Wise Dragons – or Evil Serpents?
With the later arrival of Christianity this perception of serpents and wyrms as sometimes being associated with wisdom and eloquence was turned on its head, or their double-heads. Christian Anglo-Saxons taught that wyrmas were always symbols of evil. For them the serpent from the Garden of Eden was the first betrayer of mankind – with a little help from womankind of course! Despite this it appears that the early English were at first reluctant to fully accept the Church’s new teaching on the evil nature of snakes and serpents, for the in year 745 St. Boniface wrote a letter to Archbishop Cuthbert violently denouncing the English clergy for continuing the use of snake-like interlace on the borders of their vestments.
Conclusion
The conclusion must be then that, at least in early English and broader early Germanic tribal society, not all dragons, serpents, snakes and wyrms were the same. Some, particularly the cave-dwelling, treasure-hoarding, crawling, non-flying sort, were perceived as irremediably evil. They were associated with the Underworld, the realms of the dead. They symbolised that violently defended hoarding of material wealth which was the antipathy of the pagan lord’s duty to fully recognise and live by that key Germanic pagan concept: the Doctrine of Exchange – the belief that power, authority, and wealth can all only be maintained when shared. A warrior must be prepared to give his life for his lord and his people: in exchange his tribal leader must share the wealth won in battle, freely giving away gold and silver arm rings and other treasure, distributing it amongst the people. Similarly warriors, and all members of a tribe, owed a debt for the gift of their life energy which had been donated to them by the gods, and must eventually be returned to the gods through death. To hoard wealth, power, or indeed life itself, was to become a dragon of the worst sort: sterile, alone, and truly worse than dead.
Flying dragons however, were different. Different both from crawling, earth-bound serpents, and different from each other. Some flying dragons were just as anti-human as their crawling, earth-bound cousins. They too could incinerate men and women with their fiery breath, and do so all the more effectively from the air. Others however were not only rather less troublesome, but could even be invoked for protection. It still always remained necessary to be cautious about even the friendliest flying dragon, and stay conscious of their double nature – as illustrated in Anglo-Saxon art by their double-headedness. But – these dragons were not mindless. They might still be fiery and violent, but they were clever with it. A few could talk, or at least grant the power of eloquence, and perhaps even wisdom. To become recognised by your tribal democratic assembly as an adult, you could perhaps slay a dragon. Or, at rather less bodily risk, why not learn to think like one, talk wisdom to your tribe, and be accepted that way? If you’re really lucky they might even persuade the goddesses to share their magical healing powers with you, and teach you their magical charms. Friendly dragon talk could lead not just to the gods protecting you in battle, but also to the sharing of the gods’ wisdom concerning the double-headed, double seasonal, Wheel of the Year, and with that the double-aspected Doctrine of Exchange, and an understanding of the necessary relationship between life and death.
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