Somewhere in the past 24 hours, my blog passed 20,000 page views. I never thought, when I started this page a little over four years ago, that it would be something I'd be able to keep going, let alone that anyone else would want to read it. I just wanted to thank you - yes, you - for stopping by, whether this is your first time or if you're a regular visitor. It really means a lot to me that my words and experiences are of interest to others, and if I've helped anyone by running this blog, then that's all I could ask.
I wanted to put up another book review today while the text is still fresh in my mind, but first, here's a quick update on me: this week has been and will continue to be a busy one. Gaia House has been running a "Free-cycle" event the last day or two, so I swung by today and picked up an electric pencil sharpener and some kind of reddish crystal pendant necklace. I have a project due tomorrow morning for my Technical Woods class, and over the weekend, I'll be volunteering at Habitat for Humanity before attending SIPA's Imbolg ritual. I'm really looking forward to that!
And now, without further ado... (I don't think I've said that in a while.)
Title:
Dancing With Dragons: Invoke Their Ageless Wisdom & PowerAuthor: D. J. Conway
© 1994
I'll admit, I was a little wary of reading this after really not caring for a lot of
Moon Magick, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that I liked this quite a bit better.
The book breaks things down into a lot of smaller chapters, but essentially, she begins by discussing different cultures' perceptions of dragons, and ways in which dragon energies manifest themselves in the environment. She then discusses ritual tools specific to her brand of dragon magick, before leading into a series of rituals written to connect and work with different dragons for different purposes. The last group of chapters focuses on different types of dragons, where they can be found, and how and why one might work with them.
Dragon magick practitioners should be advised that Conway approaches her subject from a predominantly Wiccan perspective. I personally do not have an issue with that in this context, but if you prefer to work secularly or in some other variety of Pagan framework, then Conway's dragon rituals may or may not work for you.
She talks extensively about dragons of Eurasia, and Chinese dragons in particular, which I appreciated as my grounding in Chinese mythology is not as strong as I would like it to be. I'd really like to do a more in-depth study sometime, when I can get the books to that end. Anyway, I digress. Conway also touches briefly on the amphithere dragons of Central and South America, but she gets into some of the dismissive language which bothered me in Moon Magick; it strikes me as wrong to call civilizations such as the Aztecs "primitive", when in fact their society was highly sophisticated, no less so than any contemporary Old World nation.
On the whole, I liked Conway's rituals, and found her poetic incantations to be very nicely phrased. I tend to be a little picky about that sort of thing, but most of them, in my opinion, had both good meter and phraseology.
Her text meshes well with previous research I've done into different kinds of dragons, and for that reason in particular, I connected with her work, because in general, it made a lot of sense to me.
There were only two other concerns which stuck out to me as something to look out for. Dancing With Dragons does provide a few mentions of ritual adaptations for disabled practitioners, but to be perfectly honest, it was pretty clear that Conway hadn't put more than the very minimum of thought into it. Whether they would actually be useful to anyone, I couldn't say for sure, but I kind of doubt it.
I also felt like Conway put a lot of emphasis on people having all of the exact tools she recommends. As someone who doesn't have access to a lot of the things her rituals employ, it bugs me a bit. Certainly any of the rituals could be adapted easily enough, but it still rubs me the wrong way to be told that I must have a specially engraved pentacle and a sword and a bunch of other stuff to work with dragons, when that is not the case.
Long story short, Conway's work seems to consistently come with at least a few caveats, but if you're looking for information on working with dragons, especially in a ritual setting, then Dancing With Dragons could be a good resource.
