Seven years ago last Tuesday, The Emerald podcast was born. This episode reflects on the journey of the podcast so far and gives hints of what's to come, all through the prism of the number 7, which is — to say the least — a mythically important number. The myths often iterate in cycles and families of seven—seven swans, seven dwarves, seven ravens, and seven gates of the underworld. In many traditions, seven represents the completion of a cycle and the beginning of a new one. In Ayurveda, in order for something to be fully embodied, it must pass through seven dhatus, or tissue layers. In many traditions, initiates pass through a journey of seven stages. This recurring 'journey through seven' is not just arbitrary, it is a reflection of nature itself, which often repeats in cycles of seven. The ancients saw seven at play in the architecture of the cosmos, in the musical scales and the spectrum of light and in a world that they saw as expressing through seven cosmic layers. The vision of seven as a number of threshold, passage, and reconnection can be understood through the numerical and geometric attributes of seven itself, which displays strange characteristics not found in any other number. Featuring Nivedita Gunturi singing the seven-note scale progressions of Hindustani and Carnatic music, and excerpts of beloved stories of seven, this episode is a celebration of seven years of The Emerald, and a preparation for what's to come.

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The dragon, or serpent, in myth and story, is the coiling, spiraling power of nature itself. And so, how cultures have treated the dragon depends a lot on how they view nature and how they view the world. Some have celebrated and honored the serpent power, some have sought to harness or direct it, others to contain or tame it, while some have labeled it as chaos and sought to subdue and slay it. The history of the Western world's relationship with dragons and serpents is fraught, and Western mythic tradition is rife with monstrous serpent beings that are vilified as 'evil'. How does this primal undulant power come to be seen as 'evil'? As author Veronica Strang explains, it has to do with how human beings interact with forces we cannot control. With the rise of large scale societies, forces outside the civilizational order — floods, unpredictable weather, and movements of the water cycle — became labeled as 'chaos.' Whereas once 'chaos' signified primal oceanic generativity, chaos became seen as wanton disorder, and in Western tradition, a polarity forms between that which is stable and eternal and good that which is shifting and changing and undulant and evil. This dichotomy — this fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of stability and movement, of boundary and flow — informs the entire history of the Western world and is still playing itself out across the sociocultural, political, and spiritual spectrum today. In traditional systems, this power is not dichotomized but is met with deep protocol, in which it is understood that the dragon-serpent power is not to be vilified, nor is it to be invoked without caution. For in relational polytheistic systems, there may be serpent powers that are helpful and those that aren't, and there may be powers that require deep preparation before they are met. So the dragon-serpent asks us — what does it mean to be in real relationship with that which is awesome, powerful, and potentially dangerous? How do we treat... the dragon? Featuring interviews with author Veronica Strang, Nyoongar Elder Noel Nannup, Shipibo professor Eli Sanchez Pakan Meni, and Mythosomatic practitioner Eve Bradford and featuring music from Victor Sakshin, Travis Puntarelli, Jeunae Elita, and Marya Stark, enjoy this spiraling journey that concludes our exploration of THE DRAGON.

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Dragon lore is everywhere in global mythology — no matter what continent you live on, the land you inhabit holds dragon story, and quite possibly was shaped by dragons, or has sleeping dragons in it. Such dragons have captured human imagination across hundreds of cultures and thousands of years. But the dragon is much more than a category of fantastical beast. In many traditions the world-dragon, or world-serpent, is creator, land-shaper, present in the water cycle and in weather systems and in the vast temporal cycles of the cosmos itself. More deeply, the dragon is related to kinetic power — to all that moves in spirals. So the coils of the dragon draw us in to a deep discussion of the fundamental energetic power of a cosmos whose basic movements are serpentine — coiling and releasing, gathering and dispersing, shedding and regenerating — one sinuous energy that is also multifaceted. This power is paradoxical — it creates and destroys, it births and it devours. Like the world itself, it is beautiful and it is terrifying. So this power is met in vastly different ways — with awe and reverence, and with fear and suspicion. How a culture views dragons says a lot about how they view... the world. For the dragon is the primal power of creation, and to explore dragon story is to explore how human beings have interacted with the world and its powers, its cycles and convolutions, across cultures and generations. Discussions on the world-dragon have deep relevance at a time when socio-historical power patterns are repeating, and forgotten monsters waking, and old power structures crumbling and new ones rising. At stake are questions of how we as human beings treat vast, monstrous, beautiful, paradoxical, primal powers. Featuring interviews with Nyoongar Elder Noel Nannup and Shipibo Professor Eli Sanchez Pakan Meni and original music from Victor Sakshin, Jeunae Elita, Travis Puntarelli, Charlotte Malin Collins and Marya Stark, this episode asks us to stare deep into the eyes of the flashing, feathered, scaled, fractal power at the heart of creation itself. Enter.... THE DRAGON.

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