Lyman Frank Baum’s novel is like a Bible for beginners. It’s yet another spiritual allegory, whether it was intended to be so or happened by serendipitous circumstance – possibly divine intervention. Don’t overlook The Holy Trinity of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, a.k.a. the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion, and the Tin Man. Blasphemy? Well, the Scarecrow works in mysterious ways.
All kinds of eerie coincidences have surrounded this timeless gem known as The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz. Starting with the making of the screen adaptation, released by MGM in 1939. One of the final scenes filmed involved actor Frank Morgan as “Professor Marvel” just prior to Dorothy catching a natural disaster flight to Heaven… Oops, I mean Oz.
Anyway, Morgan’s costume was picked off a rack of old clothes randomly purchased by the film studio. One day he turned out the coat pocket to find the name L. Frank Baum stitched into the lining. It was later verified by Baum’s widow and the tailor who made the jacket that it had in fact belonged to the author of the novel. Yeah, kinda freaky. What does it mean? I have no idea, but these kind of coincidences seem to go hand-in-hand with The Wizard Of Oz. Another example is the Pink Floyd phenomenon.
You might be familiar with this one. Unbeknownst to the rock group Pink Floyd, their 1973 album “Dark Side of the Moon” was perfectly synchronized with the on-screen happenings of the MGM classic. It’s been well-documented and, as you would imagine, the Internet has many web sites dedicated to the curious coincidence.
Of course, anything you read on the Internet is unquestionably true. I believe that life is but a dream, Sweetheart. It’s my contention that we are the creators of our reality and, on a whim, we can alter that reality. In the Old Testament we are told that Adam went to sleep, and that’s when all Hell breaks loose – so to speak. I find it curious, however, that the Bible at no point ever said anything about Adam waking up; we all just assumed that he did.
During his slumber, God takes one of Adam’s ribs and produces a partner for him who goes by the name of Eve. (I want my babyback, babyback, babyback…) First guy on earth to ever dream and what does he dream about? A woman – before they even existed. Wide-eyed, innocent, sweet, and pure. Surely this girl could do no wrong in the eyes of her loving creator. But her perception is what matters in this dream, not reality. Dorothy… Oops, I mean Eve… No, I mean Dorothy was having problems with the authority figures in the beginning of the story. Sure, she was surrounded by people who loved her and she had always been properly taken care of by her beloved Aunt Em, but she didn’t believe that her voice was being heard. Dorothy was frustrated with the status quo and wondered if there was a better place.
She knew that Aunt Em had her best interests at heart, but Dorothy felt that her aunt was undermining the threat of evil present in the form of Miss Almira Gulch – the mean and nasty old b’itch (before witch) who was trying to have her dog, Toto, destroyed. The young girl undermined the authority figure, I say. She ate the fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. After following the advice of a deceptive snake – a charlatan fortuneteller who called himself Professor Marvel – Dorothy found herself running back to God… I mean Aunt Em… because the shyster Prophet for profit told her she was needed by her aunt, who was suddenly sick. Dorothy had guilty feet, and we all know guilty feet have no rhythm. So she went running back to Auntie Em in order to repent, but, through an act of God, she was cast out of the Garden of Kansas. Wait… Adam and Eve ended up East of Eden and Dorothy Gale ended up on the Wicked Witch of the… Try to keep up, kids.
Dorothy landed on the Wicked Witch of the East. Our young heroine now finds herself in a completely foreign place. Her loyal ally and guardian angel, Toto, came with her from one world to the next. In this wondrous new world she is immediately recognized as a savior by the locals. She did, after all, make yellow brick road-kill out of their captor, the witch of the East. Right away the Munchkins are singing songs about it. You have to admire that on the spot ingenuity. They sang:”Come out, come out, wherever you are and meet the young lady, who fell from a star. She fell from the sky, she fell very far and Kansas, she says, is the name of the star. Kansas, she says, is the name of the star. She brings you good news. Or haven’t you heard? When she fell out of Kansas a miracle occurred.” Good News, or the Gospel, if you prefer.
A hero from another world coming to spread good news… It all sounds very familiar. Glinda, the spirit guide, comes along and gets Dorothy acclimated. Gives her some pretty vague advice on existing in Oz. All good spirit guides are generally somewhat aloof. They want you to find out on your own, so they only give you the necessary boost required to help you along your journey. Also, Glinda gave the pigtailed messiah a pair of flashy slippers, which were meant to ward off the Wicked Witch of the West. Could have just as easily been a crucifix, a holy book, or a clove of garlic. The symbolism which influences the mind is where the magic comes from. Ruby slippers and rosary beads are faith conductors. Incidentally, in Baum’s novel, the magic slippers were Silver. MGM had the new Technicolor to work with now.
Kansas scenes were all black and white, but Oz was bright and vivid, with lush, colorful eye candy. So Ruby slippers would be much more visually appealing than the Silver. Glinda, the good witch, also provided Dorothy with something all heroes need in order to reach fulfillment: a Quest. You see, it’s about the journey, not the destination. (The journey of a thousand miles begins with groping by airport security.) Dorothy was told that The Wonderful Wizard of Oz would be able to tell her how to get back Home. The all knowing Wizard, who resides in “The Emerald City,” which was initially the title of the book, but the publishers at the Hill Company were strangely superstitious about having a jewel in the title.
The Good Witch of the North told Dorothy that in order to successfully find the Emerald City, she would have to stay on a particular path known as The Yellow Brick Road, and she mustn’t stray from it. How nice – a path to enlightenment. Simply “Follow the Yellow Brick Road.” Ah, but if it were only that easy. Of course, as soon as the red haired guru, Glinda, disappears and all the singing Munchkins were out of view, our main character comes to a fork in the road, literally. Now which path would the witch want her to take?
This is where God intervenes. The Scarecrow is God – deal with it. Dorothy asks her guardian angel, Toto, which way they should go and The Scarecrow chimes in with, “Pardon me. That way is a very nice way.” But then he says, “It’s pleasant down that way, too.” God is indifferent, because all roads lead to him. Maybe Led Zepplin said it better when they said: “There are two paths you can go by, but in the long run, there’s still time to change the road you’re on.” Dorothy wasn’t buying a Stairway to Heaven and she wasn’t buying The Scarecrow’s insight either.
She basically asked him why he couldn’t make up his mind and he explained that he doesn’t have a brain; at which point Dorothy shows the absurdity of such a statement by asking, “Well, how can you talk if you haven’t got a brain?” God’s response: “I don’t know. But some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don’t they?” The Father: Thought, Consciousness, the All Encompassing Mind. “I think, therefore I am.” Everything in the universe is made up of atoms and atoms are, ultimately, tiny pockets of light & consciousness. This is a thinking universe that we live in (I know, I was shocked too). “The brain is just a piece of God.” – Emily Dickinson. If this is all just a dream, then somebody is thinking this stuff up. Einstein said that he wanted to know the thoughts of God and all the rest is just details. Well, everything, including the details, are God’s thoughts.
The Scarecrow’s quest for a brain is like the fish swimming around asking where the ocean is, which happens to be the case with all of the Oz characters. They all already possess what they’re seeking. All quests end up being quests of self-discovery. The One became many in order to experience itself. We’re discovering different facets of ourselves continually. Actually, rediscovering what we once knew. Baum had a reoccurring nightmare about a scarecrow chasing him when he was a little boy. I find it kind of ironic that he chose The Scarecrow to be the one that Dorothy would miss most of all. Apparently, Baum was able to reconcile with his childhood nemesis.
That’s how it works in The Earth School, I think; we have to know the dark to experience the light. I have to get to know the un-me before I can know me. The Son: The Word became flesh. The human race continues to eat from The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, therefore, the human race continues to perceive itself as separated from God. If everything is God and you imagine yourself to be an outcast, then fear is sure to be your constant companion. We are the King of the jungle, being that we are humans – human beings (most of us). We are the most evolved creatures on the planet and we exercise freewill. That’s a lot of responsibility. Imagine knowing that you were born in a night only to perish in a night. Imagine knowing that between birth and death you will suffer heartache, betrayal, loneliness, persecution, humiliation, along with physical pain. Despite this knowledge, you have the courage to go through with it. You are not a Cowardly Lion.
You are The King of the Jungle! Glory to the newborn King! …for I have lived long enough to learn that in life nothing adverse lasts very long. And it is true that as years pass, and we look back on something which, at that time, seemed unbelievably discouraging and unfair…The eventual outcome was, we discover, by far the best solution for us…” – L. Frank Baum The Holy Spirit: The middleman or the transmitting translator from Man to God, and vice versa. To me The Holy Ghost represents the eye of the storm or the center of the carousel. The place in the center where peace resides. We all sit around in a circle and suppose, but the Secret sits in the middle and knows.” – Robert Frost. The Tin Woodsman was seeking a heart, which we all recognize as Love’s residence. The center chakra is the unmarked address of pure love and The Holy Spirit. The Heart is where The Home is.
In our triple-decker God sandwich The Holy Spirit is the go-between guy. The way I see it, our perceived separation from The Father required us to implement a messenger for the two parties. There isn’t really separation at all, but as long as we continue to choose illness over allness, the illusion holds its position. See, The Truth doesn’t wave its arms or scream and yell trying to get attention. The Truth waits patiently to be observed. The Tin Man was rusted in one position for over a year before some chick from Kansas showed up to give him an oil change. Jack Haley (The Tin Man) was a devout Catholic and was once honored by the Pope. But that’s neither here nor there. What I’m writing here isn’t intended to recommend that one religion is the right religion.
This is just me thinking out loud – noticing peculiar trends in a work of fiction, which truth is stranger than. Do I think that The Bible is the word of God? Yes, but so are the funny papers. I really tried to get through this without a disclaimer and I didn’t make it. Darn… All the great religions are like spokes leading to the center of the wheel. And if you’re wondering what L. Frank Baum’s stance was on organized religion, he once said: “When the priests acknowledge their fallibility; when they abolish superstition, intolerance and bigotry; when they abhor the thought of a revengeful god; when they are able to reconcile reason and religion and fear not to let the people think for themselves, then, and then only will the Church regain its old power and be able to draw to its pulpits the whole people.”
I strongly believe that the Wizard in the story represents mankind’s feeble attempt at constructing an institution of answers. It’s definitely comforting to know that there are people in the know, but it’s also a bit on the irresponsible side handing off that burden like a hot potato. If our goal here is to find out who we truly are, then assigning that responsibility to someone else is equivalent to asking somebody else to eat right and exercise so that we can stay healthy. However, people who claim to have the answers are certainly in demand. And they are well compensated. Building huge gaudy palaces like the one in The Emerald City has always been common for our righteous Answer Men. Somehow, God’s messengers sometimes mistake themselves for God. “And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone: and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald.” – Revelations. Whether we are talking about churches and clergymen or government and politicians, our assigned babysitters certainly reap the benefits of a god well done.
In the case of the Wizard, he wasn’t an evil or malevolent man at all. It turned out that he was forced into the job, because there was such a demand. He, also being from Kansas, was an outsider so he brought the excitement of the unknown with him. Pay no attention to the naked emperor behind the curtain. However, hating the Answer Men for lying is entrapment, pure and simple. It’s two-faced. You can’t satisfy all of the people all of the time, and we know this, but we demand as much from our Answer Men. We seek out and then select & elect the most efficient liars.
Make the pill a little easier to swallow. If ignorance is bliss, then why is everybody pissed? The Wizard said that he would help Dorothy and the three wise men if they could complete one task. Of course, he gave them what he thought was an impossible task, which is usually the case with Answer Men. Answer Men tell you to abstain from sex and you will be saved. And they tell you to get the broomstick from the Wicked Witch of the West. The second is the more reasonable of the two, of course. So our group of heroes are sent out by The Wizard to retrieve an arbitrary object, just for sport really. It’s basically a suicide mission, but so is life itself. Give me a dragon to slay or else I fade away in perpetual purgatory.
The writer often created impossible tasks for his characters to overcome. Baum, in one of his later Oz novels, wrote about “the Shifting Sands,” which was an inpassable desert surrounding the land of Oz. Wasn’t there some stuff in the Bible about crossing the desert or something? Anyway… If you’re going off to conquer your fears, you couldn’t ask for better allies than the clarity and mindful awareness of pure consciousness in the form of a scarecrow. Along with a compassionate tin soldier with an unyielding sense of purpose and holy insight to divine plan. Also, give me a lion with previously untapped primal verve; The King of Kings with “da noive” to walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. And let’s not forget the ever present loyal guardian angel in the unassuming form of man’s best friend. On their way to confronting evil, evil took the offensive.
Dorothy was imprisoned in the Witch’s Castle and separated from her friends after they were attacked by flying monkey-men. (I hate when that happens.) The Wicked Witch wanted the silver slippers. Have you ever noticed that the ego always thinks it needs just one more thing to make it all-powerful? Like Mr. Potter would have been complete if George Bailey would have just given up the The Building and Loan. Wiley Coyote couldn’t have just picked a different Roadrunner? I digress. The Witch needed the slippers, so the hourglass was placed in front of Dorothy to let her know how much time she had before her demise. (Those of us with dial-up Internet service know what that’s like.) Judas sealed Jesus’ fate for thirty pieces of silver and The Wicked Witch of the West was about to do in Dorothy for her silver shoes, before the cavalry showed up to save the day. See, the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion dressed as the Witch’s guards – the Winkies (seriously), in order to infiltrate the Castle and save Dorothy. It’s a common theme in mythology for the heroes to disguise themselves as their foes in order for their quest to be a success – again, you have to know what is not you so that you may know what is you.
In the movie’s climax, evil attempts to destroy God. Silly Evil, always thinking it can exist outside of God. The Witch’s attempt at burning the Scarecrow ended with her being baptized by Dorothy with purifying water. Water – the element that almost always represents pure consciousness in theology and/or mythology – melting away the illusion of evil. Pure consciousness. “I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance. but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.” – The Book of Matthew. The power was always within you. You couldn’t see because your vision was clouded by your fears. You could have always just clicked your heels together and been Home. You’re not separate from your creator. Don’t seek wisdom, be wisdom.
Don’t seek love, be love. Don’t seek courage, be courage. “All that is now and all that is gone and all that’s to come and everything under the sun is in tune… but the sun is eclipsed by the moon.” – Pink Floyd. This, I believe, is the message of The Wizard Of Oz. L. Frank Baum wrote fairytales, because he believed in the power of imagination. Oz is one imagined nation. He states in the introduction to The Lost Princess of Oz, “Imagination has given us the steam engine, the telephone, the talking-machine, and the automobile, for these things had to be dreamed of before they became realities. So I believe that dreams -day dreams…with your eyes wide open…are likely to lead to the betterment of the world.
The imaginative child will become the imaginative man or woman most apt to create, to invent, and therefore to foster civilization. A prominent educator tells me that fairy tales are of untold value in developing imagination in the young. I believe it.” I don’t believe in happy endings, because I don’t believe in endings. Wake up, Adam! “The dream is over,” said Mr. John Lennon; he was also one to “imagine”. Mr. Baum woke up from his dream in 1919, after a lifelong battle with a heart condition. It was this sickness that restricted him from partaking in the physical activities that other boys took part in when he was young. His physical limitations nourished his imagination, however. And the world was better off for it. As Baum passed from one world to the next, his last words were a quiet whisper to his beloved wife: “Now we can cross the Shifting Sands.
