Francis Huxley on the dragon's journey: a cultural survey of its mythical imagery. (2024)

Francis Huxley (1923-2016) offers in The dragon: nature of spirit, spirit of nature (1989) an overview of the imagery of one of the most popular mythical and fantastical creatures that have puzzled and fascinated the human mind from times immemorial, considering it through the perceptions of various cultures across the span of history. The book is structured in several chapters (fifteen in number) and adorned with meaningful illustrations and plates that enrich this research and survey and at the same time reflect the author's anthropological background and his passion for the cultures of the world.

The author starts by noting right from the beginning that it is difficult to encompass the dragon within a single definition. Therefore, he begins with the most primal representations of the dragon, mentioning right from the first the images of the lamia (a marine / sea monster creature) too, connecting it thus to the "monster" dimension of this creature. Although Huxley stresses the importance of the variety of shapes and imagery that the dragon can take, for a better understanding of the dragon's spirit we are driven towards its conception. For this, the author offers imagery of a chaotic flux of primal elements, in which there is coexistence of both fire and water, the result being a creature with a piercing gaze, having two genders with power over life and death and that can perpetuate itself through some sort of an alchemical process not unlike the Uroboros:

To help us conceive anything of this chaos, many traditions describe the flux as an abyss of water stirred by a fiery spirit whose light allows it to see. In this state, say the Hindu Upanishads, it looks about itself hungrily--the very activity (in Greek, derkesthai, to glance dartingly) that gives the dragon its name. / Now it is obvious that when nothing is as yet created, all that a fiery eye can see in the abyss is its own reflection. The sight of this is said to inflame the dragon with the envious desire to engulf it, which it does both by coupling with it sexually and by devouring it whole. [...] / This Great Being, which perpetuates itself at the expense of that Other which is its own reflection, is variously described as a man, a horse, a serpent or dragon. (Huxley 1989: 5-6)

Huxley goes further to compare the Druids' approach to the origin of this sacred creature, saying that they believed that blind worms or glass snakes created a glass egg at each spring equinox in the shape of a ring, a resemblance of the Milky Way, or what is known as the "Worm of Middle Earth" (in the Norse myth), the "Snake River" (for the Accadians), "Path of the Snake" (for the Indians) and "Okeanos the World Stream" (for the Greeks).

We see thus the evolution of the dragon from the primal elements of fire and water to the animalistic representations of its form under those of the snake, horse, worms and later even men. It is interesting to note the cosmic significance that these images take and the similarity in the perception of the Milky Way galaxy as a primeval coiled snake across different cultures and its connection to the dragon image. Even more so striking is the connection of the macro domain to the micro, between the astronomical and cosmological object to their mythological counterparts created by the human mind when we read further the comparison of the serpent's eggs or the dragon's wish-fulfilling jewel to the moon. Huxley sees the resemblance of the snake in the dragon and vice versa through the shedding of the skin and lack of eyelids which give them their unmistakable gaze, poisonous sting, and armor of scales, swallowing their prey, not failing to mention the belief that a snake eating another turns into a dragon according to the English folklore (Huxley 1989: 7).

The importance of the dragon and humankind's fascination with it, the author claims, consists in the fact that it represents the manifestation of an inner knowledge animated by the same desire which the Upanishads equate with hunger and death, its cycle of spirit and flesh being the same that governs the blending of the elements into one another, the birth-death-and-rebirth cycle, the cycle of nature, the evolution of water in the atmospheric cycle etc. Regarding the dragon's connection to spirit, we are told in the book that the dead man's spirit was a dragon as it was believed in many stories of old of dragons haunting graves, thus bringing into discussion the Aztec concept of the body as a tomb of the spirit and its liberation after death (cf. Huxley 1989: 11). As it is widely known, it was not only the Aztecs who held the belief in spiritual liberation from the material body, as we also encounter it in many philosophies and religions such as the Vedic or the Buddhistic.

Huxley discusses the evolution of the myth from the space of the ancient Greece and the belief in a guardian snake for each household, a snake with a beard, going even further to mention even Osiris as the original owner of the beard, and the importance of his resurrection and connection to the spring harvest cycle and the waters of the Nile, being also invoked as a dragon. However, taking into account the Egyptian myth, it should rather be argued that a more accurate representation of a dragon would be the giant serpent Apophis (Apep), but he is portrayed in the legend as a cosmic representation of evil that seeks to destroy the Sun god who is sailing in his boat across the heavenly ocean. (cf. Assmann 2008: 34; Pinch 2002: 106-107) On the other hand, Seth or Sobek might also have been symbols of the dragon due to their association with the crocodile and the waters of the Nile:

On other occasions, however, Sobek was counted among the enemies of the divine order. In one spell in the Coffin Texts, Sobek "the rebel" is held responsible for mutilating the body of the good god Osiris. Sobek was sometimes identified with the crocodile form of Seth, the slayer of Osiris. (Pinch 2002: 201)

This connection of the dragon to the symbol of water, law and order is also observed by Huxley (1989: 8) in the Greek and the Indian myth through Uranos and Varuna, respectively.

Huxley does not limit himself only to the Indo-European mythology, but also mentions the belief of the Maya culture in the Celestial Iguana (Itzam Na) (itzam = "iguana"; na = "house" or "woman") in connection to the dragon motif and the symbol of fire. The iconography of the Mayan dragon, the sacred iguana (Chacs is the modern name of the "four Iguanas of the House"), is a compound of a plumed serpent with human head crowned with antlers. In the same manner, the Aztecs also had the feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl.

An interesting fact that the author does not fail to note is the alchemical equation of the dragon with Prime Matter, the Chinese believing that dragon fire can be stopped only by flames, what is emphasized here being the purifying dimension of fire. In this description of the elements and the imagery of the dragon's compound nature of fire and water, as well as of its origins and evolution, Huxley also approaches the sacred connection of the fire-water symbolism inherent in the dragon to that of the Soma liquor (or Amrita), as the elixir of life in Indian mythology, which is also represented and takes form as the daughter of the god Varuna, god of the Foundation of Order, Law, Death and of the "Causal water," who faces the four directions simultaneously, one of those faces being that of Agni (god of fire). (cf. Huxley 1989: 8-9)

Regarding the iconography of a dragon with horns, the author mentions that long time ago it was believed that the deer was a sort of dragon too, by virtue of the similarity between the shedding of its antlers, a symbol of virility, and the shedding of a snake's skin. Therefore, the dragon's compound nature of the elements of fire and water is also reflected in its iconographic representations both as a cold-blooded and hot-blooded creature, bearing both parts of the goat or ram or antelope/bull or blackbuck and also those of a lizard/crocodile, fish, or snake. Huxley follows this hybrid image of the dragon further in its evolution mentioning the mythological creature Chimera (lion's body, snake's tail and goat's head) and its resemblance to a dragon that is also due to its lineage (the Smoking Hurricane Typhon and the Viper Echidne).

In the same manner, Huxley also equates Medusa to a dragon due to her dragonish features, finding the same symbolism in the Nereids (half-human, half-snake creatures), mentioning Thetis in this connection, as well as Lucifer's representation in his snake body in the biblical scene of the temptation of Eve.

Later on in the book, the author also alludes to the similarity of the nymphs (melusines in French) to the dragons by virtue of their real appearance, and also to their fear of iron that they share with the Chinese dragons. This is also due to the fact that in France it was believed that the parents of these nymphs (melusines) were believed to be dragons able to shape-shift their form into men and women at will and to kidnap nursing mothers in order to feed their infant dragons, rewarding them after.

Huxley also mentions the Rainbow Snake that brings rain of the Australian aborigines, as a dragon able to take human form and also to transform into a rainbow, where at each end of it stand the two women who could bring him to life (nursing and menstruating women).

What also connects all these representations across cultures as concerns the dragon's imagery and essence in Huxley's research is the fertility dimension that he touches upon. He identifies that fertilizing spirit in the dragon's symbolism (stemming from its ability to perpetuate itself as a being of two genders) on the one hand with the Hindus' Golden Embryo or Soma (signifying Varuna's daughter), and, on the other, with the rock crystal of the shaman aborigines that the latter use in order to call up the Rainbow Snake dragon.

Of course, bringing into discussion the Christian faith, the author also mentions St. George's defeating the dragon multiple times as a hero figure, a liberator from the monster whose poisonous breath killed innocents:

Anacondas are also notorious for their breath, which stinks of the charnel house. So are poisonous snakes, and crocodiles, the latter being honoured in Egypt as the epitome of the goddess who holds the stars on her leash. But she was to suffer a great reverse at the hands of St George, because she also demanded human sacrifice. At that time she was living in the great swamp near the town of Silene in Libya, whose inhabitants were daily being killed by her pestilential breath. The survivors offered their sons and daughters to appease this dragon, and it so happened that when no child was left but the king's daughter, St George rode by and rescued her. It was the princess who then held the dragon on the leash of her girdle and led it into town, where St George despatched it; and if his ardour had not all gone into missionary zeal, he would of course have married her and inherited her father's kingdom. (Huxley 1989: 14-15)

Here by "the goddess who holds the stars on her leash" Huxley might refer to the goddess Nut, goddess of the sky, stars, cosmos and the universe (Budge 1912: xx-xxi), because the other god in connection with the crocodiles is Sobek, but he was a protective deity. What remains then is the goddess Ammit or Ammut, whose body is part lion, part hippopotamus, with the head of a crocodile, and is the devourer of the hearts of the dead who did not pass Osiris's judgment. (Pinch: 100, 126, 142, 200-201) However, the slaughter of the dragon by St. George is also said to be an adaptation of the legend of the fight between Horus and Set, with the difference that it is said that Set/Typhon escaped from Horus in his form as a crocodile. (cf. Budge 1912: xiv, 248)

After these things Horus, son of Ra, and Horus, son of Isis, each took the form of a mighty man, with the face and body of a hawk, and each wore the Red and White Crowns, and each carried a spear and chain. In these forms the two gods slew the remnant of the enemies. Now by some means or other Set came to life again, and he took the form of a mighty hissing or "roaring" serpent, and hid himself in the ground, in a place which was ever after called the "place of the roarer." (Budge 1912: xliv)

Speaking of crocodiles and heroic deeds, Huxley moves on to the part of sacrificing young women or virgins to the rivers where crocodiles or dragons were believed to live, until a hero would step up and kill the creature. Even though usually "the bait was always a woman," the author tells also the Japanese story of Susa No, son of the Creator, who dressed himself as a woman in order to fool the sea monster and defeat him. (cf. Huxley 1989: 15) Other reflections or adaptations of the battle between St George and the dragon's conquest find their echo even in the stories and folklore of West Africa where heroes have to defeat the water-buffalo for rain and marry the daughter of a king who is part snake, part human, or a three-headed monster, or the god Amma with a piercing gaze:

South of the Niger the various St Georges disappear and the water-monster lives to take its full significance as the material form of the High God, Amma. In one form Amma is a joined pair of bisexual beings, half-human and half-serpent, with red staring eyes, green skin and jointless, flexible arms. Another form is that of a ram with two sets of genitals. One set is in the usual place, which pisses out the fertilizing rain; the other rises from its head and with this it couples with the sun during its journey through the sky. (Huxley 1989: 16)

Furthermore, the author also sees a connection between the number eight and the symbolism of the dragon: turned horizontally, it also makes an allusion to the perpetual cycle and infinity, and the coiling movements of a serpent, but also to the dragon's ability of creation and re-creation of itself. Huxley underlines that this number has a special significance in the cultures of the world, mentioning the octave in music favored by the Greeks, the eight-legged horse of Odin, the Eight-Fold path in Buddhism, and so on:

[T]he Chinese recognized that the Yin and the Yang made one dragon which had the Eight Trigrams for heads. And throughout the Old World, eight was the number of spokes in the solar wheel which, in Europe as in Africa, was set in motion by the ram-headed serpent. (Huxley 1989: 17)

The author then doesn't fail to mention the dual nature of the ram-headed serpent and also alludes to the legendary figure of Cernunnos and the Celtic belief in this type of dragon as a beneficial one, blending together the spheres of life and death.

Moreover, we are also told of the Japanese sacrificial rites of horses during the spring festival to bring up the rain, believing that horses are the dragons of heavens, and in turn, on Earth, these take the form of a horse: "[t]hey are sent to heaven, that is, so that they will become dragons and preside over the change of water into fire and fire back again into water: for the horse only has power over water because it is a solar animal." (Huxley 1989: 20)

Reaching the Babylonian culture, the author delves into the origins of the dragon story, recounting the creation epic which starts with Apsu (the Abyss), Tiamat (the Salt sea and Mother of all), Mummu (Apsu's Emanation), Anu and his son Ea. The legend has it that the offspring of Ea with Damkina was Marduk, god of the storm from "whose lips fire blazed forth" (Huxley 1989: 20), often portrayed on a horned dragon with a serpent body (these being either Tiamat or Kingu). In the politics of the Babylonian gods, Marduk raised war against Tiamat's general (Kingu) and other monster offsprings (vipers, dragons, the storm demon, shark, lion, the mad dog and scorpion man), creating mankind from Kingu's blood, stationing the gods as stars in the sky and splitting Tiamat's body into the two firmaments. (cf. Huxley 1989: 21)

Continuing with the Babylonian myth, Huxley mentions next the dragon Humbaba in connection with the vegetation aspect, as "Lord of the Cedar Forest" being killed by Gilgamesh and Enkidu, and having its cosmological counterpart in the heavens in the star Procyon of the Canis Minor constellation.

The author also talks about the dragon's favorite abodes, like gardens placed on high mountains surrounded by rivers, or sacred trees above pools. Mount Meru of India where naga lords were said to dwell (nagas being half-human, half-snake creatures) was such a home of the dragon as were also the Great Square of either Tiamat or of Pegasus, as well as Marduk's abode above the four rivers. Speaking about the rivers, the name of Ladon (Echidne's brother, sibling of the Gorgons and the Hesperides) is mentioned as a symbol and name for several rivers where a dragon can find its reflection in the image of a woman. Huxley also says that his name is associated with the Garden of the Hesperides, the mythological garden where Heracles had the task of stealing the golden apples; Heracles, by killing Ladon, enabled Atlas to do the stealing instead, while Ladon himself was "translated to the skies as the Snake of Ophiuchus." (cf. Huxley 1989: 23)

Connecting the micro domain to the macro again, Huxley identifies four main dragon stations in the constellations of the sky:

[T]he water-monster Hydra is in one hemisphere, its head close to the Water-Dog of Procyon, and the Garden is the Great Square in the other; the contenders for the apples standing at opposite limbs of the Milky Way, as if over the wall from each other, one at Orion--the dragon as man--and the other at Ophiuchus, the man as dragon. What is confusing is that the dragon of one story has slipped into the scenario of another, apparently different one, while his owner points the way to a third story. But there is no doubt that all these stories are about the same thing. We know, for a start, that Ophiuchus is also Asclepius, and that he was put into the stars after Zeus had killed him for trying to bring Orion back to life; we also know that the medicine he used was a drop of Gorgon's blood, collected when her arteries had been severed by the decapitating sword of Perseus. (Huxley 1989: 23-24)

Speaking of the representations of the dragon in its cosmological iconography, the author mentions the Draco constellation in which are reflected the Babylonian water monster Tiamat, the Hindu serpent Vasuki, and the Greek snake Ladon. (cf. Huxley 1989: 28)

Huxley saw the echoing of the myth of Perseus in the Hindu culture through the Amrtamanthanam--the "Churning" of the Amrita, or Soma, the life elixir that he equates with the Dragon or with the fluid spreading from its body when sacrificed, an elixir that surges into the womb of the fire god Agni. This image bears similarity, in the author's perception, to the birth of Perseus from the trunk of the Gorgon dragon. (cf. Huxley 1989: 27) Continuing with the Rig-Vedic philosophy, Huxley also draws on the image of the Golden Embryo and its alchemical dimension as matter and spirit "mutually converted" into each other (Huxley 1989: 29), underlining that the spirit takes the form of the dragon, which married three times to itself (its own reflection as a woman) to bring forth an immortal offspring.

Another characteristic of the dragon often met in stories that Huxley also mentions in this book is the aspect of royalty, majesty and nobility. He claims that this is due to the fact that dragons often represent the spirit of the ancestors who are the guardians of the wish-fulfilling jewel containing the life of the Golden Embryo. He follows with examples of Chinese emperors having dragons at court, or in their service, going even further to the Buddha's ancestry and connection to the Nagas before and after his incarnation as a man, and thus his disciples following the same train of thought converted the creatures to the faith and had them as guardians. (cf. Huxley 1989: 30)

Huxley makes an important distinction here between the two approaches to the dragon myth of the East and West. We have been shown, through multiple legends and stories, the Occident's approach on the dragon's destiny (the myth of the hero or saint killing the monster creature) versus the Eastern philosophies' take on the dragons as benefactors and spiritual guardians, or even as dragon-gods or dragon-goddesses (for example Boddhisattva Kuanyin is the goddess of compassion and guardian of childbirth in the form of a nine-headed dragon, Kundalini the Coiled). (Huxley 1989: 31)

Overall, Huxley follows the imagery and iconography of the dragon through various cultures across the world from the earliest ones, such as the Babylonian creation epics up to Christianity and the significance of Saint George in the myth. The value he brings with this survey is that he constantly searches for representations of the dragon, or the sacrifice of the dragon in several myths or beliefs, searching how one story is echoed eons later in another. His approach to find an equivalent of the dragon's motifs in Egyptian, Hindu, Buddhist, Christian and African cultures was constantly noticed throughout this survey (for example the Tablet of Destiny and its equivalent to the Golden Egg of the Hindus, Uranos and Ea's similarity to Varuna and so on).

Moreover, the author doesn't fail to mention several festivals and carnivals that take place among various cultures, those of the Slavs for example celebrated during the twelve days of Christmas, or that of the Bulgarians, or some celebrated closer to the Christian feasts (the festival of Tarasque--the subduing and killing of the dragon-crocodile-snake monster by Saint Martha celebrated by the French) that make allusions more or less to the dragons or beasts that the hero must conquer.

Even though he draws from a wide array of belief systems and world mythologies, Huxley does not insist much on the Norse myth and Jormungandr the Midgard's serpent or worm or Ni[??]hoggr--Nidhogg, the Norse dragon who bites the roots of the world tree Yggdrasil, but revisits the same imagery and myths from the aforementioned cultures: Babylonian, Hindu, Greek, Chinese or Japanese, Aztec, Maya, or the medieval European ones.

Reading his book, the reader remains with certain central elements that have surrounded the iconography and image of the dragons throughout centuries. Huxley draws on the dragon's divine origins, his dual nature embodying both the masculine and feminine principles, matter and spirit, life and death, the beginning and the end of the world. Looking at its symbolism in several cultures, Huxley connects the dragon myth to the elements of water and fire, and also paints several images of his hybrid embodiment of several animals or animal parts, sometimes part human and snake, the horns of a deer or a bull, tails of a fish, etc. Other common elements seen across cultures were his cyclic aspect and divine nature.

Huxley explored dragons that have power over weather, were at the base of people's homes and maybe even man's base of a home, maybe even man's first encounter with the unconscious and the id. Depending on the legend or culture, Huxley's dragons are either monsters to be sacrificed or conquered, or gods and goddesses and guardians that bring boons upon their disciples or the rulers of nations.

Nonetheless, the author also mentioned what habits these dragons often had or what forms they took, what end where they destined for according to the society's belief in them and their importance in it.

Much of the book also contains meaningful stencils, illustrations and plates with dragon motifs in the art of several cultures, from past to present, east to west.

Huxley approached the sacred meaning of the dragon as a primeval, primitive force, taking its common elements through Buddhism, Hinduism, Japan and China, Babylonian creation myth and Egyptian gods and goddesses, Christian belief and how these appeared in the eyes of the Mayans and the Aztecs, too.

However, we could also argue that the author fails to mention why the elements he mentioned are the common ones across cultures in the dragons myth. In terms of structure, we could not help but notice the absence of structured research or quotes from the sources he drew his information from. At the same time, the book could have used more context and explanations regarding the dragon's symbolism and imagery in connection with the golden germ (Hiranyagarbha) of the Rig-Vedic philosophy.

References

Assmann J (2008) Seth the iconoclast: polytheism and the language of violence. Of god and gods: Egypt, Israel, and the rise of monotheism, pp 28-52. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press.

Budge EAW (1912) Legends of the gods. The Egyptian texts, edited with translations. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.

Huxley T (1989). The dragon: nature of spirit, spirit of nature. London: Thames and Hudson. [1979]

Pinch G (2002) Handbook of Egyptian mythology. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.

LOREDANA ASAFTEI

The author

Loredana Asaftei, MA; PhD Student, University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, English Department; Bucharest, Romania; [emailprotected]

doi:10.22381/C6120234