Dreams of Dragons & Other Demons
The Year of the Dragon Part 1
Threshold
Isolated in a closed hostel in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, on August 21–23, 2020 — right in the thick of the pandemic, I finally took Threshold Online along with a group of very dear friends.
Threshold is one of the cardinal workshops that Adamus Saint Germain offers through Geoffrey & Linda Hoppe on the Crimson Circle. Your guess is correct, it is about a dragon, one that appears at the doorway to realization to uncover the “secrets hidden deep beyond the human’s grasp.”[i]
For the serious adept, the mystical, or bodhisattva looking for total integration, nothing can remain unforgiven; after lifetimes of hardships in the arduous task of cleaning one’s act, and at the limit of exhaustion, these final ruthless encounters with the dragon are dreaded but unavoidable.
It is reassuring to know, however, that in a few years this “unrelenting demon becomes your best friend”[ii] and you reach enlightenment.
Eyes Wide Shut
Threshold is one marker of the beginning of the end for it introduces us to our own dragon’s gaze.
According to Wikipedia, the past form of the Greek word drákön “is thought to have referred to something with a ‘deadly glance’, or unusually bright or ‘sharp’ eyes or because a snake’s eyes appear to be always open; each eye actually sees through a big transparent scale in his eyelids, which are permanently shut.”[iii]
In The Chamber of Secrets, the second film of the Harry Potter saga, J.K. Rowling re-popularizes the European and North African myth of the basilisk, a monster believed to be the hybrid of a snake, a rooster, a turkey, and a toad. This king of serpents “was widely believed to wither landscapes with its breath and kill with a glare,” ascertains Mike Dash in a very well-informed article for the Smithsonian Magazine.[iv]
So, what exactly is a dragon? Why a dragon and not a hummingbird? Why should it come at the final stages of integration? What is it about its gaze? In this year of the dragon, has the time come for them to visit not only the initiates, but the whole human race?
On Dragons & Other Demons
The basilisk’s legend seems to have been born out of reality. It was first described in AD 79 in Natural History by Pliny the Elder, as an astoundingly deadly serpent of not more than 12 fingers in length. But in the Middle Ages, the legend was blown out of proportion, and this now terrorizing, and undeniably evil monster was responsible for having turned the fertile land of the Sahara into a desert.[v]
But according to Dash, Pliny’s was not the only account of the snake back then, and several chronicles in the Middle Ages, particularly the one about the Warsaw Basilisk of 1587 — cited as the last of the great basilisk hunts, “portray the basilisk not as an interesting ancient legend but as a living creature and a very real threat.” [vi]
Legends of dragons, however, are even older –as old as time, one could say — and they form part of the mythology of mostly every culture, but no one has ever seen a dragon. In fact, a dragon may very well be a basilisk, and a basilisk may very well be a cockatrice[vii] –a two-legged dragon with a rooster’s head– and the three of them, as depicted today, may have never existed… Or have they?
Dragon’s Skeletons
In concrete terms, a dragon is a serpent, lizard, or crocodile with big eyes and a barbed tail, a crossbreed of a reptile, a feline, an arachnid, and a bird.
Winged, horned, and capable of breathing fire in Western cultures; wingless, four-legged, and a long serpentine creature in Eastern cultures.[viii]
Anthropologists and scholars try to come up with evidence or at least reasonable theories about the origins. One researcher concludes that dragons appear in nearly all cultures because humans have an innate fear of snakes and other animals that were major predators of humans’ primate ancestors.[ix]
Other scholars believe that some stories may have been inspired by ancient discoveries of fossils belonging to dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals; others that large extinct or migrating crocodiles bear the closest resemblance; and yet others believe that many images around the world could simply be exaggerations of living reptiles such as Komodo dragons, Gila monsters, iguanas, or alligators.
We can appreciate their intent of tracing a dragon’s origin: the Samotherium,[x] an extinct species of giraffe, whose fossils are common in the Mediterranean region, has two ossicones pointing upwards and then bending backward, resembling a dragon’s head.
Similarly, Anzu, a bird-like dinosaur from the late Cretaceous whose finding in Montana was listed among 2014’s “Top 10 New Species,” is characterized by “a toothless beak, a prominent crest, long arms ending in slender, relatively straight claws, long powerful legs with slender toes, and a relatively short tail.”[xi]
But there is no dragon skeleton yet.
Legends & Myths
It is generally accepted that winged or not, legged or not, fire-breathing or not, every dragon flies — it is a mystical and not a physical ability, you see — but in legends and myths across the orb, serpentine-water monsters abound.
Let’s not call them dragons, then. These mythical draconic creatures are astoundingly similar in their diversity: hybrids, definitely; sometimes multi-headed, and even when being flying and fire-breathing creatures, they are consistently related to the waters, the seas, and the Underworld.
Also, their relationship with humans, demigods, and Gods is consistently tumultuous and ambivalent: dragons are enemies or allies, conquerors or conquered, holy and evil, chaotic, destructive, as well as wise or enlightened.
For a quick overview, a crested rattlesnake is The Feathered Serpent of the Olmec Culture (1400–400 BC), later called Quetzalcoatl among the Aztecs, Kukulkan among the Yucatec Maya, and Q’uq’umatz and Tohil among the K’iche’ Maya, who believed them to be deities of wind, fire, rain and sacrifice, that created the cosmos.[xii] Tohil, mind you, is represented as a winged human-dragon in the Popol-Vuh,[xiii] and “the only God able to make fire, at first.”[xiv]
The dragon Mušḫuššu of ancient Mesopotamia is a “scaly animal with hind legs resembling the talons of an eagle, lion-like forelimbs, a long neck and tail, two horns on its head, a snake-like tongue and a crest.” Marduk, a patron deity of Babylon who rose to power in the first century BC is said to have vanquished Mušḫuššu to later have him as his symbolic animal and servant.[xv]
In Albanian mythology and folklore, “the kulshedra or kuçedra is a water, storm, fire and chthonic[xvi] demon, usually described as a huge multi-headed female serpentine dragon. The Kulshedra is believed to have spit fire and caused droughts, storms, floodings, earthquakes, and other natural disasters. She is usually fought and defeated by a drangue, a semi-human winged divine hero and protector of mankind.”[xvii]
In Greek and Roman mythology, Hydra of Lerna is a serpentine water monster with poisonous breath (as the basilisk’s) and many heads that lived in Lerna, reputed to be an entrance to the Underworld.
In Greek mythology, Python was a serpent or a “medieval-style dragon”[xviii] that presided at the oracle in Delphi and was killed by Apollo.
Leviathan, or “the demon,” is a sea serpent referenced in several books of the Hebrew Bible. “It is an embodiment of chaos threatening to eat the damned when their lives are over. It exhales fire and smoke and is so powerful that only Yahweh can overcome it.”[xix]
Finally, in Nordic mythology, Fáfnir becomes a worm, a large venomous serpent, or a dragon, by killing his father and taking the ring and treasure of Dwarf Andavari.[xx] This story is said to have influenced the work of J.R.R. Tolkien and his representation of Smaug, the arrogant and cruel dragon hoarding his treasure within the mountain in The Hobbit, but also of Golum, coveting “the precious” [ring] in subsequent books.
A Time of Dragons
Interestingly, very relevant deliveries in mainstream culture suggest that once upon a time, dragons, dwarfs, elves, and humans coexisted.
The brilliant saga The Inheritance Cycle (Eragon, 2003; Eldest, 2005; Brisingr, 2008; and Inheritance, 2011) portrays a very similar landscape to that of Middle Earth in The Lord of the Rings, only that in Alagäesia the story is about Saphira, who hatched out of one of the last three dragon eggs in existence after the tyrant Gallbatorix had killed most every dragon and dragon-rider in the land — this story very much resembles the killing of young Jedis in the Jedi Center by a recently converted Darth Vader in Star Wars.
Jawas, Ewoks, Gungans, Twi’leks, Mirialans, Rodians, Neimoidians, Zeltrons, Iktochi, Sith lords, Kaminoans, Mon Calamari, Yodas, Wookiees, a whole cohort of dragons and many others live in the stars.[xxi] But men, elves, trolls, dwarves, dragons, ents, eagles, hobbits, orcs, Easterlings, and spiders, to mention a few, inhabited Middle-Earth. And dragons, elves, humans, dwarves, Lethrblka, Urgals, werecats, and Eragons — the dragon riders, among other species, coexisted in Alagäesia.
Game of Thrones (2011–2019) also has a diversity of races: dragons, basilisks, white walkers, unicorns, krakens, sea dragons, aurochs, giant ice spiders, shadowcats, wights, children of the forest — elf-like beings that dwell deep in forests and caves, oldmen of the river, and mammoths, among other species.
Even the Harry Potter saga, in its own way, brings together different species: muggles instead of regular humans, goblins instead of dwarves, house elves instead of elves, and a whole bestiary of dragons in Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire (2005) and other deliveries — even a cockatrice is mentioned by Hermione Granger in that movie. J.K. Rowling also includes centaurs, merpeople, giants, werewolves, ghosts, dementors, boggarts, and of course, wizards, among many other types of beings.
What does all of this tell us?
The Crystalline Waterfalls
Let’s just say it: dragons don’t exist in this dimension, at least not now.
Like many hybrids and mythological creatures, including unicorns, they come from the crystalline realms, a dreaming landscape that few visit in their dream state and even fewer in their waking state.
Even if you visit this landscape, asleep or awake, it is difficult to translate the experience into something the mind can understand; this is why describable dreams on this landscape — and other similarly distant landscapes –are so valuable.
I visited what I call The Crystalline Waterfalls on April 27, 2017; I can still remember the unusual and privileged perspective from above, the lack of proportion of the Swiss snow-covered mountains with the serpentine-winding road on which seemingly toy cars were cautiously passing by to avoid hurting one of the many incredible animals that crossed unexpectedly. The peculiar scenery and the magical feeling made it seem like a cartoon.
A giant white owl looked me in the eye and flew away; dog/wolves with very long hair resembled the Afghan Hounds that, until now, I didn’t know existed on our planet.
Squirrels and other rodents that I couldn’t recognize were roaming around a children’s playground within a park, at the side of the road; and the most impressive of all was a second white owl but with yellow crest and tail who also saw me in the eye and flew around me scrutinizing me with deliberate intent. Hummingbirds do this when they want to get to know you.
I was staying at a hotel that seemed to be in Transylvania — how funny that I wrote that back in 2017, for there is indeed an animated movie called Hotel Transylvania that resembles the hotel in my dream experience: ancient and magical.
Ana, the designer of A Thousand Dreams, was there with some friends, and now that I know she is a great dreamer and ventures far away, I do not doubt that we indeed met there.
It is now that I truthfully regret not having documented in detail the animals in this dream that I had never seen in my waking state. I also lament not having had the A Thousand Dreams app because, over the years, I have had many dreams with animals, some mythical and some hybrids, and with appropriate tagging, it would be easy to find them and write about them now, but I digress.
On a quick dive into my archive, however, I found an old dream of November 14th, 2005, that could have very much happened in the Crystalline realms, too.
This time, I was with some friends in Haciendas within this semi-desertic landscape — think of the Yucatán Peninsula. It must have been the Day of the Dead (the dream occurred 12 days after the actual festivity in the 3D) for everybody was awake at night, walking on the many dirt roads with candles, and telling spooky stories. There was even an exchange of dead people between the haciendas.
And I saw many animals: baby hummingbirds with their moms — this is not a surprise for I consistently dreamt with hummingbirds for a few years; an illuminated cat, very intuitive, but also very aggressive; and among a “weird fauna”– as I wrote back then, there was a Peruvian llama with the head of Stitch (from the animated Disney movie Lilo & Stitch[xxii]) and with several rows of teeth — very much like a snake’s hooked teeth that prevent live food from escaping out of their mouth and as crowded as in a crocodile or a shark’s mouth.
No, this dream was no cartoon, and oddly for me, I reported having been frightened. Of course, this was 2005, and at the time I was being closely observed by dark forces — a great story for another occasion.
Oneiric Creatures
How the very Mexican Alebrijes came to be puts everything into context. Described as oneiric creatures in MXCity Guía Insider[xxiii], Alebrijes are, simply put, hybrids. These fantastic beings in “impossible colors and forms”[xxiv], are one of the most beautiful handicrafts Mexico has ever offered the world.
But this craft is not ancient, and the legend is no such thing; it is a story –soon to become part of the history of our re-connection (re-cognition) of hybrids and their worlds– that has two different tales.
And I haven’t even touched upon the nature of a dragon!
To be continued,
Aberdeem
Proofreading: Cici Artemisia / USA
Olivia M. Zenteno [Aberdeem] is a branding and business strategist. Along with her team, she is launching A Thousand Dreams, a platform for dreamers to document, analyze data, and share dreams with the world. www.athousanddreams.world
Thank You
A special thank you note to all those who have kindly supported me in this endeavor; it is invaluable!
Clap
Did you know you can offer as many as 50 applauses for each story? I didn’t.
The Invitation
If you have any related experiences in dreams, please share; they will enrich us all. Otherwise, join, follow, share and if you feel like it, support. Sponsors or investors for The Book of Dreams are very much welcome or you can Buy Me a Coffee.
Background
If you want to know what this blog is about, you may want to read the following post:
If you want to know how the dreaming experience unfolded for me, you may want to read the following post:
If you care to learn about A Thousand Dreams’ origin and destiny, The Launch is the post. The idea came to me two years after I began writing and took shape and gained notoriety really quickly thanks to Adamus Saint-Germain and the Crimson Circle.
And if you want to have fun, take the quiz:
Other than that, in this blog you will find posts about many types of dreams and their relationship to our physical reality. Hope you enjoy them!
Reach Out
Contact me at aberdeem144@gmail.com. I will be happy to hear from you.
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References
[i] https://store.crimsoncircle.com/threshold-online-information-only.html
[ii] https://store.crimsoncircle.com/threshold-online-information-only.html
[iii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon#cite_note-FOOTNOTEMayor2005149-22
[iv] Dash, Mike; On the Trail of the Warsaw Basilisk; The Smithsonian Magazine; July 23,2012; https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/on-the-trail-of-the-warsaw-basilisk-5691840/
[v] Dash, Mike; On the Trail of the Warsaw Basilisk; The Smithsonian Magazine; July 23,2012; https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/on-the-trail-of-the-warsaw-basilisk-5691840/
[vi] Dash, Mike; On the Trail of the Warsaw Basilisk; The Smithsonian Magazine; July 23,2012; https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/on-the-trail-of-the-warsaw-basilisk-5691840/
[vii] A cockatrice is a mythical beast, essentially a two-legged dragon, wyvern, or serpent-like creature with a rooster’s head.[vii]
[viii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon#cite_note-FOOTNOTEMayor2005149-22
[ix] Mayor, Adrienne (2005), Fossil Legends of the First Americans, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, ISBN 0–691–11345–9, archived from the original on 19 February 2024, retrieved 5 October 2020
[x] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samotherium
[xi] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anzu_wyliei
[xii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feathered_Serpent
[xiii] https://old.vopus.org/hi/gnosis/gnostic-anthropology/popol-vuh-sacred-book-of-the-mayas.html
[xiv] https://www.litcharts.com/lit/popol-vuh/characters/tohil
[xv] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mušḫuššu
[xvi] A demon inhabiting the Underworld. “Meaning ‘belonging to the earth,’ a term used to describe a god or goddess of the earth or the Underworld, also extended to mean the divine creative force and the source of fertility in the crops, animals, and humans. The term is also used for underground deities connected with death. In ancient Greece, belief in the Olympian gods, under the sky god Zeus, succeeded the old belief in chthonian powers.” https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095611619#:~:text=Literally%20meaning%20%27belonging%20to%20the,underground%20deities%20connected%20with%20death.
[xvii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulshedra
[xviii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_(mythology)
[xix] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan
[xx] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fáfnir
[xxi] https://screenrant.com/star-wars-every-major-species-ranked-weakest-strongest/#hutts
[xxii] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0275847/
[xxiii] https://mxcity.mx/2020/08/alebrijes-oscura-leyenda-origen/
[xxiv] https://mxcity.mx/2020/08/alebrijes-oscura-leyenda-origen/
