Dragon Stories and the Symbolism of Dragon Tales
The symbolic meaning of dragons; with a focus on Dragonheart
Hello Starseeds and Magical friends! I went LIVE for the first time in 2024 (not counting gaming hehe) for Truth Tuesday. You can get the replay of the chat below, as it was all about the symbolic meanings of dragons in stories.
This, of course, is very much related to the writing of my Dragon Warriors Saga which I am targeting release on my birthday in Winnipeg for April 24, 2024. A spicy time for dragon stories, if I do say so myself - as we are going to be entering the Year of the Dragon! So I thought it would be nice to bring a little bit of a Neurolinguistic Astro Story Flavor to this conversation by first talking about the constellation of Draco.
Draco Constellation Stories
Draco is very much related to the topic of tonight’s Warrior Goddess Wednesday Show - because we are going to talk about Wife Goddess Energy; and all of the goddesses around the world that embody that energy signature. One of them, of course, is Hera - Zeus’s wife. In my young adult novel about the Dragon Warriors Battle for Mount Olympus; Hera is one of the goddesses in Mount Olympus that gets taken over by the Queen Wetiko virus - mainly because in a lot of mythologies she is the adversary and plays upon the trope of being the angry “jealous wife”.
I mean, I can’t blame Hera completely for her some of her behaviors in the mythologies. Zeus has an affinity for beautiful women, nymphs and other goddesses and so wasn’t exactly a one lady kind of guy. That being said, Hera does embody a lot of attributes when it comes to being a wife that are not necessarily glamorous but are still necessary - especially when we think of what it means to be a Queen.
Let’s circle this back to Draco.
Draco, according to myth, was said to guard Hera’s golden apples. These apples were kept in a garden at the northern edge of the world, and they were guarded not only by a hundred-headed dragon, named Ladon, but also by the Hesperides, nymphs who were daughters of Atlas, the titan who held the sky and the earth upon his shoulders. The 11th task of Hercules’ labors was to retrieve these apples. And Hera did NOT like Hercules at all, and so was not going to make it easy.
In the story I tell on the livestream, the basics are that Hercules goes to Atlas and gets him to get the apples for him. However, another story talks about how Hercules first frees Prometheus (who is being punished for bringing fire to humanity). Prometheus is the one who tells Hercules how to get the apples - by getting Atlas to do it.
Either due to the altercation or as a result of Hera honoring her dragon protector; Ladon was put into the stars and became known as Draco. Another story speaks of how Athena put Draco up in the night sky.
My favorite story of Draco is actually from the 1996 movie Dragonheart. I won’t spoil the whole movie - but when the Dragon dies and sacrifices himself for his friends, his star essences flies up to the constellation of Draco where all the star dragon gods of lifetimes past greet him and he gets to join them up in the sky.
A source of infinite inspiration, and a symbol of strength and power. It’s exactly why I love them so much, and why they serve as an emblem and a symbol in the Dragon Warriors Saga as exactly that - and what it means to wield such power.
Do you have a favorite dragon story?