Symbolism in the story of the Dragon Gate

European concepts of the dragon are very different from Asian beliefs about this mythical creature. The Europeans felt the dragon was a demonic serpent that symbolized chaos, raw destructive power and the evil inherent in the material world. Asians were in awe of this magnificent serpent. The spirit of the dragon was believed to bring prosperity and symbolized the four elements of nature: earth, fire, water and air.

The dragon dwells in the dark caves of the earth, breathes with lungs of fire, has the wings of a bird and the scales of a fish. In the dragon exists a being that unifies the elements of nature with the inner world of emotion and unconsciousness. Such unification is paradoxically a combination of opposites: material and spiritual, light and dark, creation and destruction. The spirit of the dragon represents the unifying force that underlies these opposites.

In the Dragon Gate, the individual carp represents the conscious self-perplexed by the unreal-ness of the temporal world. The pearl represents truth that illuminates the hidden world of the subconscious and the esoteric wisdom of being. The stream and the many falls that the little carp must battle represent the struggle to maintain integrity in the flow of daily events - a battle against the constraints and manipulations of social conformity and complacency. The pool just below the great falls, full of carp that wish to be dragons, represents the collective unconscious of the many who share a single aspiration. The surging falls of the Dragon gate are the cathartic waters that wash away the temporal self—a portal of the potential for the unification of consciousness beyond the self with the infinite. The final act is to become complete –to be a dragon.