Note 7 — Chapter IV · The World-wide Search for Wealth

The dragon of the Far East is associated with copper as well as gold. In the Japanese Historical Records the story is told how the Emperor Hwang brought down a dragon so that he might ride on its back through the air. He first gathered copper on a mountain. Then he cast a tripod. Immediately a dragon, dropping its whiskers, came down to him. After the monarch had used the god as an “airship”, no fewer than seventy of his subjects followed his example. Hwang was the monarch who prepared the “liquor of immortality” (the Japanese “soma”) by melting cinnabar (sulphuret of mercury, known as “dragon’s blood”). Chinese dragons, according to Wang Fu in ’Rh ya yih, dread iron and like precious stones. In Japan the belief prevailed that if iron and filth were flung into ponds the dragons raised hurricanes that devastated the land. The Chinese roused dragons, when they wanted rain, by making a great noise and by throwing iron into dragon pools. Iron has “a pungent nature” and injures the eyes of dragons, and they rise to protect their eyes. Copper has, in China, associations with darkness and death. The “Stone of Darkness” is hollow and contains water or “the vital spirit of copper”.7 Dragons are fond of these stones and of beautiful gems.8