While driving home from work today I was thinking about what I would want to research for tonight. Then I looked at the clouds and thought maybe it’s just my mindset right now but that cloud really looks like a dragon breathing fire. The pictures I took figure my driving buddy Dolphin who I got at a carnival.

This cloud gave me the idea to write about some of my thoughts on what I’ve learned so far and my thoughts on dragons in general. I want to talk about how some of my views may have changed, stayed the same, or started anew. What I mean by that is I have some new views that I didn’t have before.

Before I started this blog my first thoughts when it came to dragons included “I want one” and “how beautiful they are”. I knew that they have had an influence on many different things such as mythology, Chinese zodiac sign, and folklore, etc. I still have those same thoughts but I appreciate them more than before if that is even possible. Finding out just how they play an influence and the different stories that are told just makes them even more fascinating.

When going through the stories that are told about them I started noticing how they may be different but there are more similarities than I thought. For example, Vritra and Indra vs Jormungandr and Thor the storyline is different but the characters within the stories are very very similar. Both of the dragon figures play a role with water and the two gods have a power related to thunder and storms. I didn’t even plan on doing them back to back plus I only discovered these stories when doing research. I was really amazed by how similar they are. I was expecting there to overlaps but for reason, I wasn’t really expecting it to occur between Norse and Indian mythology. I can’t wait to see what other common characteristics I’ll discover.

Another similarity that I have noticed is they are usually seen as evil creatures that are slayed by some hero. Which is another thing that I expected but I had some hope that I would find at least one that was at least a gentle creature that wasn’t evil. I still have some of that hope because I never know what to fully expect.