The Golden Legend

The Golden Legend

A city called Silene had a large lake, where a plague-bearing dragon who breathed fire and disease lived. The dragon poisoned all the countryside. To please the dragon, the people of Silene gave it a sheep every day, for food, and when there were no more sheep, they gave their children to the dragon. The children were chosen by a lottery.

One year the lottery chose the King's daughter. The King, sad and desperate, asked the people to take all his gold and silver, and half of his empire - but only if his daughter could be saved. The people refused. The daughter was sent out to the lake, dressed in white as a bride, to be a fine meal for the dragon.

Not knowing this, Saint George was riding past the lake on the same day. The princess, terrified and trembling, tried to send him away, but George said he would stay and protect her.

The dragon came suddenly out of the lake while they were speaking. Saint George made a gesture called the Sign of the Cross, jumped on his horse and advanced toward the dragon. He used his long spear to hurt the dragon badly. Then he asked the princess to throw her long pretty belt to him. He put the silk belt around the dragon's neck. Now, the dragon followed the girl like a humble pet follows its master.

The Princess and Saint George took the dragon back to the city of Silene, where the people were terrified to see the dragon enter. But Saint George told them not to be scared. He said that if the people became Christians and went to Church to be baptized, he would kill the dragon immediately.

The king and the people of Silene converted to Christianity, George killed the dragon with his sword, 'Ascalon', and its body was taken out of the city on carts. Fifteen thousand men were baptized, not counting women and children. On the site where the dragon died, the king built a Church for the Blessed Virgin Mary and Saint George. From the altar in the church came a fountain of holy water. The water cured any disease.

Ancient sages were tellers of lore.  They wisely knew the way to the soul was through story, even as ancient prophets shared mysteries through parables.  Somehow a story stimulates the imagination where the gate to the soul provides entry into a kind of secret garden, where the holy and the human comingle.

There may have really been a Saint George who lived somewhere around 300 AD, and maybe there really was a dragon who lived in a lake, such as the lock nest monster in Scotland.  All the details of the story may have existed, but probably not.  If the story is a myth, a legend as it claims, then even if the details did exist, if you go looking for the bones of old George you're missing the point. 

There are so many layers to this beautiful old legend that it would be so much fun to write volumes about it.  It has several dimensions of meaning. 

The first layer of meaning is the spiritual myth which, like a dream, can be translated into a meaningful message.  As a Christian legend, it suggests the hidden meaning in the legend is the Christian message. This is especially interesting because that meaning has been lost to the church over the centuries and has only recently been rediscovered. 

The second layer is clearly the personal spiritual liberation story that is spirituality's real message, and is at the roots of all religious mysticism. 

And, the third, is one that England embraced, making it an English legend about an English knight, about English Catholicism. As a heroic story about a proud, yet once weak, nation it was a legend to inspire England's liberation from a foreign oppressor which (then) was the Roman occupation of England.

For us, today, the important message is the second meaning. We are living at a time when our sweet souls, our light-filled spirits, or - in Jungian and Christ language - our inner child are being threatened with extinction.  All the heroic stories, including the story of Moses and the birth of Jesus, are about the rise of a "savior" who will liberate the people.  And, in both those stories the children are being massacred.  The dragon in this legend is the anti-christ spirit of oppression, domination, control that "eats" that inner child, consuming and destroying the soul of the person, the nation and the entire world.  

Ahh ... the lake....  The lake, or any body of water in a dream, is symbolic of the unconscious and most often the emotional, watery realm of that unconscious.  For a dragon to be frothing forth from that watery realm, is clearly the power of our internalized, unconscious fears stemming from the everpresence of that opppressive power that holds us down, imprisoning our innocent souls and restraining our spiritual flight into maturity and authentic power.

So, the people give their livelihood to that power, as current day consumers give their money to bank lenders and the clever sale ads for major national and international corporations.  In short, we are giving away our money unwittingly to those who have controlled us into thinking that we need things, we just don't need. 

Finally, there's nothing more to give.  So, the people give their children.  I can't even begin to write how terrible what is happening to our children, out there, today.  There was a recent article in Portland's newspaper reporting that an incredibly high rate of high school kids are dropping out of school.  A pervasive epidemic of hopelessness, an apathy about the future, has taken hold.  With no hope for jobs, who needs an education, the high drop out rate suggests. So, even today, we're giving our children to the dragon, to feed it, to keep it silent. 

So, now, who is the princess?  Could she be the Earth herself?  Could she be the archetypal Eve, the feminine goddess who is the life-bearer of our world?  Are we to give her to the anti-christ powers that seek to consume our souls?

No.  We aren't.  We will offer her up as she has already been offered up.  But, there is also among us a heroic masculine presence, a holy liberator, who is Christ-like in his power to protect the sacred feminine, who honors and reveres life itself, enough to slay the dragon and allow the sacred life-bearer to live.  In his act, he frees us all.

In Jungian terms, that heroic masculine co-habitates within us with the heroic feminine.  It is the role of the man to protect the woman, and the child.  If we lose this, as in so many cases we have, we are lost.  If we lose the heroic male, we lose the life-giver. 

As I look around our world, it seems to me that we have lost the heroic male and the courageous life-giver which both are allowing the children to be swallowed up by the ancient foe, the dragon.  It's all in disguise, so we don't see it.  That's the beauty of a myth.  It gives us eyes to see something that is hidden. 

Just as the inner child is our authentic (as opposed to our ego) self and also within us is that divine feminine, life-giver, there is also the heroic knight, life-protector.  We have within us an inner savior, who we can summon forth to protect us, individually and collectively.  Anything that happens within the soul of a human being, is also played out on the grand world stage. 

That inner savior, that subliminal Saint George, is whom mystics would call the Christ spirit within you.  It is that inner Christ spirit that Jesus led us to.  He did not call us to look outside ourselves for his second coming, as was his first coming, but to find the same spririt that was in Him, within ourselves.  He taught us, led us and showed us where that inner eternal holy spirit was within us. 

We will know the dragon by our fear.  We will know our inner Chirst by our courage.  We will know our inner feminine goddess life-giver by our love.  All the elements of the inner golden legend are within us - if we have eyes to see.