainfall. Mm hmm. So
normally, like in the what you do have in the West, and like
the Indo European version of the story is that the the main enemy of the
dragon is often the thunder god who controls the rainfall, and in China it's
that the sort of like the dragon is the thunder god sometimes ye, but
yeah, is a is a serpentine deity or spirit or being or monster that's
a hybrid of all these different kinds of animals and controls these various bodies of
water. And a lot of the early stories have to do with not trying
to slay the dragon, although there is one that I've one or two that
I found, Although a lot of the dragon slaying the stories actually seem to
have come from Buddhism, who probably probably got them from India or maybe from
the Christian Near East something like that. And then so in some like later
Buddhist mythology, dragons do become representative of these demons that represent the passions and
etc. But in the earliest stuff, for the most part, instead of
trying to slay the dragon to get the water, you're trying to appease the
dragon in some way the gift of some kind trying to appease the dragon to
get the water. What eventually happens, and this is really important for a
Chinese cultural identity all the way up to the revolution, really is that the
dragon becomes associated specifically with the emperor, to the point that it becomes illegal
to for anybody that's not part of the imperial family to even use a dragon
as a symbol on anything. M And there are there's whole different kinds of
things about I mentioned earlier. There's a lot of symbolism for different different kinds
of dragon, like certain numbers of features and scales and spots and things like
this. So there's like one dragon that you would use if you were the
emperor, and but then if you were some member of the imperial family but
not the Emperor yourself, there was another dragon that you would get to use,
but it wouldn't be like it wouldn't have quite all the same features.
And so but basically the dragon became synonymous with imperial power, right, and
so in that same way that you can take the aspect of the dragon and
then kind of harness it. Right. But then also there's also with that,
there's always this this there's always an aspect to a dragon of its potential
to hoard or oppress. Yeah, you could imagine that. The connection is
that if you see the dragon as a guardian of water, you could understand
that as a guardian of blessings like you could you could that could easily go
into that direction. And so once you see that, then you can understand
why the guardian, the guardian of the blessing, the guardian of waters could
be like a sign of good luck in that sense. Right. It's right
then said, if I make the dragon happy, then I then it opens
up the door so that this stuff will come down on me. And you
can understand why that would then end up being that could be related to the
emperor or to some person of authority. Right, it are the guardians of
blessing, the guardian of blessings, the other really interesting thing is if you
read a lot of old stuff about dragons and Chinese and this is still the
case, by the way, in modern like Asian organized crime. It's this
idea that if you put the image of the dragon on something, but you're
not worthy of it. Uh. Actually you find the same kind of thing
in Scandinavia and uh mythology and stuff. But if you if you put the
if you put the image of the dragon on something, but you are not
sufficiently dragon like yourself, then it's not good luck. It's actually quite the
opposite, like the dragon will consume you. Like if you if you take
the symbol of the dragon for yourself, but you're not strong and lucky and
you know all these things that a dragon is, right, if you're not
those things enough, then actually you'll get the wrong kind of attention from the
dragon, which is which I think is the case of like apotrophic imagery in
general. Right. Yeah, the idea that that you want to make sure
it's outward facing and if but if you're not like yourself strong, then try
to put yourself behind this thing and sort of hide yourself behind it, it'll
end up turning in on you and kind of consuming it and eating right.
And you can understand that as the you know, if you think of Cerberus
or these kind of marginal figures that are in between spaces that guard the guard
the world of death, for example, and they kind of act, they
kind of act both ways. They'll stop, they stop things from the outside
to come in, but they can also prevent you from going out out if
you're not if you're not careful. And the similarity between medieval iconography, Western
medieval iconography of demons and Western medieval iconography of gargoyles is exactly that in some
ways they very similar in nature, and one is facing out and the other
is coming towards you, but it can always That's why there's even an ambiguous
in modern kind of popular culture, there is an ambiguous uh relationship to things
like gargoyles, let's say, you know, where they're seen almost as ominous
and evil because they're on that they're on that edge, you know, and
so something to say is maybe just like kind of a final note to this
is that there are plenty of examples in Christian iconography of of you would you
would think we would just always be anti dragon all the time, but there
are plenty of examples of dragons, again, Cherubim and Seraphim being a really
easy example, right, but there are sort of like monsters that are on
our side, or the idea of the monster guarding paradise. I've been to
lots of the Orthodox churches in more than one country where on the on the
holy doors, right, the holy doors in front of the altar, there
would be like sort of either border patterns of dragons, right, oh yeah,
and the same thing in the Middle Aged the doors of churches later on
when pews come in, even like carving some of the outside of pews and
things like that, right. So, so this is this is actually and
of course lots of Christian countries, lots of Christian countries use dragons as part
of their Now they're massive dragons on man athos, uh, you know,
on the aiconistoces, and usually they are akin to the symbolism of the bishop's
staff, which is that you'll usually have two dragons under the cross kind of
facing the cross on the akonistasis if you have across at the top of it,
you know, and it I think it is related to this. But
the deepest and most mysterious aspect of the symbolism is the fact that Christ takes
the shape of a serpent on the cross. That is, that's and that's
where I wanted to end. Was was and it starts with Moses lifting up
the serpent in the wilderness. So he takes the pole and puts the serpent
on it, and of course going back to the rod of Asclepius or the
Cadusius. Right, you've got, uh, this idea of like a serpent
on a pole as a source of healing, as a source of life.
Right, But that's in that's an exodus, yea. Or numbers anyway,
it's it's uh, yeah, it's in numbers. Yeah, it's in numbers.
And and uh. And Christ says, my crucifixion is like this,
you know. He says that it's one of the times that the Bible interprets
the Bible for you, which is always handy. You know, like sometimes
you can like sit around and like really think about these things and overthink them
a little bit, but there are a precious few number of times where Jesus
will just tell you, this is what this thing means. Right, And
so he says, even as Moses lifted up the serpent, in the wilderness.
Even so, the must must the son of Man be lifted up right.
And if I am withd it up, when I am looked it up,
I will draw all men to me. I said, we're going to
stop here. But but I just want to say, like, yeah,
to understand the mystery of Christ, you know, you have to understand it,
or the mystery of the God of Israel and how he manifests himself in
the world, you have to be able to see the three parts of this
story, which is, on the one hand, Christ is swallowed by the
snake. On the one end, he becomes the snake, and on the
on the one hand, he kills the snake. And he does all three
kind of simultaneously on the cross, which is very it's I mean, it's
it's one of those instances where you know, there's no story to tell after
that that it's pretty much reads the limit of what the symbolism of the snake
is. There is this there is this kind of a strange thing with the
image of the dragon, especially the winged dragon. So just talk about this
variant for a moment. Not every dragon has weens. That's it's not like
a universal but lots of dragons have wings, one can fly right, going
back to like the Asian dragon that you know, they always they're always able
to fly right, And this is why they can be associated with the terrestrial
water and also the water that's from above. Yeah, there is this kind
of weird thing with serpents and birds. So this is something that came up
in the Bailolf class that I've just thought about a lot since. Is it
talking about this idea that you have in some old stories, for instance the
story of Faukner, who again is the sort of the archetypical old Norse dragon.
This idea that if you eat the heart of a dragon, you can
understand the speech of birds, right, to understand the speech of birds,
and the idea of the speech of birds is always associated with let's say,
like heavenly wisdom. So then like, what's what's going on there? What's
the connection there? And and as we were talking about it, it occurred
to me, you know Christ's command, right, be why is as serpents
and armless as doves? Right? That this is connected? The this has
to be that this is connected in some way, right, Yeah, that
in some ways those two actually if you do them simultaneously. Yeah. Yeah,
and and again that's like one of those things that I still have not
like fully you know, I don't know. It's hard to talk about because
it's one of those things like I have an intuition there, but it's not
fully formed. Yeah, it's difficult because one of the things that makes it
difficult is that in some ways, this symbolism of the wing serpent, for
example, uh is one of the most is one of the oldest and kind
of the most universal symbolism, Like you find these the symbolism in North America,
in like South America, when the Spanish North America and Egypt. It's
really everywhere, and so it is in some ways a you know, it
is this union of heaven and Earth. Maybe it is this. It's kind
of poking at certain imagery that's very difficult to fully grasp. And because of
what the dragon represents can kind of understand how it can become a parasitical you
know, if you understand it as a guardian, it can always be both
affording and preventing, and it can always at the same time become how can
I say this, just like the principalities in general, Let's say you imagine
principalities above you how they can afford grace from above or they can actually make
the grace stop from where they are. That seems to be one of the
some of the symbolism that is being shaken up here. Okay, So in
your recent conversation with Father Joseph Lucas, which was tremendous, by the way,
people should go back and listen to it if they didn't listen, because
because it was really really good. But one of the curious things in there
Saint Cyril of Alexandria, when he's talking about the scapegoat, right, and
he says, Christ being the scapegoat being sent out into the wilderness is like
Christ's ascending to heaven. And I remember how weird that seemed. Right,
And this is one of the frustrating things about listening to your friends. You
know, and Father Joseph is a good friend of mine, and you're a
good friend of mine. The really difficult thing about listening to your friends have
a conversation but you're not actually there for keep what need to jump in?
I know, and what I wanted to say about that. Actually, so
this is me jumping in what I want to say about that actually is that
that's a very that's actually a relatively common Patristic interpretation. You find the same
thing in Saint Gregor with Palamas, who lived a lot longer, you know,
much later than Saint Cerial. And the reason the reason for this,
it goes back to this idea like we were used to like thinking of the
wilderness as the abode of the demons, but also the air is the abode
of the demons. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, the air is
the air is the abode of the demons. Right, And so you have
this idea saying Gregor talks about of Christ sort of like clearing a path for
us as he's ascending, right, clearing a path for us so that we
can pass sort of pass up unharmed. Even I know it's like people freak
out if you mentioned this, but even the idea of you know what I'm
gonna say, Yeah, we know what you'm talking about. Yeah, that's
what it's dealing with the spirits of the air in the toll houses that you
have to kind of encounter. Well, in Saint Paul, we're in the
set on Sunday's reading. You know, that's what it's. Yeah, it
talks about that exactly, so I just I just like so so, but
this is related to the idea of that the fiery the fiery flying serpent,
right, yea, This this idea that that there are these kind of that
there could be these like monstrous principalities that guard not just you know, that
guard access to paradise, like I don't know how to say it, you
know, yeah, and uh, And there's association with their capacity to fly,
right, and the sort of access to I mean, one of the
one of the tropes. It doesn't always come up, but it often comes
up with dragons and going back to the idea of eating the hearts, so
you can understand the language of birds is related to this. Is is a
lot of times dragons are considered to be very wise or have access to wisdom
or knowledge about things that humans don't have. Right. You find us in
some of like the Zoroastrian dragon stories as well, for instance. So this
idea that this idea that the dragon has access to this knowledge. Right,
But then of course sometimes sometimes sometimes knowledge is not good for you, right,
Sometimes that wisdom is not good for you. So it's got that kind
of ambiguity to it. Yeah, No, for sure, I mean,
we're not going to get out of the ambiguity in the symbolism of the dragons
because I'm thinking again now, like the way that the dragons represent in Revelation,
you know, as the great great dragon that pulls the stars, that
pulls the principalities and captures them basically under his rule. You know, it's
like, okay, there's another image of how he's hoarding he's hoarding these angels
in his grasp and now he's you know, kind of mastering them for his
own, for his own. Will you know, there's another image it's very
similar. But now the dragon is definitely represent and in all the Revelation,
the dragon is definitely the devil, like he's not. There's no question at
all, that's right. So so I think that it's it's really I think
we're still we're back at the beginning. Yeah, in the sense that you
know, if someone thought they would come here and get a dictionary definition of
what a dragon is going to happen. But here's here's the thing about dragons
though, if you see one, you know it's you know, it's one
of those things like very hard to nail down a definition across the board.
But I can look at a dragon in a Chinese image. Yeah, And
I can look at the carving of the Midguard serpent at the door of a
church in Norway, and I can look at, you know, a Persian
illumination of a dragon. And I can look at uh, you know,
something from South America, and I can look at all of those things and
say that's a dragon. Dragon. Yes, right, yeah, all right
everyone, Well that's our discussion on dragon. Thanks everybody for your attention and
and uh and I think that both of us, both Richard and I were
still still processing and still prossing the discussion, and so get involved in the
commentaries. This is the time, you know, tell us your insights about
dragon. So thanks everybody. I'll talk to you soon. Thanks everyone.
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