Dragon Breath

Image: Mateus Campos Felipe

Post by Jane Lewis

In Chinese astrology this is the Year of the Dragon which signals renewal and transformation, like Pluto and Scorpio in western astrology.  Dragon equivalents have lived in myths since time immemorial across all parts of the world, appearing variously in the form of snakes, serpents, lizards, crocodiles, fish, eels, dolphins, horses, stags and deers.  Coming in all shapes and sizes, they are compounds of fire and water, some having the tail of a reptile and body of a warm-blooded animal.  The dragon embodies the force that governs the transformation of the four elements into each other:  fire turning into water when congealed in earth, then liquifying and evaporating back to fire.  The dragon’s shape-shifting form symbolises the animating spirit that streams through all life.  It embodies the nature of spirit and the spirit of nature and is the self-fertilising Great Being that recreates itself from its own reflection.

Humanity’s own vital energy shares the same source as nature’s, coming as it does via our sun from the cosmic rays that bathe our solar system.  In the human body it can be balanced through therapies like acupuncture.  In the landscape it can be managed in a similar way through various earth engineering techniques that affect the subtle flow through the rocks and mountains, lakes and rivers, valleys and bridges, and buildings.  The energy flows through the earth in lines and nodal points form at crossing points that have been marked since Stone Age times by standing stones.  Megaliths, stone circles, towers, passage tombs and the like were used to help the fertilising essence of spirit to flow harmoniously.  Sometimes they went to great extremes by constructing giant earthworks and even artificial hills like that at Silsbury in Wiltshire in order to help maintain harmony between heaven and earth.

Image: huangshunping

In the later Christian era the universal spirit in nature was called the Breath of God.  The proper understanding of the dragon-serpent came to be perverted, as we might expect in the Piscean Age when Neptune creates misinterpretation, deceit and downright lies that all too easily draw a veil of darkness over the light of the sun.  The triple spiral is the Trinity of Father-Mother-Son, which is in effect the interaction of Sun, Moon and Earth, all of which receive and are influenced by rays from stars.  The holy breath of God is the dragon’s offspring, and the ‘son’ principle because it generates spontaneously from the interaction of sun, moon and earth.  Our ancient ancestors had such amazing knowledge of the solar system that it’s mind-boggling to think how they got it without today’s technology. 

Equally inspiring is the thought that we are those ancestors.  Like dragons, we are compound beings made up from the sum total of our past incarnations.  From life to life the physical body changes shape, size, gender, personality and elemental balance.  Like the snake that sloughs off its skin, we cast off our mortal physical body but regenerate in a new form in the next life when our immortal soul picks up the threads of our kaleidoscopic past, thereby living on as composites of our past selves who are our ancestors. 

As we each have had thousands of incarnations we must inevitably have lived in multiple ethnic, racial and religious cultures, so our ancestors must therefore be compounds of all religions. The soul lesson of Scorpio, the Serpent, is about non-attachment.  It’s about learning to let go of the imprisoning bonds that stand in the way of our freedom to evolve and to love ourselves, each other and all life.  Ruled by Mars and Pluto, it is a passionate sign with built-in potential for violence and warfare.  When we over-identify with the man-made constructs that religions are, as opposed to the underlying spiritual essence from which they sprang, we simply perpetuate the chain of karma that comes from acts of non-love.  The more passionately we believe that we have only ever belonged to one religion, the more attached we are and the tighter the bonds that enslave.  Being born into any religious, racial or cultural group is in fact simply a test for the soul as to how it will relate to others who belong to different groups so that it might learn more about love.  In fighting racial or religious wars we are in effect fighting our own ancestors,  fighting ourselves.

Image: wind_knight

The soul is on a quest to evolve into a plumed serpent, and when this eventually happens the dragon spirit, or kundalini energy, will have been roused from its den at the base of the spine and spiralled its way up to the crown centre from where it spouts three great plumes of light. This is symbolised in various ways in different religious and cultural traditions, for example, in Britain by the Prince of Wales feathers, by indigenous people of American by the white-feathered headdress.  The plumes of light are the natural product of enlightenment and illumination, and form an aura around the head that enfolds the whole body like angel’s wings irrespective of age, race, religion or culture.

The equinoxes and solstices have always been known as the most important times of year when the solar rays have a great fertilising effect upon the earth, especially when the energy is enhanced through ritual.  The Earth itself is on a quest to raise her own kundalini or dragon energy but depends on our help to do so.   As the Aquarian Age unfolds we are regaining understanding of how we and nature are linked together, and of the connection between our planet in relation to sun, moon, solar system and the wider universe.  Astrology is a sacred science that is intended to serve this vital higher purpose.  Through it we can work with our dragon energy and thereby become more effective channels for the dragon paths in the earth to flow more harmoniously, which is the basis for earth healing.

Image: Johannes Plenio

In the dark ages the Roman Church tried to stamp out knowledge and practice of the ancient mysteries of earth, sun and moon but it was through the Grail legends that they were kept alive, hidden in the guise of mythology.  The Grail stories are set among a landscape of megaliths which play a major part in the initiation process of the questing knights.  The tales keep alive an understanding of the importance of astrology, and the fact that the earth revolves around the sun, how the sun, moon and earth interact, how eclipses and the fertilising effect of the solar rays at the key times of equinoxes and solstices are so important for our wellbeing and evolution.  Gawain, Lancelot and Parceval represent three stages of initiation of the human soul which is ultimately destined to gain spiritual enlightenment, the spring equinox being a power-point in time for spiritual apotheosis.  Although the knights are portrayed as separate characters they are actually all one being at different stages in the soul’s evolutionary path.  Not many succeed in finding the Holy Grail but the possibility is open to everyone.  Success depends upon everybody in society understanding the need to honour the goddess we call Mother Earth, for if we don’t she loses her power through being denied the fertilising effect of the solar rays in ritual acts, the result being the Wasteland.  The Round Table is the stage upon which the drama of the evolving human soul is played out, and the landscape and all of nature within it is that Table, the symbol of which is the circle of the zodiac.