The Biggest Study (Ivan Sanderson's Files) on Dragons

http://thebiggeststudy.blogspot.com/2012/05/dragon-morass-of-confusion-at-least-to.html
http://thebiggeststudy.blogspot.com/2012/05/dragon-mass-of-confusion-part-two.html
http://thebiggeststudy.blogspot.com/2012/05/dragon-mass-of-confusion-part-three.html
http://thebiggeststudy.blogspot.com/2012/05/dragon-mass-of-confusion-part-last.html
Survey of Dragon mythology, last of four parts:

[ I am reproducing most of the text from Part 4 (not ALL of it) because of a few interesting sightings included that I had not touched on before, but basically the author of the article is taking a metaphysical view of the problem whereas I am seeking a practical one-DD]

The Big Study

Another Master-Otter?

"DRAGON": A Mass of Confusion, part last.

Here we go on this last confused flight. Any attempt to learn about truly complex subjects never ends. I'm going to simply quit looking for more shards of evidence and ideas and leave the rest to you. I was in the middle of the last blog entry when a friend sent me another dragon claim --- you can never achieve "completion" so don't try. I have friends who never publish anything because they are always waiting to "wrap it all up". Not a chance.

Here are the first third cases claimed by some to be dragon encounters --- just my randomly collected files, remember. These are obviously the really old ones. To me, six of the seventeen sound like they could be dragons as defined in our series. There are seven others which are iffy. Unfortunately, none is a particularly strong case in the UFO sense of a well-documented sighting. Since they are really old, I suppose we shouldn't expect them to be. There's just barely enough here to keep our hopes up.

One of the things that I like most on that list is number 5, the dragon of Burley Beacon and Bisterne. This tale is about a very respectfully built dragon, legs and wings and reptilian and large, which has very inconvenient behaviors for the local populace. If one could take anything at all about this story at face value, the encounter took place in the 1400s, which in theory would be plenty "modern" enough for us to have good "history" and therefore credibility. In the tale, a historical character, Sir Maurice de Berkeley, confronts and slays the inconvenient monster, both he and his hunting dogs perishing due to the battle. Since that conquest, the Berkeley family became lords of that area's manor, and the dragon took its place on the family crest. The legend was consistently maintained for centuries thereafter. [The "Dragon is two-legged with feathered wings and is therefore a large bird]

If the culture of the times was like current US culture [even without our communications technology], the Berkeleys couldn't have gotten away with just making up such an "unusual" claim, and so we'd have good reason to believe that we had a good dragon story on our hands. But what if that is just what you did to create a family-establishing legend in those times and places? I don't know that culture. I cannot say. Some expert could.

Another prize of the era is of course this: the 1619 claim by Athanasius Kircher that a winged dragon AND a winged serpent flew from Mount Pilate to Lake Lucerne [Switzerland] and that's just that. Love it, but WHO said it, and why are we to believe it??

Here's the rest of these things [I told you that my files weren't too hot on this critter]. I have about five more cases which intrigue me more than most, and at least a couple of handfuls of maybes. Compared to Little People encounters, Sea Serpents, UFOs this topic is starving for evidence. Number forty is a full-fledged dragon rising from the ocean. If I had a dozen more I'd be in business.

That's the trouble with the narrowly-defined true dragon, rather than the great big reptile. There ARE a few dragons which ascend beyond being just big reptilians, but they are few.

Japan contributed a smallish Dragon recently [2003] when this Lake "lizard" crawled out of the water and flew away. Was it well-observed? Multiple-witnessed? If so, it would be a mini-dragon. And we'd all be happy. [This was in Japan and was most likely a large lizard designed like a Draco lizard with webbed-rib-wings: such creatures had been rumoured in China for ages]

.....

By the way, Ulrich Magin, in his fairly recent book Investigating the Impossible has as his second chapter as pretty good candidate for an ocean-going Dragon [winged and all] from 1922 near Istanbul. I just read this so it's not in my files, but it's as good as any.
[This appears to be a Plesiosaurian Sea-monster with winglike front flippers in motion out of the water, a type of sighting that occurs infrequently the whole world over]

...



Possibly related to that tale is the reported experience of a modern scientist, while attending a workshop in 1984. This meeting was a naval presentation [he was in at the time] and the subject matter was not very exciting. It was about 11am and well into the orientation lecture when the officer began to see the floor beneath himself and the other officers in the room becoming transparent. He was not asleep in any way, as he remembered every word of the lecture "loud and clear", but his experience of the "floor environment" was radically changing despite the above-the-floor scene remaining exactly the same.

What he was now looking at below the floor was a set of apparent "connections" between every individual in the room with the back of a great animal --- yep, a dragon. Each man was attached to that great dragon through which seemed to flow an animating energy of life. He felt powerfully alive. The dragon, which seemed to extend forever, had a tiled/fitted scaly back composed of subtle jewel-like colors. It was "impossibly beautiful". Staring at the beauty, he then saw the beast writhe a bit, lift up its head, and momentarily stare back at him. The view of the dragon lasted several minutes until the floor again began "solidifying" and the vision was gone. "Strange days indeed. Most peculiar, Momma", as John Lennon said.

F.W. Holiday in his Dragon and the Disk seems to have a totally different idea. After searching the Scottish Lochs and the Welsh countryside for years, Holiday sees that the dragons and the Balls-of-Light phenomena are somehow one. Although I like Holiday's originality of thought process as he pursued these mysteries, and have an instinctive itch telling me that somewhere in all of that mish-mash some truth lies, I still can't make any hard connection. Paul Devereux seems to be able to, as he has his Earth line energy concepts, and even called his work the Dragon Project. But I'm still not quite getting it. Strangely enough, in a recent book, Solomon Islands Mysteries, it seems that people in that part of the world have the exact same idea. And, as I have difficulty with any hypothetical cultural transferences between the Solomons and Wales or Loch Ness, that is even more intriguing.

But what does it actually mean? Are Earth energies [the physical textbook kind] generating brain-boggling electromagnetic fields [Michael Persinger and John Derr's hypothesis], and scrambling consciousness, burping up dragons? And the BOLS are just secondary physical side-effects? Or are the BOLS faerie, and the "dragons" or whatever else from "there"? Remember that Teodorani believes that the only sustainable hypothesis to cover the behavior of the BOLS he studies is that they somehow contain consciousness. Cue John Lennon again.

Let's go into a different Out Proctor Hollow. The above is a very early painted rendition of what Pierre Marquette saw of the Piasa Bird on that expeditition. Hmmmm.... just look at that thing for a moment....

" As we coasted along the rocks, frightful for their height and length, we saw two monsters painted on these rocks, which startled us at first, and on which the boldest Indian dare not gaze long. They are as large as a calf, with horns on the head like a deer, a frightful look, red eyes, bearded like a tiger, the face somewhat like a man's, the body covered with scales, and a tail so long that it twice makes a turn of the body, passing over the head and down between the legs, and ending at last in a fish's tail. Green, red, and a kind of black are the colors employed."

Not exactly a European dragon but certainly in the ballpark. My intuition is that the things were pictorially somewhere between the two renditions above.

The Sioux have a legendary creature, sometimes painted on rockfaces, called the Unktehi. It seems properly cryptozoological if not trending towards prehistoric or dragonish.[This one is a Mishipizhiw, Algonquin analogue of the Unktehi and what had most likely been painted on "Piasa Rock"]

Apparently there are more than one place where the Unktehi is drawn, indicating some significance to me. I've taken one such drawing and added wings --- an illegal move by me, but I'm meditating..... not completely far off Piasa Bird imagery. [Yes, forget the wings: Unktehi were contrasted with winged creatures and fought against them. Some at least seem to be based on fossil dinosaur bones]

Could the pre-European Native Americans known of a dragon-like creature? If so, what does that do to our ideas as to whether anyone ever had true "external reality" encounters? As I said, folks: I'm trying as hard as I can on this one.

And with that: what then is this alleged Native American pictoglyph from Wupaki Park all about? Is it legit? A modern fake? Half legit with modern additions? Too bad that I at least don't know, as it is a fine, albeit crude, rendition of a dragon in my eyes.[Actually it is a water monster and it could be "Blowing like a whale": Both Mishipizhiws and Unktehis were actually water-monsters]

So even here Out Proctor, I'm still haunted by Beowulf's Bane. Where did it come from? It doesn't seem like a reverie of the Lifeforce of the World, but more like an awesome cousin of the equally awesome Piasa Bird. [Which was not a bird. That part was a hoax]

Desperate for inspiration, I'm turning to my least favorite Catholic saint, Augustine. Despite being a theological misfire of calamitous proportions on several major topics, he was a highly curious man with many contacts. And in an unfinished treatise on the creation of the world, Augustine stated flatly that dragons existed and that the pagans have known this for a long time.

When Augustine uses the word "pagans" he is usually referring to certain Greco-Roman area cults, one of which he himself belonged to as a youth. But Augustine also knew well the "paganism" of the British, as his main theological opponent, the one who tested his thinking most severely, was a British monk named Pelagius. In fact there was a lot more "commerce" between Britain and Rome back then than one imagines [we are speaking of the c.400AD era here --- the Dark Dark Ages]. What sort of dragons was Augustine hearing about, that convinced him of their reality? By the way, he speaks of these things as natural beasts from the creation, not icons of Satan.

[This is another twolegged winged dragon more than likely based on a large pheasant of foul reputation and identical to the Wyvern if not also to the Cockatrice]
I'm getting an itch that he's talking about this. You're allowed to get itches Out Proctor.

Going back to the beginning: Tiamat vs. the gods of Order. The Tiamat legend gets a serious change of imagery with the Mesopotamian ascendance of the later Babylonian-Assyrian empire. By 700BC The battle isn't between goodness and a giant sea monster, but between Bel [good guy god] and a winged dragon... or maybe a Griffin.{Second guess is correct]

Here's another cylinder seal of that era. The fight now takes on a decidedly dragonish flavor, as the opponent is properly winged, and yet continues the flavor of the serpent/reptilian Tiamat in the back of one's mind. And... the griffin, which seems very close to our ancient dragon at this point, is a guarder of treasures as well.

Here we have an illuminated manuscript representing the biblical story of Daniel "defeating" the dragon, which is clearly a direct Old Testament steal from the old Bel and the Dragon Mesopotamian story. Our dragon here, happily in its cavern has a more dragony than eagle-like head, and one sees many legends running together on details.[This one is more likely a big monitor  lizard]

Dragons and Griffins --- not really so different in appearance. Throw a Wyvern into the middle and you have rather smoothly translating physical set. How does this play into our story, though? I can't claim to have strong opinions about that. The legends, powerful legends possibly resting upon real sea serpent and monster encounters were there. They were so ubiquitous that they were in the minds of Bible writers and people like Augustine. Right with that were the Griffins. Based on encounters? All this was a stew existing in the scandinavian and british minds. The Beowulf poet lived in that legendary environment. He plucked it out. Was it a plucking of an idea based upon encounters? Or was this only a very emotive image of awesome force?

Lots of griffin, wyvern, dragon image exists. Shreds of claims and testimonies exist. The Piasa Bird stands there mocking. Dragons.... did any entity from faerie ever decide to manifest in that form? Where are the encounter stories? [Ironically the Piasa bird seems to be the only one of this series that was not originally a bird]

I'm out of here. Dragons DO exist Out Proctor.... but I still don't know about anywhere else.

Till next time, and next topic: may your lives be full of wonders and only beneficent dragons.

"The Piasa Bird" and Mishipizhiws

This is one case where MOST of the books have got the thing WRONG.

To Quote the usual Internet version of the information:

"The Piasa Bird is a Native American Cryptid depicted in one or two murals painted by Native Americans on bluffs (cliffsides) above the Mississippi River. Its original location was at the end of a chain of limestone bluffs in Madison County, Illinois at present-day Alton, Illinois. The original Piasa illustration no longer exists. A newer 20th Century version has been placed on a bluff in Alton, Illinois, several hundred yards upstream from its place of origin"

John Russell account
The monster depicted in the mural was first referred to as the "Piasa Bird" in an article published circa 1836 by John Russell of Bluffdale, Illinois. John Russell was an imaginative professor of Greek and Latin at Shurtleff College, Upper Alton, Illinois. The article was entitled "The Tradition of The Piasa" and Russell claimed the origin of the word to be from a nearby stream : "This stream is the Piasa. Its name is Indian, and signifies, in the Illini, "The Bird That Devours Men" ". [note: The original "Piasa Creek" ran thru the main ravine in downtown Alton, and was completely covered by huge drainage pipes circa 1912.] According to the story published by Russell, the creature depicted by the painting was a huge bird that lived in the cliffs. Russell claimed that this creature attacked and devoured people in nearby Indian villages shortly after the corpses of a war gave it a taste for human flesh. The legend claims that a local Indian chief, named Chief Ouatoga, managed to slay the monster using a plan given to him in a dream from the Great Spirit. The Chief ordered his bravest warriors to hide near the entrance of the Piasa Bird's cave, which Russell also claimed to have explored.[5] Outoga then acted as bait to lure the creature out into the open. As the monster flew down toward the Indian Chief, his warriors slew it with a volley of poisoned arrows. Russell claimed that the mural was painted by the Indians as a commemoration of this heroic event.

Some sources report that this account was simply a story created by John Russell. In the book "Records of Ancient Races in the Mississippi Valley..." Chapter 2, 1887 by W. McAdams , the author says he contacted John Russell and Russell admitted the story was "somewhat illustrated" [He is also supposed to have told his son the story was "Made up"-DD]. The bird imagery is not reported in Father Marquette's description, which makes no mention of wings. [emphasis added-DD] It is also possible that Marquette's description and Russell's account were both accurate for their respective times. The image may have been repainted at some point between 1673 and 1836 to revise its appearance and iconography.

When contemporary historians, folklorists, and tourism promoters are looking for a narrative description of the story behind the Piasa "Bird", they often rely on Russell's account. This colorful version of the tale can be adapted to allow a wide range of interpretation and allow other cities and counties to claim promotional rights to the legend.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piasa

Furthermore,
Local claims that the word "Piasa" meant "the bird that devours men" or "bird of the evil spirit" are not accurate nor based in the Illinois language.

It seems that the original petroglyph was a different sort of creature entirely and that the image that had been originally reported,













...had by the 1840s sprouted wings, probably by way of some White Men restoring the image beyond what was actually warranted. About the time that Russell "Made up" his version of the story (together with the fanciful "Translation" of "The Bird that Eats Men"), the petroglyph looked like this




And it seems that the creature had reversed position on the rock as part of the process. The 20th Century version now used is mostly fanciful but is ultimately a much-modified descendant of the 1840s version, with the wings becoming ever larger and sturdier





Again from Wikipedia, under "Discovery":

In 1673, Father Jacques Marquette saw the painting on a limestone bluff overlooking the Mississippi River while exploring the area. He recorded the following description:

"While Skirting some rocks, which by Their height and length inspired awe, We saw upon one of them two painted monsters which at first made Us afraid, and upon Which the boldest savages dare not Long rest their eyes. They are as large As a calf; they have Horns on their heads Like those of a deer, a horrible look, red eyes, a beard Like a tiger's, a face somewhat like a man's, a body Covered with scales, and so Long A tail that it winds all around the Body, passing above the head and going back between the legs, ending in a Fish's tail. Green, red, and black are the three Colors composing the Picture. Moreover, these 2 monsters are so well painted that we cannot believe that any savage is their author; for good painters in France would find it difficult to reach that place Conveniently to paint them. Here is approximately The shape of these monsters, As we have faithfully Copied It."
Later French explorers, like St. Cosme, reported that by 1699 the series of images were badly worn due to the habits of the local Indians to "discharge their weapons" at the images as they passed. Author A.D. Jones, in his book " Illinois and the West" c.1838, also describes the ravages of weapons (firearms) upon the images, and further refers to the paintings as being named "Piasua".




Wikipedia illustration of The Underwater Panther or Misipizhiw from the article on the Piasa petroglyphs. The figure is important in many Native traditions and is frequently posted along waterways, also including the Great Lakes area. There is very little doubt that the original Piasa petroglyphs were variations on this design, which was also of importance to the Mississippian "Moundbuilder" cultures of the area.

While it actually is possible to locate Native words meaning "Bird" that sound like "Piasa" in the Eastern Woodlands area, it is pretty certain that the creature depicted was never thought of as a "Bird" at all. Furthermore, nearly everybody that quotes Russell's story in more modern times wants to relate it to the Thunderbird legend and to modern sightings of what are also said to be Thundrebirds in the area. On the contrary, Thunderbirds are also known from Folklore of the area, in their usual "Bird" forms and not as flying "Piasa Birds". They are depicted in traditional fashion to resemble larger eagles. And what is more, Folklore of the Great Plains insists that the Thunderbirds and the Underwater Panthers (or Horned Serpents) are at war with each other and are seeking each others' extermination.






And the final blow seems to be that actually, "Piasa" seems to be taken as merely a variation on the term for Mishipizhiw, perhaps a generic trade term used throughout the Mississipian mound area. The website where this pipe was illustrated does so use the term "Piasa" as a composite creature of mostly-feline appearance and underworld associations, or in other words what is called Mishipizhiw (and with numerous variations) in other areas. The pipe is from Alabama. The source is the Smithsonian Institution, from the Collections of the National Museum of the American Indian


http://americanindian.si.edu/exhibitions/infinityofnations/woodlands/170893.html



Copper cutout (Mound) Thunderbird from Near Peoria, Illinois.




As to the reported Thunderbirds, I have collected reports of them off and on since the 1970s, in Indiana as well as in the adjoining states. I have no reason to cast doubt on the popular opinion that the largest reported birds are remnants of the Ice-Age Teratornis and I hope to give a report on them on this blog in the near future.

Best Wishes, Dale D.