LINDWORM: (or Lindorm) a wingless dragon with two short legs, a long tail and cat-like eyes allowing easy navigation in the dark.
The Lindworm often lives in streams or underground. From the Americas, Marco Polo - while exploring the New World - described the Lindworm in detail in his journals as "swifter than it looks, easily able to take down a man on a galloping horse." The Lindworm's powerful front legs allow it to push itself across the soil and its long muscular tail is often used like a whip to unhorse riders and so it might eat their mounts. With a predilection for eating cattle and humans, and invading churchyards, Lindworms symbolise war and pestilence.
Many believe the Lindworm to be only semi-dragon. It is said that it's ancestors may have bred with a serpent. In the first stage of the Alchemy process, Lindworms are frequently represented as "prima materia".
SALAMANDER: small agile creatures with four legs and a long tail.
These creatures exist today and are not often thought of as dragons; however, medieval legend states that they were part dragon, thus immune to fire. It was believed the Salamander inhabited the centre of the Earth. Salamander voices are said to pop and hiss out of sparks as they perform ceremonial dances within the flames. These singing-like sounds were thought by some to be the casting of spells over their houses. During colonial witch hunts it was believed that witches could transform into salamanders to escape the flames of the stake.
The GREAT SERPENT MOUND in Adams County, Southern Ohio, occupies a plateau overlooking Brush Creek Valley as the largest and one of the most famous effigy mounds in the world.
The Great Serpent Mound curves and spirals uncoiling like a giant earth serpent, coils average three feet in height and run a total length of 1,330 feet over a quarter mile. It is believed indigenous people created the mound over 2000 years ago: not as a burial mound, but as a place of worship symbolising a religious or mythical principle for its creators. Nearby conical mounds contained burials and implements characteristic of the prehistoric Adena people (800 BC-AD 100).
