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Dragon
A fabulous animal, usually represented as
a huge fire breathing winged serpent, reptile or saurian, often red or green
in color, having a crested head — sometimes several heads — that spews fire
and vapors, with scaly skin, enormous claws, and a large tail, not unlike some
dinosaurs.
The dragon was believed to possess
enormous strength, but the ancients thought that it could be charmed by
music, and the beast that guarded the Golden Fleece of
Greek legend was soothed by the voice of Medea.
In India, at the time of Alexander the Great, a dragon was worshiped as a
god, while in occult history it is considered the manifestation of
Hell.
Winged dragons made
their first Western appearances in the works of ancient Greece
and in the Bible, but it was medieval Europe whose imagination was most
captured by the stubby-legged, fire-breathing monsters, whose apparent chief duty was
to provide the hero with opportunities of valor.
As legend had it, any
of those terrifying creatures, often having formidable horns, horrible
fangs, and pestilential breath, might hold a town hostage and devour
young virgins until it was killed —
most likely being beheaded or impaled —
by a virtuous knight, usually armed with a magical sword. The most
famous hero to rescue a town and maiden was
Saint George, whose victory
was seen as an allegory for Christianity's
triumph over the powers of darkness.
Other
Catholic Saints are also depicted in the act of killing a dragon: for
instance, in Italy,
Saint Mercurialis,
a zealous opponent of paganism and arianism and the first bishop of
the city of
Forlì, is often shown saving the city by slaying a dragon. Sir Lancelot, one of the
knights of King Arthur’s Round Table,
was also assumed to have slain an enormous fire-breathing
dragon.
Malevolent dragons were always prominent figures in Christian
myth and iconography. In the Hebrew Bible (the
Christian Old Testament) the
word tannin, commonly rendered ‘dragon’ in older English translations,
generally refers to a variety of animals such as crocodiles, jackals, and
serpents, but occasionally to the dragon (Ezekiel 29:3;
32:3). In
Revelation 12:3, an enormous red dragon with seven heads is described, whose tail
sweeps one third of the stars from heaven down to earth (held to be symbolic
of the fall of the angels). In
Revelation 12:9,
Satan is identified as this
'great dragon', who was overcome by the
archangel Michael and cast down to earth along with his
angels.
In the
European Middle Ages the dragon
became a symbol of great strength. In the 15th century, the
emperor of the
Holy Roman Empire founded the
Order of the Dragon to unite
Christian rulers against the incursions of the Turkish Muslims into the
Balkans.
During the time of
Henry VII (1457–1509), a coin was given to those who were
cured of possession with one side featuring an angel standing with both feet on
a dragon. The idea of the dragon is perhaps evolved from the concept of the
earth as a living being, a notion that gained currency from
earthquakes and
related phenomena.
Dragons also loomed
large in Chinese folklore, where they were relatively benign. In fact
many oriental cultures dragons were, and still are by some, revered as
representative of the primal forces of nature and the universe. But in the
West they were always evil; the real-life model for the fictional vampire Dracula,
the prince Vlad Tepes, was nicknamed Dracula after the Romanian word for
dragon and devil. Even in death,
a dragon reportedly had extraordinary powers. A drop of its blood could kill
instantly, and its teeth, planted in the earth, sprang up overnight as armed
men.
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