Enter The Dragon, Terrifying and Beautiful (Part 1)

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 nineteen eighty three playing D and D. That was me, right down to the haircut. 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 that coils

is not simply an exercise in reliving childhood fantasy. For the dragon is a lot more than a category of mythical beasts. 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 socio historical patterns are re weaving and forgotten monsters are waking. And old power structures crumbling and 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 set 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 reimagine 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 dot com slash the emerald podcast. This is where we can spiral into deeper discussion. This is where we can reweave 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.

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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 twenty twenty five, my family and I visited the UK, and we were invited by some friends at Kai Mabon in Wales, in Snowia, to climb a hill named Dinos Em. 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 Murray.

told King Vortigan, if he stopped to dig at that very spot, he would find two sleeping.

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 moo, the aido huido, the great shimmering anaconda. We don't understand it unless we understand the dynamic. 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 in the mouths of the serpents will be higher. We don't understand these delicate relationships unless we truly understand spirals and coils. Just 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. O beloved.

No matter what continent you are listening from, the land you inhabit holds dragon story.

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 water. 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 Brooke 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 fifteen, I heard the venerable Kalu Rimpochet. 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, storm dragons, gold and silver writhing dragons as he described them, 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?

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 thirty or forty or fifty 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 А бинг резід.

And that being can be described as a tangible reptilian creature that resides in the world's clouds and the world's eyes. 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. Entrapping, 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.

A guardian of the 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. I tell you what's out there. Yes, please. The dragon. A beast. That if you were to see it whole and all complete in a single glance, it would burn you to cinders. Where is it? It is everywhere. This is everything!

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 Narbi, 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. Chuang Su says that the length of the great cosmic fish bird being is who knows how many thousand miles. Hindu mythology also provides an example of a serpent of immeasurable proportions. known as Shesha, the thousand-headed snake that floats on the cosmic ocean. while the twin creator beings Vishnu and Lakshmi recline in its coils.

Ananta Shha, 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, Hinton tells us, quote, Primal emptiness separated into heaven and earth. That's how it all began. Before long, a pair of dragons emerged. Root Breath and Lady Shivoy.

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

In West African derived voodoo traditions, the serpent is named Dambala. Says Leah Gordon, quote, In the beginning there was a vast serpent. whose body formed seven thousand coils.

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 movement of the With the fact that the land manifests in waves, whirls, and convolutions. The upheaving of glacial moraines, 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 Yonkoporta, 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 coy oil? 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 grocked the bloodstream of the dragon in the patterns of estuaries and river basins? Nungar Elder No Nanop speaks of the geologic and geographic interplay of the two great serpents of his region.

Crosses an eight and border of the inland people.

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 It moves, it spirals, it is dynamic. It is one but made up of It sheds and regenerates. It undulates and as it undulates its facets shimmer.

Culture upon culture holds this vision of serpentine world being Fractal or reflective. Circling, spiraling creator energy. 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 dynamisms. And that dynamism expresses in waves. So the serpent is there in the vastest galactic spirals. in constellations like Draco, which spirals around the pole star like a dragon clutching a 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.

There is something serpentine hissing, rattling with vibration, unfolding in patterned. There is life. in the most basic cellular processes of life. There is a dragon. Right. From Narbi 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 flax. It is a double vital force that develops from one to several, and its place is water.

And sometimes the serpent appears as the spectral play of the water of the river. And sometimes the serpent is vaster than the river. It's the whole set of relationships that feed.

Have you seen them? In the play of the light and the water? In the writhing forms of the lava rock. There's one who hangs out at Nuanu Pali Cliff on Oahu, says Maria Lohani Brown. The scales above his right eye are red and those above his left are black. When placed on someone else's Scales allow that person to see what is far away. They're everywhere when you start looking. Mo with detachable tails that can be used as weapons or bestowed as gifts.

Sometimes you can even find them surfing in the bay, like Kalamainu, a surfing water dragon whose surfboard is her own lizard tongue. How metal is that?

Like any other class of deities, reptilian beings' interactions with humans may be helpful or harmful or both. Because Moo 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, also like water, are shapeshifters. 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, to seduce us or destroy us. Mull are powerful. And awe inspiring. A few moo do have a water related form, such as fog. 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, moo 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. That dragons, serpent beings, reptilian water spirits are as textured and multifaceted as the world itself. Quote 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 mole. When the plants are yellowed and the water covered with a greenish yellow froth, the mo is at home. If so, you should leave quickly, lest the mo' make itself known to you to your detriment. It might eat you or take you as a lover. Either way, Yes, Moho, Nagas, Dragons, Yakaruna are not always out for In the Amazon, Stephen Bayer talked about the book.

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. Seduced and abducted by the erotic creatures of the uncanny depths. Dragons have mood. Dragons have temperament. There are dragons. A varying disposition. Just as there are many ways the spirals of the world express, and there are places that are ferocious.

The dragon. All the paradoxical textures of this world of what we're doing.

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.

The world you could say through deep ancestral lizard eyes. But that reptilian soul of the world is frightening.

this world. 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 splayed out helpless as it's being slowly digested, and the snake is smiling. Nature is a cold blooded killer.

This is the monster. This is the dragon. Tiamat, terrifying and beautiful. So there are beautiful dragons and there are monstrous 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 strive. Dragons battle in the Countryside proclaims the IJ, their blood black and yellow, colours 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. Groans of ecstasy and the floor. It is the roar of the colour.

Through time all this is braided together, this web of relationships, these patterns of being, this serpent spine. Hawaiian cultural practitioner Kanani Aton quotes Kailiohe Kame Akua as saying this about the Mo'o, about the dragon.

Then there are the hind 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, carrying and protecting. me 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.

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, Without the long tale of ancestral connection. Of slow wisdom. The dragon is rudderless, frenetic, roving this way and that.

Progress for the sake of progress, a modern world built to amplify the hungers 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. That's all the front feet know how to do. If we focus on one part of the dragon. at the expense of another. If we focus on the consuming mouth without the anchoring. Or the quick front feet without the steadier middle feet, or the ever-seeking eyes.

The body to back it up. Then the 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 Yankoporta, 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 it the great dragon of karma? This great snarling dragon of cause and effect had King Cadmos begging for her return to boundary. in the end. Cadmos who sowed the teeth of a slain dragon. a monstrous war dragon of Ares into Mediterranean soil, and then somehow expected that the family lines that sprouted from those teeth.

would be anything other than monsters.

In Hawaiian tradition, the word for story, and in particular lore, myth, story of the ancestors and the gods, this type of story is Moolo. Which can be translated quite directly as dragon talk Lizard Speech. Snakish, as they say in Estonia. Here's Canani again. speaking the words of Kaili Ohe Kame Ekua, describing how the dragon spirals through story, through all aspects of cultural life.

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 shamans sing, it is Yube, the great serpent, a multiplicity of Yube, a multiplicity of cosmic dragons. through with the shaman. According to some Shipibo Kanibo shamanic songs, the universe itself originated when the anaconda sang the designs it has on its skin.

insufflating 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 hemming, hawing, twisting, breathing? The Anakonda, says Yahwarkani. is the mother of all the Shepibo designs, and is seen as a path covered with designs. A path covered with designs.

O artists, O singers, O stitchers, oh. Do you see the great cosmic dragon serpent whose skin embodies all possible?

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, what the mestizos of the Peruvian Amazon designate as their mother. Ronin dragons are claimed to have beautiful Kene 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 Shibo artists since ancient times.

Shipibo Professor Eli Sanchez Pacan Muni speaks of the Anakonda, the Ronian And the gifts it brings in the form of song and medicine and knowledge of cune or pattern.

an actual being. And so one must be prepared to to see it and to be with it. Because if you're not prepared, it 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 zeronin

is through what, you know, in Spanish they call dieta, same chipibo, or where you establish that connection with like the spirit of a tree. Through doing this diet, which is this period of like fasting abstinence, you can get in contact with the runin directly and it ca and it becomes your teacher.

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. The diagram that outlines the blueprint of creation, the progenitor to the trigrams of the each. Arises from the Yellow River. as a pattern on the back of a dragon. The river diagram says. was born by a dragon horse that emerged from the Yellow River. Dragon water horse appears to the ancient

Stock and cook with fire. Using the hexagrams, they taught people about bow and arrow, plow and Pottery and markets. And finally, writing. All of these Gifts. The gifts of understanding primal scale patterns 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 Rasputin. Or they sailed too deep into the season of the Protestant. More than one political party has foundered because it didn't know the middle feet of its own dragon body from its front feet. Which aspects of its pattern body should be

When is time for gathering and when for dispersal? When is time for provocation and when is time for slow persistence and gentle cultivation?

Means understanding. Yes, the impelling power is one of the powers in play. But we also must understand the full river diagram.

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 says 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 Who has access to the dragon post? who receives of it and harnesses it and channels it and issues it forth again.

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 Asclepios Asclepios, Greek god of healing who learned the art of medicine from who? From a serpent that bore a medicinal herb in its mouth. So the Asclepian symbol, the symbol for healing, is one serpent coiled around a central rod.

Sometimes you see another symbol associated with medicine too. The Caducius of Hermes This is because in the nineteenth century the two were mistakenly conflated, and the Caducius came to be used by many American medical institutions. While the World Health Organization and most European institutions retained the staff of Asclepius. And this is interesting simply because while Asclepius rules healing, Hermes 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 Asclepius and his serpent. Asclepius is depicted bearing a serpent's staff, entwined with serpents, and sometimes in the form of a serpent himself.

Perhaps it's something about shedding skin and emerging. Something about how understanding patterns and cycles and the true pace and rhythm of the spirals of change. Perhaps it's also about that paradoxical place.

A shaman snake who holds the knowledge and who often became a shaman through a direct serpent encounter. In some Amazonian traditions, says Elsie Legru, 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 electricity. An indication that the person has been chosen to hold the knowledge of the world. 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.

A dieta through particular plants that are sacred to the Ronin? Or you had mentioned like the saliva or is it through Ronin songs or what would that dieta be?

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 eye. 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, undulating, 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 at once. It is the power of life. This of death, the arrows of all that undulates.

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. the 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, How do we relate? How do we interact with this beautiful, terrifying, nourishing, destructive?

And lose much of the knowledge of how to do it. create the actual power patterns of the world. And in consigning them to sleep have we already set forth a 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 its 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 worlds. 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 10,000 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 pimp it for our gain? What do we do with the serpent power? The power that spirals across time now surging. Now urgently arising, now lying. Can you see the The great water keeper 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.

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 slain. But then it's also not as easy as saying all dragons.

For right now in this is a snarling, monstrous dragon of fascism rising. I've heard its dank breath on the ground. Whispering for the

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. And do you know what I take the world to be? asks Nietzsche. Shall I hold my mirror up to it? This world is a monster.

Special thanks to Clemence Laubert for translating. Clemence is a student of the Shibibo traditions and recipient of one of the Emerald Podcast grants. for her work to preserve the Shipbo cosmovision and culture. Many thanks to Marina Alves for wonderful research on the Amazonian serpent lore and to the folks at Chi Mabon, a retreat center in Wales, founded by a wonderful lore keeper named Eric Mattern.

You can find Kimabon and their thatched roof hobbit houses online at chimabon dot co dot uk. That's caem.co dot uk. Many thanks to Victor Sokchin for the beautiful hand pen and singing in this episode, who 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 Sokin S A K S H I N And he's on Instagram as well at Victor Soxhin. Travis Puntarelli, who you can find on Instagram as Balladier B A L L A D I R.

Janae Rogers contributed beautiful music for this episode, and her Instagram is Janae Elita J E U N A E underscore ELITA. Special thanks to Maria Stark, who did some wonderful singing on this episode. You can find Mario's music everywhere you stream music and it's M A R Y A Stark S T A R K Charlotte Maylin Collins provided some beautiful viola and violin for this episode, and you can find Charlotte's music at Althea Music. It's A L T H A E A music.

And as always, this episode contains reference to many books, films, songs, articles, and more. These include the Shu Wen Jiitze by Shuo Shin, Kapoe Moo Akua, Hawaiian Reptilian Water Deities by Maria Lohalani Brown, an absolutely spectacular book about Hawaiian Moo tradition. The Empty Space by Peter Brook. Game of Thrones, the series on HBO, The Dragon Riders of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey. The game Dungeons and Dragons by T Sr. The Fourth Wing series by Rebecca Yarros.

The book Water Deities by Veronica Strang, highly recommended, translations of Lie Tzu by Eva Wong, The Hobbit by J. R. Tolkien, The Wave and the Mind by Ursula K. Le Guin. Excalibur, the nineteen seventy nine film by John Bormann, the book The Cosmic Serpent by Jeremy Narbi, Rituel Chamanique Champ de Pouvoir Chile Charana by Pierre Delage. Amazonian Waterway Amazonian Water Worlds by Giuliana Borea and Rembrandt.

The Kuna Sikati Kirika by Alianza Arcana The Book of Documents by Kong Angu The Y Ching translated by David Hinton. Another translation of the Y Ching by Stephen Carcher. The writings and artworks of Marlowe Brook. on Instagram as Marlowe Brooks. M-A-R-L-O-W, Brooks. Com os olhos da serpente, homem, animais e espíritos nas concepções catuquinas sobre a natureza, by Edgeline de Lima, antigamente não é mais hoje. Mobilidade e transformação entre os noqueco by Ruth Daniel Lopez.

Anaconda Becoming An Amerindian Relational Aesthetics by Elsie LeGru The song Natural Born Killers by Ice Cube and Doctor Dre The Book of Voodoo by Leah Gordon The Book Snake Talk by Tyson Yankaporta. 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 Kame Ekua and Pile J Lee The Marriage of Cadmos and Harmony by Roberto Colasso.

And of course the song Boa Constrictor, performed by Peter, Paul and Mary.