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Dragons 73
Dogma
Two modern-day fallen angels, Bartelby and Loki,
are condemned to a fate almost as bad as hell
when they are sent to Wisconsin. Although the
cast of this 1999 movie is great, the plot is lame
and too much time is wasted on boring nonsense
and excessive profanity.
Dragons
Often depicted as a mixture of several creatures,
the dragon is a fantastic beast that appears in
mythology and folklore worldwide. Although in
Oriental mythologies the dragon is seen as a
beneficent animal and is often a symbol or a
portent of prosperity, in most European mythologies
it is viewed as a demonic beast hostile to
humanity. In Christian symbolism, for instance,
the dragon represents the chief of the fallen angels,
the Devil.
One of the inspirations for the Christian
Devil via Hebrew scriptures (the Old Testament)
is derived from the Babylonian female dragon
monster, Tiamat. In early Christian thought, the
dragon represents the Devil or the Devil’s
servant, and has the allegorical role of representing
the Antichrist, or more generally, evil
passions, paganism, or the oppressive powers of
this world. In chapter 12 of Book of Revelation, it
is described as large and red, with seven heads
and ten horns.
With reference to the story of the revolt of the
angels, the archangel Michael is usually represented
as the slayer of the dragon, and his angels
fight against the dragon and his rebellious angels.
“The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient
serpent who is called Devil and Satan, the
deceiver of the whole world; he was thrown down
to the earth, and his angels were thrown down
with him.”
In Hebrew scriptures, in which the dragon is
mentioned several times in the same breath as the
owl—another creature with large, black eyes—
Yahweh is depicted as a storm god. At his coming
“the earth trembled, and the heavens dropped, yea,
the clouds dropped water, the mountains quaked
before the Lord” (Judg. 5:4–5). “Thou didst break
the heads of the dragons on the waters” says the
Psalmist (Ps. 74:13), and “the Lord . . . shall slay the
dragon that is in the sea” (Isa. 27:1). Moreover, in
Psalms 91:13, “the saints shall trample the dragon
under their feet.” The battle between Yahweh and
the dragon is very popular in the visions of the
later Hebrew prophets, although the dragon
usually embodies a purely symbolic meaning as the
enemy of Israel, that is to say the Assyrians, the
Babylonians, or the Egyptians.
An account of God’s hostility toward Pharaoh
is reported by the prophet Ezekiel, who speaks of
Pharaoh as “the great dragon that lies in the midst
of his streams” (Ezek. 29:3), into whose jaws he
will put hooks and whom he will have thrown into
the wilderness. Elsewhere in the Old Testament,
the dragon is represented also as a symbol of
mourning and desolation.
One of the most discussed chapters of the Old
Testament is Daniel 7, which reports a dream,
alleged to have occurred in the first year of
Belshazzar, king of Babylon, in which Daniel sees
the four winds of heaven stirring up the great sea.
Out of the sea emerge, one after the other, a series
of beasts, four in number, all of fabulous form.
The fourth beast, in particular, is especially terrible
and has ten horns. The four beasts represent in
succession the Babylonian, Median, Persian, and
Hellenistic empires.
In classical legend, the dragon guarded the
golden apples in the garden of Hesperides. Among
the most famous encounters between a Christian
warrior and a dragon is that of St. George, who
slays the dragon or tames the animal and frees the
maiden. It has been argued that the story of St.
George and the dragon owe much to the Greek
myth of Perseus and Andromeda.
See also Leviathan; Satan
For Further Reading:
Cavendish, Richard, ed. Man, Myth & Magic. The
Illustrated Encyclopedia of Mythology, Religion
and the Unknown. 1983. Reprint, New York:
Marshall Cavendish, 1995.
Day, John. God’s Conflict with the Dragon and the
Sea. Echoes of a Canaanite Myth in the Old
Testament. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1985.
Mercatante, Anthony S. The Facts on File
Encyclopedia of World Mythology and Legend.
New York: Facts on File, 1988.