THE CAULDRON
Stirring the pot with Angeline Hawkes


The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. - H. P. Lovecraft


Monsters in Horror: Why They Will Never Die
Part I. Dragons


Whenever the presence of monsters in horror arises in conversation, there is always that one person who declares he/she detests monsters in horror fiction. This always makes me laugh. I cannot separate monsters from horror. There are many types of monsters: the ones we classify as supernatural, to the human monster that we read about in the news. Monsters are with us whether we like it or not.

From primitive times monsters have appeared in art and writing. Every form of religion boasts its fair share of scary creatures, usually depicting evil or a form of divine punishment. Why so many monsters? In times when knowledge was scarce, people needed a reason for things to be the way they were. It wasn't enough for someone to simply die, or for it to thunder, or animals to die of sickness. There needed to be an explanation: something that detailed what it was that was out of their control. Sometimes a tangible happening would occur to give root to the explanation. For instance, the water ran red and then the cattle died. The water may have been running red due to an overabundance of red clay in the riverbed, and the cattle may have ingested a parasite from a completely different source; but the fact that the two things occurred within the same timeframe gave the primitive people an explanation. Obviously, there were those amongst them that had vivid imaginations. Or the desire to manipulate others. It was easy to work a god or two into the mix in order to frighten and control the less intelligent people in the village. Old Woman Brown's deformed grandchild would be a monster born to plague the village because they didn't sacrifice a quality animal, rather than the scientific explanation of inbreeding between cousins.

When researching the origins of typical monsters, one can find similar creatures in nearly every culture sometimes used for religious purposes, sometimes for entertainment, or sometimes to take the place of scientific knowledge. Perhaps one of the oldest such monsters is the dragon.

The word dragon omes from the Greek and means: a serpent of huge size. The size differs from culture to culture. The Western European dragon ranged from bear-sized to the huge Tolkien interpretations in most popular fiction. The Asian dragons hold to the Greek definition in that the beast is more serpent than lizard-like, and has no wings. Asian belief had it that the dragon could fly using magic alone and didn't need wings. From Pre-Columbian peoples, to Native Americans, to the ancient biblical writings, to the art and writings of Western European, the dragon captures the imagination. Wings, scales, fire breathing, magic, caves or lairs stockpiled with jewels and gold: all of these things make up the legend of the dragon.

In The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell believed dragons to be the unification of heaven and earth by the combination of a flying form with a land-dwelling animal form. Perhaps this interpretation can be seen in the dragon in the Biblical book of Revelations that knocks the stars from the sky to the earth: again, a symbolism of the unification of heaven and earth. Thus the dragon is sent to serve as a reminder to man that he's mortal, and having no magic or wings, is land-bound, and flesh-bound.

Whatever form of dragon the reader may favor, arguments can be made that at one time there must have been some beast upon the earth that gave rise to such a prominent creature in so many different geographical locations and cultures. A dinosaur, perhaps? I like to think that actual dragons existed. Maybe one day the fossilized remains of a dragon will be uncovered. Until then, the dragon will exist in our art and fiction just as powerful and ferocious as it was to the ancients.