Beowulf, A Precessional Myth, page 13
A Battle with a Dragon
Dragon stories appear in many cultures, but there is no such creature as a dragon. Some think that dinosaur bones unearthed in ancient times may have led people to inventing the dragon to account for the awesome size of the skeletons. In researching precessional myths I discovered another explanation, one that has been suspected by others decoding mythology. Our intuition was that it all has something to do with the constellation of Draco (which coils its way around the polar skies). Further more, it has everything to do with an astronomical phenomenon called 'precession of the equinoxes' which I have already covered earlier in this paper (and in my essays St. George Decoded and Precession of the Equinoxes). Do these dragon stories have astronomical significance? I believe they do.
Look at Figure 13 below and you'll see the path that the celestial north pole traces due to the effect of precession. It spends several thousand years around the constellation of Draco.
Figure 13. Path of the celestial north pole crossing Draco.
Just over two thousand years ago, the Celestial North Pole had precessed out of Draco and now pointed at empty space. Before that time, the pole had been precessing close to Draco for thousands of years. In fact, we could say that Draco so dominates the circumpolar sky that it's not surprising that our ancestors had so many dragon myths. The force moving the Celestial North Pole around is often ascribed to some mythic hero, or a god. For example, in the Mythraic mysteries it is Perseus who fights Draco in the guise of a sea monster. In the legend of St. George it is the good knight himself who battles the dragon. Such is the length of time the pole precesses by Draco, the battle is often seen as bitter and prolonged.
Legends often speak of a dragon being invincible except for a single vulnerable spot on its body. The battling hero must drive his weapon deep into this spot to defeat the monster. The path of the Celestial North Pole crosses the constellation of Draco only once, near the star Thuban about the year 2750BC. It is the only time this path crosses Draco in its entire 26000 year odyssey, the dragon's vulnerable spot being a metaphor for this crossing point. Our precessional hero, Beowulf, is the one who does this deed in our saga.
The dragon guards a hoard of treasure, but in reality the treasure isn't gold, it's knowledge of the mechanics of precessional astronomy. A further clue to the true significance of the dragon is the fact it only flies at night and returns to the earth at dawn. As our author implies, Draco can only be seen at night, any night, right up there in the polar regions of the sky.