The Dragon Within Your Heart

By Meg Llewellyn

None of us has ever seen a dragon in the external world—and yet all of us would recognize one if we did. This book of dragon folklore, quotes and stories reminds us that dragons don't exist "out there." Instead, they live within us, within our hearts as much as our imaginations. Dragons tell us something about our own natures. Sometimes, they even call to us with God's voice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anamchara Books
• Release date: Jul 28, 2011
• ISBN: 9781933630922

Book preview

Introduction

A dragon is no idle fancy. Even today (despite critics)

you may find [people] . . . who have yet been caught

by the fascination of the worm.

—J.R.R. Tolkien

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Dragons have lived within the human imagination for thousands of years. Whether wise and wonderful, or monstrous and evil, these creatures are a part of us. In one way or another, we all dream of dragons.

Psychoanalysis tells us that to understand our dreams, we should consider each dream character to be an aspect of our selves. The perils we face in dreams are not actual, real-life dangers; they are the things we fear inside our hearts. And by the same token, our dream heroes are the valiant aspects of our own natures.

I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons.

It all exists, even if it’s in your mind.

Who's to say that dreams and nightmares

aren’t as real as the here and now?

—John Lennon

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Fairy Tales are more than true;

not because they tell us that dragons exist,

but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

—G. K. Chesterton

In the stories, of course, dragons are out there. The old European dragons were external dangers that threatened entire villages with their fire; in the East, they were divine beings that blessed kingdoms with their wisdom. The West saw them as creatures of the earth, living in caves, and yet able to soar through the air on enormous bat-like wings. In the East as well as the West, dragons were considered to be elemental creatures of earth and air and water.

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Scholars speculate that ancient discoveries of dinosaur bones may have triggered the concept of dragons, but their persistent place in the human imagination cannot be explained so easily. None of us has ever seen a dragon in the external world—and yet all of us would recognize one