I am currently writing The Dragon Whisperer’s Handbook, a compendium of ancient magical practices that I’m hoping will help all those walking the long and winding road towards self-realisation, and I think it will also be a particularly useful guide for baby dragons. Of course, if you are a baby dragon, you probably won’t know it because learning to recognise the alchemico-spiritual force growing inside us is a major challenge in a society no longer aware of what ignites inner spiritual growth. So making any progress at all in that regard can be as terrifying an initiation as it is for a fledgling bird making its first flight out of its nest.
When you are in its beginning embryonic stages – when the dragon energy is developing inside you – you have no idea what it is. All you know is that you’re going through a very difficult time in which you just don’t seem to fit in anywhere. It’s as if every time you open your mouth to speak, you upset someone, and you cannot fathom why it seems as if your mere presence in a room sparks unease all around.
I first began to experience this phenomenon in my life in the mid-Nineties, soon after I gave up journalism. While I was making up my mind about what to do next, I freelanced as a copywriter for different advertising agencies in London. My contracts would generally last about six weeks at a time and, during those short periods, I began to notice that my mere presence being injected into the room, into what had previously been a completely stable situation for years and years, would suddenly cause all hell and high water to break loose.
I’d be sitting innocently at a corner desk, quietly getting on with some writing, while around me, all the cognitive creepy-crawly nasties that had taken up what they’d assumed was permanent residence in the dark ‘blind spots’ of my colleagues were suddenly running all over the room, and causing so much havoc that people would fall out with each other.
I would finish up the contract and move on to the next place and the same thing would happen all over again … and again. So I began to notice a theme.
At this time, I was at the beginning of my training to become a shaman and, although I was lucky enough to undergo a very good and comprehensive two-year course with an excellent teacher, it took me at least a decade after that to learn to co-exist with my dragon, which is the expression I use for this alchemically metamorphic process. It is the ‘whispering’ part of the title of this book, which refers to the communication you will learn to have with your dragon, to get it on your side, so that it can lead you to the treasure cave of wisdom it has been guarding for you.
The greatest challenge I’ve had to face in living with my dragon is having to exist in a society in which everyone is admonished to be kind … all of the time. It is a bit difficult when you can feel the tongue in your mouth turning into a flaming sword in response to some consensual fabrication of unreality or other.
But if you’re beginning to recognise yourself, please don’t panic. You are just passing through a necessary stage towards enlightenment, and what’s more, you’re in very good company.
Going back for thousands of years, the Druids were the purveyors of an esoteric teaching system that covered the Earth at a time when dragons and serpents were associated with wisdom, and so were often given the soubriquet of dragon or serpent, like Arthur Pendragon.
Later on, in the 17th century, they were the Dragon Clans that were banished from Britain along with the Plymouth Pilgrims on the Mayflower, and many of them went on to become the Founding Fathers of America.
So let’s see if I can come up with a succinct definition for dragon types.
A dragon in this context is one whose consciousness disturbs the creatures of the consensual swamp that forms, and stagnates, around ignorance, and this fiery force can often create something of an explosion. However, its ultimate purpose is for the general good. The dragon uses its flames to burn to ash all the parasitic pondlife that has buried itself in the weave of the consensual cognitive fabric. It is an act of purification which, once completed, gets change and growth flowing quickly again. In other words, its burning sparks fertility as much as the ash of a forest fire encourages new life.
Of course, it’s one thing to disturb the putrid waters of the marshlands all around us. It’s quite another when we realise that that bog is just an outpicturing of the festering waters within ourselves. If left alone, they will begin to overflow our flood defences and this will wake up the draconic forces within and without. It is a force of Nature that arises when we are not facing and healing our shadows, and this is where my book will help you.
I will be giving you ways to work with your dragon by channelling its fire into your own metamorphosis and enlightenment. In learning how to turn it inwards, its flame will burn up all that no longer serves your highest calling, and you will walk forwards with confidence now that you’re no longer feeling that you’re drowning in a malodorous quagmire of uncertainty, doubt and fear.
Annie Dieu-Le-Veut 