Dragon. Lady. - 59" X 60"
Like the serpent, the dragon was an image associated with the old wisdom and the old religion. According to early myths of Babylon it was said that "before the world was created, there was only Tiamat*, dragon of bitter waters and sweet springs. In the deepest void, before all being arose, She gave birth to light. Dividing Her body, She then became both Heaven and Earth, water and air, fire and roots."
The creative female dragon power stirred enormous fear in the patriarchal church fathers. Their stories are full of dragon-slaying heroes such as St. George and the dragon and, in a similar vein, St. Patrick driving the snakes from Ireland. Truth be told, there never were snakes in Ireland. Natural history saw to that, covering the Emerald Isle with ice and separating it from the larger Britain with deep ocean waters that no snake could swim. So Patrick removed the snakes with blarney. Too bad they couldn’t fly.
*Her name seems ultimately to have been a Sumerian one as in that language Ti = Life, and Ama = Mother, suggesting her original name may have been "the mother of all life" (Thorkild Jacobsen, (1968)
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