Culture and Cosmos is a peer-reviewed academic journal in the history of
astrology and cultural astronomy published by the
Sophia Centre Press in
partnership with the Sophia
Centre for the Study of Cosmology in Culture, Faculty of Humanitiies and the
Performing Arts, at the University
of Wales Trinity Saint David
We are currently seeking submissions for future volumes of Culture and Cosmos.
We are currently seeking submissions for future volumes of Culture and Cosmos.
Volume 13
Volume 13, No. 1
The Dragon of the Eclipses—A Note
Marinus Anthony van der Sluijs
Abstract
The astrological concept of the ‘dragon of the lunar nodes’, responsible for eclipses of the sun and the moon, may have derived from a combination of ideas prevailing in Late Antiquity with respect to the ourobóros or ‘tail-biting serpent’—that it constituted a ring of darkness, that it was bent around the sun and that it was positioned on the ecliptic band. Various Mithraic, astrological and alchemical images of celestial dragons appear to represent this aspect of the dragon.
