The Onion is of course satire, but the esoteric roots of TWoO are well known, with thousands of references on google. The best summary among the first few is perhaps

http://www.examiner.com/article/the-theosophical-foundations-of-l-frank-baum-s-wizard-of-oz

"'The Wizard of Oz' is an allegorical tale of the soul's journey along the spiritual path, which in the story is called 'the yellow brick road.' In Buddhism it's called 'the golden path'."

"...Her journey can be seen as a near-death experience and her adventures there as preparation for returning to schoolhouse Earth and passing her tests."

I'm more partial to the interpretation of TWoO as a metaphor for the hostile takeover of the US economy by the Fed. Kansas and other states being incorporated "we're not in kansas anymore" and the yellow brick road meaning "follow the money" to the "old white man behind the curtain."

But yours is good, too..

kolobian Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'm more partial to the interpretation of TWoO as
> a metaphor for the hostile takeover of the US
> economy by the Fed. Kansas and other states being
> incorporated "we're not in kansas anymore" and the
> yellow brick road meaning "follow the money" to
> the "old white man behind the curtain."

You're on strong ground, kolobian. I submit for your consideration, Hugh Rock's Rutgers 1990 academic paper.

http://economics.rutgers.edu/dmdocuments/RockoffWizardofOz.pdf

Arguing against this interpreration, and holding that it is indeed nothing more than a children's story, is:

http://www.usagold.com/gildedopinion/oz.html

"The Wizard of Oz" is deceptively rich literature, as evidenced by the number of treatments and considerations it has inspired, not to mention productions. As a writer, I wish I could be a mere fraction as effective. Incidentally, Dorothy's shoes were originally silver, to represent the groundedness of silver-based currency.

Theosophy, incidently, is a kind of a mix of Eastern metaphysics and spiritism (commonly called "spiritualism"). It was quite a fad in the latter half of the 19th Century. Mary Baker Eddy (founder, Christian Science) borrowed extensively from it, but went to awkward efforts to disavow that.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/16/2013 06:37PM by caffiend.