⋆໋✧˚ How to Form your Dragon⋆໋✧˚
So you've been introduced to dragonwork and have an interest in forming a dragon. Well, welcome! Here is my general framework for developing a dragon.
This guide is built on my personal practices surrounding dragonwork through a combination of daemonism, thoughtform, and tulpamancy concepts. It borrows from many of those practices, combining them together into dragonwork.
As a general warning, this guide is made for my desired level of autonomy within my dragon, that being a lot. I'm interested in my dragon being pretty close to sentient, and that's what this guide helps to develop. If you're interested in less sentience in your dragon, I recommend reading this guide and adjusting it to put more weight on your decisions and less on the dragon's.
This guide also assumes you have an understanding of the life stages and their functions, as the steps to forming are linked to the life stages. If you're unfamiliar, read about them here.
Without further ado: let's go!
✧ Materials ✧
The only thing you truly need for forming a dragon is your self, but a few extra materials can come in handy throughout the process.
Journal: Especially the beginning when you're compiling hopes and aspirations for you and your dragon, a journal can be very helpful. It can help you keep track of personality traits, behaviors, features, and habits you'd like to form.
Routine: Set aside a time of day to work through these steps. Could be while you work on something else, could be designated meditation time. Regardless, a routine will help a lot in keeping consistency.
Self-care: Creation of a dragon draws energy from you, and truly you can only progress if you're taking care of yourself as well as your dragon. Continue to maintain yourself and your environment as a way of maintaining your dragon.
✧ The Thread Metaphor ✧
Your dragon is a part of you, and thus before you begin you need to designate which parts of you it is. You are the framework for your dragon's creation. Your sense of self is what will drive the development of your dragon.
Because of this, I find this thread exercise really helpful to use when starting out and throughout the forming process. Anytime you feel distant from your dragon, or they feel unsolid, return to this exercise to realign yourselves.
Imagine yourself made up of threads, all woven together. Each thread is an experience you've had, and they all gather together to make up you. As your dragon forms, imagine taking some of those threads and designating them for your dragon. They're still you, and you're made up of the same things, but you're separate. As you move through the early life stages, you are designating more and more of those threads to your dragon. It takes time; you don't want to take all of your threads at once. And it takes self-care. You can't pour from an empty bucket, after all. But as you weave these threads together, your dragon will form. And as your dragon moves through the life stages, it will begin to have its own experiences and form its own threads. It remains a part of you, but can grow and take a form of its own.
✧ Egg ✧
During the egg stage of your dragon's life, you are feeding into it aspirations and hopes. This period is more so for your dragon to get to know you and your expectations. Before you're looking your dragon in the eye, you're suggesting to it traits it can have.
This is when a journal can be helpful. Make a list of personality traits and behaviors you forsee your dragon having. If you're lucky, it may tell you some of these itself! But chances are, here at the beginning, this is reliant on your imagination.
Once you have a list of personality traits, tell them to your little egg. Talk to your dragon within its egg, letting it know what traits you forsee it having and where those come from. How do you imagine it will react to certain scenarios? What will its temperament be? Talk these out with your dragon, either through a mental dialogue or out loud.
Talking to it is a significant element of this step, as it cements in your mind these traits as if they're realistic. During this stage, you want to focus on taking your imagination and trying to make it feel real, and talking helps a lot with that.
Example:
"Hi! You're Emi. You're my dragon. You are purple with magenta scales along your back and soft quills that will get harder as you get older. You are clumsy, because your wings are bigger than you expect, but you're very bold and energetic and love adventures."
This may be a quick stage, or it may take you some time to feel confident that you've figured out your dragon. Once you have a good understanding of who you hope for your dragon to be, you're ready for the next phase.
✧ Hatchling ✧
This next stage is focused on the visualization process.
Your dragon has hatched! Congratulations! For the first time you can see what your dragon looks like. The main goal of this stage is to get into the habit of visualizing and projecting your dragon.
Write down, draw, or otherwise create an image of your dragon to keep as reference. This will help keep your dragon's image consistent. Don't worry if it's not accurate! Your dragon's features may change as you get to know it better, and if so change the image! But continually refer back to your description or image of your dragon throughout this stage to help you.
The first part of this is an active approach to visualization. I recommend doing this once or twice a day when you have free time.
When your dragon first hatches, repeat the steps above but looking your dragon in the eye. Hold your dragon in front of you and talk to it. Tell it its name, personality, your hopes for it. Tell it about your day, what's on your mind, what you need to get done. Just talk!
As you speak to your dragon, don't expect it to speak back. It's a baby, after all. The point of this stage is to practice seeing your dragon. Look at it as you speak to it. What color are its eyes? Its scales? Its wings? How big is it? Is it sitting still, or is it antsy?
For a passive approach to visualization, remind yourself to project your dragon throughout the day. As you're walking to the bus stop, or doing the dishes, or drawing, imagine where your dragon is sitting with you. You don't need to interact if you don't want to, just remind yourself that it's there.
Sight isn't the only sense we're working with in this stage, though. When you hold your dragon, how does it feel? How heavy is it? How soft is it? What does it sound like when it chirps at you? And my favorite and easily the most powerful: what does it smell like?
The goal isn't to actually perceive these stimuli, you're simply using your imagination to aid in the visualization process.
Once you feel certain in your projection and visualization, move on to the next stage!
✧ Adolescence✧
We have two main goals during this stage, and in my opinion it likely takes the longest because these goals are the trickiest. Simply, we want to be able to perceive personality, and perceive communication.
Note the word "perceive" here. Early on we collected our hopes and aspirations for our dragon including personality traits we wished it'd have, but during this stage we're not looking to force traits onto it. Now, we're interested in seeing what traits persisted and became present.
With a steady hand on visualization, you're going to start to simply watch your dragon. Notice the way it reacts to your surroundings and the events of your life. What do you notice? What makes it happy vs angry? What does it like vs dislike? These are all signs of your dragon's personality shining through. Its personality may differ from what your aspirations were, and that's okay!
If you're interested in a sentient dragon, here's where it gets trickiest. We want to move away from puppeting while watching our dragon to see its personality. Rather than deciding for our dragon what it's doing or what its reactions are, we're letting it do that for itself. This is going to be difficult at first, as until now your dragon has been pretty much just a vivid imaginary friend. Trust your intuition, though. Before you apply your own reasoning and ideas to your dragon, see what it does. When it moves and reacts on its own, celebrate that! That's independence forming, and that will help you sort out its personality!
Again, this practice can be active or passive. Sit on your bed with your dragon and simply watch it explore your room. What does it do? What does it interact with? Or, take a walk, do chores, something that keeps you busy. What does your dragon do then? All of these can help you sort out personality and behavior.
Communication is the other big element of this stage. Previously, your dragon likely did not communicate at all. Now, you're going to be paying attention to communication methods and content. Talk to your dragon just as you have been, but rather than talking at it, attempt to talk with it. Ask questions, and leave spaces for responses. These responses may not be verbal; perhaps you receive a feeling that isn't yours, or an idea that comes to mind. Regardless, these are communication methods.
Again, these steps are some of the trickiest. It will take patience and consistent practice to get your dragon to a place where it feels not only present but independent. Once you do, though, you can confidently say you have an adult dragon.
✧ Concluding Remarks✧
A lot of the guides I consulted placed timelines on moving through different stages of development, but I don't really find that necessary. I think you, as the dragonworker, are the expert on how long all of this will take. Do what feels right, and don't rush it! Enjoy every moment with your dragon.
I really do recommend keeping a journal through this. It can be helpful to have something in front of you to keep track of what you've noticed. Your dragon may exist in your mind, but that doesn't mean you need to manage everything mentally.
The steps in this guide are not cemented in stone, either. Feel free to change them, rearrange them, or leave steps out if they feel unnecessary. Make the practice your own! This is just what's been working for Emi and I.
Thank you!