Some of you may wonder why I ask you to buy me dragons instead of coffee.
Judith Skelton Grant ends her biography of Robertson Davies — about whom I wrote an essay here — by quoting from an essay by Davies called “Jung and Heraldry”:
A reminder of the incalculability, the might, and the chthonic force of the Unconscious, he is a perpetual adjuration to seek below the surface for the truth of things; he is a counselor that instinct is often the shortest guide in important human affairs. His wings give him power to soar: he is no creeping thing. He is the Old Saurian who possessed the earth before the johnny-come-lately Man seized it and proceeded to mess it up with his cleverness. The dragon says: Trust Nature but do not fear to fly above earth, and Remember Me. The dragon frees the mind from the present, for he is very old, and he frees the spirit from commonplace considerations, because he has wings. And the dragon, looked at in this light, is a dear companion indeed, a Wise Animal, a Counselor that only a fool would neglect.
Now, unlike Davies, I owe no debts to Jung — but a creature with the power to free the mind from the present and free the spirit from commonplace considerations is the Totem Animal for me.
Not all dragons are good, of course, as St. George can tell you. But not all of them are bad, either. Discernment is required. And as we learn in the Earthsea books, it helps to know their names.
The motto of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus. But maybe if you tickle the right one gently enough, it’ll roll over on its back and keep you warm with the heat wafting from its fire-stoked belly, and then quietly, and with a few rumbling chuckles, tell you a few things it has learned over its many many years watching Man mess the world up.
And maybe there's something else worth noting here: in 2 Samuel 22 David, having been "delivered from the hand of Saul," sings this praise to the LORD: "Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations of heaven moved and shook, because he was wroth. There went up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth devoured: coals were kindled by it. He bowed the heavens also, and came down; and darkness was under his feet."