It was described as a being of fire and of water, as coiled about the earth, within the deep, or flying through highest heaven. Always it was serpentine; sometimes, yet not always, evil. The heart's blood of the Dragon gave wisdom, it guarded subterranean treasure, or, it might be, a beautiful princess, or the Hesperidean apples, or the fleece of gold.

All the early gods and heroes seem to have struggled with the Dragon-Marduk, Cadmus, Apollo, Jason, Thor, St. George, Siegfried, and Arthur. In all accounts it appeared to have been the worlds of both gods and men, of the height and the abyss; triumph over it fulfilled the desire of the heart of the victor. Maker of eclipses, and binding the black rain cloud, through its devices the fall of man was brought about. It is associated with the traditional origins of man's life on earth and with man's conquest of eternity.

The most typical quality of the Dragon, as the myths indicate, was its changefulness. Protean, it was of all the elements-of fire, air, water, and earth-the free, powerful and dangerous denizen. In Art as is myth, the Dragon is the most universal of symbols, and it is intertwined with the deepest mysteries of human thought. As the ultimate characterisation of the serpent image, a resolution of bird and reptile into one vast being, the Dragon culminates in type as the devourer, the swallower. Old stories speak of it as swallower of the sun in eclipse- the Chinese describe and paint it as straining after the mystical "Pearl".

In the height of the starry skies the Dragon is to be seen writhing in an incessant circle abour the turning point of the north, Once, in the age-long circular swing of the earth's axis that continuously, gradually, changes the position to that "ever-fixed" arctic point, it contained the polestar itself. The one unchanging point, the centre of the zodiacal circle, that of the sun's ecliptic-remains forever amid its coils.

So obvious is the importance of the dragon constellation Draco, in the heavens, that a study of the meaning of this figurd, in myth, may offer some understanding of the other images in that treasure house of the imaginings of ancient man and of the symbols of ancient tradition. In the sky, whereupon is wrought the strange pattern of man's mind, where his thought and contemplation imprinted long ago the figures of strange histories, there, in the centre of the circle of the great types of life-the Zodiac-the Dragon rides in glory.

The constellation figures are obviously related to a considerable number of myths, and many of them are protagonists under various names in different stories. But of the greatest importance is the fact that the signs of the zodiac and many of the constellations are, as symbols, the oldest direct inheritance that we possess from the ancient world, They offer the only continuous clue, leading directly through time, to that day's measure of thought. The key lies embedded in a tradition which has degenerated, but, nevertheless, it has been continuously employed until our own day.

Indeed, so long have these constellation figures been known, that as symbols they are the images to which, even today, man's hidden mind appears to cling most tenaciously. The amazing figure of the Dragon is the flower of mythopoeic thought; to seek first for the gleaming shape of wonder and terror in the world of the real and purely rational is without avail to any end; it is a creation of the spirit of man-a dream. Like the dream, it can pass where it will, bearing the wise man who can guide it into the profundity of the inner world, to the spring and fountain of life, and to the perilous topmost height of the mount of heaven, there, if he will, to regard the very paradisial garden and the Lord God walking therein.

It is indeed the summation of the duality of the world; it is, at once, the guardian of the gate and the one who reveals the way in. Of the darkness and of the light, it is one with Time; change, and eternity of change are its names. The moon is its measure, and the sun. These three are the great triad by whom are made manifest the four seasons of the year-the Sun, the Moon, and the Dragon.

Draco is the guardian of the pole because, speaking generally, it marked the ancient limit of the stars which do not set, for in the southerly latitude of the Mediterranean countries its head descends even to the horizon. Again, it is, of course, the center of the zodiacal path, the road of the sun, moon and planets. Thus the northern pole, as the very heart and centre of the movement of the fixed stars, has the appearance of being guarded and encircled by the Dragon, Draco, which itself is the central figure amidst the path of the changeful planets.

The Earth, the Sun, and the Moon, are bound in an intimate relationship that enters very deeply into the lost lore of the Astrologers, and it is a matter beyond the obvious phenomena of light and heat giving. It is of the same intensity of effect that is manifest in the moving tides of the sea, and it is of the same nature; but, as having to do with the mass and body of the earth, it is even more significant. Just as the effect of the moon's attraction is to sway the waters of ocean, the effect of sun and moon together is to sway the solid world, for it is to be understood that the precessional change of equinox is due to this drag and pull of the two luminaries.

The force of the Moon is as great in this deflection as that of the Sun; indeed, it is said that the Moon's close proximity makes her effect even more considerable. So, on this account, every year the Earth's vernal equinox is a little earlier, the Sun rises sooner and conjoins with the same star group about twenty minutes later. This steady loss of sidereal time and its divergence from tropical or equinoctial time, was known to the Greeks at least 150 B.C. The whole complex of interplay is thus manifested in a movement of the sun's equinoctial points from East to West, and of the polar axis moving in the same direction around the centre of the ecliptic circle.

Another aspect of this close intimacy of relation is the "nodding" of the pole. This is due to the Moon's varying position in the ecliptic, at times above and at times below the Sun's path. This slight movement, or nod, or wave, in the path of the polar axis takes 9.3 years, or half the time of one revolution of the Moon's nodes; in other words, this is the Moon's disturbance of the earth's axis, when acting in a different direction from the Sun.

The moon passes north and south of the ecliptic at the nodal places; here her path crosses that of the sun, and at such points of crossing, the simultaneous arrival, the meeting of sun and moon, causes an eclipse. These are the typical places of the Head and Tail of the Dragon, and this is the title given to the precessional movement of the moon, occupying about 18 1/2 years from node to node again.

These points and their purpose are unexplained by modern astrological manuals, which commonly reveal ignorance of any but prognostic meaning, and which claim that the terms were used by the old writers to fill a gap in their judicial scheme. But the Dragon is of all the extra-zodiacal constellations the most significant in the study of the planetary movements in the ecliptic. It is at the pole of that zodiacal circle, and the centre of the sun and moon movement as seen from the earth; as such it is of first importance in any real study of the geocentris view of the starry heavens.

The common astronomical descriptions of the stars are abstracted to unreality in our present-day books. They have next to nothing to do with sight and sense of the living movement is the skies. Yet, to regard-to contemplate-the sky, we must know the path of the planetary round as well as the movement of the fixed stars. The planets' road, the road of signs, goes diagonally amongst the fixed stars, and each planet travels at a different pace, and each circles about Draco. The great Dragon is the fixed symbol at the centre of the zodiacal circle, which is their pathway; hence the importance of the Dragon to the old astrologers. Set in the height of heaven, it oversaw, all-seeing, according to its name, the changeable stars. It was related to the nod of the earth's pole caused by the sun and moon power. The Dragon is master symbol of the phase of being which man represented by the Zodiac and the planets therein. So far as the ego of man lives reflected in that great life, it is watched by, and moves about, that great and wondrous invention of his cosmic dream.

It is, then the image of that central life which intertwines and conjoins in the complex of man's psyche the major energies of sensual life, the symbols of which are Sun, Moon and Earth. Creep or climb, fly or plunge, it is the image of that which represents mastery. The image of power, energy, force of imagination, strength of vision, it is that impossible thing of which Vaughan the Alchemist, tells:-

"I am the old Dragon that is present everywhere on the face of the Earth,-father and mother, youthful and antique, weak yet powerful, visible and invisible, hard and soft, descending to the earth and ascending to the heavens, most high and most low-in me the order of nature is oftentimes inverted- I am dark and bright; I spring from the earth and I come out of heaven. I am well known yet a mere nothing."

"The Celestial Dragon is placed over the Universe like a king upon a throne; the revolution of the year is as a king over dominion; the heart of man is as a king in warfare."

This seasonal aspect of this star figure in the height accords with the movement of the planet Mercury, which traverses its orbit four times in the year. Hence, no doubt, the close affinity between Mercury and the Dragon, for just as the typical symbol of the Sun is the Lion, so that of Mercury is the Dragon.

The Dragon is the controlling symbol of Time, for its movement relates the sidereal year to the year of the sun and moon, whose dissimilar indices of revolution are brought together by the nodes, their points of conjunction in the ecliptic. The Dragon is the significant image of the planetary movement within the zodiac, together with the vaster movement of the fixed stars-the link between the same and the other-the golden chain binding together the two terms of difference.

The astrological definitions of the relation between the Dragon, and the Sun and Moon, reveal their position in the ordering of the seasons. In the three signs representing Spring, Aries, Taurus, and Gemini; the Sun, Moon, and the Dragon are respectively Exalted: in Autumn, they are in Fall. In Summer, the Sun, Moon, and Mercury are in the signs in which they rule-Leo, Cancer and Virgo: in Winter, they are in the signs of their detriment. Thus, as Mercury can be equated with the Dragon, the four seasons of the triad are, Spring-the time of their Exaltation, Summer-their Rule, Autumn-their Fall, and Winter-their Detriment.

There are certain ancient images of Time, Mithraic, and Gnostic, and Orphic, part of the vast undercurrent of religious experiment which broke out at the beginning of this now ending era of the world's history. These were of the figure usually named the Æon, sometimes called Abraxas, and there is an Orphic version named Phanes. It was the man-like divinity first born from the Cosmic Egg.

The great winged serpent, in the old Gentile belief, generated and hatched out the egg of the Æon. The new terrific vision of life, encoiled in its folds, burst from the world egg, after the winds of the four quarters had blown upon it, setting up a rotatory motion, whilst the fire within caused it to burst into being. Hence came the manifestation of the primal man, or god, enwrapped in the coils of the time serpent, and called, alternatively, Pan, Phanes, Dionysos, etc., according to the cult. This is, of, course, that original egg which would appear to have preceded the chicken, for it was generated by the Dragon.

This myth is important, particularly on account of the frequency with which the symbol of the Dragon or serpent is used, as if it had simply a generative or sexual meaning. Far as it is from having so narrow a purport, it is, undoubtedly, the image symbolising the full energetic life of the dark Ego which may be sublimated. As a serpent, it has one aspect of the knowledge which is power; just as it knew the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden, so in other ancient stories it knows the herb of healing, or of life. The common proverb, "As wise as a serpent", retains this symbol, and the other adage, less well-known, which says, that to become a dragon, one serpent must swallow another, contains an equally suggestive meaning.

The flying Dragon, the great glowing dragon of power that traverses all, above and below, penetrates everywhere in heaven and hell, keen-seeing, far-darting, is the type of the sublimated ego which we describe so vaguely as imagination, that which is, again, the faculty of image-seeing and making. The Dragon, as such, is the transformed creeping serpent, and like the Eagle or the Gryphon, symbolises the sublimation of the earth-born faculty, that which redescends to the deep to gain new force and energy. It is not separate, nor is it separable from, the one or the other of the triad to which it is related-Sun, Moon. or Earth. All of them are represented by it in their intercommunion of life and force within the body, soul and mind of Man. It represents the power within as Time, and by the power of such an imagination are new worlds born. It is the greatest symbol of the past, and the future lies in the coils of the winged and brooding serpent.

The Easter vigil, the midnight watch for the coming of Christ, dates back so early in Christian history as to be mentioned by St. Jerome. At that mystical season the Pervigilium Paschæ, the watcher looking to the skies knew the appointed hour from the position of the constellation Draco, which lies at the centre of the four royal signs of the quarters of the heavens, and is the guardian symbol of the North. Upon the midnight of the ancient season of the Vernal Equinox, this golden dragon hung in the zenith on the south side of the polestar, with head to east and tail to west, as if it were coiled upon the arms of the cosmic cross of the heavens. Two great stars, Altair and Regulus, lie at the East and West to mark the arms of this, the visible cross of the mystical Easter in the vault of the skies. Theoretically, of course, the symbol of Aries yet remains the Zodiacal sign of the Spring season, and the constellations are considered as if the sun hidden in the north at Easter midnight were yet in that sign. These Images of Lion and Eagle and Dragon make up the composite form of the Gryphon with its eagle head, its winged lion and serpent body. The Golden Dragon, the great one of the North, is the figure in the midst of that mighty cosmic dance, which is the sacred ritual progression of the twelve circling signs of the Zodiac. To the Chaldean astronomer this dragon was the firstborn and central symbol of the whole sky circle. Like the brazen serpent, he is lifted up on the pole hanging in the zenith to draw the vision from the lesser fiery stinging serpents of the wilderness beneath, the constellations Hydra and Serpens just upon the horizon.

The double sense of the serpent image as emblem both of wisdom and evil, lends a contributory significance to the mystery of the Cross, and to the strange saying of Jesus Christ:-

"As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up."

The heaven of Easter night reveals the veritable story of Moses' serpent imaged in the constellations. Above, in the height of the arched skies, is the golden Draco in the midst of the great cross of East, West, North, and South. The lesser serpent constellations lie along the horizon of the South, as it were, at the foot of the stem of the cross. At that hour and at that season the foot of the cross of the heavens would be rooted in the sign Libra, the Balance, which has as subordinate or accessory constellation the Southern Cross.

Dante at this Easter midnight entered upon his quest through the three worlds. He gave the stages of his progress in the celestial pilgrimage by the constellation changes which marked them. This was the season also of the Pervigilium Veneris when the renascent Adonis was to be looked for; it has always been the time for a ritual watch and the symbols of the heavens were naturally connected with it. The Mandæans, sometimes called the Christians of St. John, fix their principal annual celebration by the northern heaven of the Pole in the fashion of old Babylon. But also in the myth of Dionysos, as told by Nonnus (a Christian writer of about the fifth century), Cadmus, the conqueror of Typnon, was instructed by Zeus to regard the Dragon of the North when worshipping. And it may be taken that the principal constellations of the North, with the companion symbols, the four living creatures of the quarters, are the great keys to the ordering of the celebrations, rites, and festivals of the year, and hence give some glimpse of their purport.

These four wheels of the corners of the world have the Dragon as the centre of that cross of which they are the arms. The glyphs of the signs corresponding are the cherubic heads of the Lion, the Bull, the Man, and the Eagle, the symbols of St. Mark, St. Luke, St. Matthew, and St. John. They afford a striking indication of the transference of the old sidereal imagery into Christian symbol.

In themselves, these Royal Stars, or their signs as seen on the planisphere, form a Greek cross with equal arms. But if the heavens are considered as seen from the temperate zone of the northern hemisphere, a substantial part of this cross is always hidden by the northern horizon. The arm in the North is shortened and that of the South is proportionately longer. The type of cross, as drawn upon the skies, is not equal armed like the Greek cross, but is of the form of the Latin cross, which has its stem longer beneath the arms, and shorter above. The true Latin cross, our Western crucifix, is seen therefore extending from its base in the South across the heavens to the North, with equal arms East and West.

Such is the cross upon which the Dragon to the North hangs and such the symbol of the raising up of the Son of Man, and such the image of the skies at the hour of the Paschal vigil.

No doubt the psychical fear of the serpent is due to a displacement of its true function as a symbol. The Dragon is the symbol of that in man's mind which knows the power misapplied that led to the fall. The serpent secret is the reconquest of the lost garden of simplicity. In the fairy tales the beast, the dragon, the terrible monster, is the disquise of the beloved; the horror to be overcome itself is, or contains, the reward. Beauty and the beast must be conjoined.

The old tag that a serpent becomes not a dragon save by devouting another serpent, has an Alchemical sense. These are the two dragons, male and female; they destroy one another, or one destroys the other and a new and mightier one is born, a fiery wonder, a phoenix, a leaping glory, a star of dream ascending to the throne of the whole world. This was the transmutation, in the great work of the hidden glory of perfection.

The vision of easter was the vigil of the new fire of spring; the burning essence of life was the glorious revelation awaited. What religion promised, and that which the three days of the vernal mystery showed forth in symbol and rite was the regenerative secret. It was the period of the mystical war against death and hell, of the emergence of the sun from the lower realms of the grave, triumphant, born anew and more glorious. This was the breaking of the Easter egg from which in ancient myth the primal light appeared, the watch from midnight to the dawn.

It was necessary to celebrate the typical cosmic event and sacrifice at the Equinox, for at other seasons of the year there is a certain disarray in the relative position of things in the heavens. Most conspicuous of these is the displacement from the due East and West points of the Sun's rising and setting. Astrologically, this characteristic of the Vernal season is defined as the substantially accurate coincidence of the constellations of the Zodiac with the geocentric houses of the heavens. Aries, the Ram, is at the Vernal Equinox in its own house-the first house, the House of Life, at dawn. At the great festival of this season begins the Sun's swift increase of power. Subject from the time of the Autumnal Equinox to the ascendancy of the Moon, the Sun in spring regains his virtue of dominion. The cold moon months are finished. In Autumn and Winter the Moon rides higher in the sky. Her nights are long; the Sun is low and feeble. The old Sun, like an aged and effete king ruled by his queen, gives place, after the preliminary ritual of death, to the New one, and the power of the queen of night is diminished.

For Easter, to the Church, is not merely a festival having a symbolical association with the sun's exaltation, but it is appointed also according to the relative position of the moon. The Sunday of Easter is that which follows the full moon.

Palm Sunday preceding is the occasion of the entry into the lower Jerusalem, the city of this world, in contra-distinction to the New one which follows the destruction of the old. On that day begins the last seven days of the moon's winter glory and power. This week is devoted to the entry into Jerusalem and the betrayal and execution of Jesus Christ, and ends with his delivery from the tomb. At the Paschal festival, the Passover of the Jews, the sun passes across the Equator of the heavens in his ascent to the northern hemisphere. The whole system of symbol about this period depends upon the number seven. The final consummation of the whole process of salvation occurs seven weeks later at Pentecost, when the descent of the tongues of flame brings about the ultimate consecration of the disciples. So again are there seventy days of Septuagesima preceding. Seven is peculiarly the moon's number. Twelve is the formal ordering of the sun's passage through the year, which is divided into four quarters of the seasons. These are the four great angles of the world when they are envisaged as the cardinal points, for the world was traditionally a square, at each angle of which were the supports of the heaven's pillars or mountains. These four quarters have their iconographic symbols in the four living creatures.

The great sweep of the heavens as seen at night reveals the definitive symbols of these seasons and their festivals. As has been explained, the Vigil of Easter Night is shown by Draco hanging across the zenith from East to West. Again, at the Autumnal Equinox the same symbol of the Dragon lies near the horizon on the opposite side of the Pole. In Winter, at the solstice, Draco is East of the Polestar, and at midnight of midsummer to the West.

In other terms of reference, that of the holy days of the four seasons; the two solstices, St. John's Eve and Christmas morn are the two fire festivals, the bonfire of summer and the yule log of winter are their celebration. The evening and the morning sky respectively have exactly the same aspect of the stars as are seen at midnight of Easter and again at midday of the feast at the end of September, that of St. Michael. So then have the four seasons their festivals in the four quarters of the day-Easter Vigil, Christmas Morn, St. Michael's Day, Midsummer Eve.