In trying to sort out the dragons of east and west I got lost along the way. I was looking at the use of the dragon as a symbolic barrier and started looking at other barrier figures and came across the "King of the Wood" now the short form of the story is this king/knight is a guardian of a sacred grove and at some point he is replaced when a challenger captures the Golden Bough in the most sacred tree in the grove. Now its been said of dragon that the are a symbol of greed with a taste for gold and virginal maidens. Now its commonly thought the a dragon has little practical use for either one, the wise guy in me would say that when you look like a dragon having gold might be helpful when dealing with maidens of any sort, but lets leave that aside, and get back to this guy wandering around in this sacred grove.

The "King of the Wood" seems to get little out of being king except being the guardian of this special branch of a special tree and in the end getting killed by some lucky challenger in single combat. So I thought well here you have two figures willing to die to protect something special but of little apparent use to them. So trying to remember that we are looking at multiple levels of symbolism the king of the wood story is related to the Goddess Diana (the origin location of the story is her sacred grove)and the Green Man. After following the typical soap opera that fills greek and roman myths, I boiled it down to nature, spring, fertility and a hero challenge. The common dragon stories of the west also carry some of these elements often in a more abstract form.

So I thought I would follow the Green Man around for a while to see where he would lead and wouldn't know he ended up heading east toward the holy land and in some from in India as part of the great wheel of life. So where does that leave our dragon friends, well here is where dragons become protectors and symbols of good fortune, fertility, success, and higher spiritual awareness. Well there is much more but thats the half baked ideas I have been working on tonight.