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Recently it was St George’s Day here in the UK, and that got me thinking about dragons. St. George is England’s patron saint, and he is supposed to have defeated a dragon by killing it, and thus rescuing a fair maiden. This is, of course, pure fantasy, but the Church used the story to Christianise the Pagans. It was an allegory; used to counter the Pagan idea that the land and the population would, if not controlled, turn out to be unmanageable. And conquering the dragon regenerated the land, the seasons, relationships, and even complete countries.
But where does the original idea of the dragon originate?
If humanity is actually older than science would have us believe could the idea of dragons be a folk memory of the dinosaurs? Throughout the world their descriptions are very similar, and people used to think that dinosaur bones were in fact those of dragons.
There is also the legend of the Loch Ness Monster. Could it be a plesiosaur? In the desert of southwestern America palaeontologists have found dinosaur tracks and fossilized bones together with petroglyphs that depict both modern animals and what appears to be a Brontosaurus – a long necked flying lizard. And in South America some of the Ica stones seem to represent Triceratops and Stegosaurus. (For more on the Ica Stones you can read my article here.)
In the Middle East, the Orient, and Medieval Europe, dragons are mythical creatures. In the UK, in 770 A.D., Ethelward's Chronicles states that: "Monstrous serpents or dragons were seen in the country of the Southern Angles that is called Sussex." And let’s not forget that such fearsome creatures are mentioned in the Bible, i.e. the Behemoth and the Leviathan. So are they memories of real animals, or some communal illusion?
Is there also an association between Celtic Artwork and ancient North American Indian petroglyphs? Dragons are a very common feature of Celtic art. The Celts believed that dragons had influence over the land, and that the locations where they appeared possessed special power – similar to the Chinese traditions in Feng Shui. The Celtic dragons were also associated with water, in the shape of sea serpents and, as such, they were shown with wings but without legs.
Dragons were also known as Fire Drakes, (a creature of Teutonic mythology; usually represented as breathing fire, having a reptilian body, and sometimes wings). In Celtic Mythology the Druids saw the Earth as the body of the dragon, with the ancient dolmens and stone circles being placed at the great power nodes.
The dragon image has developed throughout history and is now normally connected with kings; while in the Orient it was the symbol of Imperial China.
A recent book by Richard Freeman, entitled: Dragons: More than a Myth? makes for a very interesting read.
However, there is also a belief that the dragon image was an early attempt to explain, and to depict, comets. So, from this point of view, could they have originated from Draco? And possibly, in the guise of E.T.s, have interacted with China or Tibet long ago?
Back in February 2007 a Finnish amateur astronomer discovered a new meteor shower emanating from a previously unknown comet. It is thought to be one of the five most dangerous long-period comets for the Earth because it comes inside our orbit. As yet unidentified, the comet is believed to orbit the Sun every 4,000 years. And the name October Camelopardalis has been suggested for the event because it appears in that section of the sky. You can read the report of its discovery here:
http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Finnish+star-gazer+discovers+meteor+shower+-+tail+of+new+comet+pinpointed/1135223350592
It would seem that the meteor shower radiates not only from the constellation of Camelopardalis but also from that of Draco.
In ancient mythology dragons were also the guardians of knowledge and secrets. It was once believed that they could cause a solar eclipse by swallowing the sun, and that they could imprison rain clouds. And, once again, one of the dragon’s symbols is the constellation of Draco, with Mercury being the planet that is linked to it.
Furthermore, in China there are four dragons: the Celestial Dragon (upholding the heavens); the Spiritual Dragon (of wind and rain); the Earth Dragon (of rivers and streams); and the Dragon of Hidden Treasure (guarding treasure, or knowledge, that is hidden from humanity).
Another word for Dragon Lines is Ley Lines.
The Chinese art of Feng Shui places significance on planetary influences, especially the Yin and Yang dragon paths, which are linked with the power of the Earth and the Moon. It is therefore interesting to read the following from one of the UK’s most eminent astrologers:
http://www.cainer.com/2006/
"At the peak of a Lunar Standstill, the Moon exudes a special kind of energy. Mystical places have the power to draw down and capture this, rather like aerials, picking up a radio transmission.
They then amplify the signal and ‘rebroadcast’ it along the secret lines of power that connect these ancient ‘sacred sites.’
One of the most famous runs all the way from the sacred springs of Carn Brea in West Cornwall, all the way up to Glastonbury Tor and then along to the recently discovered Sea Henge, a bronze age timber circle on the coast of Norfolk. Another connects the Rollright stones of Oxfordshire with the Rosslyn chapel near Edinburgh via the Long Meg stones of Penrith.
We also know now, that these lines extend right across the planet. In China, they are known as Lung Mei or dragon’s pathways. To the aboriginal Australians, they are Songlines.
They can’t be seen but they can be traced on a map - or dowsed with a pendulum or divining rod. Some sensitive dowsing experts say that the lines can vary in width from a few feet to a quarter of a mile... depending on the time of year and the phase of the Moon.
According to tradition, Lunar Standstills re-energise these ley lines, causing them to widen dramatically and to send out a much stronger signal."
Incidentally: In ancient times Glastonbury was known as Ynys-Witrin, or the Isle of Glass. The derivation is unknown but perhaps it came from the fact that the land there is very marshy, and the Tor would have been surrounded by water for much of the time. However, it also has the name Avalon, which means ‘apple orchard’ and, in the Iron Age, the Celts thought it was the Isle of the Dead.
Back in the late 1970s Paul Devereux was the editor of The Ley Hunter and he set up the Dragon Project. This was a volunteer venture that attempted to see if the claims made by dowsers, and others, that ancient sites were the source, or repository, of mysterious energies, (a.k.a. earth energy). These ideas were not, and still are not, accepted by conventional science. After almost a decade of investigation it was concluded that such energies did not exist, but that there did exist some weird abnormal properties in recognized energies. The project also found that at many stone circles magnetometer and Geiger counter assessments indicated provisional verification of irregularities in the local geomagnetism and the natural background radioactivity. You can read about the findings in Paul Devereux’s book entitled: Places of Power, published in 1990. And you can also read A Short History of Ley Hunting at this link:
http://www.leyhunter.com/begin/be2.htm
Two further books on the subject of Ley Lines are: Danny Sullivan's Ley Lines: A Comprehensive Guide to Alignments published in1999. This book covers Ley Lines and some of the anomalous phenomena associated with them. And, John Timpson's Timpson’s Ley Lines: A Layman Tracking the Leys published in 2001, which is simply a descriptive account of Ley Lines in the UK.
Some believe that there is a tissue in the skull that contains a substance called magnetite. This helps living creatures to sense magnetic changes and thus, if it is true that electro-magnetic fields can influence the body and mind, it is also probably true that magnetic fields will have an effect on the magnetite in the brain. Some of the effects are akin to that of static electricity, and the energy may create low frequency vibrations that can alter perception, as well as inducing feelings of headaches, unbalance, dizziness, and nausea.
There is also a belief that ancient man knew about Ley Lines and built sacred structures along them, probably to access their mysterious properties. Geomancy asserts that structures are sited in the countryside according to magical principles, including mathematical and musical ones, so as to give a harmonic location for the structure.(Geomancy – Cassells Concise Dictionary: (1). the art of siting buildings by a form of divination; (2). divination by means of lines, figures or dots on the earth or on paper, or by the shape formed by particles of earth cast on the ground)
Some people believe that the earth has a quantity of major power paths that are constituted from delicate electro-magnetic energies that are invisible to the naked eye. They also believe that these have been known about since the most ancient of times, and that their symbol is the dragon, snake, or serpent.
Yet others believe that Ley Lines are connected to UFOs in that ancient astronauts built them as navigational aids. Then there are the New Age people who believe they are concerned with the spirituality of the location where they are found; and others who believe they are part and parcel of the Earth Mysteries topic. At this link you can read an article entitled: Cult and Fringe Archaeology: Earth Mysteries that debunks all of these ideas:
http://www.kmatthews.org.uk/cult_archaeology/ley_lines_2.html
Could it also be that some rock art, both in the UK and further afield, especially in the USA, were in some way representations of the dragon? It is thought that Shamans produced many of these petroglyphs. In the USA many of the inscriptions from the Great Basin were the work of Shamans who were focused on rainmaking. As we’ve seen previously it was once thought that dragons could imprison rain clouds.
Until around three hundred years ago, when what we like to think of as the Modern Era began, it was universally acknowledged that the land was haunted. People believed that supernatural beings and creatures shared the landscape together with humanity.
In the book by Paul Devereux entitled: Haunted Land, published in 2001, on page 125, he writes: …..
"In a shamanic culture, mapping one’s mental state on to a geography of somewhere outside oneself is not just the privilege of the shaman, but is a basic way of talking about one’s emotions and social relationships,’ explains anthropologist Piers Vitebsky ……… ‘This may be a geography of the universe, or it may be a geography of the trees and bus-stops outside someone’s house.’ The idea of the physical landscape becoming a mindscape is not readily grasped by us today, but it is at the core of the shamanic worldview. We might interpret such imagined landscapes as being metaphorical and mythical, simply providing symbolic tools for the shaman to use, but it is crucial for us to understand that the ordinary people in shamanic societies, and perhaps a good percentage of the shamans themselves, took the mindscaped countryside quite literally as well. That is why it is worthwhile seeking both physical evidence as well as the testimony of folklore and anthropology when investigating the vestiges of ecstatic traditions."
And on page 207, Devereux writes …………..
"The hidden agenda of my quest back through the ages in both the Old and New Worlds had been for a clearer grasp of the remarkable heritage of the ancient mind, for former ways of seeing that we might yet come to understand and appreciate in a new way, and that may even influence our future perceptions of reality. I had to accept that such a process of reclamation was yet in its infancy and that a wholly unexpected area of research was only just beginning to open up. In the final analysis, what haunts the land is mind-at-large – the spirit in the landscape is consciousness itself. When the mystery as to how that takes place is fully solved, as it will be, the modern world-view will shift irrevocably."
You can find Paul Devereux’s web site here:
http://www.pauldevereux.co.uk/new/body_index.html
The subjects he covers are:
Ancient sites & world-views
Cognitive archaeology
Consciousness research
Ecopsychology
Phenomena
"Earth mysteries"
Ancient mysteries
Geomancy
So, it seems probable that neither real Dragons, nor Ley Lines, exist. But then, that’s just the view of the scientists, and we know how closed their minds can be. As for me, until conclusive evidence one way or the other is found, I’ll continue to be intrigued by the idea that both are real.