“The Spirit of the Dragon, say the Adepts, must be changed, ere we attain the Great Secret…”



-from Meister Karl’s Sketch-Book by Charles Godfrey Leland (1855).

Dragon-fighting image from Athanasius Kircher’s Mundus subterraneus (1665). Image via Internet Archive.

Our world, once a realm of unexplored hinterlands, has accordingly had its fair share of dragon-hunters. Their craft, which has its origins in the Bronze Age, when the serpentine goddess Tiamat danced about the watery recesses of the Mesopotamian mind, lasted well until the Middle Ages—which abounded in Saint George legendaria—and culminated in the manifold researches of the seventeenth-century geologist and all-around genius Athanasius Kircher.



On the whole, however, time not been kind to the dragon-finding art. The previous two centuries has seen its proponents either swallowed by the advancing tide of evidence-based science or relegated to the pages of fantasy novels. But the era of these winged fire-breathers is far from ended.



Sketch of a dragon from Cardinal Francesco Barberini’s personal collection. Mundus subterraneus via Internet Archive.

In Auvergne, a land with its own popular traditions of monsters and monster-hunters, Professor Michel Meybeck is continuing the chase, attempting— like the ancient Greek mythographer Euhemerus— to piece together the historical facts behind a unique group of dragon and devil tales linked to the region’s mysterious Lake Pavin.



Since the 1500s, the infamous crater has been associated with certain anomalous meteorological phenomena. Like the demon-haunted lakes of Pilatus, Scholomance, and Norcia, Pavin was thought to shelter the inferno’s most temperamental beasts. It was also said to be, as one nineteenth-century writer explained, a place where “sorcerers conjured wind and storm by casting a stone into its enchanted waters”.



Lake Pavin circa 1830. Image courtesy of Gallica BnF.

This belief apparently persisted well until the 20th century. “My aunt Gina,” Meybeck told The Thinker’s Garden, “a skilled swimmer who crossed all lakes of the Cézallier (a magnificent lake district by the way) told me she would never have attempted to cross Pavin, because of its maleficent whirlpool.”



He also said that his grandmother “seriously warned” him against throwing stones into the lake when he started working there in 1969.



According to Meybeck, who currently serves as the emeritus director of research at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), these stories stem solely from Pavin’s periodic outbursts of CO 2 , an occurrence known as outgassing. Citing cataclysmic events like the Lake Nyos limnic eruption in Cameroon (which saw almost 2,000 killed by a toxic cloud), Meybeck in his co-authored book Lake Pavin: Lake Pavin: History, Geology, Biogeochemistry, and Sedimentology Of A Deep Meromictic Maar Lake (2017), has argued that in the past, similar seismic or erosive events in or near the lake caused its gaseous contents to violently rise to the surface, causing all manner of visibly apocalyptic signs from thunderclaps to tsunamis.



Lake Pavin in 1835. Image courtesy of Les bibliothèques de Clermont Auvergne Métropole.

It’s a theory that still lacks the consensus of the scientific community, but Meybeck, who claims to have collected “ten times more sources” than other Pavin researchers, also thinks that his fellow geochemists are “slowly” warming to his outlook.



Much like the Late Renaissance polymath Kircher, Meybeck was drawn to geology and cultural history from an early age. Born and raised in Égliseneuve-d’Entraigues, a fifteen minutes’ drive from the lake, he avidly studied classical mythology and folklore in his teens while building up an extensive collection of shells, minerals, and postcards.



“I also have several family connections to Pavin,” he told us.



Throughout the 1950s, Meybeck occasionally attended Marian processionals at the nearby Chapel of Vassivière. His experiences, during which he, along with his grandmother and aunts, prayed for the statue’s protection, later suggested to him that the area’s ancient residents had cause to fear Pavin.



“I read all registers of Vassivière miracles,” he said. “The earliest ones (1618,1680) were very detailed and featured many similar stories: sudden commotions, paralysis, all types of neuronal disorders. I also found in two descriptions with full details, of abnormal atmospheric events (explosion, sudden light) perceived by people at Vassivière, particularly in 1551.”



Lake Pavin circa 1888. Image via Internet Archive.

Meybeck eventually went on to study at the Sorbonne, graduating with a thesis on Lake Geneva. Following a postdoctoral stint in Quebec, he published widely on limnology and geology. Concerned with humanity’s environmental impact on rivers, he also became one of the first scholars to “apply the Anthropocene concept”.



“I was sitting next to Paul Crutzen when he first articulated his Anthropocene idea in 2000 at an International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) meeting in Mexico,” he explained. “I found this term very convenient to describe something which I had been working on for twenty years.”



Before he began his scientific forays into the dragon’s lair, as it were, Meybeck participated in various excursions that, when recounted, bring to mind the adventures of Tintin and Indiana Jones. A 1976 expedition found him in the Congo, where he and a Dutch research team spent two weeks off the coast of Angola.



“On our way back we sailed on a sea of luminescent squid for hours during the night,” he said. “It was fascinating!”



Later, he was invited to participate in a research project in China. Communicating with locals “by gesture”, he gathered samples from the Yellow River Delta on a “tiny fisherman’s boat”.



Work also took him to Russia’s Lake Baikal, the world’s deepest and— arguably— most numinous lake. During the voyage, the captain of Meybeck’s research vessel, an ethnic Buryat, poured out libations with a vodka bottle and made a formal offering to the lake’s tutelary deity. “These are some of the encounters you can make when working on the field,” Meybeck reflected.



For now, however, the dragon-hunter has his eyes fixed on Auvergne. Pavin’s meromictic titans, which rest beneath its Erebusian waves, slumbering until they are called once again to unleash their fury, are in his sights and it’s unlikely he’ll be slowing down anytime soon.



“I am totally Pavin-centred,” he confessed.



Meybeck’s next engagement, a talk on the myths, history, and legends of Pavin and other European maar lakes, is slated to take place in Chaméane, Auvergne, on 26 April (tomorrow). This will be followed up by an appearance on a volcano-focused miniseries produced by Arte, a German-French television network. The special is set to air later this year.



“Maar lakes can definitively bring you anywhere you want,” Meybeck said, “across time, beliefs, and continents.”



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