Fantasya Elemental dos Dragões

Fantasy Elemental Dragons

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"Dragon" is a Greek word (drákôn), but the Greeks may only have been thinking of snakes. Mediaeval dragons, which give us the images of dragons typical in the European tradition, may actually have come from China, brought with steppe migrants like the Huns and Alans. Chinese dragons -- -- in popular religion tended to be associated with water, rivers, rain, etc. I don't think we get Chinese dragons breathing fire. That may be peculiar to European dragons, with the fire derived from images of Hell. In the association with the elements, however, the archetypal Chinese dragon is associated with the East, and with the element Wood. The color that goes with this can be read as either blue or green, so we alternatively hear of the Blue or the Green Dragon. But there are also Chinese Imperial dragons, where the Imperial color is yellow. All in all, a fan of dragons begins to yearn for dragons more systematically matched to the elements and the colors. A Blue Dragon, using the colors from the Fantasy Seven Element Theory, sounds more like water. A Red Dragon certainly goes with fire. A Yellow Dragon goes with air, and a Green Dragon with earth.

Chinese river dragons lived, of course, in rivers. A Rain Dragon (the name of Judge Dee's sword), like European fire-breathing dragons, can be imagined flying in the sky, like the Yellow Dragon for air. An earth dragon is something else. In John Boorman's movie Excalibur [1981], Merlin seems to be saying that the whole world rests on a great dragon, which is responsible for creation. Merlin's "charm of making" draws out the "dragon's breath." This is very evocative. Merlin's dragon is also pretty much invisible, which we would expect for a dragon under the earth -- it is disturbed, throwing Merlin off balance, when Excalibur is thrust into the earth by Arthur. To complete the image, fire dragons and water dragons can be imagined linking sky and earth, since volcanoes definitely contain fire, but erupt into the air, while water dragons, although a lot of water is low lying, must be in the air also as rain. Air dragons can be seen in the wind.

A Red Dragon occurs in the Bible, in the Book of Revelations:

(Revelations 12:3) And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon [drákôn pyrròs mégas], having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.

(12:4) And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.

(12:5) And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne.

(12:6) And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days.

(12:7) And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,

(12:8) And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.

(12:9) And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil [Diábolos], and Satan [Satanâs], which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

This Red Dragon is Satan, and we have the account of the revolt of the angels and the casting of Satan out of Heaven, later elaborated by Milton in Paradise Lost. The modern incarnation of this, however, is not Satan, but a serial killer, the human devil of Red Dragon [1981] by Thomas Harris, now a successful movie [2002], with Anthony Hopkins again playing Hannibal Lecter, a character famous from The Silence of the Lambs but first introduced in the Red Dragon. The symbolism of Red Dragon also includes the Mah Jongg tile called the "red dragon," one of the set of red, green, and white tiles called "dragons" in the game. This name of the tiles, however, does not seem to originally be Chinese but was introduced by Western players of the game. So this doesn't involve a connection, as we might think, back to Chinese dragons.

Something more obscure but formerly quite widespread does apparently go back to Chinese dragons. According to my colleague Gunar Freibergs ("Why Are There Two Other Dragons at the Slaying of Fafnir? Tracing the Migration of a Dragon Motif Across Eurasia"), a decorative motif of two dragons, with tails intertwined, arching down over a scene, occurs early in Chinese art and later turns up in Sythian, Sarmatian, Celtic, and even Viking art. In China, it was often an arching, two-headed dragon, which is actually found as a character on Shamg oracle bones. This was often reproduced in decorative pieces in jade or bronze from the Chou all the way down to the T'ang Dynasties. Gunar quotes Victor Mair, of the University of Pennsylvania, that this character, pronounced huáng, meant "rainbow." This apparently is character number 2299 in Mathews' Chinese-English Dictionary [Harvard University Press, 1972]. The dictionary definition is curious: "Ancient ornament of jade, of a semi-circular shape; it was hung up as a tinkling pendant." Since the actual heads of the dragons can be discerned on many of the ornaments, the definition is curiously agnostic. That this was supposed to be the rainbow may be something that has dropped out even of Chinese consciousness, though that the rainbow should be dragons seems quite reasonable in the context of the tradition.

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