Idea Tattoo - 3NTINI Editore

Dear friends,
it is with great pleasure that we unveil this special edition by the name of TRIBAL DRAGONS. Danilo Sini has worked his magic to successfully blend the mythical image of Chinese dragons with his own legendary, potent tribal designs and come up with a fantastic series of exclusive and original TATTOOS.

They have been researched, classified and drawn with tattoos for different parts of the body in mind, including the upper arm, inside forearm, neck, lower back, outer thigh and calf.
Luca Tarlazzi’s 3D illustrations in TRIBAL DRAGONS will guide you in your choice of a design and what part of your body to have it tattooed on.

This roller coaster ride takes you through history and points out symbols and curiosities to help you discover the meaning of the dragon, one of the most frequent and complex symbols of traditional Chinese iconography. It can be found on objects from Neolithic terracotta relics, ancient bronzes, jade pieces from the Shang dynasty (16th – 11th century B.C.) right up to embroidered Mandarin clothing from the early 20th century.

From a symbolic point of view, the dragon represents one of the cardinals of Chinese cosmology and revolves around fundamental concepts such as reproduction, fertility and activity. Oh yes, it is also thought to have a special kind of magical power that can ward off evil influences.

WHAT DOES A DRAGON LOOK LIKE?
The actual word dragon (from the ancient Greek drakon and the Latin draco) means ‘snake’. During the course of more than three thousand years of history, this term has been used all over the world to describe real snakes as well as mythological creatures, or dragons as we know them, which have some snake-like features but appear much more menacing and elaborate.

This article investigates the historical and anthropological profile of this amazing mythological character. It highlights the differences between the western and eastern images, with special reference to China, a country where the dragon is still an omnipresent and integral part of everyday life.

Morphologically, Chinese dragons, or more precisely long dragons, are a combination of nine different creatures: they have the head of a camel, the horns of a young deer, the eyes of a rabbit (some say of a shrimp), the ears of a cow, the scaly body of a lizard (for the Japanese it is a carp), the belly of a frog or a snake, the paws of a tiger, the claws of an eagle and the wings of a bat.

While their colour varies from area to area, the dragons’ diet is the same everywhere, in fact it is said that they prefer swallow meat.
A survey carried out in China in the early part of the 20th century showed that four out of five people firmly believed in the existence of dragons.
This fact corresponds with the traditional Chinese idea of the dragon as a bearer of good fortune, bringing rain and fertility.

THE OLDEST DRAGON TALES
Sumerian, Akkadian and Egyptian mythology from the first three thousand years before Christ provide us with the oldest stories about dragons, in which they were very similar to snakes and represented the forces such as drought and famine that stopped the world functioning normally.

They were then defeated by the gods: in Egyptian mythology the god Seth killed the dragon Aposhis, in a Sumerian text, the monster Labbu was defeated by the god Enlil and in Greek mythology Apollo killed the female snake draknina at Delfi, to name but a few examples.

All of these myths share the same principle: the slaying of a dragon by a god is necessary to defend or safeguard the world order, in other words to make the earth become fertile and start bearing fruit once more.

THE PLUNDERER OF LIVESTOCK AND OF WOMEN
For many Indo-European societies (Indian, Greek, Roman, Germanic and Armenian) the dragon also represented a tyrant that had to be paid off.

It was described as monstrous being with three heads and a snake-like appearance. One particular ancient Egyptian myth of Astarte and the sea, in which the gods, terrorised by a dragon, send it a goddess as an offering.

Alternatively, in other myths, a god (or a hero) re-conquers whatever the dragon has taken by force, by killing it. In an ancient Iranian myth, the dragon Azhi Dahaka takes noblewomen who are later rescued by the hero Thraetaona after he has slain the dragon.

The myth in which a dragon kidnaps women – and is later slain by a hero who frees them – is repeated throughout the Middle Ages in both Europe and Asia. In oral folklore (especially in Europe) it was told until almost the 20th century.

In this instance, the myth tells the story of a princess kidnapped by a dragon and freed by a young man of humble origins who thus gains a respected place in society. Sometimes, rather than kidnapping a woman, the dragon takes away vital elements such as water or light.

THE DRAGON IN THE WEST
We have seen how the dragon symbolised something negative and evil in many ancient societies.
In the Hebrew Bible and ancient Christian writings there are for example descriptions of monsters – recognisably dragons – thought to represent a foreign enemy or tyrannical nation.

In many religious texts from Hellenic and Roman times, especially originating in the eastern Mediterranean, the dragon and the snake are described as the main representation of the forces of evil. It was from this stance that during the centuries, especially in the west, it came to be identified with God’s number one enemy, Satan.

In the Christian world, there are many biographies of saints in which the ancient myth of the dragon-monster identified as Satan or his representative, fights against a saint who then kills it.
In fact St George, the saintly knight of Anatolia as well as patron saint of England, is an emblematic example. If we transfer these concepts into the classical, western tattoo tradition, especially of the early 20th century, we discover how the dragon represents the evil side in all of us.

It was nearly always tattooed together with St George killing it, suggesting a sort of second iconographic level that symbolises our raising consciousness and the successive defeat of the evil hidden within us.

Nevertheless, St George is not the only saint to be identified as a dragon slayer. In more ancient texts, the archangel Michael also played the same role; St Marcel of Paris and St Ilary of Poitiers are also described as dragon slayers, but instead of being depicted with armour and a sword (as St. George and St. Michael were) they were shown dressed as bishops and they kill the dragon using their bishop’s staff.

Finally, we should remember that students of medieval European folklore and culture have found in the image of the dragon a complex mixture of symbols that are not always negative. We just have to think of how dragons are used on flags or as national symbols.

THE DRAGON IN THE EAST: BEARER OF FERTILITY AND LIFE
In the east, especially in China and Japan, the dragon has always been shown acting in a harmless way, sometimes running after a flaming jewel, the “magical ruby”, a sort of prickly ball, which many thought symbolised the sound of thunder.

For others, this “shiny pearl”, which was red in colour, represented the moon, for others still the sun, or even the so-called cosmic egg, a sort of safe containing all human energy in a concentrated form.

The dragon’s ideal habitat was water, although it also regularly appeared in the middle of clouds or waves. Its violent contortions were attributed not so much to violence, rage or evil, as to its strength, fieriness and vitality.

In China, the dragon was therefore thought of as a fantastic, good-natured, playful animal, closely connected to natural phenomena like the changing of the seasons or the defeat of a famine through the arrival of the rain.

It was told that in April the dragon left its earthly or watery home to go up into the sky and make the rain come amid thunder and lightning, announcing the reawakening of nature and its energies.

For the Chinese, the brief appearance of a dragon therefore symbolised the arrival of the rain, the result of the amorous clash between two dragons of the opposite sex (at one time, some Chinese people refused to go out in the rain, so as not to be indiscrete witnesses of these ‘battles’…), or the birth of a future great emperor.

ASTROLOGY, COSMOLOGY AND THE MYTHICAL NINE DRAGONS
In 1244, a Chinese artist named Chen Rong (1235 – 1260) painted an unparalleled masterpiece featuring images of dragons.
The work, made in ink on paper, is entitled Nine Dragons and is held at the Museum of Boston.

The legend goes that Chen Rong painted while drunk using his hat dipped in ink and a paintbrush to complete the details.
In Chinese astrology, a period of 3600 years is defined as an epoch, which is obviously a multiple of 360, the degrees in a circle, the perfect geometric form.

The circle of every epoch, the perfect, circumscribed unit of time, at the end of which there are radical changes on earth, is made up of 60 major cycles, known as Dragons, of sixty years each.
Each major cycle is made up of minor cycles of 12 years. The 12 years that form a minor cycle are identified by a sequence of characters called Zhi, the Terrestrial Branches, originally used to distinguish the 12 months that Jupiter takes to complete its orbit in the sky. The Chinese still call this Jupiter’s cycle or the Great Year in which every month is equivalent to one of our years.

In Chinese astrology, the minor cycle is associated with astrological animals: the rat, ox (or buffalo), tiger, rabbit (or hare, or cat in Vietnam), dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog and pig (or wild boar).

To form the major cycle, each animal sign is associated with the five elements that make up the universe: wood, fire, earth, metal and water.
If each animal dominates one cycle of a solar year, the element on the other hand expresses an energy that dominates the cycle of two years, manifesting itself in two different ways: one element is yang, i.e. it expresses its masculine, solar side and the other element is yin and shows its feminine, lunar side.

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