29-06-2023, 04:35 PM
The origin of dragons, at least as idea and symbolism, is a pretty deep and fun rabbit hole, that I've only explored briefly. I happen to subscribe to the theory that dragons (as modern day humans imagine them) originate in a collective, handed-down memory of a large avian predator that preyed upon early Stone Age humans, until we developed the technology to hunt them to extinction.
Back in college, I remember reading a few sources that linked Chinese dragons to a personification of any sort of "stripe" in the sky, whether a long thin cloud formation like airplane exhaust, or the visible front of an approaching storm. But this visual metaphor rests in turn on the same collective memory of a large, dangerous bird / reptile / dinosaur-like creature shared by pretty much all of humanity. Pretty sure I've even seen the Chinese dragon, when used as a visual motif and a sine wave undulating live dance performance, compared iconographically to our beloved Wolkenband / nebuly line. I digress. My point is, the use of dragons and dragon-themed pareidolia as symbols for happenings in the sky has a pretty rich history. And probably a rich prehistory too; Mythological themes like a dog guarding the underground world of the dead and the tree of life are common to scripture and folklore the world over. I think the idea of a dragon flying across the sky, and bringing sudden changes to the sky and everything in it in its wake, is one of these deepest of memes. And that being the case, I'm imagining its precise origin, in place and time, being pretty hard to trace. For all we know, the Eclipse Dragon and its relation to the Moon and the Pleiades was part of the mythology of the Ancient North Eurasians, of Paleolithic Lake Baikal.
Marco, if I ever find myself in India again, and I'm feeling some serious Robert Langdon or Indiana Jones vibes, I plan to pay a visit to the temple that houses that restored painting, if at all possible. I'd like to obtain high quality images of it, and would be willing to pay for them. I'd also want to get recordings of locals talking about what they know about this painting, its history and iconography. Because like taking a medical history from a patient, what they say may or may not be true, but it's full of valuable clues regardless. There's a reason they said what they said, the way they said it. If life and travel have taught me anything, there's at least one humble, unassuming, not worldly or formally schooled, absolute character of a local, whose only accomplishment in life is knowing absolutely everything there is to know about this [interesting piece of local culture].
Back in college, I remember reading a few sources that linked Chinese dragons to a personification of any sort of "stripe" in the sky, whether a long thin cloud formation like airplane exhaust, or the visible front of an approaching storm. But this visual metaphor rests in turn on the same collective memory of a large, dangerous bird / reptile / dinosaur-like creature shared by pretty much all of humanity. Pretty sure I've even seen the Chinese dragon, when used as a visual motif and a sine wave undulating live dance performance, compared iconographically to our beloved Wolkenband / nebuly line. I digress. My point is, the use of dragons and dragon-themed pareidolia as symbols for happenings in the sky has a pretty rich history. And probably a rich prehistory too; Mythological themes like a dog guarding the underground world of the dead and the tree of life are common to scripture and folklore the world over. I think the idea of a dragon flying across the sky, and bringing sudden changes to the sky and everything in it in its wake, is one of these deepest of memes. And that being the case, I'm imagining its precise origin, in place and time, being pretty hard to trace. For all we know, the Eclipse Dragon and its relation to the Moon and the Pleiades was part of the mythology of the Ancient North Eurasians, of Paleolithic Lake Baikal.
Marco, if I ever find myself in India again, and I'm feeling some serious Robert Langdon or Indiana Jones vibes, I plan to pay a visit to the temple that houses that restored painting, if at all possible. I'd like to obtain high quality images of it, and would be willing to pay for them. I'd also want to get recordings of locals talking about what they know about this painting, its history and iconography. Because like taking a medical history from a patient, what they say may or may not be true, but it's full of valuable clues regardless. There's a reason they said what they said, the way they said it. If life and travel have taught me anything, there's at least one humble, unassuming, not worldly or formally schooled, absolute character of a local, whose only accomplishment in life is knowing absolutely everything there is to know about this [interesting piece of local culture].