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ANDROMEDA

Dreamed 1987/12/30 by Wayan.

In Greek myth, Andromeda was a princess chained to a sea-rock, to appease a dragon. Perseus, riding Pegasus, rescued her.

I dreamed I met that dragon, before he flew to her. He wasn't what I expected. Part sea-serpent, part man--or rather, men. For like Frankenstein's monster, he had been sewn together. He had four quadrants: thoughts, senses, feelings, and intuitions. The monster was that rarity, a WHOLE PERSON--though his parts came from others, and his seams showed.

He spoke in a lean dark voice full of poetry, of the need for balance between darkness and light...

Crayon of Andromeda chained to a rock by the water as a dragon flies closer. They both have similar coloring, as if they're kin.
And Andromeda, the maiden chained to the rock? She was another! Four quadrants, fused. Maiden and monster were the same chimera. No need for a human hero to rescue her! The dragon himself would unchain her: he sought a mate, not meat.

Only... did she know that? Did she know her own strangeness... and strength?

Crayon drawing of Andromeda and the dragon locking gazes.
The dream was almost certainly inspired by two stories I'd recently read:
  1. In R.A. Macavoy's Tea with the Black Dragon, a Chinese dragon takes human form. At one point he recites the Prajna Paramita Sutra, about emptiness inside, much as the dream-dragon preaches about balancing darkness and light.
  2. In Bluebeard's Egg, Margaret Atwood revises the end of the Bluebeard legend: if you can reassemble the cut-up murdered girls, they come back to life. Andromeda and the dragon are both such resewn, resurrected figures, suggesting the dream's about recovery from soul-murder.
Of course the four quadrants suggest Jung's "four functions"--sensing, thinking, feeling, intuition. Both dragon and Andromeda have all four, meaning they're whole, well-rounded. As opposed to most of us limping fragments.

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