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Dragon Lore(continued) By Tala Bar Unlike the Europeans, who feared it and its fire-spitting character, desert people regarded the water-connected dragon as beneficial. It was said to have dwelled in wells, whose bottom was sometimes called "Dragon's eye," thus considered the source of water. In the Far East, beneficial dragons were connected with the weather, and in China there were four main kinds of dragons: the Sky dragons that had wings, symbolized the spiritual power of the world; the Air dragons hovered in the air and were in charge of the weather and seasons; the Earth dragons were in charge of all earthly sources of water and fertility; and the Underworld dragons were in charge of all treasures buried in the earth, and they also kept the Pearl of Wisdom. All Chinese dragons had an elongated serpentine shape, but not all of them had wings. The picture of a pair of dragons chasing each other's tails forms the Chinese basic male and female idea of the world, the Yin and Yang. Even today the Chinese dragons form an integral part of their festivals, and when rain is needed, people make a giant, colorful dragon in wood or paper, representing the Rain dragon, which is carried in a procession. As has been shown in the Chinese dragon myths, dragons had also various and different spiritual qualities. Some people see in the dragon's complex body a symbol of the four basic elements — earth, water, air and fire. These elements are divided into two groups consisting of matter on the one side and spirit on the other. According to such division, the dragon also represents the duality of the sun and the moon, male and female, good and evil. This forceful symbolism had granted the dragon some supernatural qualities of power, wisdom, hidden knowledge and life giving.
Some ideas connected with the dragon fantasy have continued to the present day, and appear particularly in the modern literature of fantasy and science fiction. It may be added that this literature on the whole ignores most kinds of ancient symbolism, following mainly the fancy of the writers more than any recognized world wisdom. Such authors' fancies have produced a good number of dragon series books. The best known of them is the Dragon Lance series originated by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman, which was added to by other writers. The dragons here take part in human wars, and they reflect the qualities of the humans they are attached to, being good or evil in character, as the story takes them. They also have some magical powers which are used by their human mates. Another known series by the same pair of authors is the Death Gate Cycle, where dragons can be connected with either fire or ice, or else with wisdom. Another known dragon writer is Anne McCaffrey, who has written about humans settling on the planet of Pern. In order to overcome a natural danger, these humans create huge dragons from small, dragon-like creatures, whose main qualities are flight and fire-spitting. As in the Dragon Lance series, here too each dragon shares telepathic communications with its human rider. They live a symbiotic life and act in unison, in a way which would be unthinkable in ancient times and myths. These dragons have snaky bodies, and four legs as well as wings. These features allow them a total of six limbs. Another deviation from the earthly dragons is their non-scaly soft skin. Both in Dragon Lance and in the Pern series, each dragon has its own characteristic color, which many times represents its nature, which is another significant difference from the European dragons. McCaffrey's dragons are good by nature, and would never harm a human being, in great contrast to the Dragon Lance dragons, some of which are plain evil, who would kill anything in sight. It may be seen, then, that we have come a long way since ancient people fantasized about creatures they had never seen, when finding mysterious huge bones in various places on earth. Unlike the age of myth, today we can differentiate between reality and fantasy, describe the lifestyle of many dinosaurs and leave dragons to fantasy literature.
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