Dragons and Serpents: Water as The Mythopoëtic Symbol for Life

Serpents and dragons get short shrift in Western culture. In actual fact, they symbolize the life-giving properties of water, fertility and immortality.

In certain aspects of world culture, serpents represent immortality as seen by the water cycle of where evaporation of water from bodies of water such as rivers, lakes, streams, and the sea causes clouds to form and then rain to fall, only for the raindrops to mingle into many streams which flow into many rivers into the sea.

In Chinese mythology, Nüwa is said to have created humankind. She is also a repairer of the four pillars that are said to hold up the heavens (the sky); a wife or sister, and usually depicted ass what the Indians call a naga, a half-human, half-snake demigod; and a goddess of the Miao people.

In Chinese symbology, the serpent and especially the dragon represent water, especially clouds, rain and rivers. Its association with fertility has to do with the life-giving properties of water, without which all life on Earth would perish.

With Nüwa being half serpent and half human, this represents fertility and reproduction. As well, Nüwa may also be viewed as a dragon. Yet this is mythopoëtic language, which includes also the snake's association with the Tree of Life from Greek and earlier Babylonian mythology and the Tree of Knowledge and Immortality in Judeo-Christian symbology.

In ancient Egyptian symbology, a serpent represents the land and its fertility as governed by the waters of the Nile. The common theme of Renenutet and Wadj have is the serpent as a symbol. The most ancient of Egyptian goddesses is Wadjet (or Wadj), the Green One of Lower Egypt, yet even more ancient is Renenutet, the Snake Goddess who represents birth and child-rearing, as well as the true name of the soul (Ren).

Renenutet is seen as a symbol of fertility, harvests, and thus of good fortune and riches, while Wadj is associated with Bast, the fierce warrior goddess, usually depicted with a cat's head in ancient Egyptian art.

What Nüwa and the Egyptian goddesses Renenutet and Wadj share in common is the serpent i.e. Nüwa and her brother are half-human and half-serpent, while both Egyptian goddesses' symbol is the cobra.

Regarding Nüwa and association with the naga, the Nagas as a race supposedly worshipped the Indian cobra, which has a weak association with Wadj. In ancient times, an ancient king of Egypt had laid siege to the ancient Indus Valley city-state of Mohenjo-Daro in the Late Harappan period circa 1900 BCE. This civilization might be a collaborative effort between Babylonian, Mediterranean and Dravidian people.

This is more indicative of a serpent totem than a race of half-serpent, half-human peoples. Naga represents freedom, because a snake cannot be tamed.

In Indochina mythology (Cambodia, Laos and Thailand), the Rocket Festival in mid-May is a reminder of the Sky God to honor his peace treaty with the bodhisattva known as the Toad King. In this myth of the Toad King, the Toad King angered the Sky King with his popular sermons, thus causing the people to neglect their worship of the sky. In response, the Sky King withheld the rain, instructing the Rain Princess to stop letting water fall on the land. Acting without authority and support of the Toad King, the Naga King Mekong declared war on the Sky King, only to lose. Once persuaded to act by Mekong, the Toad King got termites to build mounds to the heavens so that centipedes and scorpions could pester the Sky King and bring him and the sky down to earth. Once on the earth, the Sky King sued for peace. In celebration, rockets were fired. Now every year throughout Southeast Asia the Rocket Festival is performed to remind the Sky King to honor his promise of rain. Indeed, the Rocket Festival happens during the first rains of mid-May.

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Reference:

• Ancient Egyptian Mythology:
  • Nüwa: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nüwa
    
  • Wadjet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wadjet
    
  • Renenutet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renenutet
    
  • Bast: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bast
    
• Indus Valley Civilization: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_Valley_Civilisation
  Nagas and their relation to Babylonian and Mediterranean people:
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C4%81ga
    
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serpent_%28symbolism%29#Nagas
• Serpent totem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagavanshi#Serpent_Totem_and_Naga_race
  Myth of the Toad King: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_Festival#The_Myth_of_the_Toad_King
  

Lands Edge: A Story Summary

The Boulder

The Boulder is a massive glacial boulder that marks the lair of the dragon of Lands Edge in the outskirts of the Highlands.

Kiryn is the heroine of Lands Edge. She is the daughter of Gylan, the late Highland king who was killed by the Highland dragon in retribution for not maintaining the ancient rituals of worship that summon up the dragon that guard the energies that channel through it to keep the lands fertile and free of death and pestilence.

Dragons here are actually shapeshifters, whose original form was that of a mortal human who were once mages but have been transformed by the primordial energies of the earth into their current form. They can maintain their human form only after doing battle with a dragonslayer, the last one dying in Lands Edge.

After witnessing her father's death, and fearing for her life because she never was taught the art of dragon fighting, Kiryn travels to the last place on her world where she may find the last of the dragonslayers, a friend of her father's.

She passes the Boulder, unaware of the dragon's presence.

Lands Edge Inn is a tavern in the lowland many leagues from the Highland plateau that Kiryn grow up in.

Kiryn finds the dragonslayer, only to be told he no longer trains and is a landowner like her father. She ignores the slight, since the dragonslayer is more like the benevolent aristocratic landlord than a true king who rules over a vast domain.

She tries to shame the dragonslayer into training her, so that she may confront the dragon of Land Edge and learn how to appease the dragon now occupying her former castle on the Highland.

The dragonslayer teaches her fighting techniques, yet never did learn the reason why a dragonslayer fight dragons. This is never revealed in the story.


Two Stones

After training hard, the two humans unleash psychic energy induced by ritual combat which awakens the dragon below.

Alarmed and already sensing the presence of its brother dragon on the Highlands, it knows it must act swiftly to maintain the balance over death and pestilence.

It reaches the surface of its home world at the Two Stones, the place of its battle with the dragonslayer's father, who died due to his slow reaction. The smaller of the Two Stones is a man-sized chip that fell from the Boulder when the dragon's deadly blow missed the dead man.

Also, previously dragon's tears are mentioned and they are the most valuable gems, the dragon's treasure.

A battle ensues, which ends when Kiryn, awakened to the dragon's mind, stops fighting and listens to reason.

Finally, the dragon uses the energy of battle to shapeshift to human form and instructs Kiryn on what must be done to regain her home in the Highlands. This is not clear in the story.

What is clear is that dragons need alcohol to be tamed.

Kiryn returns home and bribes the dragon there to be her husband Draco. Making her his betrothed, deflowering her causes Draco to be bound to her, unable to shapeshift unless she releases him from her spell.

The dragon cult is promoted by Draco in far off lands.

This marks a departure from mages who guard one kingdom or domain. He extracts fealty by warning the fiefdom that if they do not give tribute, a dragon will come out of the land to punish them. Sometimes a fiefdom will disobey him yet he cannot punish them in human form.

So he asks her to release him from the spell.

She replies that their son will do that for them.

Soon she gives birth to a dragon that her magick cannot bind to human form. She complains to her husband, who tells her that he needs to lie in wait for a virgin queen to bribe him with alcohol after a battle.

They send the son to kill the rebel lord of one fiefdom, and tell the people to send a young woman to be raised as warrior who knows the way of the sword and the queen's magick.

The fiefdom picks an orphaned girl.

The tradition of dragon sons conquering fiefdoms in exchange for an orphaned girl to be raised as warrior-mage is established. This establishes a lineage of fiefdoms, since the next fiefdom is conquered by Draco's grandson. Yet Kiryn's magick can give both her and Draco long lives.

Once the dragon lineage is established and no petty lords exist to oppress their own fiefdoms, both she and Draco retire to Lands End.

From time to time Draco would play with the Boulder dragon, staging mock battles for his queen's amusement.

In time Kiryn dies and is buried at her ancestral estate in the Highlands. Draco, freed of the spell cast by his mate, reverts to dragon form.

Draco and the dragon at Land's Edge join forces to prevent the likes of men from ruining the world through corruption.

They use magick to create worms that fly off to find places on the earth in need of protection. Nothing is mentioned of the Highland lineage.