Tradition

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Dragons and Serpents gathers two named embodiments of a dragon or serpent form from entirely unrelated systems, one an honored guide woven into an astronomical scheme, the other a hostile demon.

The Azure Dragon, Qinglong, is the emblem of the eastern quarter of the Chinese sky, one of the Four Symbols dividing the twenty eight lunar lodges into four palaces of seven. He belongs to the east, to spring, to the phase Wood and to the colour blue green, his body traced across the sky from the Horn lodge at Spica through the Heart at Antares to the Winnowing Basket in Sagittarius, a scheme old enough that a lacquered clothes chest from a fifth century BCE tomb already carries the twenty eight names with a dragon and a tiger on either side. In later use he guards the eastern wall of a tomb, the eastern side of a city and the left hand of a feng shui site, and is not the same figure as the imperial five clawed dragon of the throne, though the two are often confused.

Azi Dahaka is a three headed, three jawed serpent demon of the Avesta, created by the hostile spirit Angra Mainyu as one of the most dangerous creatures among the forces of the Lie, later transformed in the Persian epic tradition into Zahhak, the tyrant king with serpents growing from his shoulders.

The two members share only the grouping's own animal form: one a benevolent cosmological guide fixed to a quarter of the sky, the other a created instrument of a hostile power later reborn as a human tyrant, held together for their shared serpent body rather than any shared role.