谈谈“龙”

[westpointer]

hi, everyone, i am a chinses. recently i become interested in the Dragon.As Ian_Lee said that the cultural difference in perception between East and West is best manifested by Dragon as an icon. In East Asia, dragon stands for strength, justice, spirit, wisdom,.....etc In the West, dragon stands for strength, viciousness, cunningness,....etc. Their only common trait is strength. In Lunar New Year, you wish the others as spirited as dragon and horse.

But in Greek tales, dragons were bad creatures that had to be killed.

i want to know what have caused this difference, anyone who have a study on this topic?

[aak]

In the East, the dragon is a symbol of energy at all levels of existence, as seen through the sages' 第一卦 (first guà or divinatory trigram/canto) of the 《易經》 Yì Jīng; it can therefore be understood as a manifsetation of the divine evolutionary force at work universally. In the West, this knowledge was hidden in myth (itself meaning hidden), and these mythic tales then became part of popular lore, where there has to be a "good guy" and a "bad guy". The former is inevitably the hero, usually a youth; and what better baddie than this hidden force lurking in the depths of the Earth, coming out and wreaking death and destruction on common folk, maidens especially?

Any deeper analysis may go beyond the scope of this forum, which allows nonetheless private messages.