Theosophy and Oz

Theosophy and Oz are the subjects of this post.

So.  Why not begin by introducing them?  (I think I will.)

Everyone quiet, please!  May I direct your attention to the front of the auditorium?

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you. . .

Kong!

Whoops; the wrong script.

(Hand me the right envelope next time.)

How about?. . .

Theosophy and Oz!

Oz first.

Ok.

Theosophy and Oz, beginning with Oz

L. Frank Baum’s children’s book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, was published in 1900.

I remember, as a boy, some sixty years later, coming across an old hard-cover copy of it.  I probably found it in the school library and liked the cover.  Though I didn’t care much for reading, I was fascinated by book covers.  Seem novel?  I didn’t know anyone else who collected books because they liked the covers.  Besides.  I was more interested in writing books than reading them.  That must have made my teachers, and my mother, scratch their heads.  But that’s okay.  I figured, why be someone else, when you can be yourself?

Though I didn’t read much, I found that old worn-out book about the land of Oz amazing!  I don’t think the cover was even completely attached anymore.  It seems to me it sort of “tagged along” with the pages.  But that was not a problem.  I loved the book!  I couldn’t believe a book from school could be so much fun to read and take me to another world; like, somewhere over the rainbow, actually.  But it did.  I didn’t want to put it down when I came home from school!  Especially not for an old milk cow!  My eyes must have been the size of tomatoes when I crawled between the covers (of the book and my bed).  After my little brother and I milked the cows, of course.  And ate our supper.  (The hungry, hard-working men that we were.)

Taken up in a funnel?

You’d think I had been taken up in a funnel.  (Can a book do that?)  Because, around the same time, when the annual telecast of the 1939 Wizard of Oz movie began appearing on television, my family and I enjoyed watching it every year on our black-and-white TV.  Even though the movie was already “old” by then, it never got old.  I didn’t know, at the time, most of it is in color.  Who needs color?  We were happy to have a TV and not have to hip-hop to an outhouse on cold nights to go to the bathroom.  When we moved from our North Dakota farm to our ranch in Montana, we acquired an indoor bathroom with running water, and a TV!  We felt like the Beverly Hillbillies for all the fancy things we had!  With suds, and buds from Oz.

We turn now, to the other star in our Theosophy and Oz drama. . .

Theosophy

Not that you and I need to add another word to our vocabulary.  But, not long ago, I was introduced to the word “Theosophy.”  I had never heard of the term.  I knew it meant “God wisdom,” or, “God’s wisdom.”  But I had no idea such a word was being used to identify a “spiritual” movement (with occult roots, among other things) that began near the end of the nineteenth century.  In fact.  I learned, if you follow the roots of Theosophy back to where they begin, when you emerge from the ground, holding on to the end of your root, you will be looking at the faces of an ancient Gnostic and a Neoplatonist!  Quite a surprise, eh?  (They will be just as surprised to see you.)

(Neoplatonism is a new way of looking at plate tectonics.  I’m only kidding. . .  It’s a ha-ha moment!  Right?  Unless no one is laughing.)

The movement was “inspired” by a woman from Russia.  Her name was Helena Blavatsky.

You can probably guess where this is going.  It’s like a movie script where you figure out the plot before it happens.  So.  What do you know?  (Act surprised.)  L. Frank Baum becomes a convert to Theosophical teachings.  Not only that.  But he also becomes an outspoken proponent of Theosophy by the time he writes that dear, old hard-cover book I discovered as a boy.  No!  It can’t be!

. . .But it is.

But that’s like saying, apple pie and ice cream are bad.