Water Dragon

This picture of a Water Dragon comes from The Druid Animal Oracle. The oracle is made by Philip and Stephanie Carr-Gomm and the illustrations are made by Bill Worthington. The Water Dragon shown is the Stoor Worm, a great sea-sragon whose 'head was like a mountain and his eyes were like round lochs, very dark and deep'. The dragon had quite an appetite and was finally killed by a young man who entered the sea dragon with his boat and set fire to its liver. During its death struggle the dragon's tongue made a deep slash in the earth that made the Baltic Sea, its teeth fell out and formed the Orkneys, the Shetlands and the Faeroe Islands and finally the dragoncoiled itself up tightly and crashed into the sea forming Iceland with its body, the smoldering liver being responsible for the fire beneath its crust. The story can be read in more detail here.


In The Druid Animal Oracle the Water Dragon is one of four Dragons, one dragon for each of the elements. Although the dragons are connected with the elements, they are Otherwordly creatures. 

In psychological terms Water represents the Unconscious and the emergence of monsters or dragons from sea, well or lake represent unresolved complexes, repressed and distorted drives and desires, welling up into awareness. The destructive Water Dragon symbolizes perfectly the damaging nature of certain contents of the psyche, which, for the healing of the self, require a transmutation that may be depicted as a symbolic death. (source: the book that accompanies The Druid Animal Oracle)

This Water Dragon is very different from the one that was the inspiration for Black Phoenix's perfume. As can be read in my earlier entries about Water Dragon, it was the scent for the Chinese New Year and this year is the year of the Water Dragon. Chinese Dragons are symbols of power and good luck instead of forces of destruction. I am sure that the Stoor Worm would have inspired a much less joyful scent.

Earlier entries about the Water Dragon can be found here(1), here (2), here (3), here (4) and here (5).