Theosophical Wizard of Oz
I found this on WND where they were positing it a bad thing.
According to University of Georgia Prof. John Algeo (former president of the Theosophical Society) in the Theosophical publication The Quest (Summer 1993), The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a Theosophical allegory and “Oz is a mandala. Mandalas represent the human psyche and the world of samsura–the. . . world of differentiation and becoming. . . Kansas is that world where there is no differentiation–but only Oneness. . . from which we have all come and to which we are destined to return.”
Algeo related that “Dorothy is the soul sent. . . out of the nirvana of Kansas into the samsura of Oz, here to find her way back again to the undifferentiated unity from which she comes. . . Dorothy is brought from Kansas to Oz by a cyclone [which] is the cycle of necessity, the round of birth and death, which catches us up and brings us into life, that is, to Oz. . . Toto expresses the archetype [that] represents the animal nature in all of us.”
Algeo then explained that the Cowardly Lion, Tin Woodman, and Scarecrow who respectively want courage, a heart, and a brain, come from a Blavatsky statement published by Besant, which reads: “There is no danger that dauntless courage cannot conquer; there is no trial that spotless purity cannot pass through; there is no difficulty that strong intellect cannot surmount.” Relevant to the Scarecrow’s and Tin Woodman’s debate over whether having brains or a heart is more important, that comes from Blavatsky’s Voice of the Silence section “The Two Paths” where the “Intellectual Doctrine of the Eye” is compared to the “compassionate Doctrine of the Heart.”
Algeo explained that “Dorothy’s quest in Oz is to find her way home, back to Kansas, back to nirvana,” and it has three phases. First, she follows the Yellow Brick Road which “strongly suggests the Path, the mystic way, that leads to enlightenment.” This comes from the Blavatsky-Besant statement: “There is a Road, steep and thorny, beset with perils of every kind, but yet a Road, and it leads to the very heart of the universe.” The Yellow Brick Road leads to the Emerald City, which is, according to Algeo, “the heart of the universe of Oz. At the end of the Road are the Emerald City and the Wizard. Emerald or green is the color of harmony, of balance; it is the midway in the color spectrum; it is the color of the fourth or harmonizing ray.”
Concerning the second phase, Algeo mentioned that “the wicked Witches of the East and West represent, respectively, the desire for birth and the fear of death which accompany our coming into and passing out of this life.” After crushing the Wicked Witch of the East, “thus overcoming the desire for further birth,. . . Dorothy must go to the uttermost West, encounter the Wicked Witch of death, and overcome her–with water, the symbol of life.”
After this, Dorothy returns to the Emerald City and discovers that the Wizard, according to Algeo, “is after all a humbug. This is perhaps the most Theosophical of all details in the fairy story. The Wizard is a humbug because all teachers we find outside ourselves are humbugs. One of the cardinal messages of Theosophy is that we can rely on no one to save us but ourselves.”
Dorothy then begins the third phase of her journey to the land of the South, as Algeo explained, “to seek the counsel of Glinda, the good Witch. To travel south is to travel deep within ourselves. . . Glinda represents the intuition within each of us–the glint of the light of Truth, the only true source of guidance. What Glinda tells Dorothy is that she has always had the power to go back to Kansas; Dorothy needs no guru, for she is her own guide. She need only rely upon herself. . .” Algeo concluded his essay by stating: “If there is a ‘moral’ to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, this is it: we must rely on ourselves, for we alone have the power to save ourselves.”
