Imagine the worst natural disaster.
Imagine the fear, the casualties, the trauma.
That's the essence of a dragon.

A lot of people think that European dragons and Asian dragons aren't the same, but that's because they don't understand what a dragon is.

A dragon is always the embodiment of some type of nature’s power.

What people commonly call a European or Western dragon is actually an embodiment of a wildfire. That's why it destroys cities and towns by burning them down. And the act of devouring virgins came from ancient rituals, which sacrificed people to prevent wildfires.

Whereas the so-called Asian or Eastern dragon is an embodiment of a river. That's why it can be both a bestower of blessings (water brings life) but also a destroyer (think of a flood).

These two dragons aren't limited to Europe or Asia. Dragons are a global phenomena, but due to civilization changes, advances in technology, combined with political, cultural, and religious shifts, most stories of dragons have died out. The only ones still known today were those, which were applicable the longest.

In the case of Europe, wildfires were decimating cities and burning millions of civilians to death well until the 20th century. That's why the wildfire dragon became the most commonly mentioned in stories.

On the other hand, major Asian cities were built along rivers and ocean coasts, and their main most common source of disasters came from water. If you look carefully, you can see slight differences between dragons embodying rivers and dragons embodying oceans, but with people no longer understanding the meaning of dragons, the two have greatly merged into one creature in much of folklore.

Of course, the same dragons embodying rivers and oceans existed in Europe, but their stories were less common. Yet if you search very carefully for the old lore of riverside or coastal communities, you'll find them.

Similarly, stories of dragons embodying wildfires also exist in Asia, and can also be found, if you look hard enough.

And there are just as many types of dragons in ancient fantasy stories as there are types of powers of nature.

For example, my favorite ones were always dragons embodying an avalanche. I loved how they were always introduced as sleeping deeply in the hidden caves of the snow-covered mountaintops, and that whoever woke them up would never leave the mountain, and if you ever went hiking, you could find frozen corpses of those, who were unlucky to meet the dragons.

There are even dragons in native American folklore, who embody tornadoes and earthquakes, but contemporary people don't call them dragons, because once again, people don't know what a dragon is. Many assume that dragons must have a lizard-like appearance, which is false.

Dragons can have all kinds of shape, color, size, and powers, because it's all dependent on what they embody.

For example:

1. A dragon that's embodying a fire will likely be red or orange, but a dragon embodying ice will likely be blue or white.

2. A dragon embodying an ocean wave might be shaped like a fish. But a dragon embodying a gust of wind is going to be shaped like a bird.

3. A dragon that's embodying the Yellow River is going to be a huge serpent, but a dragon embodying a creek will likely be a small snake.

4. A dragon embodying a tsunami will be attacking from the ocean, but a dragon embodying a tornado will be attacking from the air.

There is really a vast diversity, when it comes to dragons. And you can even create your own dragons, as long as you know what power of nature you want it to embody.

And this is where I have problems with modern fantasy stories. In the old fantasy stories, it's always possible to guess the original power of nature, which the dragon embodies. However, in the contemporary fantasy genre, dragons make no sense.

For example, the idea of riding a dragon is completely misunderstood. Since dragons represent powers of nature, anyone capable of riding (controlling) them, has to be a superhuman.

In ancient stories, this is how authors told the readers that their characters were divine, magical or extraordinary without explicitly writing that.

The act of riding a dragon is akin to being a god or a god-like being. It's not meant to be something cool that everybody can ride as long as they're tall enough to be permitted on a roller coaster.

Just think of the last ten stories, where a character rode a dragon. Was that act a way to introduce the character's superpowers? Most likely not. Most likely, the dragon was a pet, or they were friends.

What human has the ability to turn a volcano into a pet? What human has the ability to become friends with a thunder?

"Volcano, sit down. Don't explode, or I won't take you out for a walk."

"Hi, Thunder. How's your day? Could you hit my neighbor's house, pretty please?"

In real life, turning a power of nature into a pet or a friend is impossible for humans. As such, in a fantasy world, turning a dragon into a pet or a friend shouldn't be possible for average characters. It should be limited to superhumans.

In ancient stories, such superhumans are usually called heroes, and they carry with them divine blessing, magical weapons and heroic strengths - any of which are things that enable them to do what average people can only dream of.

And this treatment of dragons as overgrown fantasy dogs is what's driving me mad.

I included a character in the tale of Antidotum, who could control a dragon and gave Yew Sky a ride, but only later I realized that people nowadays have no idea what dragons are. So none of the readers would realize the gravity of that scene. No one would pause and wonder what superhuman abilities does this man possess to be able to control a dragon. The whole importance of that event would be lost for most readers.

And that's why I wrote this rant about fools, who don't understand dragons.

Unfortunately, dragons are just one of many pieces of the ancient fantasy world that have been lost in recent years. There are many more.

Ancient stories are dying every time they're remade and rewritten to fit the modern standards. Moreover, new fantasy stories are built with misinformation, misrepresentation, and misdefinition of ancient fantasy terminologies, further destroying any hope for contemporary readers to understand the original language of the archaic tales.

For example, I read Cinderella as a child no older than eight, and I understood it to be a message to endure abuse without submitting to evil. After all, if you’re abused, it’s easy to abuse those weaker than you in turn. However, Cinderella never allowed herself to become the abuser, and her endurance against spiritual corruption earned her the right to become a queen. I have yet to meet a person, who understood this story like this, but I have also never met anyone, who was abused as a child and kept alive by the wisdom from those ancient tales.

In many ways, I feel like God made me suffer such a diversity of abuse throughout my childhood in order to awaken my mind to the wisdom of the bygone days. In the contemporary world, where so much of human suffering has been eliminated by a combination of technology and social actions, the ancient wisdom built upon everyday suffering became like an extinct language that no one understands anymore.

I hope I’m wrong, but I feel like I’m the only person in this day and age, who learned to understand wisdom in ancient fantasy stories. I feel like most people read them for entertainment, but since they don't find the stories entertaining, they lose interest and never find the real treasure - wisdom of our ancestors.