Here Be Dragons: 1

In 1993 I was living with (third husband) Andrew in a small flat in Melbourne, and bemoaning to my friend Janet the fact that we weren't allowed pets. 'Why don't you have psychic pets?' she asked. (She and I were quite used to being able to manifest things on non-physical levels.) I decided to have dragons. I didn't do any summoning rituals or anything. I just reached out into the Universe with my mind — working, as always, in the energy of Love — and asked for a couple of dragons. And they came.

I received impressions that one was red and male, slightly larger than the deep blue female. I also got quite clearly their respective names. I 'saw' them hovering slightly above the roof of the unit we lived in at the time. My vivid imagination? I decided to suspend disbelief and at least behave as if I thought them real. You can get used to anything! After a while I became almost blasé about their presence. These poems ensued:

DEAR Janet,

How are the unicorns?

I haven’t patted or said hullo to

the dragons for such a long time.

I forget them, like plants unwatered.

I hope they feed themselves

and don’t depend on spasmodic rains

or the crumbs we leave for birds.

I wonder what they do up there all day.

Are they bored? If it was me.

I’d copulate constantly — but dragons,

I think, have a different kind of season.

I see they have moved

to a low, convenient cloud. The roof

was awkwardly shaped, uncomfortable.

They swathe their massive tails

in coils around each other.

They look bored but cosy;

lazy and cosy, curling up for warmth.

The blue one is Agyar, known as Betsy.

The red is male. His name is Aragon.

They are faithful dragons to me

and dutiful. I must treat them better.

Janet, how are your unicorns?

© Rosemary Nissen-Wade 1993

DEAR ROSEMARY

The unicorns

look silly in the laundry beside the washing machine

Nathan is combing Jennifer’s tail with his teeth

I woke up at 3 o’clock last night

because someone was nuzzling my cheek

They love music

Nathan’s a Beatles freak

Jennifer prefers Debussy

They don’t look bored

I don’t think unicorns do that

and they’ve got the cat to talk to

I asked them what they think about

they said ‘LOVE’   and the space beyond the black stump

There’s a black stump where they come from too

They look cramped in the laundry

Perhaps I’ll take my psychic paint-brush and

create for them a daisy-covered meadow

and in the lounge-room a pond

It’s wonderful living with unicorns

© Janet Gregory 1993

Both poems first published in Feet First: poems by the Aardvarkers

 Also in Rosemary Nissen-Wade's Secret Leopard: new and selected poems
 1974-2005 (Paris, Alyscamps Press, 2005)

Then came the day when Janet phoned to ask if I could send one of the dragons over to her place for a while. She was feeling in need of some protection. I sent Betsy. Janet lived on the other side of the city, so I gave Betsy street directions plus a telepathic impression of my friend's energy, and duly noted her absence from above the roof. A couple of weeks later I walked outside one morning and detected a difference in the energy. 'I do believe Betsy's back,' I said to Andrew. Later that day Janet phoned. 'Did she get back OK?' She explained that she'd sent Betsy back on a passing truck so that she wouldn't have to fly the whole way, and thought it would have taken her about that long to reach home. That little exercise made it harder to suspect that the dragons were 'just my imagination'.

I liked the idea of having dragons around, and requested two more, one to keep Andrew company and protect him, the other to do the same for me, so that Betsy and Aragon could focus on guarding our home. They duly arrived too. Andrew's turned out to be white and mine black, both male. I noticed they would keep pace with our cars, and were one each side when we travelled in the same vehicle. I forget why, at some point, I decided I needed a chaos dragon with me too. That one is female, deep midnight blue and particularly powerful. 

Some years later, five friends were under psychic attack. I asked if they would like some dragons to protect them, and when they agreed, I put out the call. I was shown the dragons' colours and told their names and genders and which person each one would look after. One man in the group was fairly sceptical — until one night, as he was doing the dishes, he felt his dragon blow gently on his cheek at the same time as appearing to him in mental image.

I say 'his' dragon, and I referred earlier to psychic pets — but in fact they are not pets, much less servants or possessions. I felt this strongly from the first. Nor am I their servant in any way. What we are is friends and equals. They come at my request in a spirit of graciousness, and I appreciate this. 

The names bear a certain family resemblance, with many of the same letters included: A, G, R, sometimes Z.... (And no, I am not going to make any more names public. I sense that, while the first two had no objections, the rest wish to keep that information private.)

By now, most of the time I am not much aware of these companions. It is as if they withdraw into the background unless needed, though I know they are in fact always present. Betsy and Aragon have accompanied us to all our homes — quite a few, as we have moved around a bit.

Recently a friend asked if Andrew's white dragon was still here now that Andrew has died. I was shocked to realise I had not thought to check. I wondered if perhaps he had accompanied Andrew to the spirit world, or had just quietly gone home. Neither. When I did check, I found he was still here, waiting politely for me to tell him he was free to go. I told him he had always been free to do so, and asked if he would like to go home now. He would. I said goodbye with grateful thanks, and he left.

How do I converse with them? Telepathically, sometimes using a pendulum to make certain of 'yes' or 'no' answers to specific questions.

I own books on dragon magick by various authors, all of which seem to agree that elaborate, precise rituals are necessary. I have never done that. I just give my friends a call and they turn up. Of course they are not in physical form. I guess they are in the astral. But that blowing on my friend's cheek was certainly something he felt physically! I know that fairies (nature spirits) can flit between dimensions — another topic for another time — so it seems to me that dragons have some of that ability too. Perhaps they have it 100%; perhaps that is the source of old stories about dragons on earth, and they don't choose to manifest fully into our physical dimension now. But there I'm only guessing.

It took a few years before I started wondering why they would come to me so readily and be so obliging.