Mỹ Sơn Sanctuary – Where the Dragon’s Song Awakens

Travelling north along what we have come to call the Dragon Spine of Vietnam, the journey has slowly begun to reveal itself as more than a movement across geography. Each place seems to mirror a different stage in the rising of life-force through the body of the land.

The path began quietly at Borobudur in Java, where something stirred awake like a whisper at the base of consciousness. At Angkor Wat that awakening met the great axis of Shiva, the stabilising pillar that joins heaven and earth. At Black Lady Mountain the dragon egg appeared — a seed of potential placed into the system. Then the waterfalls, rivers and lakes of the Central Highlands carried the journey into the realm of water, where memory and life-force began to move again through the land.

Arriving at Mỹ Sơn Sanctuary felt like reaching the moment when water meets fire.

Hidden in a valley surrounded by mountains, the Cham civilisation built Mỹ Sơn as their sacred centre devoted to Shiva, the pillar of flame that connects heaven, earth and the underworld. Walking among the ancient towers, it felt as though we had reached the solar plexus of the dragon’s body — the place where the inner fire awakens.

At one of the restored shrines I sensed the presence of an ancient dragon coiled protectively around the light of the temple. It did not feel fierce, but deeply protective, as though something fragile and sacred was being guarded there.

Earlier in the journey at Lak Lake, the naga beneath the waters had breathed life into the unborn child within the dragon egg. Here at Mỹ Sơn that first tone seemed to awaken into song. A warm golden light spread through the valley like a lamp being lit inside the body of the dragon, illuminating the path ahead.

That night the experience continued within my own body as the fire of the solar plexus seemed to open a pathway upward toward the heart. In that quiet space a simple understanding arose:

The dragon is not the source of the song.

The dragon is the protector of the heart of the song.

Perhaps that is the deeper purpose of this pilgrimage — not only to walk the sacred landscapes of the earth, but to rediscover the path back into the heart itself.

And so the journey continues north along the Dragon Spine.

Leaving the solar fire of Mỹ Sơn behind, the path now turns inland toward the great limestone mountains and hidden rivers of central Vietnam — a landscape known as the “inland Hạ Long Bay,” where the dragon’s path seems to disappear beneath the earth before rising again toward the heart.