Misplaced Pages

Dragon: Difference between revisions

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
Browse history interactively← Previous editNext edit →Content deleted Content addedVisualWikitext
Revision as of 18:04, 25 August 2005 editAlex '05 (talk | contribs)15,289 edits →Dragons of ancient mythology: Slavic dragon is attested in dark ages/middle ages, not ancient. Added Romanian Balaur.← Previous edit Revision as of 21:16, 27 August 2005 edit undoN-Bot (talk | contribs)3,085 editsm Changing links-to-redirects-to-lists to links-to-list-sections. See userpage for more info.Next edit →
Line 73: Line 73:
* '']'' * '']''
* ] * ]
* ] * ]


==Further reading== ==Further reading==

Revision as of 21:16, 27 August 2005

Chinese dragon, colour engraving on wood, Japanese Chinese school, 19th Century

A dragon is a mythological creature, typically depicted as a large and powerful serpent or other reptile, with magical or spiritual qualities.

Overview

The various figures now called dragons most likely have no single origin, but were spontaneously invented by several different cultures around the world, based loosely on the appearance of a snake and possibly fossilized dinosaur remains.

Chinese dragons (among others) are generally seen as benevolent, whereas European dragons are usually malevolent. However, malevolent dragons are not restricted to Europe and also occur in Persian mythology (see Azhi Dahaka) and other cultures.

Malevolent dragons are prominent figures in Judaeo-Christian belief. In Revelation 12:3, an enormous red dragon with seven heads is described, whose tail sweeps one third of the stars from heaven down to earth (held to be symbolic of the fall of the angels). In Revelation 12:9, Satan is identified as this "great dragon", who was cast down to earth along with his angels. In iconography, some Catholic Saints are depicted in the act of killing a dragon: for instance, Saint George, or, in Italy, Saint Mercurialis, who was the first bishop of the city of Forlì.

Dragons are often held to have major spiritual significance in various religions and cultures around the world. In many oriental cultures dragons were, and in some cultures still are, revered as representative of the primal forces of nature and the universe.

Some believe that the dragon may have had a real-life counterpart from which the legends around the world arose — typically dinosaurs are mentioned as a possibility — but there is no evidence to support this claim. Another less common claim is that they are based upon some sort of flying machines possessed by some ancient, unknown culture. Both of these hypotheses are strongly considered to be pseudoscience by the scientific community.

Dragons of myth and folkore

Living things named after ancient dragons

Other things named after ancient dragons

File:DragonTiles.JPG
Mahjong dragon tiles

Dragons of modern literature and culture

The word "dragon" should not be confused with dragoon(Infantry that moves around by horse, yet still fight as foot soldiers). However, numerous fantasy settings (such as the Final Fantasy games) make varying degrees of association between dragons and the dragoon character class (such as in the helmet of a dragoon-class character).

See also

Further reading

Category: