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Dragons as symbols of transformational power
Jung spoke of dragons as the first alchemical symbol, and dragons featured prominently in alchemy as in The Red Book where the hero Siegfried killed the dragon. Jung said that: "Only one who has risked the fight with the dragon and is not overcome by it wins the hoard, the 'treasure hard to contain" (Jun, CW 14, par. 796). In his advise to nourish the soul, Jung warned "otherwise you will breed dragons and devils in your heart." Yet, Morgan painted and befriended dragons and I did as well in my application of Jung's art-based process. Synchronously encountering women's relationship in befriending dragons (for example, in the dream of a woman from the one Jung group I attended), I have come to see the heroine's journey as befriending not killing the dragon.
Often depicted with many eyes, dragons were associated with vision: "Vision, even for a dragon, is woefully unreliable. What you can see with great clarity may not be real; what you cannot see may be the ultimate reality." T. A. Barron
"No, I would not want to live in a world without magic, for that is a world without mystery, and that is a world without faith." R. A. Salvatore
