Are Dragons Good or Evil?
Reassessing the demonisation of East Asian dragons
What first springs to mind when you hear the word ‘dragon’? Is it the fearsome Smaug in The Hobbit, or the vicious Drogon in Game of Thrones? Or is it something cuter like Toothless in How to Train Your Dragon? Or maybe it’s more East Asian like Shenron in Dragon Ball?
(By the way: Happy Year of the Dragon! An apt post for the season.)
When I was 9, I bought a book from a thrift shop, the wrap-around cover a foreboding dark blue with a dragon’s silhouette: the 1982 fantasy novel, In the Hall of the Dragon King, by Stephen R. Lawhead. My parents out of concern made sure it was appropriate for me to read (thankfully it was, and I devoured his novels). Even at that age, I somehow knew instinctively that dragons were meant to be feared. (Dungeons & Dragons was a definite no-no.)
I’ve mentioned in a previous post the tendency to instinctively demonise indigenous religions and cultures that aren’t Christian. Objects, including those depicting dragons (such as the statue seen below at a temple in Kyoto), are often thought to serve as entry points for evil spirits.
Recently I read a book on the history of Asian Christianities called Uncovering the Pearl, and I was fascinated/miffed to discover that this stigmatisation has been blatantly ongoing since the western colonial era. Archie C. C. Lee contends that many missionaries intentionally mistranslated the Bible ‘to demean indigenous cultures and religions.’1 He highlights Robert Morrison of the London Missionary Society who published a Chinese Bible in 1823 and deliberately chose to use the positive Chinese character ‘long’ to translate the word ‘dragon’ with its negative connotations in thirty-three verses:
Lee explains, ‘Among Chinese communities, the word “long” is understood as a beneficial mythic creature, combining the most miraculous parts of many animals. Chinese people believe that the dragon brings blessing and prosperity to humanity.’ Morrison departed from the translation of Matteo Ricci, an Italian Jesuit missionary in China from 1583 to 1610, who understood the meaning of long and therefore chose another Chinese character (jiao) for ‘dragon.’ Lee argues that ‘Protestant missionaries capitalized on the mistranslation and came up with an oppressive Christianity with the biblical God taking on a long fight against the evil and devilish Chinese culture and religion.’2
This was no surprise; you can see similar attitudes two hundred years later.
But at the same time I was reading The Story of Art by E. H. Gombrich, particularly a chapter about manuscripts made in England and Ireland during the 7th and 8th centuries:
Figure 103 is a page from the famous Lindisfarne Gospels, made in Northumbria shortly before 700 AD. It shows the Cross composed of an incredibly rich lacework of intertwined dragons and serpents, standing against a background of an even more complicated pattern.3
Wait… what?! I thought western Christianity unequivocally condemned all dragons as evil! But here we have an indisputable example of dragons being used for Christian purposes, and dare I say… Christian good?? Hold on a minute.
Now I’m not naïve about the existence and presence of evil spirits, and I’m certainly not advocating mindless acceptance; idolatry is always a real and serious risk. But is it really so simple and clear-cut as to demonise every dragon – particularly East Asian ones – for being evil? I began to suspect that the stigma against East Asian dragons might be more nuanced than many (including myself) believed it to be.
I’m obviously not the only one wondering about this. I found an article on Salt&Light entitled, ‘Should Christians have anything to do with the dragon this CNY?’, where a Chinese Singaporean Christian asks Reverend Ng Zhi-Wen if it’s okay to celebrate the new year with all its dragon associations. This spurred me on to dig deeper.
Arguably the strongest support for dragons as evil is to look at the Bible. The symbolic presence of dragons (especially in Revelation) is often negative, associated with evil kings and even Satan himself. Here are some passages:
‘Thus says the Lord God: I am against you, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great dragon sprawling…’ (Ezekiel 29.3 NRSV)
‘Then another portent appeared in heaven: a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads. […] Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back, but they were defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan…’ (Revelation 12.3,7-9 NRSV)
‘[An angel] seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and threw him into the pit, and locked and sealed it over him, so that he would deceive the nations no more...’ (Revelation 20.2-3 NRSV)
The Bible Project does a whole video on this topic and concludes:
In the Bible, dragons represent rebellious spiritual beings and the violent humans and empires in league with them. Jesus ultimately overcomes the dragon with a courageous act of generous love, and he invites his followers to do the same.
(It’s worth noting that this negative view is supported in the Apocrypha’s narrative of Bel and the Dragon, an addition to the book of Daniel, where Daniel kills the great dragon that the Babylonians revere and worship as a living god.)
Daniel Ogden, a Professor of Ancient History, describes the evolution of European dragon iconography in the Middle Ages, where a cross-pollination with the imagery of winged demons only perpetuated the connotations of evil:
How did the classical dragon, essentially just a massive snake in form, a worm, evolve, in early Christian culture, into the very particular and distinctive fantasy creature we know as a ‘dragon’ today in the West? […] Its wings, […] and probably too in effect its two legs […], it derived rather from demons and the Devil, the latter being associated with snakes already in the Old Testament, and then spectacularly so in the New Testament’s Revelation.4
Western Christian tradition maintained this perception. One of the most iconic myths is St George slaying the dragon, which you can see depicted in this stained glass window in The Cathedral Church of St Nicholas in Newcastle upon Tyne:
The Christian tradition of saintly dragon slayers also includes St Philip who
destroys some [dragons and snakes] by calling down lightning upon them and others by staring them down with the light of the Holy Spirit in his eyes. Yet others he dispatches to the wilderness as if exorcising demons. […] Christian dragons […] often infect the air with their pestilential breath, and this can serve […] as a metaphor for the paganism the saint seeks to eradicate.5
To this day, ferocious and deadly European dragons – popularised by mainstream fantasy like The Hobbit, Harry Potter and Game of Thrones – still need to be defeated or tamed.
But in contrast… you have playful and puppy-like Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon?! In fact, it’s not just in western popular culture that you can find more positive depictions of dragons; you can also find them in western Christian tradition, for example, as we’ve already seen with the Lindisfarne Gospels.
Maureen S. O’Brien has thoroughly investigated positive dragon associations in medieval biblical tradition. Just look at these passages (admittedly from the KJV, but still):
‘I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls.’ (Job 30.29 KJV)
‘The beast of the field shall honour me, the dragons and the owls…’ (Isaiah 43.20 KJV)
‘Praise the Lord from the earth, ye dragons, and all deeps…’ (Psalm 148.7 KJV)
Let’s go back to modern translations. What about the Leviathan? Cue negative depiction in Isaiah 27.1 NRSV: ‘On that day the Lord with his cruel and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will kill the dragon that is in the sea.’ But God also created the ‘great sea monsters’ as good (Genesis 1.21 NRSV); and there’s even an adorable image of the Leviathan having been formed by God to play/frolic in the sea (Psalm 104.26 ESV/NIV).
(The Apocrypha also contains a positive depiction of dragons, primarily in the Greek additions to the book of Esther, in which Mordecai, Esther’s cousin, has a dream of two great dragons ready to fight (Greek Esther 11.6), and later interprets the two dragons to be Haman and himself (Greek Esther 10.7).)6
O’Brien further explores Moses/Aaron’s snake-turning staff in Exodus 7. St Isidore of Seville described how Moses’ rod ‘turned into a dragon’ and swallowed up Pharaoh’s magicians’ dragons – the Hebrew word for ‘snake’ used in this passage (tannin) is also translated as ‘dragon’ elsewhere in the Bible – and compared this incident with Christ swallowing up death’s sting.
Moreover, it was common in medieval Europe for tripartite Easter candles (Arundina Serpentina) to be in the form of a bronze winged dragon to represent Moses’ bronze-snake-on-pole in Numbers 21 – again, creating a connection with Jesus who compared himself with that very snake (John 3.14). O’Brien suggests that these parallels can be read as Christ the Dragon(!!) who defeats all other dragons.
Perhaps the East Asian dragon would be more palatable if it was Disneyfied, like in this cool Instareel by a Chinese animator:
I slightly jest, but come to think of it, Yu-Gi-Oh! was completely off limits growing up whereas Pokémon was more acceptable despite both containing dragons, probably because the latter were cuter and less menacing than the former.
On a more serious note, it’s interesting to see how European dragons have been, not just condemned or even tolerated, but utilised positively by western Christianity. Perhaps we could embody a similar attitude of openness towards East Asian dragons too.7
I found this from the Salt&Light article super helpful:
we should be careful about identifying any dragon that we encounter today with that great red dragon [in Revelation].
The great red dragon is not the ‘Chinese’ dragon. The Chinese dragon is often seen as benevolent and not as the embodiment of evil. Chinese Christian scholars have even questioned whether the word for the creature called long2 (龙 / 龍) should have been translated as “dragon”.
For that matter, the great red dragon in Scripture is also not a western dragon. It is true that western dragons are typically fearsome, aggressive and evil, but even that depiction is bound to specific times and contexts.
We should ensure we don’t conflate East Asian dragons (and European dragons) with the biblical dragons of evil. Yes, there are certainly some terrifying and evil East Asian dragons (just like how there are terrifying and evil European dragons), and there’s always the potential for dragons to become idols, worshipped as living gods – but anything can be too. I mentioned earlier that idolatry is always a risk, and this is the same in every culture – both eastern and western.
I don’t think dragons, just like any other animal/creature, are innately evil. (Neither are snakes.) They seem to be symbolic creatures, able to represent good or evil, as we’ve seen in the Greek Esther with Mordecai/Haman, as well as with the Leviathan. (The same can be said for lions: Satan as a roaring, devouring lion in 1 Peter 5.8; and Jesus as the Lion of Judah in Revelation 5.5.)
You can see this in popular culture too, for example, in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings with its two opposing dragons: one is evil, but the other which prevails is good. (Haku in Spirited Away is another good East Asian dragon.) The issue isn’t about dragons inherently, but rather how we view and use them (e.g. not as objects of worship).
We also needn’t fear dragons. Reverend Ng Zhi-Wen agrees:
Even if there are apparent similarities between the Chinese dragon and the great red dragon, we need not fear them.
Giving and receiving angpows with dragon signs in and of themselves do not signify evil on anyone’s part. (Those who do must take issue with all other depictions of dragons, including dragon boats!). We should not let any sign of the dragon exert a controlling influence on us.
Let’s not forget that Christ has defeated the enemy – whether manifesting in the form of the great red dragon or not – and we can take comfort and courage in the fact that Christ has the victory over all evil.
Ultimately, neither wholesale acceptance nor demonisation is helpful; rather it requires an astute discerning (of spirits) case by case. And just like how western Christianity has been able to use European dragons positively and for good purposes, perhaps there is also the possibility of using East Asian dragons – with their auspicious nature and associations – positively and for good Christian purposes. But that’s a thought for another day.
I will confess there was a slight rebellious streak in me – coupled with the desire to reclaim my cultural heritage – when I found and bought this black Uniqlo jumper with an East Asian dragon and tiger emblazoned on the front. Not that anyone’s ever accused me of wearing something evil, but it’s been rather empowering to wear such explicit East Asian iconography in the West – and also really cool.
William Yoo, ‘Western Colonialism and Christian Mission’, in Uncovering the Pearl: The Hidden Story of Christianity in Asia, ed. by Amos Yong, Mark A. Lamport, and Timothy T. N. Lim (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2023), 35–51, at p. 42.
Yoo, ‘Western Colonialism and Christian Mission’, pp. 42–43.
E. H. Gombrich, The Story of Art: Pocket Edition (London: Phaidon Press Limited, 2006), p. 121.
Daniel Ogden, The Dragon in the West: From Ancient Myth to Modern Legend (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), p.3.
Daniel Ogden, Dragons, Serpents, and Slayers in the Classical and Early Christian Worlds: A Sourcebook (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), p.3.
Maureen S. O’Brien, ‘Wales, Dragons, and the Book of Esther’, Aliens in This World [1 August 2014].
There’s a wider discussion to be had about mythologies in general. If you’re going to lump all East Asian mythologies as evil and idolatrous, what you apply to dragons you probably should also apply to all animals featured as gods or spirits, e.g. foxes, tanuki, cats. Plus, a quick look at the interface between Celtic pagan mythology and Christianity in the mid-1st millennium AD shows that the western tradition cannot claim full innocence either – see Miranda Aldhouse-Green, The Celtic Myths: A Guide to the Ancient Gods and Legends (London: Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2015), pp. 198–201.