On the Dragon Wings of Time
Knight, C. (1991) On the Dragon Wings of Time. In Maidens, Snakes and Dragons
'To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be
bom, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a
time to refrain from embracing…' - Ecclesiastes 3: 1-5
A miraculous winged snake or ‘dragon’ is prominent in mythology in almost all parts of
the world. To pursue this motif to its ultimate meaning would be to delve beyond
‘symbolic studies’ as usually conceived. Mythmakers once gave pride of place to
fabulous snake-like beasts out of their need to codify the deepest logic of their cultures.
Surviving mythological traditions have preserved such images to the extent that they
have not quite forgotten their beginnings. Manifested in a multitude of local forms, ‘the
dragon’ is so universal that its origins cannot be merely regional. I suggest that this
fabulous beast is more than ‘just a myth’. To understand it fully would involve an
evolutionary, archaeological and historical quest into how culture itself first came into
being.
But how should we define the term ‘dragon’? As a first approximation, let us take it to
be a very large snake-like creature which has wings. This is a useful beginning because
it takes us immediately to the heart of the issue: any dragon is first and foremost
paradoxical. A snake is a low creature, having no legs and therefore crawling upon the
ground. A snake in the sky is an utter contradiction. The invention of such an image
could only have been the work of minds bent quite deliberately on ‘uniting the
opposites’
Let us continue with this idea. Imagine that it was decided to conceptualise all possible
opposites, list them in pairs, depict them artistically – and then unite them to form a
single image. Would the result be a dragon?
We would have the lowest creature (a snake) which was also the highest (an eagle, bat
or other winged creature). We would have death which was also new life, female which
was also male, animal which was human, water which was fire, dark which was light –
and so on. Artistically and narratively there would be many different ways of assembling
the combinations. The result would be an array of fabulous beasts, monsters, dragons
and other creatures which had in common only the extremity of their internal
contradictions.
The ancients knew that life itself is a movement between opposite phases or states.
Summer changes to winter and winter back to summer again. Vegetation seasonally
dies, is reborn, dies once more and is again revived. Day is ‘killed’ by night; but then
night is ‘killed’ by the resurrected day once more. The earth – as we now see matters –
revolves around its axis and also around the sun, a movement of daily and seasonal
light/dark alternation which has become central to the rhythms of life on earth.
Nineteenth-century mythographers of the solar school believed that primitive
mythology – dragon-legends included – could be explained by reference to this logic
of cyclicity. When a dragon devoured a young maiden, it was an image of summer being
swallowed up by the winter, day by night, life by death. When the dragon was slain and
the maiden rescued from its jaws, this was a way of describing the sunrise or the onset
of spring. No-one nowadays holds to quite so simple a view, but there are insights here
which we would be unwise to forget.
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