Curing the monster Some images of and considerations - Prof. Dr ...

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The more I allowed the dragon to enter into my space the more I made the
experience that this creature allowed me to cross boundaries, time boundaries as
well as cultural ones. Not only that I rediscovered that previously in my life, as a
boy-scout, there had been a time in which the dragon already had quite some
significance for me as I identified myself with St. George, the hero. Very soon it
also became obvious to me that the dragon not only is as old as mankind but more
or less a universal creature which, despite its various meanings, can be found in
nearly all cultures. Like the chimera, the centaur or the sphynx the dragon is a
creature of the imagination. The question whether such an imaginary creature will
be regarded as unreal or as real soon leads one into deeper areas of philosophy
and of epistemology, in particular. Although at present there can be no doubt that
the dragon is an artifact, created and brought into life through art, during previous
millenia it often had the same reality as gods, angels, devils, ghosts, fairies and
other beings. Today we may be convinced that there is no such a thing as a
dragon and that dragons never really existed, but nevertheless we are surrounded
by countless symbolic representations which prove that there were times in which
our predecessors considered dragons to be as real as either the particular hero
who attempted to kill it or the horse he rode upon.
Overtime, the more I tried to take the dragon seriously the more I became
confused with images and perceptions, previously taken for granted, of what reality
was supposed to be. If, for example, according to contemporary Christian belief of
the existence of God, the saints and the angels is supposed to be real but not the
existence of the great red dragon with seven heads and ten horns which is
described in the Revelation of John (cf. Rosenberg 1956: 207 ff.), what are then
the 'criteria' to discriminate the real from the unreal? Similar is the case of St.
George whose historic existence eventually was negated by the church. What
about all the good works which have been accomplished by thousands of
Christians for his glory; are they less real after the annihilation of this saint? And if,
on the other hand, the dragon will be regarded as a symbolization of a part of
human reality which otherwise cannot be grasped or described, what then is that
reality about? Is it a real reality, an unreal or even a false one?