Cultural impacts

The Ancient World

Ophiolatreia, "Snake/Serpent Worship" was essential and vital in the most ancient cultures and earliest civilizations. The symbol of the serpent was the most used symbol to represent mother goddess and her relationship with humanity. Serpents were the connection between the two realms, spiritual and physical. They symbolized duality; man and woman, heaven and earth. They were both feared and revered, and are essential when considering the progression of mankind.

Asia

This ancient continent has its fair share of dragon stories, and while not having the first, certainly some of the oldest and most rich classical myths on dragons you can find. This culture sees dragons as powerful, wise, and something to be honoured and worshipped.

Surely, while other ancient civilizations had a good amount of mythemes surrounding gods and dragons, in Asia, they have built a whole culture around dragons. Very interestingly, there is no creation myth involving a god in ancient China, as any myths developed later. Instead of extreme gods and either evil, or loyal servent serpents as we see in other cultures, their stories are about incredible emperors and dragons.

Europe

One of the depictions of the first beings created (according to Greek mythology), the Giants, are that which have snakes for legs. There are a few gods in particular with multiple references to serpents and dragons in Greece. Ceres, the goddess of agriculture and fertility, was often depicted driving a dragon pulled cart. Dragons, or large serpents, were symbolic of fertility, and she would appear with two snakes in her hands. Here is really where we see, not only that clear correlation between dragons and the feminine, but also of being overcome by man. Unlike in other regions of the world, dragons have reverted to being more beastlike and something to overpower. This is a backwards shift that begins the decline of the dragon imagery for the Western and European world. Serpents are still symbolized with that healing, protective, fertile, feminine mother-goddess aspect, as they always were in ancient cultures, but we see that imagery start to be viewed as negative and overtaken or conquered in ancient European mythology.