The history of the dragon is so long and so diverse, I wanted to write: like the race of people, but we’re not here Tolkien.
Dragons have actually always existed and, interestingly, they have appeared all over the globe. Still without any technical or even analogue communication, as far as we know. While dragons in Europe are more like monsters, on the Asian continent the further east you go they are sometimes sacred creatures.
What they look like varies, but there are always similarities; For example, the lucky dragon in China has no wings, but in Central America it does. But the dragon always has something reptilian and, above all, something supernatural. Although it combines individual elements of other animals, it resides in areas where these animals never existed. For example in the Swiss mountains, where he looks like a cross between a lion and an alligator.
The motifs that a dragon always lives near water (for example in a cave) and that one has to fight with it are repeated from ancient Rome to Mongolian folk legends. And it is assumed that the terrible news inevitably spread via the trade routes of the time.
Siegfried and the single problem
It is commonly known that one has to assume that the dragon actually exists because it has a property that practically proves its existence: dragons can hide very well. And so proof of their existence is that almost no one ever sees them and very few people have ever seen them. Every child knows that. Hildegard of Bingen already knew this and recommended precious dragon blood as a USP medicine against malaise, or crushed dragon scales (which can always be found even after the animal has already moved on because they fall off its back) against bone loss, for example. And whoever is lucky enough to pick up a dragon’s tear from the ground will be granted immortality. Siegfried already knew that if you bathe in the blood of a dragon, no sword can wound you. It’s just a shame that he couldn’t apply cream all over his back (a typical single problem), oh well.
You see: the topic of “kites” is very rich.
However, things get craziest (as is often the case) at sea. But I also imagine that it would be difficult. Anyone who may not have played around on a two-master as a youngster, but has at least been on a cruise, knows that ships are simply floating cells of madness. You can’t get away from it, the sea is your boss and also the sky, which many people bitterly underestimate and stagger off the ship, red-skinned and spiritually withered, with the promise on their chapped lips never, ever to board a ship again.
The joys of gender segregation
Anyone who traded by sea back then sent out a team of people who stayed crammed together below deck like prison inmates, vomiting their innards in the wind and storms and having as little to freak out as possible in the scorching heat that lasted for weeks.
Ships were also traditionally women-free spaces.
A short digression: I can now understand this well. When I recorded a record without men and kept the process free of any male involvement, I learned for the first time what concentrated, efficient work is. And not because the men I had always worked with were now all so sloppy. No, it was because flirting with them didn’t distract me from my work this time, quite simply. When I don’t want to please anyone, I can think much better.
Imagine it’s storming and you have to look good, I don’t know, on the topmast. Or even just standing upright on deck. By the time you get seasick, that’s it for your sex appeal. And now back to the topic.
The first dragon catch
Guess the lifting of anchor in the sixteenth century didn’t necessarily mean the arrival of cargo or even the return of the crew on board. One day, however, something strange appeared in the Antwerp area. It was rumored that it was the sailors who brought with them real remains of a creature called a “sea serpent” or “water dragon”.
For so long people had relied on dragons to remain invisible as proof of their existence and now this. The sailors in 1558 reported a young dragon that was caught alive in the Baltic Sea and brought its remains with them as proof.
I imagine that people were crowded together at the harbor and a loud murmur went through the crowd as some one-eyed sea dog raised his calloused hands and held a dead dragon in them. The first real dragon that the residents of Antwerp had ever seen.
The male equivalent of a mermaid is a bishop
The thing looked truly frightening: long, thin legs, two thin little arms, but a broad chest made of thick skeleton. And then a skull that was elongated upwards, sloping down to the sides in two wings and in which were dead, slit-like eyes that made the blood run cold in the veins of the good people of Antwerp.
More than once the sailors returned from their voyages and brought such dried-up sea monsters with them on land. From then on, the stories about these real dragons just poured out of people. Some claimed that you could see it clearly, the team was one Sea Bishop went online. So the male counterpart to the mermaid, which somehow also belongs to the dragon genus due to several characteristics (hybrid creatures, very dangerous for inexperienced people). Others, on the other hand, thought that this strange creature that the sailor lifted into the overcast Belgian sky was a water dragon and nothing more. When people put their minds to something, they find evidence for it, we know that now.
A big step for Belgium
So the “Jenny Hanivers” were like the draconian remnants – derived from jeune d’Anvers (Girl from Antwerp) real dragons. And finally, finally, in little Belgium they could prove to the whole world that they had actually encountered such a creature (albeit dead). This was, it has to be said, a big step for Belgium, for shipping and ultimately for all of humanity. The fact that evil, the dark, supernatural, overpowering, had finally taken on mortal form seemed to deeply satisfy many people. How else could they have tied down their diffuse fears about being alive?
The dragon has always fulfilled the function of the “other”, is the creature that rises from the darkness of the collective psyche and attacks us humans. And the fact that the way people encounter this monster (Latin “monstrare” = “to show”) is so different and special – in China, for example, it brings good luck and is by no means fought against, but rather worshiped in colorful ceremonies – is so infinitely interesting that from now on I will deal with it and explore it outside of the column, music and theater.
I’m becoming a hobby dracologist, so to speak.
Oh well: evil tongues claim that the Jenny Hanivers are nothing more than dead rays that have been somewhat artfully put together. But that would be such a deep fake and such a disgrace for Belgium, shipping and all of humanity that I simply wouldn’t believe it can …