Description
The defining image of visionary art in the Western tradition.
Between approximately 1803 and 1805, William Blake created a series of four watercolours depicting scenes from the Book of Revelation. At their centre is the Great Red Dragon — the seven-headed beast of Revelation 12 — in four encounters that trace the full arc of apocalyptic drama.
The image
The Dragon stands with its back to the viewer, wings spread, looming over the Woman Clothed with the Sun who stands below in a posture of supplication or surrender. The Dragon’s power is total. And yet — the Woman is crowned with twelve stars. She stands on the moon. She is clothed with the Sun.
Blake was depicting the paradox at the heart of Revelation: the forces of destruction are real and overwhelming, but they are not ultimate. The Woman — the soul, the creative principle, the divine feminine — survives by going through the ordeal, not by avoiding it.
Why this image endures
Thomas Harris chose this series as the obsession of his serial killer in Red Dragon — because Blake’s Dragon is genuinely terrifying. It is power without mercy, drawn with the full force of a visionary imagination that refused to sanitise what it saw.
This is the image for practitioners who understand that genuine spiritual development means encountering the depths, not avoiding them. The Dragon is real. So is the Woman.
About this print
Museum-quality archival print. Public domain original (c.1803). Ships worldwide.
