THE 'OLD SERPENT'

[Zaskia_Morgan]

I thought I would share this intriguing exerpt from the Sacred TExts site.
The study of Dragon Lore and spirtitual use thereof is a certain key of kin.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/etc/ddl/ddl14.htm
DRAGONS AND DRAGON LORE
BY ERNEST INGERSOLL





Tthere is that powerful modern picture in enduring phrases: "There was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent called the Devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world; he was cast out and his angels were cast with him." Milton in next describing Satan's return to Pandemonium, changed to a dragon, finely distinguishes this hellish monster from the snaky tribe out of which it has grown, in these verses from Paradise Lost (10: 519):

For now were all transformed
Alike, to serpents all, as accessories
To his bold riot. Dreadful was the din
Of hissing through the hall, thick-swarming now
With complicated monsters head and tail,
Scorpion, and asp, and imphishaena dire,
Cerastes horned, hydrus and ellops drear,
And dipsas (not so thick swarmed once the soil
Bedropt with blood of gorgon, or the isle
Ophiusa); but still greatest he the midst,
Now dragon grown, larger than whom the sun
Engendered in the Pythian vale on slim,
Huge Python; and his power no less he seemed
Above the rest still to retain.

The figures of metaphor chosen by St. John show that he knew the traditionary characteristics (largely derived from India) of these reptilian ogres, and counted on the public's familiarity with them. No doubt he had often heard or read dozens of legends about them--such tales, for example, as the following one recounted in the long story about Job by Thal'labi, who died in 1035 A.D. It is a part of the Book of the Stories of the Poets, from which it was quoted into the American Journal of Semitic Languages (vol. 13, p. 145). God is haranguing the fretful job:

"Where wast thou in the day when I formed the dragon? His food is in the sea and his dwelling in the air; his eyes flash fire; his ears are like the bow of the clouds, there pours forth from them flame as though he were a whirling wind-column of dust; his belly burns and his breath flames forth in hot coals like unto rocks; it is as though the clash of his teeth were sounds of thunder and the glance of his eye were the flashing of lightning; armies pass him while he is lying; nothing terrifies him; in him there is no joint . . . he destroys all that by which he passes."




Z. MOrgan

[The Madame X]