Siegfried bathes in the dragon’s blood in Fritz Lang’s 1924 epic Die Nibelungen.
3,726 words
1. Why Does Sigurd Slay the Dragon?
In How to Kill a Dragon, the linguist Calvert Watkins explores the common structure of the dragon or serpent slaying myths that are found throughout the Indo-European tradition. Midway through the book, he asks a crucial question, “Why does the hero slay the serpent? What is the function of this widespread if not universal myth, what is its meaning?” His answer employs language that must immediately remind us of Evola’s account of the “heroic path”: “The dragon symbolizes Chaos, in the largest sense, and killing the dragon represents the ultimate victory of Cosmic Truth over Chaos.”[1]
Now, we must be careful here. From the fact that Watkins and Evola both use the word “chaos,” it does not follow that they mean the same thing by it. On closer examination, however, they do seem to mean very much the same thing. We noted in part sixteen that Evola lists the following alchemical symbols for chaos: abyss, matrix, the “place of the tree,” the waters, mercury, serpent or dragon, and “the woman.” We also noted that in the Sigurd/Siegfried story the dragon and the waters have a functional similarity. The gold must be wrested from or retrieved from the waters, just as it must be from the dragon (and in the Nibelungenlied, the gold returns, in the end, to the water).
Now here is Watkins expanding on the meaning of the dragon: “The Chaos which the dragon symbolizes may take many manifestations in the different traditions. In Indo-Iranian it is the theme of the pent-up waters, the ‘resistance’. . . which is the blockage of life-giving forces, which are released by the victorious act of the hero.”[2] Furthermore, Watkins references the Indian myth of the god Indra (equivalent to Thor) slaying the serpent-monster Vṛtrá, releasing the “pent-up waters.” “Vṛtrá,” Watkins notes, “is a personification—confined to India—of an Indo-Iranian abstract noun *urtrám meaning ‘resistance’; the channel [which releases the waters] is the divine epithet vrtra-han-. . . originally ‘smashing resistance.’”[3]
Both the dragon and the waters thus symbolize, on Watkins’s interpretation, resistance or obstruction that somehow blocks “life-giving forces.” The hero is he who “smashes resistance.” Superficially, however, this does not seem to cohere with the account of the “chaos principle” given by Evola, which is pure formless potentiality for being.[4] It is this interpretation that most closely accords with the original Greek meaning of chaos, which referred to a “yawning” or “yawning void.” However, these interpretations of chaos are not as different as they might seem.
You can buy Collin Cleary’s Summoning the Gods here.
As I noted in part sixteen, if chaos is allowed to dominate, then the void and non-being reigns. Thus, chaos is something that must be subdued in order for it to be productive. Chaos can be the source of all being—or it can be that which obstructs or resists coming to be. This principle is clearly illustrated in the Norse creation myth. Ginnungagap (“yawning gap,” “gaping void”) is obviously equivalent to Greek chaos: that from which comes all things. But note that the first thing to emerge from chaos is the frost giant Ymir. This heralds the “Titanic age” in Norse myth. Forms appear haphazardly and are usually abortive humanoids. Creatures are produced out of ice blocks, or out of armpits, or from the mating of legs, etc.
I have argued elsewhere that in Norse myth the giants (and this could equally be said of the Greek Titans) represent a force that works against the orderly processes of change, growth, and development.[5] To use Calvert Watkins’s word, the giants represent the force of “resistance.” Ragnarok represents the conflict between the order of the gods and the “resistance” or disorder of the giants. Among the monsters that challenge the gods are two of the children of Loki (who is half giant) and the giantess Angrboda: the wolf Fenrir, and the Midgard Serpent, Jormungandr. Thor’s ongoing rivalry with Jormundgandr is yet another instance of the dragon slaying (or, in this case, dragon fighting) motif analyzed by Watkins.
The Titanic age in the Norse cosmogony ends when the brothers Odin, Vili, and Ve kill Ymir. Significantly, they return his body to the center of Ginnungagap and dismember him. From his remains they construct a cosmos (from Greek kosmos meaning “orderly arrangement”) where before there had been disorder. There can be little doubt that we are to understand Ginnungagap as the sort of pure potentiality for being that Evola identifies with Chaos. At the same time, however, what first emerges from Ginnungagap are monstrosities.
In order for chaos to produce a cosmos, it must be subdued or conquered by a principle of order (what Evola calls “egg”). Then the “pent-up waters,” or “life-giving forces” are released. If the chaos principle dominates or acts on its own, it produces disorder or calamity. Chaos thus has dual aspects. The dragon slaying motif represents the creation of being out of nothing: the emergence of definite, individuated being out of indefinite potentiality. The dragon slaying symbolizes the process of cosmic creation, as well as the creation, by the alchemist, of a spiritual corporeality—his recreation of himself (see part sixteen).
2. The Dragon as Ouroboros
In terms of the Hermetic path or what Evola calls “initiation,” slaying the dragon refers to dominating the chaos principle within oneself. To follow the “yoga” discussed in part sixteen—to achieve identification with the watching self—is to cause the One to emerge out of chaos. To repeat what was said there, detaching the self from chaos and remaining in that state is a movement from a “self” that is many, to a self that is one and indivisible in that it is one pure act of pristine awareness. The alchemist becomes not a one but the One.
You can buy Collin Cleary’s Wagner’s Ring & the Germanic Tradition here.
Evola interprets ☉, the symbol for both gold and the sun, as the Ouroboros, which represents chaos, coiled around the One which emerges from it (just as Kundalini coils around the subtle phallus, which can be represented by the Shiva bindu, which means drop, point, or dot). Gold represents the One that is crystallized out of chaos. Let us now try to go a step further in utilizing this imagery to understand the saga. Is Fafnir an Ouroboros? He is not explicitly depicted this way in the saga, but there are compelling reasons to think that he is one.
Did Fafnir coil around his treasure? The etymology of his name certainly suggests this, for it literally means something like “he who embraces” (from the verb faðma, “to embrace”). We will find much more convincing evidence, however, if we consider the depiction of serpents as Ouroboroi in other Germanic sources.
In Ragnar Lothbrok’s Saga, the sequel to the Volsung Saga, Jarl Herruth gives his daughter Thora a small snake as a gift. Thora puts it in a box and places a piece of gold underneath the snake. In time, both the snake and the gold begin to grow. Eventually, the snake grows into a huge dragon and the gold into a great hoard. Finally, the dragon becomes so big that it “encircled the cabin so that its head touched its tail.”[6] Slaying this dragon is Ragnar’s initial heroic act in the saga.
The dragon slain by Ragnar is thus explicitly depicted as an Ouroboros. As so often happens in the lore, Ragnar recapitulates the actions of earlier heroes, in this case Sigurd’s slaying Fafnir and winning the gold. This example from Ragnar Lothbrok’s Saga is especially significant given that it seems to establish a symbiotic relationship between the serpent and the gold. The gold seems to transform the snake into a dragon, but the gold grows as well. Is there anything like this in Fafnir’s relationship to his gold?
All we may say is this: we are not told—either in the Volsung Saga or in any other source—whether Fafnir chose to transform himself into a dragon, or whether it happens as an effect of the cursed treasure. Both Wagner and Tolkien seemed to think it was the latter. In Wagner’s Ring, Fafnir is a giant and his transformation into a dragon is a result of the corruption of the gold. In Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, which was heavily influenced by Germanic mythology, the hobbit Sméagol is transformed by the gold ring into the hideous creature Gollum. The gold of the saga, in any case, clearly seems to have the power to corrupt. Snorri’s Edda mentions that when Odin initially saw the ring in Andvari’s hoard “he found it beautiful and removed it from the treasure.” It is this detail that inspired Wagner to depict his Wotan as seduced by the ring.
However, there are other examples of Ouroboroi in the lore. The most famous example is Jormundgandr, the Midgard Serpent. Like the dragon in Ragnar Lothbrok’s Saga, he also grows and encircles. Snorri says that “when [Loki’s children] came to [Odin] he threw the serpent into that deep sea which lies around all lands, and this serpent grew so that it lies in the midst of the ocean encircling all lands and bites its own tail.”[7] As already mentioned, Thor’s battle with the serpent is the same mythological motif of the hero slaying the serpent discussed by Watkins, and is homologous with Sigurd’s battle with Fafnir.
We may mention a couple of other examples. In Helgakvitha Hjorvarthssonar, the hero, who at this point in the story has no name, encounters a group of nine Valkyries on horseback. One of them names him “Helgi,” and predicts a glorious future for him. Helgi responds, playfully, that he will not accept the name unless it is accompanied by a naming gift. The Valkyrie then says,
I know where there lie
forty-six
swords
in Sigarsholm.
But one of those
shield-breaking blades
is better than the others;
it’s decked with gold.
There’s a ring in the hilt,
And courage in its middle,
and there’s fear in its point—
fear of the man who wields it.
A blood-colored serpent
decorates the blade;
another serpent bites its tail
on the hilt’s hand-guard.
The sword is magical and one of the two snakes with which it is decorated is an ouroboros. Finally, we must mention another detail from Ragnar Lothbrok’s Saga. Ragnar has a child with Aslaug, the daughter of Sigurd and Brynhild, and the child is born with an image of a brown snake (or dragon) in one eye, hence the boy is named Sigurd Snake-Eye. The saga does not specify that the snake is an ouroboros, but it is difficult to imagine the snake in any other position than coiled around (or within) the iris. So, the motif strongly suggests an ouroboros.
It is highly appropriate that the grandson of Sigurd should be born with this image in his eye, since we are told in the Volsung Saga that Sigurd adopts the dragon as his personal emblem. Esoterically, this refers to his triumph over chaos.
3. The Baptism of Blood
We now come to the symbolism of the dragon’s blood. Those reading the saga for the first time are often surprised that Sigurd does not bathe in the blood of Fafnir. This motif occurs only in the continental German versions of the tale, whereas the Scandinavian versions have Sigurd drinking the blood and coming to understand the language of birds. In the German sources, Sigurd is Siegfried. It is the same character, but with different names, which do not mean the same thing. Sig/Sieg means “victory” in both cases, but –urd derives from Proto-Germanic *-ward meaning “protection” (hence, something like “Victory-Protector”) and –fried comes from Proto-Germanic *-frið or “peace” (thus, “Victory-Peace”).
The German sources in which Siegfried bathes in the dragon’s blood (or in which he is said to have done this) include the Nibelungenlied (13th century) and Rosengarten zu Worms (ca. 1300). Thidreks Saga (ca. 1250) is in Old Norse and features Sigurd both drinking the dragon’s blood (thus acquiring knowledge of the language of birds), as well as bathing in it. However, Thidreks Saga is mostly a translation of German materials. We must also mention the German Das Lied vom Hürnen Seyfrid (The Song of Horn-Skin Siegfried), in which Sigurd bathes in molten dragon’s skin rather than blood. Hürnen Seyfrid is the youngest of these texts, written around 1400.
Sigurd tastes the dragon’s blood in this detail of the Ramsund carving.
Our oldest surviving sources for the Sigurd story are carvings, such as the Ramsund carving which dates from around 1030. Some of the poems dealing with Sigurd and related characters in the Codex Regius may be as early as the 10th century (though the text of the Codex Regius was written down in the 1270s). Despite the fact that the Scandinavian sources are older, scholars believe that the stories of Sigurd originated on the continent as an oral tradition, then made their way to Scandinavia.
Because of this latter fact, I feel we are justified in discussing the “bathing in dragon’s blood” episode in the life of Sigurd, even though it does not occur in the Volsung Saga. (For simplicity’s sake I will refer to Sigurd rather than Siegfried or “Sigurd/Siegfried.”) For all we know, this episode could have figured in the oldest oral versions of the Sigurd story. This is the same methodology I have followed in earlier installments, in which I have covered material from other sources (e.g., from the Codex Regius) which does not appear in the saga but which amplifies it.
In all the sources that depict Sigurd bathing in the blood, the effect is that his body becomes invulnerable. This is the whole point of “The Song of Horn-Skin Siegfried,” even though, as already mentioned, in that tale he bathes in molten dragon’s skin rather than blood. The effect is the same. Dragon’s blood clearly has some very special qualities, if it can both render skin invulnerable and confer wisdom. We noted in part fifteen that Sigurd asks Regin what will happen if he gets the dragon’s blood on his skin. This is a reasonable question, for the blood of Germanic dragons was widely reputed to be poisonous and corrosive.
We know from the saga that both Sigurd’s father, Sigmund, and his half-brother Sinfjotli could withstand poison falling on their skin. Only Sigmund could survive ingesting it, however. When Sinfjotli is a boy, Sigmund stops him from making bread from a bag of flour into which the boy had ground “a huge poisonous snake.” The sagaman then tells us, “Sigmund was so hardy that he could take poison and yet come to no harm. But though Sinfjotli was able to stand outward contact with poison, he could neither eat nor drink it.”[8] Years later, Sinfjotli is killed by a poisoned drink served to him by his wicked stepmother.
In Beowulf’s account of “Sigemund” slaying the dragon, after the serpent is killed the text says Wyrm hat gemealt, which Stephen Mitchell renders as “The dragon dissolved in its boiling blood,” interpreting what literally means “The dragon melted” as being caused by the dragon’s own blood.[9] (Grendel’s mother is also depicted as having corrosive blood.) The belief that serpent’s or dragon’s blood is poisonous may be very old, and not just confined to the Germanic world.
Let us consider, in this connection, a few passages from Evola’s Hermetic Tradition. He quotes the Chrysopoeia of Cleopatra (attributed to the 3rd—century figure Cleopatra the Alchemist) which says that “One is the serpent, which contains the poison, according to the double sign.” The texts says, further, “The One is the all, the source of all and the culmination of all: if the all did not contain the all, it would be nothing.”[10] This very short text also contains a famous image of an ouroboros, within which is the inscription hen to pan (“the all is one”).
As we have already noted, in alchemy the dragon symbolizes the chaos principle. In this connection, Evola also holds that the dragon represents the “spirit of dissolution,” and has this to say:
We have mentioned another association: the Serpent or Dragon. This is the “universal” or “cosmic serpent” . . . which, according to the gnostic expression, “moves through all things.” Its relation to the chaos principle—“Our chaos or Spirit is a Dragon of fire that conquers all”—and to the principle of dissolution. . . (the Dragon Ourobouros is the dissolution), goes back to the most ancient myths.[11]
He also lists “Venom, Viper, Universal Solvent, and Philosophical Vinegar” as alchemical symbols for the “spirit of dissolution” or “power of the undifferentiated.”[12] As noted in part sixteen, the alchemist must enter into the chaos principle—without, at the same time, surrendering his will—and allow it to transform him. Only then can the One emerge from chaos, and the alchemical opus be achieved in the body of the operator. Thus, the dragon, as chaos, is a dissolving principle. Through the dissolution effected by the poison found in the dragon, something new is coagulated. And recall these words of Evola’s:
In general it is the unanimous opinion of all the hermetic philosophers that a mortification must intervene; a dissolving of the waters, a disappearance into the mother’s womb that devours or kills the son, a domination of the Female over the Male, the Moon over the Sun, the volatile over the fixed, and so on; but all that is simply a provisional condition for returning potentiality to the son to enable him to reaffirm himself again over what has previously dominated and “dissolved” him, to make himself “more perfect and greater than his parents.”[13]
In a passage very significant for our purposes, Evola alludes to the views of the (probably legendary) 15th-century alchemist Bernard of Treviso, saying that this same chaos principle or principle of dissolution “confers victory over all things to the ‘King’ who knows how to bathe in it.”[14]
Sigurd’s bathing in the dragon’s blood and acquiring thereby an invulnerable body symbolizes the alchemical process by which the “spiritual corporeality” is created. We discussed this process extensively in part sixteen. Evola says that “it is a matter of the body, while remaining as it is on the outside, now existing solely as a function of the spirit and no longer for itself.” [15] The aim is to “embody the spirit and spiritualize the body in one and the same act.”[16] The transformation does not liberate the alchemist from his body. Instead, he remains in the world in what is outwardly the same body.
What is necessary, as Evola puts it, is for “consciousness to pass from an individualized state . . . to a nonindividualized, unshaped state (Waters, Solvents, Mercury, etc.). The symbols of this process are liquefaction, fusion, dissolution, solution, separation, and so on.”[17] This is exactly the esoteric function of the corrosive blood of the dragon, or its molten skin (in Hürnen Seyfrid). This liquid would destroy any other man but Sigurd “knows how to bathe in it” (i.e., he can withstand contact with it). To create the spiritual body the old body must be “dissolved”: the body must be “unmade,” then remade. Evola says that this dissolution can be approached “actively or passively, as dominator or dominated.”[18] He who approaches the chaos principle or principle of dissolution actively and masters it—he who can slay the dragon and bathe in its blood—is suffused with a life-force “which has the nature of diamond and of irresistible thunderbolt, [and] transforms the mortal and deprived condition into one of immortality.”[19]
In the last quotation, Evola seems to be alluding to two traditions that speak of the “spiritual corporeality.” These traditions may, furthermore, be connected. The Chinese alchemical tradition speaks of the creation of a “diamond body” through “internal cultivation.” This is also referred to as the “Phoenix” and the “Golden Dragon body.” Vajrayana Buddhism also teaches a path to the creation of a “diamond-thunderbolt body.” There is reason to think this is a perennial teaching. For Evola, it is the principal esoteric teaching of alchemy.
An important question remains. In some versions of the story of Sigurd’s bathing in the dragon’s blood (e.g., the Nibelungenlied) his body becomes invulnerable except in one place. A leaf falls on his back and sticks there, so that the blood does not transform him in that spot. This is, of course, his “Achilles heel,” and leads to his death. Esoterically, what does this represent? We will discuss this in a later installment. For now, all we will say is that it is important to keep in mind that Sigurd is a tragic figure. His is a story of alchemical transmutation—but one that seems incomplete in some important respect. What can this be?
In our next installment, we will explore the esoteric significance of “the language of birds,” of the World Tree (Yggdrasil), and of the tale of Odin winning the poetic mead.
Notes
[1] Calvert Watkins, How to Kill a Dragon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 299.
[2] Watkins, 300.
[3] Watkins, 304. Please note that I have simplified spellings and have not used some of the special characters employed by Watkins in his transliterations and in his reconstructed Indo-European words.
[4] Eliade puts forward the same interpretation of the waters. See Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, trans. Rosemary Sheed (New York: Meridien Books, 1963), 188-190.
[5] Edred Thorsson says that “The forces of nonconsciousness are embodied in the thurses. . . . They are, even in later tales, marked by their stupidity.” And they are “actively antagonistic toward the forces of consciousness and seek to destroy it through their rime-cold entropy.” See Edred Thorsson, Runelore (York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, 1987), 188-189.
[6] The Saga of the Volsungs with the Saga of Ragnar Lothbrok, trans. Jackson Crawford (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2017), 89.
[7] Snorri Sturluson, Edda, trans. Anthony Faulkes (London: Everyman’s Library, 1995), 27.
[8] The Saga of the Volsungs, trans. R.G. Finch (London: Thomas Nelson, 1965), 10.
[9] Beowulf, trans. Stephen Mitchell (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), 59. See also Stephen E. Flowers, Sigurðr: Rebirth and the Rites of Transformation (Smithfield, TX: Rûna-Raven, 2011), 123.
[10] Julius Evola, The Hermetic Tradition, trans. E.E. Rehmus (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 1995), 21. (Henceforth, “HT.”)
[11] Evola, HT, 31.
[12] Evola, HT, 31.
[13] Evola, HT, 72.
[14] Evola, HT, 31.
[15] Evola, HT, 165-166. Italics added.
[16] Evola, HT, 156. Evola italicizes this entire phrase, indicating its importance.
[17] Evola, HT, 71.
[18] Evola, HT, 71.
[19] See Evola, The Path of Enlightenment in the Mithraic Mysteries, trans. Guido Stucco (Edmonds, WA: Alexandrian Press, 1994), 19.
1 comment
Mr Cleary,
I started at Part I and have made it all the way to Part XVIII and I must say that your scholarship and mastery of various subjects is impeccable!
Comments are closed.
If you have a Subscriber access,
simply login first to see your comment auto-approved.
Note on comments privacy & moderation
Your email is never published nor shared.
Comments are moderated. If you don't see your comment, please be patient. If approved, it will appear here soon. Do not post your comment a second time.