The Power of the Dragon

I've always found it interesting, the things that people collect, from bottle caps and beer bottles to quilts and baseball cards and everything in between. Everyone is interested in something. For me, it is the arcane. The mysterious Dragon.

Were they real? Oh, I can hear you laugh and say: "Of course not. There are no records, no remains, no pictographs on cave walls." No one can find the missing link between simians and homo erectus either. Archaeopteryx is the closest fossil we've found. Dinosaur or Dragon? Well, okay, dinosaur, but you can see the evolution, if it had taken place.

The Eastern dragon, as depicted in asian art, is a powerful entity. Often shown holding the Pearl of Life, the Shen Lung represents good fortune and abundance and is the herald of good tidings. With an open mouth the dragon is breathing the Cosmic Breath, or Chi, which can be good or bad depending on your Feng Shui.

I had the Shen Lung presented to me as a gift. He came from Singapore, and good luck followed. Not overt win-the-lottery kind of good luck, it was much more... soul deep: the return to a job I like, the creativity and focus of novel writing, the early arrival and perfection of my new desk, finding the perfect hutch to go with it, the quiet, less stress-filled life I lead now; that kind of luck.

Last week, I added to my collection: twin green and gold dragons; Yin and Yang, Masculine and Feminine energy, Northern and Southern hemispheres, the good and the bad. The twins are beautiful, carefully sculptured and up to their tricks: Lost money, upset breakfast bowl, temporarily missing file; nothing malicious, simply... provocative.

We all live with such things every day - I'll write about so called 'gremlins' in a future post - but for me it's a rare occurence for so many things to happen at once.

I've now separated my Eastern dragons from the Western ones (there are more of them); and I think they'll be happier. I mean that. Think of the esoteric, the metaphysical, rather than the physical and with our alleged more sophisticated mind.

Our culture teaches us that such things are impossible; worse, that to do so is expressing a sort of insanity since it cannot be proven to be true. Faith, for wont of a better word, is an esoteric event. Does God exist? Did dragons? Both are leaps of faith and I am unwilling to say 'nay' or 'yay' to either.

What I do know is that magic happens, whether we want it to or not. And one of the most power icons in eastern or celtic philosophy is that of the dragon. I'm comfortable with creature of myth. The dragon holds no fear for me, only comfort. It matters not what the dragon is to others, only what it is to me and my id.

It is that magic that each of us holds inside - and for some, denies - that makes us who and what we are.

The truth of the matter is that only the true cynics, the truly unevolved (and I'll get into that, too, later) disbelieve in magic. It's an unfortunate consequence that it is these people who are in control.