Baking dragon bread
The song that accompanies this time of year in the early years is usually this one.
The Knight and the Lady went riding one day,
Far into the forest away, away,
Dear Knight said the Lady I pray have a care,
This forests is evil beware, beware,
The Knight slew the dragon
The Lady was gay,
They rode off together away, away.
One child is the Knight and one the Lady. One is the dragon in the middle of the circle who acts fiercely like a dragon. Then the Knight takes his sword and touches it to the dragon, who then lays down.
The first time I watched this in my daughter's kindergarten I had mixed feelings. She let both girls and boys play the parts of the Knight, Lady and dragon so I wasn't quite sure where my discomfort about the situation lay. Luckily, I had the most patient teacher ever who would always indulge my questioning about these things. When I would approach her with all my, "I don't get it. Why the slaying of dragons? Aren't we past that in our evolution? Do we really need to be reinforcing conflict resolution through violence? Why the sword? Why does the Knight save the Lady?" and on and on.
It took my quite a few years to really move beyond the physical literalness of all of these images and go to that place of deeper metaphor and really 'get' some of these things on feeling level rather than mental. The way I now understand these images are the same as they are represented in fairy and folk tales through the ages. All characters are just aspects of each of us. They are not outside of ourselves. They are ourselves. We are the dragon, the Knight and the Lady. Our dragons (or demons) are all different on the physical level, yet all stem from ideas of separation. The Knight, as in fairy tales, is that part of ourselves that many of refer to as Spirit, God or higher self- the only self that has a chance of bringing our demons to rest. The Lady is our smaller, ego self using traditional psychology language- the ego is the opposite in Waldorfian language. Semantics all get very confusing in Waldorf worlds. In any case, that part of ourselves that exists outside of Spirit or God that sometimes thinks it can do things on its own.
These concepts can be translated into any religious terms that are comfortable to each individual or none at all simply saying that we need to adhere to the laws of the Universe and work with that energy rather than against it. We can't make up our own laws and try to force them. From a scientific non-religious point of view it could be as simple as looking at gravity. No matter how hard we push against it it will not go away. We can overcome certain aspects of the law- like flying- but we still need to work with the law itself to figure out how to get around it. Airplanes would not fly if the scientists didn't understand gravity first. To slay our dragons we have to submit to the laws that govern us and surrender to them.
In Waldorf worlds we hear so much about 'strengthening the will.' It is this will that must be strong to silence our dragons. Take something simple like gossip. It is so easy to succumb to the desire to gossip. It requires a very strong will to walk away silently without engaging. This is the Knight at work. We want strong Knights with sharp swords that can cut through these temptations in life. And we need the soft side of the feminine energy to surrender, not in weakness but in strength. Both men and women need these aspects of themselves working together in order to slay the dragon. Feminists often have a very difficult time with these images feeling it makes women weak and submissive. If they only understood the deeper meaning. We are our own Knights saving ourselves by surrendering to that thing that is more than our little helpless selves in distress. That 'thing' that people refer to as God, Spirit, the Universe, Jah, Allah, Jehova, the love intelligence that rules the Universe, the laws of quantum physics, magic, and on and on... So many names for something so simple and yet so profoundly complicated.
