Description: two-legged dragon with two wings, a serpent’s head and the claws of an eagle. In modern images, they may have claws on the wings and a sting filled with poison on the end of its tail.
The French Wyvern known as a Vouivre or Wouive, is portrayed with the head and upper body of a voluptuous woman with a ruby or garnet set between her eyes that help her to find her way through the Underworld.
Origin: from the Old French wyvere which means both viper and ‘life’.
Powers: Wyvern are frequent in heraldry and are considered a sign of strength to those who bear the symbol. Wouive is the good ‘Genius’ who hovers protectively over the countryside and masters the underlying currents of the earth. She is ‘the spirit that breathes or inspires.’ The ancients represented these currents, that today we term cosmic or magnetic, by winged serpents.
Nevertheless the Wyvern appears in some western folk tales as a malign and violent predator with a fierce head, bat’s wings and a tail that sometimes has an extra scorpion-like head on its end. The life-giving aspect of the Wyvern is inverted in favour of death as she takes life. The Wouive’s ‘Breath of Life’ has been reversed, for the Wyvern is said to have poisonous and corrupt breath. These dragons symbolise envy, war, pestilence, and viciousness.
Famous: Marco Polo met and described lindworms while crossing Central Asia. They were quick and mighty enough to take down a man on a galloping horse. The dragon Fafnir from the Norse Völsunga saga appears in the German Nibelungenlied as a lindwurm that lived near Worms
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