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Good and Bad Dragons
…Anyone who earns the gratitude of animals, or whom they help for any reason, invariably wins out.
This is the only unfailing rule that I have been able to find. It is psychologically of the utmost importance, because it means that in the conflict between good and evil the decisive factor is our animal instinct, or perhaps better, the animal soul; anyone who has it with him is victorious.
Good qualities that are contrary to instinct cannot last, but neither can evil when its one-sided demonism runs counter to instinct.
Animals, says Jung, are more obedient to God than is man; they live out their foreordained lives without doubt and without deviating from their inner patterns. This is no doubt why in so many fairy tales an animal is the symbol of “right” behaviour…
Thus when a redeemed prince or god steps forth from a sacrificed animal in a fairy tale, this symbolizes the sudden disclosure of the spiritual meaning that seems to lie behind the “rightness” of the animal instinct.
And at the same time it means that on the one hand people should follow their unconscious instinctive impulses, but that at a certain point in the curve of their lives they will demand that they sacrifice them. Instinct itself demands to be sacrificed and in so doing reveals its spiritual aspect…
