The Virgin and the Dragon
In Episode 4 of the last season of Game of Thrones, Rhaegal, one of Daenerys’ two surviving dragons, is shot dead by three piercing bolts. The death blow is delivered by a bolt that punctures Rhaegal’s neck from side to side, and a splash of blood pours from the beast’s mouth as he falls tragically from the sky into the sea below. This beautiful and terrible scene struck me as strangely familiar, as if I had already seen it many times before. Something about the imagery of slain dragons is rooted in our collective mind, and awakes memories of ancient tales we thought we had forgotten. But this scene reminded me of something in particular.
Since I first saw it, as a kid, on the cover of some book, I was always hypnotized by Paolo Uccello’s painting of St. George and the Dragon. The magic of this image resides in the details: the circles decorating the Dragon’s wings like those of a moth; the blood dripping from the neck of the wounded beast; its glossy, sorrowful eye; the thin spear of the knight and the even thinner leash that binds the surprisingly peaceful lady to the dying monster. There is something enigmatic, if not just plain confusing, about it: what is the relationship between the lady and the dragon? Why does the dragon have to die? After all, the same questions could be asked about Daenerys and her children. We may find some answers by interpreting Paolo Uccello’s painting – and, possibly, GoT’s last season as well – as an alchemical key.
Dragons have a long iconographical history in hermeticism and alchemy. A few associations that easily come to mind are the Ouroboros, where the serpent or dragon is connected to the idea of eternity and cyclical time, and the alchemical salamander, a mysterious being that can withstand fire without ever burning. This multiple association is not surprising, since often in alchemical texts images and words have multiple meanings. It is the case of Mercury, which is frequently referred to as being double: it indicates the universal solvent, or poison, needed to begin the alchemical Opus, but, in many cases, it is also used as another name for philosophical Gold, the universal medicine or Elixir, which is the coronation of the alchemist’s work. This lexical ambiguity is, in itself, a caveat on the deadly danger of undertaking the alchemical Work; the same substance that could grant eternal life has the potential to manifest itself as devastatingly poisonous.
The same kind of ambiguity surrounds the image of the Dragon; it is both depicted as the ultimate natural power, containing in itself the four elements and being able to grant complete control over matter and time, and as a deadly monster that needs to be slain so that the Work may be completed. Dragon’s blood is mentioned in the Rosarium Philosophorum as the fluid that can dissolve all matter, and, in this regard, is also identified with the first, poisonous kind of Mercury:
“Note this that no silver can be made unless first they be all dissolved. Secondly, that no solution ought to be made but in the proper and appropriated blood, that is, in water of Mercury which is called Dragon’s Water.”
The same association returns later in the text, clearly indicating the necessity of the death of the Dragon so that the Work may be completed:
“[T]he Dragon is born in his blackness and is fed with his Mercury, and killeth himself and is drowned in it, and the water is somewhat whitened, and that is Elixir.”
In this respect, the Dragon represents some kind of primordial matter, imbued with properties of dissolution and disaggregation, that can be unleashed and made available to the alchemist through a ritual sacrifice. This dismemberment is mythologically recurring, as we have noted elsewhere, and it often coincides with the cosmological beginning of order, reason and civilization.
Dragons are, in our minds, associated with fairy tales of young damsels in distress, that are abducted by a monstrous creature and are kept segregated from society until a knight comes along and brings them back into the world of men. This is, on a surface level, the story behind the scene depicted in Paolo Uccello’s painting. But, in alchemical symbolism, the relationship between dragon and woman appears more complex and elusive. In alchemical texts, the virginal quality of Mercury is often mentioned, and the same substance that is referred to as dragon’s blood is also indicated as virgin’s milk. These two aspects of Mercury, that of the virgin and that of the dragon, seem to fade seamlessly into one another. Are the virgin and the dragon one and the same? Yes and no. It seems that womanhood is intended as a transformative power that can bind the primitive, chaotic potential of the dragon into a productive cycle of forces. In a cryptic passage from the Turba Philosophorum, woman and dragon are buried together, so that they may merge and produce the philosophical venom required to begin the Magnum Opus:
“I also make known to you that the dragon never dies, but the Philosophers have put to death the woman who slays her spouses. For the belly of that woman is full of weapons and venom. Let, therefore, a sepulchre be dug for the dragon, and let that woman be buried with him, who being strongly joined with that woman, the more he clasps her and is entwined with her, the more his body, by the creation of female weapons in the body of the woman, is cut up into parts. For perceiving him mixed with the limbs of a woman he becomes secure from death, and the whole is turned into blood.”
Of course, a deep, troubling connection between dragon-like creatures and holy virgins recurs in christian iconography. One of the most commonly reproduced images of the Madonna shows her radiating in the sky as she steps over a snake, echoing the Apocalyptic virgin and the seven-headed dragon from the Book of Revelation. While we could understand this symbology as a representation of the Holy Virgin triumphing over evil, some authors, namely Peter Grey in his Apocalyptic Witchcraft, have argued that the conflict between the Virgin and the Serpent consists in a false dualism, and that their mysterious alliance is the key to access the alchemical universal medicine. Similarly, Eliphas Levi underlines the role of the Virgin in directing the blind forces contained in the original serpent:
“She who is destined to crush the serpent’s head is intelligence, which ever rises above the stream of blind forces. The Kabalists call her the virgin of the sea, whose dripping feet the infernal dragon crawls forward to lick with his fiery tongues, and they fall asleep in delight.”
Eliphas Levi, The Doctrine of Transcendental Magic
But this alliance, while it can result in a productive polarization of forces, clearly constitutes a deadly danger to civilization if not accurately balanced, as the tension between pious, fertile womanhood and destructive, sterile monstrosity is always unstable. Quoting Nyx, “[t]he path of heterodoxy and disintegration into infinitely many individuated particles begins with woman, Binah. This paradoxically makes it not merely that the weak Eve was tempted by the evil Serpent, but rather that the origins of Evil lie in Eve. Or rather, in woman”. The awareness of this danger is intrinsic in alchemical symbolysm, where the productive nigredo or putrefaction of the ancient dragon, activated by the catalyzing power of womanhood, can set off the unstoppable disintegration of all matter into fire and blood.
Daenerys’ arc in Season 8 can then be intended as an alchemical experiment gone terribly wrong. The Dragon Queen’s destructive madness is a testimony to the dangers of the Great Work; her ultimate sacrifice is the only way to save the world from devastation, and to guarantee the reproduction of civilization so that the wheel can keep on turning. Just like in the ancient tales of damsels and dragons, in the end the monster is slain, subversive femininity is aborted and patriarchal order is restored. If we wish for a different ending to this story, then, we need to experiment with a different kind of alchemy.
“In everything In nature there are three from two: the beginning, the middle, and the end. First the needful water, then the oily tincture, and lastly, the faeces, or earth, which remains below. But the Dragon inhabits in all these, and his houses are the darkness and blackness that is in them.”
The Golden Tractate of Hermes Trismegistus
Originally posted at https://thenanim.home.blog/2019/05/22/the-virgin-and-the-dragon/
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