Enter The Dragon, Terrifying and Beautiful (Part 1)

Hi everyone, I'm Josh and this is The Emerald, currents and trends through a mythic lens. The podcast we explore in ever changing world and our lives in it through the lens of myth, story and imagination. The Emerald, all that's happening on this green jewel in space. 2025 was for me in many ways, a year of dragons. Somehow I seem to repeatedly find myself traveling through land that holds dragon story. I didn't plan it, but everywhere my family and I turned it seemed. There was a dragon. A dragon breathing as highland missed. A dragon spying protruding along the horizon. I'd ask, what's the story of this place? And sure enough, somewhere a dragon would emerge from the deep pools of that story. As if to say, see, we are everywhere. Remember us. Remember how all this, all this mythos, this is all in some ways, dragon story. For me this episode is the fulfillment of a long spiraling dream. For dragons shaped my early life, my early imagination. There were dragons in the Japanese and Tibetan Buddhist stories of my upbringing. Dragons and the drawings I drew and in the games that I played. I grew up during the first wave of dungeons and dragons popularity. Those kids in season one of Stranger Things sitting around the table in 1983 playing D&D. That was me, right down to the haircuts. Yes, there's been dragon story at play in my life for a long time. But to do an episode on dragons, on elemental lizards, on world serpents, on all the coils, is not simply an exercise in reliving childhood fantasy. For the dragon is a lot more than a category of mythical beast. The dragon is, shall we say, the serpentine spiraling power that moves through this world. To know the dragon is to know how the power moves, how it expresses what its coiling patterns are, and what we do with that power, how we treat it, if we vilify it or praise it, how we channel it and pass it on, has deep relevance in a time when sociohistorical patterns are re-weaving and forgotten monsters are waking, and old power structures crumbling in new ones rising. So you can consider these dragon episodes, the second and third in the episode series on power. And to make it clear up front, these episodes will involve considerable overlap between dragon story and serpent story. And I'll be spiraling from dragon to serpent myth because they are deeply intertwined. They are both at their heart, stories about spirals, stories about energy. In times when we are reimagining our relationship with power, and seeking to understand more what alignment to the greater power of nature means, my hope is that this podcast provides not only deep nourishment for the spirit, but also provokes discussion on how to re-imagine our relationship with power. I hope it sparks conversations on systems, patterns, connections and reconnections that allow us to deepen and to build together. And if you're longing for such deeper conversation, for deeper community around these topics, the podcast Patreon community, the Emerald Podcast Patreon community, is a good place to start. This podcast depends completely on patron support. I'm able to do this podcast because of the support of patrons. So if you've been listening to the podcast for a while and it's sparking something in you, and you feel nourished by it and you want to support the artistic vision so that it can continue, then support the vision directly and become part of the community at patreon.com/theemeraldpodcast. This is where we can spiral into deeper discussion. This is where we can re-weave together. For those who want to go even deeper, I offer a year-long deep dive into mythic and animate tradition, an online course platform called The Mythic Body. And this is where we can really explore these topics in a way that is anchored in the practice of somatic reconnection. It's a place to study, song and story and to breathe together and to reconnect together and to adore the animate together. The most recent iteration launched a couple months ago and this platform, this mythic body community is thriving and it's a lifelong work of the heart. It is buzzing with conversation and exploration and practice. It's something that I've put together over my entire life of study. And it's a place for those who love the podcast to be able to live this mythic stuff much more danceably. So the next round of the course begins on June 1st and you can find out more and register for the course at the mythicbody.com/courses. Special thanks also to the Fetzer Institute, which provides absolutely essential structural support for The Emerald Podcast. Fetzer, like The Emerald Podcast, understands the need for spiritual solutions for the crises that the world faces and is dedicated to supporting initiatives that model a relational vision. You can find out more about Fetzer at Fetzer.org and speaking of dedications, this episode is dedicated to my kids, my two boys. May you know Dragon Wonder in your lives. In June of 2025, my family and I visited the UK and we were invited by some friends at Kai Mabon in Wales in Snowdonia to climb a hill named Dinos Emris. Dinos Emris is the place of course where the red and white dragons of Welsh legend were once captured in vessels and buried deep inside the heart of the mountain. The place where a young fatherless boy named Merlin told King Vordigan if he stopped to dig at that very spot he would find two sleeping dragons. Yes, there are dragons in that ancient hill and so we went to find them. Right from the start of the hike there is Dragon Sign. An old wooden bench carved in the shape of a dragon, a serpentine stony river. There are dragon whispers everywhere. And my sons, my two boys are getting excited now and they're asking are there real dragons here? Are we going to see real dragons? So I bring them close when I say listen, sometimes the dragon isn't something you can see with your eyes. Sometimes you have to feel the dragon in your heart. We make our way to the top, Dinos Emris, that hill in the midst of four great mountains, that hill perched above the waters, above the shimmering waters, that hill amidst the mists, that hill all green and growing, and clouds flicking about like serpent tails, and the mists passing back and forth like a great creature's breath, and the very sky, a great bright eye. My youngest son looks at me with eyes all shining, there upon the mountain, and he says, "Papa, I think I feel the dragon in my heart." Do you feel it? Do you feel the dragon? Do you feel it my son? I feel it too, in the wind's wet bluster, in the scaly bark of the trees, of being waking now, slowly as if from sleep, its inner fire is rising, rising in the flush of your cheeks, the dragon. Look, now here with me, Sons, look across this ridge line. We're used to thinking of dragons as lizards, right? That are what? 30, 40, 50 feet from head to tail? But what if that's not the full picture? What if the dragon was so vast that this whole rocky ridge line is in spine? What if the arc of its back plunges way down into the valley below only to rise up in a great reptilian hump far to the east? Do you see its back now, forming the architecture of the very horizon, plungeulating in stony waves, the dragon breathing as the heaven flow of the mists, roaring as the wind, branching as the river systems of the world, flashing as lightning, bellowing as thunder, with scales, say the Hawaiian tails, that sparkle silver and gold like doodrops, with scales like sun on the sea, with red scales and black scales some tradition say, with scales like feathers, with scales like rainbows, scales like mirrors, scales of time and space, have you seen the dragon running? And wait, I thought we were talking about dragons. Like you know, storybook dragons that capture princesses and horde treasure, and now we're talking about whole mountain ranges? I thought dragons were fire-breathing lizards. They are. And they're also rain-giving serpents, born in the deep roots of the mountains, born in the accumulation of waters. When waters accumulate the daoistek se, they form a deep, and from the deep, a dragon rises. Yes, there is a spiraling serpent in the water cycle. Have you seen resting in liminal pools, guarding the entrances of spring, crawling slowly through underground rivers? Sleeping dormant in the deep of this, before waking, with great evaporating wings. Rising as billowing clouds gathering as a coming storm, gnashing its teeth in great grinding thunderclaps, releasing its mighty rains. Such dragons are to be found everywhere. They lend their names to numerous places, and even to the names of countries like Bhutan, whose full name means prosperous land of the thunderclaps. And this is the beauty of this nebulous and impossibly vast category. Dragons aren't just fire-spouting lizards. Yes, there are fire dragons, and there are water dragons and cloud dragons. There are wood dragons of springtime. Walk through Apanda Rosa Forest just after a rain, through the display of gleaming segmented bark, and see the scales of the dragon. Dragon's story is vast. There is dragon's story that is about cosmic-sized creator beings, and there is dragon's story that is about weather. There is dragon's story about beings that live in deep pools and guard springs, and there is dragon's story finer than all this about patterns and spirals, about all that pulses in waves. Gaze out my sons, at the pulsing movements of waves in and out of the bay. The time lapse movements of this pulsing world, swallowing, regurgitating, heaving, gathering in, issuing forth yet again, gaze upon the dragon. Laying in weight, springing to life, erupting outwards, now hoarding, now releasing, now the withhold of rains, now the storm itself, see it in the spiral of weather systems. In the long tail of lunar ellipses, see it in whirlpool, see it in curls, drawing into itself in eternal centripetal coils. The dragon says the shwo-wen-jitsu is the chief of scaled creatures. It can be hidden, it can be manifest, it can conceal or reveal, in spring it ascends to the heavens, in autumn it sinks into the deep, concealing, revealing, coiling in, spiraling out. These are the serpentine dynamics of the dragon. So we don't understand this mythic category of dragons, unless we understand that which spirals and coils. We don't understand the feathered serpent, the rainbow serpent, the mole, the idol-huedo, the great shimmering anaconda. We don't understand it unless we understand the dynamics of that which spirals and coils. Just as we don't understand the world, the trajectories of history, the interlocking fractal scales of community and society, the dynamics of power, the risings and fallings of empire, unless we understand spirals and coils. We don't know land and seasons and river systems, and the delicate relationships that cause the shift in the direction of the wind and the emergence of a particular flower, that signals that the venom levels and the mouths of the serpents will be higher. We don't understand these delicate relationships unless we truly understand spirals and coils. As we don't know ourselves, the patterns that play themselves out in our lives, the skin of the feathered serpent of our lives. We don't know our habits, our tendencies. We don't know breath, we don't know mind, we don't know feeling and what it truly is and how to navigate its waves, unless we understand that which spirals and coils. Oh, beloved, do you see now the dragon? And which of these dragons spirals needs to be celebrated and which needs to be fed and which needs to be summoned or soothed, which needs to be befriended and sung to, which needs a touch of taming and which needs to be lopped off right at the head. The dragon. Feel me? Dracaris. Here you enter the coils of the dragon. The coils of the dragon. Dracans are everywhere. Have you noticed that nearly all cultures speak of some form of dragon? The dragon lives on all six inhabited continents, finds its way to Welsh flags and Flemish family crests and Slovenian road signs, arises as a benevolent rain being in the east. Sores across the steps, finds itself locked in battles with fierce thundered deities from Avaston all the way to the Arctic Circle. We all know dragon story if we pause to think about it. No matter what continent you are listening from, the land you inhabit holds dragon story. And quite possibly it was shaped by dragons. And quite possibly there are sleeping dragons in it. And these dragons never seem to lose their appeal. The dragon always gets our attention. Because Peter Jackson Hobbit movies were what I would call a total abomination, except for smog. The dragon. That gold-bellied gleaming-eyed hissing breathing dragon. Game of Thrones season one was on the verge of falling flat until Daenerys Targaryen emerged from a flaming fire naked and torn to three infant dragons. Each generation, some writer or TV producer resuscitates the dragon and animates it for us in newly beautiful and terrifying ways. From the dragon writers of Perne, which shaped my dragon story as a child, to fourth wing and all the various spin-off iterations of modern soft core dragon lore, dragons have perpetual staying power. We go back to dragons again and again. We fear them, adore them, slay them, ride them. In fact, every texture of our relationship with the world, we seem to have in our relationship with dragons. And that's not a coincidence. And of course, there's a question here right at the beginning that must be addressed, that must be lopped off right at its hydra head so that this dragon of a conversation doesn't get mired in unnecessary stagnant waters. That question that always comes when people realize that dragon story has existed everywhere in all cultures for all time. The modern question, what Peter Brook might call the deadly question, the question that slays so many imaginal dragons just in the asking of it. You know the question, are dragons real? To which I will offer this. When I was 15, I heard the venerable Kalu Rinpoche. Tell a story about a journey he took to a remote mountain hermitage. It was an arduous climb to the top. And when he reached the top, there was a storm. And in the midst of that storm, he was trying to clear out a space for meditation. When what did he encounter? Not just one, not two, but dozens of dragons. There in the flashing light stormed dragons, gold and silver, writhing dragons as he described them. To which the incredulous western audience asked the deadly question, wait a minute Rinpoche, this is hard for us to understand. Are you saying that dragons are real? And he replied matter of factly, surprised almost that the question was even asked. I mean, we have them in Tibet. Don't you have them here? People who deny the existence of dragons, says Ursula K. LaGuin, are often eaten by dragons from within. And Tolkien said something to the effect of dragons aren't real in the same way that fish aren't real. So forget for a moment the modern western mind that wants to categorize everything as real or unreal. There's going to be a whole lot more on that in an upcoming episode. Forget for a moment the programming that says that a discussion on dragons is a discussion about the existence or non-existence of a 30 or 40 or 50 foot winged lizard. And let us assume that yes, the dragon is a category of the real, that in the spirals and coils of faceted regenerating natural serpentine relationships, a being resides. And that being can be described as a tangible reptilian creature that resides in the world's clouds and the world's deeps. And it can be described as a serpentine pattern present in the very fabric of creation. It can be described in a thousand ways. There are patterns at play in this universe of pattern that are monstrous, sublime, alluring, inviting, entraping, vivifying, regenerating. This life one could say is an ongoing navigation of inner and outer weather patterns and where there are weather patterns, there are dragons. Dragons in ancient China says David Hinton embodied the awesome force of change. A dragon was in constant transformation, writhing through all creation and all destruction, shaping itself into the 10,000 things tumbling through their traceless transformations. The dragon invites us into a different way of seeing, a way of seeing, coiling connections, and synchronous animacies, a way of seeing what can only be described as energy. For yes, the dragon is a lizard, a serpent, a distinct little bee, a guardian of springs, a sometimes benevolent, sometimes malevolent creature, and the dragon is the land itself. Merlin tells Arthur the dragon is everywhere. It is everything. What are you afraid of? I don't know. Shall I tell you what's out there? Yes, please. The dragon, a beast of such power, that if you were to see it whole, and all complete in a single glance it would burn you to sit-bills. Where is it? It is everywhere. It is everything. It scales, glisten in the bark of trees. Its roar is heard in the wind and its forked tongue strikes like. Like lightning, yes, I think. How can I. What, what shall I, must, must I. Do nothing. Be still, sweet. Rest in the arms of the dragon. Dream. Dream. Imagine as the dragon does. Imagine new worlds into being. In many, many traditions, the dragon, the hybrid lizard world serpent, is creator, land-shaper, geo-generator, fertility-bringer, inextricably linked with the land. It says Jeremy Narby in his book The Cosmic Serpent, a stunning number of creator gods are represented in the form of a cosmic serpent. Not only in Amazonia, Mexico and Australia, but in Sumer, Egypt, Persia, India, the Pacific, Crete, Greece and Scandinavia. These aren't storybook dragons. These are primal creation deities, vast as the land itself. Mythical serpents, says Narby, are often enormous. In the image from Benin, the serpent surrounds the entire earth. In Greek mythology, the monster serpent Typhon touches the stars with its head. Chwangsu says that the length of the great cosmic fishbird being is who knows how many thousand miles. Hindu mythology also provides an example of a serpent of immeasurable proportions, known as Shesha, a thousand-headed snake that floats on the cosmic ocean, while the twin creator beings Vishnu and Lakshmi recline in its coils. Ananta Shesha, the eternal world serpent, the primal potential power of creation itself, afloat on the infinite ocean. The sense that there is a dragon present right there in the creation process is expressed across many traditions. In one ancient Taoist creation story, Hintin tells us, "Primal emptiness separated into heaven and earth." That's how it all began, before long a pair of dragons emerged. Root, breath and lady, she voice. What beautiful names. The very core of creation born of two dragons. Quote, "The appearance of these dragons was the beginning of the ever-changing diversity of things we know as the cosmos. Turns out this very world is serpentine. The very patterns of creation can be described as a dragon, which can thrash and heave as chaos or can spiral into webs of profound support and strength. Depending on how it is met, how it is harnessed, how it is sung to, how it is fed." So the primal serpent, Shesha, born into a family of unruly serpent beings, calms himself over thousands of years of meditation and Brahma pleased with his devotion, offers this primal serpent the task of coiling himself into the other world and supporting the very earth. In many traditions, the dragon serpent that coiling regenerative pattern at the heart of the cosmos is the support of everything. In West African derived voodoo traditions, the serpent is named Dambala, says Leagordan, "In the beginning there was a vast serpent whose body formed 7,000 coils beneath the earth, protecting it from descent into the abysmal sea. Then the titanic snake began to move and heave its mask. form from the earth to envelop the sky. It scattered stars in the firmament and wound its taut flesh down the mountains to create riverbeds. It shot thunderbolts to the earth to create the sacred thunderstorms. From its deepest core it released the sacred waters to fill the earth with life. As the first rains fell a rainbow encompassed the sky and Dambala took her Ida Wedo as his wife and so they are forever linked the serpent and the rainbow. So sometimes creation is the result of the movements of a great primordial dragon serpent. Sometimes creation comes from the body of the dragon itself. The dragon body ruptures and the land is formed. In Near Eastern traditions Tiamat is split open creating the primal foundation of the cosmos. "Marduk split Tiamat like a shellfish into two parts. Half of her he set up and sealed it as the sky. He drew a line and made a crossbar. He established the upper waters and the lower waters. So the dragon, the great rainbow serpent, is associated with the body of the land and even more specifically with the movements that shaped the body of the land. With the fact that the land manifests in waves, worlds and convolutions, the upheaving of glacial marines, the tracks of grinding rocks, the churning of land over time. The dragon is visible in the shape of the land and invites us to deepen our relationship with cycles of movement, with regenerative patterns. For when you know its movements and its patterns you know something of land. We all agree," says Tyson Young Caporta, speaking of his extended Aboriginal community, that there are great serpents running through the living body of this land as threads binding us together in a patchwork quilt of biocultural diversity. And there are many traditions who know this about the land, who've seen the serpent in the land. Have you seen it? The serpent in the land. Have you seen the coales? This great dynamic serpentine water dragon. Have you felt the movement of silt and soil along ancient waterways as a great shedding and regeneration of serpent skin? Have you grok the bloodstream of the dragon in the patterns of estuaries and river basins and flood plains? Nyunar Elder Nolnannup speaks of the geologic and geographic interplay of the two great serpents of his region. "Well we call the one here in my dead's country the Wagar and we have a little song about it because it meets one that comes from the east of us and out in their language they call it Bimmera and Bimmera follows all the waterways to the coast and when it rains out there of course all the disturbance of the soil creates a reddish colour because of the oakers and the sand and all of that out on the inland country and then it runs to the sea to the ocean. As it's coming in it gets to a point where it crosses an ancient boundary and border of the inland people and it comes into the coast and upon reaching here it will at times render that piece of country at the confluence of the ocean and the river the major tributary that all this disturbed soils come in on it flattens the area because you have the great Wagar which can live in the ocean the salty water and then the Bimmera lives in the fresh and then there's times when the Wagarle can move into the fresh water and they flatten the landscape beautifully and one of the major tributaries that we have in W.A. in the south west I grew up from that it's called the Greno Flats today and we just simply know it as Bukhara in the language of the Nyunga people and when those two serpents meet each other in this ancient story they fight and they fight over the land and as they're doing that they're flattening the land and it's just beautiful the acres and acres of beautiful flat country I mean perfectly flat and then tiny little tributaries running through it that eventually feed back into the major water course that's flowing through that and making its way to the sea so there is a song and very few of our people know it but it goes Bimmera Banner Bimmera Banner Wagarle Banner Bimmera Banner Wagarle Banner Wagarle Banner Bimmera Banner Wagarle Banner Bimmera Banner Wagarle Banner Bimmera Banner and they're hitting each other. Flattening the soil and the Bimmera when the rain falls out on its country the Banner part is the soil and the acres mixing together and the rain falls and then it washes it all the way to the coast so when your major tributaries are at their highest flood level you have flots and the color of the country right across the tributary and then slowly it goes down and as it slowly goes down it leaves an apron on each side of the waterway and the people out on Yamaji country for the greener will call the way to the ocean on their own soil so it prevents fighting over country. The rainbow serpents the land shapers the water gatherers and water releases are tangible things they're not ideas they're struggle they're thrashing about changes land and leaves aprons of red soil they wriggle and ride they curve and twist they are felt in the movements of land in the interplay of waters over time in the serpentine flow of breath in the spiraling of consciousness they exist though sometimes these days they sleep sometimes they are just beneath the surface sometimes they are buried deep and sometimes they reveal enough of themselves that they can for just a moment perhaps be seen. Back there in 87 as a park ranger and I'm out at the place where my mam was conceived a big water hole and the people that other traditional owners of that water hole the message was they sang the spirit down when the tall ships came and left it way down under the ground and one day it would be sung back up again when there was an amicable arrangement between the new inhabitants and the old inhabitants and they would come together and this spirit would come back up again and I was working with Bruce I'll name him because I honor him and the spirit showed itself to him and I we went to a water hole together and as we're at that water hole we've just done the mundane things that rangers do we cleaned up the toilets we cleaned up around the fireplaces and emptied the rubbish bins and I was just driving back to pick up Bruce I was stunned to see this guy turn orange I mean it was shimmering and then red and then back to orange then yellow then green then blue then blue tinge of indigo and maybe violet I'm not sure I was that entranced and the first thing I did was look up and down and to the water to see if it was breaking the water because something in me was was looking for something real as I looked up and saw this huge eye that peacefulness came over me because I'd already said never near the river Merdo I was just so peaceful I heard a voice say hey it's okay settled down and as I settled down I watched in amazement at something I thought took a long long time but went just like that and it was this serpent and it slowly sank into the water in front of us because Bruce saw the look on my face he said and I just rolled up alongside him in the borewheel dry he dropped the mop and bucket he had and just stared at whatever he saw and later we compared notes and he saw the same as I did so I have seen the rainbow server but and to this day everywhere I go no matter whose country it is in relation to being Aboriginal I hear the old people singing in the background don't even know the language just completely transforms you into a person who knows without any shadow of doubt that the ancient Aboriginal dream is real you cannot call it the dream time because that only locks you into one part of it because the dreaming is not only now it's not only way back a long time ago it is also way out in the future and guess what it's all the places in between both of them and right here to now where exactly was the rainbow serpent in this story what was the extent of its body was it the pool of water was it the orange and yellow sky above was it the head breaking the surface of the water was it the eye was it all of it was it the meeting point of the perceiver and the being was it the stirred motion of the in-between spaces was at the pattern of that place that holy place was it dancing in all things that move in waves and that's the nature of this place and that's how that beautiful seven that everyone refers to as the rainbow seven belongs and it habits and it has a vibration because every single color has its own vibration the vibration of the sun which is the gamma ray on this end the vibration of the radio waves on this end and then of course you have the first of the color ultra violet and they all have their own vibration and then the next one is the infrared so you bought yourself to the color spectrum then the red the orange the yellow the green the blue the indigo and the violet and we live in that space and we call it Walden the rainbow if we see it at night we call it Walden and it's the very fabric of who we are the body of the serpent then can be seen in all of the wave like forms yes in all of the wave like forms the full vibrational spectrum of wave forms imagine every wave form in the cosmos has its own spiraling dragon the serpent and the rainbow the word for dragon in Chinese long comes from a root word that means bow says Veronica Strang that which is bent in the shape of a bow in the Kundalini traditions of India the primal serpent power is associated with the goddess whose name means the bent one this is a basic recognition of how energy how the power of nature manifests in bending arcing writhing waves the dragon is code for all that bends and bows and so the dragon is everywhere why is the world so often spoke of in draconic in serpentine terms because the world is serpentine it moves it spirals it is dynamic it is one but made up of facets it sheds and regenerates it unglates and as it unglates its facets shimmer culture upon culture holds this vision of serpentine world beings scaled feathered or mirrored fractal or reflective circling spiraling creator energies the dragon exemplified in so much cave art and so many artistic visionings as what as a wavy line this isn't a world of straight lines this isn't a world of just spacious stable nothingness it is a world of dynamism and that dynamism expresses in waves so the serpent is there in the vastest galactic spirals in constellations like drako which spirals around the pole star like a dragon clutching a pearl and it is there in the tiniest weaving threads of creation in the atomic and cellular matrix itself so at the deepest most intimate tiniest heart of reality there's not nothing there is a dragon trembling there is something serpentine hissing rattling with vibration unfolding in patterned scales there is life in the most basic cellular processes of life there is a dragon rising from Narby quote the connections with DNA are obvious and work on all levels DNA is indeed shaped like a long single and double serpent or a wick of twisted flags it is a double vital force that develops from one to several and its place is water that's why bodies of water is so important Josh you know you look at a body of water actually when we get to a body of water we actually throw a pebbling our people would always throw a pebble the pebble actually breaks an assemblage and as the water becomes corralled you have some electromagnetic activity taking place then when you have the complete body that's the body of the serpent and when you've got the body of the serpent you've got the serpents attention and then what you do is we call it mary waga you for the young ones they wipe their brow and get the sweat off their brow and under their armpits then they pick up some little bits of mud and they wipe the brow and under arm and then wash their hands in the water and that puts their DNA into the water and when it's one complete body and assemblage that's the serpent it knows you and when you do it again guess what it knows you're back and if you've got someone with you that's completely different to what it's already got recorded then it knows there with you and the correct protocol is to talk to that great wha-bh and let it know that you're just here to learn don't do any harm please keep us safe that's the sort of thing we we connect to and that's why the rainbow serpent is so big in our lives and now we don't need imagination because I've seen it it is real and and when you see it I mean you know I can't explain it it's just the honor of being born and being a human because it's so deeply spiritual and then every answer you need to your questions just comes flowing through and just by being there and sitting and reflecting and your mind says oh I need to know and understand this there it is stride a what across the world the dragon the rainbow serpent the moe all the anaconda is deeply associated with the water cycle and here's where the modern mind latches onto something it can hold on to and says I've got it the serpent is a metaphor for the water serpent lore is hydrology and that's a nice start, but it's not quite it. And I'm not an expert on this, but I'll say perhaps that the river can be part of the expression of what the serpent is, of the body of the serpent, and sometimes the serpent appears as the spectral play of the water of the river, and sometimes the serpent is faster than the river. It's the whole set of relationships that feed in and out of the river, and the song sung to it, and the stories told of it, the whole charged vibration of it, the river and all it is, over the river of time. Across the world in culture upon culture, the waterways have been associated with serpentine beings, with dragons, with lizards, with snakes. Genius Loki, the spirits of place, were depicted in the ancient Mediterranean as serpents, places where such spirits were known to be strong, were marked with serpent imagery. Geniolochi cum serpente, the inscription red, to the spirit of the place with the serpent, the place of the gathering waters, was the serpent's place, and it's not just the Mediterranean, European dragons, guard, springs, naga's dwell at the bottoms of lakes. Mo'ol, reptilian dragon beings in Hawaiian tradition are associated with bodies of water. Mo'ol often translated as dragons, with their shining iridescent perlescent scales. Mo'ol with green and yellow scales. Mo'ol with scales that are weapons, scales that are medicine. Beings of water that are not just water themselves, but are often visible, like so many dragons are, in jagged landscape features. Have you seen them, in the play of the light in the water, in the writhing forms of the lava rock? There's one who hangs out at Nuanupali Cliff on a wahu, says Maria Lohelani Brown. The scales above his right eye are red, and those above his left are black. When placed on someone else's eye, the red scales allow that person to see what is far away. They're everywhere when you start looking, mo'ol with detachable tails that can be used as weapons, or bestowed as gifts. Sometimes you can even find them surfing in the bay, like Kalamai Nuhu, a surfing water dragon whose surfboard is her own lizard tongue. How metal is that? These reptilian beings are multifaceted in nature. They are powerful. They give life, but they also take life. They are generous, but they also hoard and keep. They flow, but sometimes they restrict flow. The paradoxical nature of serpentine beings, which is very close to the paradoxical nature of water itself, is important in understanding dragon and serpent myths. In her book on mo'ol, Maria Lohelani Brown speaks of the nature of these reptilian beings, like any other class of deities. Reptilian beings' interactions with humans may be helpful, or harmful, or both. Because mo'ol are freshwater deities. When investigating them, we should keep the life giving and death-dealing properties of water in mind. Because as a collective, they embody most, if not all, of its attributes. Mo'ol, also, like water, are shape-shifters. They can, in a limited capacity, change their forms to suit their moods or aims. They can be beneficent or malevolent. Protect us, nourish us, seduce us, or destroy us. Mo'ol are powerful, unpredictable, and awe-inspiring. A few mo'ol do have a water-related form, such as fog, mist, a rainbow, a kind of rain, or the power to control clouds or water. As a rule, their relationship with water is most evident in terms of where they live. Significantly, mo'ol are generally associated with specific bodies of water, or damp places, and attributed with distinct dispositions that tend to parallel these locations. And I want to highlight one thing she said there. Reptilian interactions can be helpful, or harmful, or both. This is important because it gets us out of the binary question, are dragons good or evil, and into a more nuanced understanding. The dragons, serpent beings, reptilian water spirits are as textured and multifaceted as the world itself. "Tradition holds that when you come across a body of fresh water in a secluded area, and everything is eerily still, you should not linger, for you have stumbled across the home of a mo'ol. When the plants are yellowed and the watered covered with a greenish yellow froth, the mo'ol is at home. If so, you should leave quickly, lest the mo'ol make itself known to you to your detriment. It might eat you, or take you as a lover, either way you're doomed because it will consume you completely." Yes, mo'ol, naga, dragons, yakaruna are not always out for our best interest. In the Amazon, Stephen Byer tells us, they say that, quote, "when fishermen do not return, when husbands disappear, when young girls do not come home at night or become mysteriously pregnant, the answer is clear. They've been seduced and abducted by the erotic creatures of the uncanny depths. Dragons have mood, dragons have temperament. There are dragons of many dispositions just as there are people of varying disposition. Just as there are many ways the spirals of the world express, and there are places that are ferocious, and places gentle and sweet, and there are gentle and sweet seeming places that hide a deeper ferocity. An encounter with a dragon can be many things. Some meet dragons and leave bearing great treasure. Others do not leave unscathed. Just as it is in the world, we encounter this world of great treasure, and we do not leave unscathed. The dragon is all the paradoxical textures of this world of waves. So the world in great dragon creation myths is described as serpents, as dragon, not simply because its spirals and coils and sheds and regenerates. It is described as serpentine because it is dangerous, paradoxical, both beautiful and terrifying, often at once. There is a beauty to deep water, there is a peril to deep water. The world, nature, the animate power is beautiful, and it is terrifying. The world serpent, you may have encountered this, the world serpent has a forked tongue. It has two sides. It gives us life, and it devours us. The world, like a vast, jawed serpent, will swallow us too. And sometimes we love this beautiful shimmering world, this terrifying world, this ecstatic world, this devouring world. Sometimes we love it, and sometimes when it presents its devouring side, we don't like it very much. So yes, there is a reason the primal creator destroyer being that is the very spiraling dynamism of the world is seen as reptilian rather than, say, a cuddly little mammal. There is a reason it is not the world mouse, or the world marmit, or the world beaver. It is the world dragon, the world serpent. Because nature is not just beautiful and warm and cozy and familiar. Yes, it is familiar in that we recognize that the base of our brains and the core of our spirit, in the deep of our dreams, we recognize it. We recognize something reptilian. We recognize life. We recognize the world of constantly spiraling patterns. We recognize the world you could say through deep ancestral lizard eyes. But that reptilian soul of the world is frightening. It is us but not quite us. We are it but not quite it. It is other in the same way reptilian things, cold blooded creatures are other to us. It is so familiar this world. We are so inextricably part of it. Our bodies made of it, our lives expressions of its fractal scale patterns. And yet it is also other. It is deep, cold. Unflinching in its commitment to death and devouring. The rivers rise in Texas. Dozens are swept away. It is a tragedy. Children swept away. This is the paradox of the world dragon. The paradox of nature, the great devourer and the great giver. This world is a monster. The world is reptilian in its cruelty. You ever seen footage of a snake swallowing a mouse or a hamster? And because of the shape of the unhinged jaw, the snake has what looks to be a smile on its face. The hamster's limbs are all split out helpless as it's being slowly digested and the snake is smiling. Nature is a cold, blooded killer. Who will kill eventually every single one of us? This world dragon sweeps away lives by the millions. That's what it does. The births us out of its own coiling body, expresses us as its own individuated scales, allows us to witness the beauty in its fractal expressions, gives us voices to sing back to it, and serpentine nervous systems to feel all that's scaly nuances, and then it sheds its skin. Destroy us as we know us and recycles us and makes way for something new. This is the monster. This is the dragon, teamont, terrifying and beautiful. So there are beautiful dragons and there are monster dragons, and there are dragons both monstrous and beautiful. There are dissonant dragons that clash and thunder, and there are clashing dragons who struggle and strife brings deeper balance. This battle in the countryside proclaims the E.J., their blood and black and yellow, colors of heaven and earth. To stare into the reptilian eyes of the dragon is to stare into the abyss of nature itself. The roaring abyss, and the roar of the dragon is all the groans that have ever left and at lips. The winds of ecstasy and groans of pain, it is the roar of the cosmos, the roar of the generative and consuming fires of a world in which all things, one day, flame out and die. Why are dragons feared in some traditions? Because the world is frightening. Time is frightening. What do we do when faced with the reality, the awesome reality of time? For the dragon, the serpent is time. How could it not be? It is all things that spiral and time surely spirals. In the Mesoamerican tradition says David Bowles, Omatéotl, the Lord of time in his spirit form, is a dragon-like fire serpent whose coiling body matched the circular cycling of the ages. Eventually, as the complex wheels of time were deciphered, he would establish the two calendars that govern life in Mesoamerica, solar and sacred years, interlocking, ever-turning. The dragon called time keeps turning, keeps churning, keeps swirling, keeps weaving. As past, present and future are braided together. Through time all of this is braided together. This web of relationships, these patterns of being, this serpent spine of life. Hawaiian cultural practitioner Kanani Atan quotes Kaileohe Kamekua as saying this about the mole, about the dragon. The mole dragon is a representative of time. It begins in tomorrow, the dawn that has yet to come. The eyes of the dragon look for a star to fix upon, always searching for guidance for the family. The front feet of the dragon are not all pure, the young children of the family. Always restless, always changing position, always in motion. The middle feet of the dragon are the parents, Kamakua, the solid force of the family. The providers of food, the home, the ones that take care of the young. Then there are the high feet of the dragon, Nakupuna, the grandparents. Behind the kupuna is Kaivi, the bone or the ancestors, who have passed out of body. They help the family in ways beyond the physical realm, caring and protecting and guiding from the spiritual side of the rainbow. Each position is in preparation for the next position. Each person is a small part of the whole, yet each part is integral and necessary for the whole to be complete. I love this vision. The eyes of the dragon looking for a star to fix upon. Do you feel it? The spiraling dragon of ancestry. Of time. I heard Uncle Samka I speak of this great dragon. Its front feet roving. Its long tail winding across the ocean, across the vast Pacific, deep into the place of memory. But unless you have eldership, parental guidance, that foundation that comes with the middle part of the dragon, then the front feet simply churn forward for the sake of churning forward. There's no anchor, no stability. With the long tail of ancestral connection, of slow wisdom, the dragon is rudderless, frenetic, roving this way in that, progress for the sake of progress. A modern world built to amplify the hungars of the young and eager, but to give them no direction other than to funnel them into endless consumption, or send them out onto battlefields to die, or get trapped in cycles of relentless forward movement because that's all the front feet know how to do. If we focus on one part of the dragon body, at the expense of another, if we focus on the consuming mouth without the anchoring tail, or the quick front feet without the steadier middle feet, or the ever seeking eyes without the body to back it up, then the pattern is disrupted. Law gets upended, and all kinds of unbalanced energetics ensue, all kinds of roving algorithms thrashing about like a severed gecko's tail. For the dragon, the rainbow serpent, the Australian Aboriginal traditions will tell us, is law itself. The dragon is law. It is the dynamic architecture of the cosmos through which nature expresses and responds in cycles. The serpent, says Tyson Young Caporta, became the law in the land, which we understand as a flow that governs the complexity of right relations in living systems. Right relations in living systems, so that if there is overstep or violation of law, the serpent's coils respond. They arc back stronger. They thrash more violently, and there are repercussions. There are geologic disruptions, communal disruptions, internal disruptions. This is not so much the sign of an evil dragon appearing out of nowhere to threaten us, and much more of an indication that we have crossed a line. We have failed to honor the cycles and spirals of nature. The fractal scale pattern of law. And now there needs to be a rebalancing. We have subdued a dragon that is rising up now, more pronounced than before. The coils of the serpent are the wave pattern of cause and effect. You feel me? Have you met the great dragon of karma? This great snarling dragon of cause and effect had King Kodmos begging for a return to balance. In the end, Kodmos who sowed the teeth of a slain dragon, a monster's war dragon of aries into Mediterranean soil, and then somehow expected that the family lines that sprouted from those teeth would be anything other than monsters. And after those family lines exhausted themselves in spirals of conflict and war and pain. Kodmos begged the gods to turn him into a dragon. You hear the dragon in that story hissing. You hear its warning. You hear its fire. The coils of a story. The ark, the spirals of story. This too is the dragon. For the dragon, beloveds is story. And story is a living dragon. In Hawaiian tradition, the word for story. And in particular, lore, myth, story of the ancestors and the gods, this type of story is mo'olelo, which can be translated quite directly as dragon talk, lizard speak, snake-ish as they say in Estonia. Here's Kanani again, speaking the words of Kaili Ohi Kamehakuha, describing how the dragon spirals through story, through all aspects of cultural life. To understand how important this dragon is to our family, we see how it is used in our language. Mo'olelo are history and traditions. Mo'oleo are pathway. Mo'okuo ho are genealogy chance. Mo'opuna are descendants. Mo'awini, a vision and mo'ovaivui to keep an account of something. So Mo'okov is all parts of our lives. We are Mo'ol. So you see, says David Hinton, in his forward to the e-chang, we are descended from dragons. We have dragon hearts pumping dragon blood, dragon minds thinking dragon thoughts. This is our story, and story is a living dragon. Story arises from the primal spirals of the world, from the undilant voice of the winds and waters, from the hissing, frothing, tumbling wave story of the world itself, and then the story itself has a serpentine body. The body of the story is a dragon body. The story is not static. It is a story of vibrational unfolding, of sound waves whispered from mouth to ear. Do you hear the dragon here now in this story? Sound waves that make waves in the waters of the bodies that hear the stories. Waves that shift how we think, feel, and see, and the story adapts. It sheds its skin. It shifts and changes over generation and transforms to meet the needs of each generation before it. Each generation it encounters. Yes, the serpent is story. Just as the serpent is song. Songs, says Pierre de laage, describing the song traditions of the Charanava in the Amazon. Songs are coils of the Anaconda. The Anaconda, in some Amazonian visions, holds the place of world-sirpent creator and is sometimes translated as. Dragon. The great Anaconda, whose very coils are songs. Songs repeating in spiral pattern, in choruses of coils. Songs repaterning ritual spaces in rhythmic spirals. Repaterning consciousness in rhythmic spirals. Rebalancing ecology in rhythmic melodic spirals. Spiraling our hearts down and in up and out, gathering in, spiraling out. When the song is sung, it is the serpent itself singing. It is vibration itself singing. Quote, "When the shaman sing, it is yubei, the great serpent. A multiplicity of yubei, a multiplicity of cosmic dragons singing through with the shaman." Quote, "According to some Shippeebo-Kanibo-Shamonic songs, the universe itself originated when the Anaconda sang the designs it has on its skin. Inceflating their existence as a fundamental graphic musical power. This is the dragon. This is the great pattern of the world serpent. Do you hear this pattern singing? Do you see it? Heming, hoeing, twisting, breathing. The Anaconda says, "Yahar-Kani" is the mother of all the Shippeebo designs and is seen as a path covered with designs. A path covered with designs. The path stretched out before you. This path of harmonic patterns, of encounters and relationships and practices and openings and closings and gatherings together, do you see the winding dragon path of life? For the dragon is pattern and patterns come from the dragon. Among the Shippeebo says Stephen Byer, the designs painted on their bodies, homes, boats, tools, household goods and clothing, our sacred patterns derived from a cosmic Anaconda whose skin embodies all possible designs. Oh, artists, oh singers, oh, stitches, oh, weavers, do you see the great cosmic dragon serpent whose skin embodies all possible designs? The beautiful book of Shippeebo patterns, the Kunna-Sikati-Kirika speaks of the patterns that come from the Anaconda and names the Anaconda as the dragon. Quote, "The Ronin Kunna is the design of the dragon or the immense serpent, that according to the sage's ancient stories and visions lives in the depths of the waters and is the guardian of different places such as ravines, whirlpools or lakes. The Ronin Kunna, the dragon designs, symbolize the spiritual and energetic vibration of rivers, lakes and streams, providing us with the understanding that the waters are also alive, that they have thought, soul and consciousness, and that they also have an owner, a guardian, with the mestizos of the Peruvian Amazon designated as their mother. Ronin dragons are claimed to have beautiful Kunna designs on their bodies, so we know that they are an animal with an almost sacred spiritual force. The designs on their bodies have inspired Shippeebo artists since ancient times. Shippeebo professor Eli Sanchez Pakan-Mani speaks of the Anaconda, the Ronin, and the gifts it brings in the form of song and medicine and knowledge of Kunna or pattern. He was recognizing the power of the snake and the serpents around the world as these very, very powerful beings, like that marvelous creature. This creature is so powerful, they feel it so powerfully that he must live, he must exist for real. It's not just a feeling, it's a real being. For the Shippeebo, it's a very powerful spirit and more than just a spirit, it is an actual being. And so one must be prepared to see it and to be with it, because if you're not prepared, you can take you by surprise and if there's fear, then you're not going to be able to see it and be with it. And then another dimension to connect to the Anaconda, the Ronin, is through what, you know, it's Spanish they call "Jetta", San Mani and Shippeebo, where you establish that connection with the spirit of a tree. Through doing this diet, which is the spirit of like fasting abstinence, you can get in contact with the Ronin directly and it becomes your teacher. He goes on to speak of varieties of Ronin being, one who lives in the bamboo, one who guards the earth, and one who lives in the deep waters. And that's what I forgot a little bit to say that this is a river that is in the world of the waters, but also in the sub-water, in the bottom of the waters, the sea of rivers, the depth of the cars of the waters. This is the Anacondas that lives in the water and in the deep, deep water, and it's one that they can hear at the very early morning, three-four in the morning when they go fishing, and they can connect to it because their ancestors went for the "I've done this diet, so they have the connection to it." And if it's around, it means that it's like bringing fish for them, you know, it's gathering the fish for them. For the unprepared, the Ronin, like Merlin's dragon, can be too powerful to grasp, too powerful to see. But when a relationship is slowly built with it over time and through discipline, the Anaconda transmits knowledge of the patterns of life, through the designs on its skin, which are seen in visions, through songs, and through knowledge of plants that bestow their own knowledge of the pattern of life. How can this connection be connected to the one that is supreme? Thanks to the Anaconda, there were shown a plant called the Kunowaster, that is a plant that teaches you and connects you with what they were called the "Nutter", like the realm of the Kunow. Yeah, the Wasters are very interesting little plants, they're little like rhizome, and you've got a bunch of them and they all look the same from the outside, they're all just weeds, but then you have to know which is which, because these little rhizome then will teach you something different. And there's one that teaches you designs that you can drink it, you can put it in your eyes, they would put it in the belly button as well, and it connects you to the patterns. And that is a gift of the Anaconda, that comes through the Anaconda. That's a gift of the Anaconda. It's their life to know the Kunow, it's like what they should live for, it's to understand the Kunow. The Kunow is like a form, it's the form of writing in the sense of like it's an expression of life. The pattern of creation. The gift of the Anaconda in this vision is knowledge of the foundational patterns of nature that manifest as song, as design, as medicine. Knowledge of the great mystery. When we see the sun, our view is not the chance to see what color it is, how is the body? It reflects absolutely. And so, until that power has this sun. When once is a sun, an Anaconda, we can't really see it with our eyes, it's hiding itself from us, it's glowing, and we can't grasp its actual pattern and its color and like the beauty of it. And so, the Kunow is like a transformation of this pattern that we can't fully grasp and that we get to see individual space, individuals. So, the Kunow is the outward facing manifestation of a spiritual pattern that is so vast and mysterious that we can't see it with our eyes. This understanding of the dragon as pattern, the carrier of pattern, the inspirer of the patterns that inform understandings of the structure of the cosmos and ecology, and provide the blueprint for the harmonic musical navigation of nature and of life. This understanding is not limited to the Amazon basin. In the Taoist Shamanic traditions, what is known as the River Diagram. The diagram that outlines the blueprint of creation, the progenitor to the trigrams of the eaching, arises from the yellow river as a pattern on the back of a dragon. The River Diagrams, as Kunow was born by a dragon horse that emerged from the yellow river. This dragon water horse appears to the ancient sage King Fushi himself a divine being with a serpent's body. It was our first ancestor, says Hinton, who created the hexagrams. More dragon than human, his thoughts were almost indistinguishable from natural process itself. So when he shaped them into the hexagrams, those strange dragon graphs expressed all phenomena in the endless process of change. So that River Diagram, those dragon graphs, carry with them what? Knowledge of the energetics of heaven and earth, of mountain and lake, of wind and thunder, of fire and abysmal water. But more so, knowledge of their cycles, their wave movements, the shape of the land, the knowledge of openings and closings, of breakings and reassemblings, of risings and fallings. This is the gift of the dragon. To everything, there is a season. To understand to know how energy moves in cycles. That is, dragon knowledge, knowledge of life. Quote, "These lines were alive." Like dragons and the cosmos itself, the hexagram lines were in constant transformation. And so the invitation of the dragon power is knowledge of the specifics of earthly change. The actual intersecting diplomacy of animate relationships. These dragon patterns, these hexagrams, quote, contain the secrets of civilization. Applying those secrets, root breath, the primal dragon taught people how to hunt and fish, how to keep livestock and cook with fire. Using the hexagrams, they taught people about bow and arrow, plow and boat, pottery and markets. And finally, writing. All of these in this understanding are dragon gifts. The gifts of understanding primal scale pattern, and how they map onto family and community, how they inform how to channel water and grow food. And how they invite us to understand and align our lives to the changing seasons. I'm not speaking figuratively here about the power of the recognition of the pattern of the seasons. More than one empire has fallen because it literally didn't understand the seasons. Because its leaders misjudged the Rasputitza, the time of spring mud, or they sailed too deep into the season of the Protestant winds. More than one political party has found her because it didn't know the middle feet of its own dragon body from its front feet. Which aspects of its pattern body should shift and which should remain the same. More than one intentional community has crumbled because it understood love as an abstract. But not the patterned dragon discipline of love because it couldn't see that the communal rules are also the pattern of the dragon. Also, the river diagram. All this is river knowledge, water knowledge, dragon knowledge. Hutsa identifies nine spirals in the deep waters and then demonstrates three of them in his own body. These spirals are how animate power moves through individual bodies, through communities, and through society. To know in ourselves, in our social movements, in our rituals. To know when is time for gathering and when for dispersal. When is time for provocation and when is time for slow persistence and gentle cultivation. This is dragon knowledge. This is knowledge of spirals and coils. This is knowledge of the nine dragons of the water. In times of urgency, we might fool ourselves into thinking urgency is the only power. And urgency is a powerful dragon indeed. And comes clothed in language about how in such times it is the only possible valid expression of power. And so it feasts on itself until it becomes its own monstrous thing. Ever seeking out greater urgency, magnifying urgency. Until wellness becomes urgency, spirituality becomes urgency. Activism becomes urgency, politics becomes urgency, change itself becomes conflated with urgency. But truly understanding dragon patterns, dragon changes, means understanding, yes, the impelling power is one of the powers in play. but we also must understand the full river diagram. of powers. It means understanding the gentle permeating power, the slowly penetrating power, the power that delivers insight through warmth, the yielding power, the power of resourcing in deep dark places, the evaporating power of rising mist and open waters, the persisting power, the slowly filling from the bottom up power. Remember that one, the binding power, the budding power, the combustive power, the crystallizing power, the power that comes as the eaching says through honoring the river of ghosts on whose edge we stand. Each of these are the intricately articulated scales of the rising dragon. This is the balance of power and it translates everywhere. The changes you see in nature, it says the aids of follow the course. The four seasons behave in a regulated way. In truth, all human matters follow the principles of heaven and earth. What more is there for me to say? This is the gift of the dragon to understand how energy moves. Energy, power and what it asks of us and what we must offer back to it. How it arouses us in eros, how it gushes forth as art, as all the serpentine variations of artistic expression over the generations. In ancient China, as Marlo Brooks, creativity was known as the dragon's power. And who will handle this power? This serpentine power. Who will funnel it, channel it, receive it, pass it on? Who will interpret the patterns of its endless display? In many traditions, it is the shamanic figure, the priestess, the oracle, the wizard, the druid, the mage, who has access to the dragon power, who receives of it and harnesses it and channels it and issues it forth again. So this serpent dragon power fires the visions of the seers and saturates the ceremonies of the healers with potent medicine from the Amazon to the Mediterranean. The Pythia, the Pythaneses, the snake oracles at Delphi arose from the body of a slain serpent and drank the waters of an ancient dragon's brain. The serpent power sent them into states of a regular visioning. He almost, the ancient Greek seer, was raised by serpents who fed him honey from their mouths, serpent nectar that gave him prophetic vision. The dragon serpent winds its way through ancient Greece, embedded in land, emergent in waters, tracing a patterned path back through dianician trans rituals, through numerous shape-shifting serpent gods, all the way back to bear breasted manoeun goddesses, who stand fierce and tall, wielding serpents in their bare hands like lightning, like life, like the power of all that unjulates. In deep oracle caves, Mediterranean seers listened for the voice of the dragon. I went to one such cave last summer, high on the ridges of Mount Parnasos, a nymph cave where seers would journey to be possessed by serpentine beings. And if you saw what I saw there, if you stepped across that threshold into that cave of winding water pools, into that echoing cave, into that shimmering cave, where still now water is slowly dripping, where still now the great earth is breathing, you would not be able to describe it in any other way. It was a dragon. I mean literally, a dragon. I'll post some pictures of it for you. It was a dragon. Have you seen it? The dragon. There are those that are willing and able to stare into the eyes of the dragon. Sometimes it is through no choice of their own. Sometimes it is at a great cost, yet they emerge, bearing a power that can both hurt and heal. Yes, potent and powerful serpents have long been associated with healing. And if you think that sounds strange, look no further than the side of an ambulance. And there it is in plain sight, the serpent of healing, the serpent of ascrapius. Ascrapius greaked God of healing who learned the art of medicine from who, from a serpent that bore a medicinal herb in its mouth. So the ascrapian symbol, the symbol for healing, is one serpent coiled around a central rod. Sometimes you see another symbol associated with medicine too. The caduceus of hermies. This is because in the 19th century, the two were mistakenly conflated, and the caduceus came to be used by many American medical institutions, while the World Health Organization and most European institutions retained the staff of ascrapius. And this is interesting simply because while ascrapius rules healing, hermies rules different things like commerce. So do these medical serpent signs indicate that we are more dedicated to gods of healing or more dedicated to gods of commerce? You decide. But back to ascrapius and his serpents. Ascrapius is depicted bearing a serpent staff in twined with serpents, and sometimes in the form of ascrapius himself. Ovid describes how ascrapius healed Rome from plague while in the form of a great serpent. And this can seem paradoxical to modern minds. After all, snakes are often venomous. Snakes hurt. Snakes kill. Snakes, even if we don't see them as bad or evil, are often things we want to keep a little bit of distance from, right? Why would snakes be associated with healing? And perhaps it's something about slow regenerative cycles over time. Perhaps it's something about shedding skin and emerging renewed. Something about how understanding patterns and cycles and the true pace and rhythm of the spirals of change is a big part of understanding what healing is. Perhaps it's also about that paradoxical place where poison and nectar meet. For what we call medicine has never been comfortable. It's never been simply sweet. It's always involved a little bit of the thing that hails us. You know that place, the place where venom and honey meet, that serpentine place of ecstasy, that place that can only be described as medicine. In the Shippewa anaconda traditions, the pattern of the anaconda is not simply art. It is medicine. It is a medicine pattern and healing happens through understanding, pattern and through deliberate, meticulous, repaterning. So perhaps what we call healing has a lot to do with a true understanding of regenerative patterns and cycles. In the Amazonian Katochina healing traditions, the knowledge of plants and plant medicines are also deeply tied to the serpent, says Egylene Genima, "The shamanic plants belong to the snakes. They were the ones who instituted them in the world as "rawl," that is medicine." In this vision the medicine patterns come from the serpent who is the holder of all patterns. And the person who has knowledge of plant medicine is called a serpent themselves, a shaman snake. who holds the knowledge and who often became a shaman through a direct serpent encounter. In some Amazonian traditions says Elsi lagrou, "To become either a shaman or a prayer healer, a man must encounter a snake that reveals the secrets of healing. Whether while hunting on the way home or gathering shellfish, the snake appears in a man's path, causing strange sensations in his body. Changes in smell. The body comes to smell like a snake. Blurred vision, dizziness and chills. These encounters with snakes are interpreted as an election, an indication that the person has been chosen to hold the knowledge of healing. The size of the snake seems to determine the amount of secrets it can reveal, and whether the man can act as a shaman or a prayer healer. So the anaconda in these traditions is seen as the first shaman. The pattern power of creation that brings knowledge of song pattern, ritual pattern, story pattern, vision pattern, healing pattern, plant pattern, knowledge of life force through its scales, through its regenerative skin. Snakes, says Ruth Lopez, and especially boeds, aquatic and terrestrial, are a manifestation of the primordial shone. According to mythology, they touch the stone of immortality, and the fact that they can shed their skin proves this immortality. Their skin, in fact, is highly valued and strongly linked to shamanic knowledge. The powers, knowledge and healing chance are accessible through their skin. Power is distributed through the snake skin, through knowledge of the patterns of the anaconda. The power comes through the skin, sometimes through the anaconda blood, sometimes the power even comes through snake spit. Yes, I've heard of Amazonian sages who do a deata of symbolic or actual serpent saliva in order to receive those medicine patterns, those strong songs. When you were talking about the Ronin deata, is that a deata through particular plants that are sacred to the Ronin, or you had mentioned like the saliva, or is it through Ronin's songs, or what would that deata be? Drinking its saliva would be the most direct manner to connect to it. It's hard to get though, if he's the procurator. But I'll just say, you know, before you go, jumping on that snake saliva deata as the next wellness optimization kick, qualified professionals only please. Because in many traditions, to go down the dragon path, the serpent path is serious business. The path of access to nature's innermost coils, to nature's deepest patterns of powers is not for everyone. Says Elsie Lagrue, quote, "Because the powerful singer has become you, Bay, become the ancestor and spirit owner of the anacondas, his sweat is dangerous for his own kin, especially for his wife and children who could become ill if he touched them without taking a bath after the ritual." So the serpent is power, and it's not a power for everyone to mess with. Just as not everyone wants to be a snake handler when they grow up. Though perhaps these days in certain circles, everyone fancies themselves a snake handler. Just as everyone fancies themselves a shaman, but it has always taken deep protocol to handle that power. It has taken protocol and it has never been an easy road. And the power exacts its toll on those who stare into the dragon's eyes. And this is how we can bring this coil of the story to a close before unfurling the next, with the simple understanding that we began with, that the dragon, the serpent is power. The serpent is the power of a dynamic, unrelating, moving, spiraling cosmos. It is present in all things that move in cycles. Cycles of birth, growth, renewal, cycles of violence, of trauma, of pain. And therefore it is beautiful and terrifying, nourishing and destructive all it wants. It is the power of life, the hiss of death, the arrows of all that undulates and all that stands straight. It is lightning and the moisture after. It is seed bearing, it is skin shedding, it is deep biting, it is winding, winding life. The iterations of dragon and serpent story carry all the nuance and texture of how human beings have interacted with the world, with the power of the cosmos, with the pattern of creation. Dragon as healer, dragon as killer, dragon as possessor, dragon as liberator, dragon as hoarder or as freer. The charged and difficult relationship many traditions have had with the dragon or the serpent can be attributed to the fact that serpent myths are ultimately about the force of life. The primal power, the charged Kundalini of the cosmos and how it is understood, how it is met, how it is handled, how it is embraced, revered, or how it is shunned, subdued or sent away. For once we understand the dragon as real, dynamic, present, tangible power, the question then becomes how do we relate, how do we interact with this beautiful, terrifying, nourishing, destructive, creative power. Do we ignore it, pretend it is not real, turn a deaf ear to the voice that calls from the wind and waters and lose much of the knowledge of how to navigate the actual power patterns of the world and in consigning them to sleep have we already set forth the future of inevitable upheaval as those sleeping dragons one day wake. How are we in the face of life's great spirals? How are we before the dragon, terrifying and beautiful? Do we separate out its terrifying aspects from its beautiful ones and vilify the ones that are terrifying? Do we see the waves of the world, the cycles of joy and pain in the world as evil? Do we imagine or strive for a state of being that takes us beyond spirals and coils? Do we long for something true and eternal and then in our urgent grasping for that far off place? Do we set off new spirals, new dragons, new cycles, new world pools of fate? How do we meet the dragon? Once we recognize it as power, do we seek to hold it, capture it, harness it? Move it, send it, flying up our spines until it erupts out our skulls into ten thousand petals of light. And wow, that felt awesome. I want more of that. I want to share that with everyone. I could probably catch that fleeting serpent in a basket and charge passers-by for a glimpse of it. So do we extract it, commodify it, dress it up in scaly sequin dresses and pimped it for our gain? What do we do with the serpent power? The power that spirals across time, now surging, now dying, now rushing together and longing, now divided by hate. Now urgently arising, now lying and waiting. Can you see the dragon, the great waterkeeper and the great water liberator, in humanity's ongoing revolutions of freedom and restraint? Yes, there is a dragon there too. For the serpent is not just power in some abstract sense. It is patterned power. Power that is deeply patterned, it is the patterns of history, the patterns of family. These are dragons of great intricacy. What if all your patterns are dragons? And all your patterns together form one great dragon, so that it's not so easy to separate out the patterns that help versus those that hinder? The patterns that liberate versus those that bind. There are patterns, there are dragons that possess the Chinese traditions say, and there are also dragons that free us from possession. Both in certain understandings are dragons. And so it's not as easy as saying all dragons are to be slayed. But then it's also not as easy as saying all dragons are to be embraced. Not all dragons are to be embraced. For right now in this world there is a snarling monstrous dragon of fascism rising. I've heard its dank breath on the collective here, whispering false patterns into permeable brains. There is a dragon of ideological patterns so beguiling. There is a dragon long scorn that would like nothing more than to open its mouth and spit fire at lay waste. There are fire dragons and there are dragons that shine with irresistible light and that shimmer like schools of flying fish leaping at noon tide. Yes, there is the shining, flashing dragon of all you've exposed your eyes to in the past month of what are its scales. Some craters and vacation destinations, protests and memorials, unending litneys of takes upon takes upon takes, so many dragons, so many patterns, so many coils. How do we meet them? How do we interact with the patterns of power? We'll look into this deeply in the next episode. All the many ways that human beings have met the dragon, serpent power. Some have shunned it, subdued it, sought to slay it, others revered it, adored it, sought to understand it. So many ways that human beings have met the world. For the world, beloved, the world is the dragon. Do you know what I take the world to be? Ask Nietzsche. Shall I hold my mirror up to it? This world is a monster of energy. Without beginning or end, the play of energy and waves of energy, simultaneously the one and the many, waxing here and waning there a notion of tempestuous and torrential energies, forever changing, forever evolving back, with enormous periods of recurrence with an ebb and flow of its configurations, bringing forth the most complicated from the simplest, the most fiery fears and self-contradictory from the most still, rigid and cold, and then from this profusion returning again to simplicity, from this play of contradictions back to the joy of Concord. Will affirming itself in the identity of its courses and ages, forever blessing itself as that which eternally recurs, a becoming which knows no satiety, disgust or weariness. This might ionize the world of eternal self-creation, of eternal self-destruction. This mysterious world, he says. This mysterious world. Oh monstrous, mysterious world. Oh great dragon, I feel you in my heart. I think I feel the dragon in my heart. Many thanks go out to Neungar Elder Noel Nanop for agreeing to do this interview about the rainbow serpent. Special thanks to Professor Eli Sanchez-Pakhan Mani for making the time to discuss the Anakonda in the Shippeebo traditions. Really a joy to have Eli on this episode. Eli teaches a course on the Shippeebo-Kunibo-Kasmo vision and language, and you can find out more about this course at jaconjoy.thinkific.com. That's j-a-k-o-n-j-o-i dot thinkific think-i-f-i-c dot com. Special thanks to Clemons-Lobar for translating. Clemons is a student of the Shippeebo traditions and recipient of one of the Emerald Podcasts grants for her work to preserve the Shippeebo-Kasmo vision and culture. Many thanks to Marina Alves for wonderful research on the Amazonian serpent lore and to the folks at Kai Maban, a retreat center in Wales, founded by a wonderful lore keeper named Eric Maddern. You can find Kai Maban and their thatched roof Hobbit houses online at KaiMaban.co.uk. That's C-A-E-M-A-B-O-N dot C-O-D-U-K. Many thanks to Victor Soxion for the beautiful handpan and singing in this episode. He really brought the episode together. You can find Victor's music on streaming platforms. It's Victor, V-I-C-T-O-R, last name, Soxion, S-A-K-S-H-I-N. And he's on Instagram as well at Victor Soxion. Travis Punterelli, who you can find on Instagram as Baladier B-A-L-L-A-D-I-R. Renee Rogers contributed beautiful music for this episode and her Instagram is Janay Elita, J-E-U-N-A-E_EL-I-T-A. Special thanks to Maria Stark, who did some wonderful singing on this episode. You can find Maria's music everywhere you stream music and it's M-A-R-Y-A Stark, S-T-A-R-K. Charlotte Malen Collins provided some beautiful viola and violin for this episode and you can find Charlotte's music at Althea Music, it's AL-T-H-A-E-A music. And as always, this episode contains reference to many books, films, songs, articles, and more. These include The Shwo-Wen-Jetsu by Shwo-Shen. Kapoe Mo-O-A-Kua, Hawaiian Reptilean Water Deities by Maria Lo-Halani, Brown, and absolutely spectacular book about Hawaiian Mo-O traditions. The Empty Space by Peter Brook. The Game of Thrones, The Series on HBO. The Dragon Writers of Pern, series by Anne McCaffrey. The Game Dungeons and Dragons by TSR. The Fourth Wing series by Rebecca Yarros. The book Water Deities by Veronica Strang, highly recommended. Translations of Leetsu by Eva Wong. The Hobbit by J-R Tolkien. The Wave in the Mind by Ursula K. LaGuin. Excalibur the 1979 film by John Bournemont. The Book The Cosmic Serpent by Jeremy Narby. Bichuel Shamanique Shon de Puvoir, Célez Charonaua by Pierre Deliaj. Amazonian Waterway, Amazonian Water Worlds by Juliana Borea and Remberia Horkani. The Kunna Sekati Kiddika by Alianza Arcana. The Book of Documents by Kong Anguol. The E-Chang translated by David Hinton. Another translation of the E-Chang by Stephen Cartier. The writings and artworks of Marlowe Brooks on Instagram as Marlowe Brooks. M-A-R-L-O-W Brooks. Con Olsolios da Serpente, Ome, Animaise, Espiritus, Nasconceptsons, Katukina, Sobrea, Naturiza by Egylene Gilema. Anchigamanchi now in my Soji. Mobili Daji, Transforma Sound, and Threos Nokekoi No Akri by Ruth Danielle Lopez. Anaconda Becoming, An Amerindian relational aesthetics by Elsie Lagroup. The song "Natural Born Killers" by Ice Cube and Dr. Dre. The Book of Voodoo by Leah Gordon. The book "Snaked Talk" by Tyson Young Caporta. Singing to the Plants by Stephen Byer. The film "Enter the Dragon" starring Bruce Lee. Feathered Serpent Dark Heart of Sky by David Bowles. Tales from the Night Rainbow by Kylie Ohe, Kamé Ikua and Piley J. Lee. The Marriage of Codmos and Harmony by Roberto Colasso. And of course, the song "Boa Constrictor" performed by Peter Paul and Mary. Oh no, oh no, he swallowed my toe, he swallowed my toe. Oh gee, oh gee, he's up to my knee, he's up to my knee. Oh fiddle, oh fiddle, he's reached my middle, he's reached my middle. Oh heck, oh heck, he's up to my neck, he's up to my neck. Oh dread, oh dread, he's following my.