Quest Magazine

news & notes

Reprint from Quest 89 (January-February): 30.

Because the year 2000 was the centennial of the publication of L. FrankBaum's modern fairy tale The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the book and its author received a great deal of attention (see for example the interpretive and review articles in the last issue of the Quest). Most of the periodical-press hoopla was superficial, but a partial exception was an article by the novelist and man of letters John Updike, "Oz Is Us: Celebrating the Wizard's Centennial" (NewYorker, Sept. 25, 2000, 84-88).

Updike's critical essay is one of the few recent treatments of Baum and Oz to cover not just the surface events of his life and the warm and fuzzy popular appeal of the story, but to touch upon the intellectual aspects of Oz. Those aspects have been neglected by both the popular press and Oz fans, but on an unconscious level they may be factors that have helped to ensure the survival of the Oz myth. Updike thinks enthusiasts have overrated the Oz story, but he acknowledges the cultural dimensions of Baum's work. Updike's knowledge ofTheosophy is far from deep, but he is aware of its influence on Baum, observing:

American Theosophy, to which Baum had been introduced by his formidable mother-in-law [Matilda Joslyn Gage], mixed spiritualism and Buddhistand Hindu beliefs with a meliorism that rejected the darker, Devil-acknowledging side of Christianity. "God is Nature, and Nature God," Baum said; yet he also professed an animistic vision in which

every bit of wood, every drop of liquid, every grain of sand or portion of rock has its myriad of inhabitants. . . . These invisible and vapory beings are known as Elementals. . . . They are soulless, but immortal,frequently possessed of extraordinary intelligence, and again remarkably stupid.

Madame H. P. Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society, in her book"Isis Unveiled" (1878 [sic, correctly 1877]) wrote of these Elementals as "the creatures evolved in the four kingdoms of earth, air, fire, and water, and called by the kabalists gnomes, sylphs, salamanders, and undines." This giddying, virtually bacterial multitudinousness came to characterize Oz as sequels multiplied its regions and its strange and magical tribes; but the"Wizard" itself presents an uncluttered cosmogony, drawn in bright blunt tints.According to Theosophy, our astral bodies come in distinct colors, and so do the regions of Oz, with their inhabitants.

By John Algeo

Reprint from American Theosophist 74 (1986): 270-3.

Lyman Frank Baum (1851-1919) is best known as the author of the popular children's book The Wizard of Oz, on which the1939 movie starring Judy Garland was based. Mainly through that movie, Baum's story has become one of the most widely known and best loved of all modern fairy tales.

Although Frank Baum is famous primarily for that one book, he wrote a good many other children's stories, including 13 additional Oz books; a variety of other fairy tales, short stories, and verses; and several series of girls' and boys' books (published under various pseudonyms). Also,because of the popularity of The Wizard upon its publication in 1900,Baum converted it to the stage, and it became a highly successful musical play on Broadway, inspiring a number of similar works (such as Victor Herbert's Babes in Toyland).

As a young man living in New York State, Baum authored, produced, and acted in a play, The Maid of Arran, with which he toured from Canada to Kansas. He gave up that theatrical career, however, when he married Maud Gage, because her mother took a dim view of acting as a livelihood for a son-in-law. Thereafter, for brief intervals, he ran his family's axle-grease company; moved to Aberdeen, South Dakota, where he operated a store called Baum's Bazaar; edited a weekly newspaper, the SaturdayPioneer; worked as a reporter for a Chicago newspaper; became a traveling salesman; was instrumental in founding the National Association of WindowTrimmers; and edited a magazine for the trade, The Show Window.Subsequently, he made motion pictures and pioneered the use of special effects for films based on his children's stories. Baum's genius, however, was as a teller of stories for children--initially for his own four sons. He was a devoted husband and a doting father.

Such facts about Baum's life are widely known. What is not so well known, however, is Baum's interest in theosophy. Michael PatrickHearn, one of the best of Baum's biographers, has made the most extensive, and virtually the only, acknowledgment of that interest:

His son Frank admitted the author's interest in Theosophy, but also reported that the elder Baum could not accept all its teachings. He firmly believed in reincarnation; he had faith in the immortality of the soul and believed that he and his wife had been together in many past states and would be together in future reincarnations, but he did notaccept the possibility of the transmigration of souls from human beings to animals or vice versa, as in Hinduism. He was in agreement with theTheosophical belief that man on Earth was only one step on a great ladder that passed through many states of consciousness, through many universes, to a final state of Enlightenment. He did believe in Karma, that whatever good or evil one does in his lifetime returns to him as reward or punishment in future reincarnations.... He believed that all the great religious teachers of history had found their inspiration from the same source, a common Creator. [72-73]

Although he did not join the Theosophical Society for some years, Baum seems to have believed in the central Theosophical concepts.It is not clear which Theosophical teachings Baum "could not accept"; possibly that reservation means only that Baum did not consider every idea that had been advanced by individual Theosophists to be Theosophical--a reservation that most of us would still want to make. Baum's belief in the basic ideas of Theosophy has thus been recognized, even though it has not been widely publicized. What has not hitherto been known, however, is that Baum became a member of theTheosophical Society, as did his wife, Maud, and his mother-in-law, MatildaGage.

In the early membership rolls of the Society, there are entries recording the application for membership of Lyman F. Baum and Mrs.Maud G. Baum, of Chicago, Illinois, on September 4, 1892. They were admitted on the same day to the Ramayana Theosophical Society upon the recommendation ofDr. W. P. Phelon and M. M. Phelon. William P. Phelon was a prominent early member and one of the organizers of the American Section in 1886. The Baums'permanent diplomas (or membership certificates) were issued by the parent organization on December 5, 1892. Baum's mother-in-law, Matilda Joslyn Gage,had joined the Society seven years earlier, when she was living inFayetteville, New York. Her application and admission to the RochesterTheosophical Society are dated March 26, 1885; she was recommended by JosephineW. Cables and E. M. Sasseville.¹

It is likely that Baum learned about theosophy from his mother-in-law, a remarkable woman who was an active figure in the woman's rights movement and other social causes throughout her life. She was coauthor,with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, of the three-volume History of Woman Suffrage, and was one of the prominent early members of the NationalWoman Suffrage Association (Wagner, Declaration 2, 20).

In view of her concern for human equality and rights, it is not surprising that Matilda Gage was attracted to Theosophy. She valued it not only because it provided a philosophical basis for equality and social action, but also for some of its other teachings, such as reincarnation,which she explained to one of her grandchildren living in Edgeley, NorthDakota:

There is one thing I want you to remember first of all: This is that what is called "death" by people is not death. You are more alive than ever you were after what is called death. Death is only a journey, like going to another country. You are alive when you travel toAberdeen just as much as when you stay in Edgeley, and it is the same with what is called death. After people have been gone for awhile, they come back and live in another body, in another family and have another name. [Cited byWagner, "Dorothy," 6.]

Frank Baum supported his mother-in-law in her work for woman's rights, and he learned many things from her, including Theosophical ideas. While he edited the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer, he wrote a seriesof articles called "The Editor's Musings."² Before he joined theSociety, in the first issue of the paper under his editorship (January 25,1890), he wrote about the insecurity many Christians felt about the challenge of other religions and about a growing aspiration for knowledge outside the church. He wrote sympathetically of the Buddha, Mohammed, Confucius, andChrist, and he introduced his readers to Theosophy:

Amongst the various sects so numerous in America today who find their fundamental basis in occultism, theTheosophist[s] stand pre-eminent both in intelligence and point of numbers.

The recent erection of their new temple in New York City has called forth the curiosity of the many,the uneasiness of the few. Theosophy is not a religion. Its followers are simply"searchers after Truth." Not for the ignorant are the tenets they hold, neither for the worldly in any sense. Enrolled within their ranks are some of the grandest intellects of the Eastern and Western worlds.

Purity in all things, evento asceticism is absolutely required to fit them to enter the avenues of knowledge, and the only inducement they offer to neophytes is the privilege of"searching for the Truth" in their company.

As interpreted by themselves they accept the teachings of Christ, Budda, and Mohammed,acknowledging them Masters or Mahatmas, true prophets each in his generation,and well versed in the secrets of nature. But the truth so earnestly sought isnot yet found in its entirety, or if it be, is known only to the privileged few.

The Theosophists, in fact,are the dissatisfied of the world, the dissenters from all creeds. They owe their origin to the wise men of India, and are numerous, not only in the far famed mystic East, but in England, France, Germany and Russia. They admit the existence of a God--not necessarily a personal God. To them God is Nature and Nature God.

We have mentioned their high morality: they are also quiet and unobtrusive, seeking no notoriety, yet daily growing so numerous that even in America they may be counted by thousands. But, despite this, if Christianity is Truth, as our education has taught us to believe, there can be no menace to it in Theosophy.

A month later in the Saturday Pioneer (February22, 1890), Baum turned to writing about fiction with occult and mystical themes. He dealt with Bulwer Lytton, one of H. P. Blavatsky's favorite writers,to whom she often referred; H. Rider Haggard, especially his novel She;and Mabel Collins, whose Idyll of the White Lotus and Light on thePath were already Theosophical classics.

A few months later in the same periodical (April 5,1890), Baum wrote about mediumship and elementals. Mediumship was a subject of intense interest in the late nineteenth century (as witnessed by the fact thatOlcott and Blavatsky met at a séance). Baum's explanation of mediumistic phenomena, while perhaps partly his own interpretation, owes a great deal toBlavatsky. She attributed many of the apparent marvels of the séance room to the activities of elemental beings attracted to the medium. Baum's interpretation of mediumship is certainly derived, directly or indirectly, fromHPB.

The foregoing articles show that while he was editing the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer Baum had a considerable interest in Theosophy,occultism, and related subjects--an interest that he was not reluctant to write about. However, in spite of his keen interest, he did not join the TheosophicalSociety in 1890.

It was two years after writing these pieces in the SaturdayPioneer that he actually joined, and for a considerable time thereafter he sustained his Theosophical interests. His niece, Matilda Jewell Gage, who stilllives in Aberdeen, South Dakota, visited the Baums after they moved fromChicago to San Diego, California. She remembers that her famous uncle and grandmother both were interested in Theosophy and Theosophical literature.³

Further evidence for Baum's involvement withTheosophy is found in his children's books, especially The Wizard of Oz.Although readers have not looked at his fairy tales for their Theosophical content, it is significant that Baum became a famous writer of children's booksafter he had come into contact with Theosophy. Theosophical ideas permeate his work and provided the inspiration for it. Indeed, The Wizard can be regarded as Theosophical allegory, pervaded by Theosophical ideas from beginning to end.The story came to Baum as an inspiration, and he accepted it with a certain awe as a gift from outside, or perhaps from deep within, himself.

Frank Baum was one of the most notable yet unknown Theosophists of the turn of the century and was our first and perhaps greatest Theosophical writer for children.

Notes

1. This information was kindly supplied by Grace F. Knoche and Kirby Van Mater, of the Theosophical Society headquartered inPasadena, California. The Baums' membership is recorded on Register 1, page561, and Matilda Gage's on the same Register, page 49.

2. For access to Baum's newspaper, I am indebted to the kindness of Janus Olsen and Dolores Campton of the Alexander MitchellPublic Library, Aberdeen, SD, and of Barbara Rystrom of the University ofGeorgia Library.

3. This information is from a personal interview withMiss Gage conducted in January 1985 in Aberdeen.

References

• Baum, Frank, ed. TheAberdeen Saturday Pioneer, Aberdeen, SD, Jan. 25, 1890--Mar. 21, 1891.

• Hearn, Michael Patrick, ed. The Annotated Wizard of Oz.New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1973.

• Wagner, Sally Roesch. The Declaration of Rights ofWomen: 1876. Aberdeen, SD: Aberdeen Area Chapter of NOW, 1975.

• ———. "Dorothy Gage and Dorothy Gale." Baum Bugle28.2 (Autumn 1984): 4-6.

Oz and Kansas: A Theosophical Quest
By John Algeo
University of Georgia

From Proceedings of the Thirteenth AnnualConference of the Children's Literature Association, University ofMissouri--Kansas City, May 16-18, 1986, ed. Susan R. Gannon and Ruth Anne Thompson, c. 1988, pp 135-39.

Undoubtedly the best-known modern American fairytale is The Wonderful Wizard of 0z, written by L. Frank Baum and first published in 1900. However, the story is most widely known through the JudyGarland movie of 1939, which by its television broadcasts has spread knowledge of the story around the world and has made it part of our national popular lore. The Wizard of Oz is an archetypal American fairy tale; and that is what Frank Baum wanted to produce. As he wrote in the introduction to his book,"It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heart-aches and nightmares are left out" (85).

J. R. R. Tolkien has explained that fairy stories are not normally about fairies, but rather about Faërie, a land that he calls"the Perilous Realm" (42). Whatever else the perilous Land of Faërie may be, it is clearly a projection of the human psyche, and journeys in the Land of Faërie are explorations of our own inner landscape, efforts to map the common psychological experiences of humankind (as Bruno Bettelheim has shown).

The Wizard of Oz has all the essentials of a true fairy tale. It is set in a perilous, enchanted land, where the humanprotagonist is engaged in a quest. The questing plot of The Wizard makes a symbolic or allegorical interpretation almost irresistible, even though allegorical interpretation is not exactly on the cutting edge of literary critical theory these days. As Ursula K. LeGuin puts it, in untheoretical terms:

I hate allegories. A is "really" B, and a hawk is "really" a handsaw--bah. Humbug. Any creation, primary or secondary,with any vitality to it, can "really" be a dozen mutually exclusive things at once, before breakfast. (53)

It is impossible not to sympathize with a view elegantly stated with four literary allusions in as many lines. Moreover, there is a goodchance that Baum himself would have agreed with LeGuin. The Wizard, he said, "was written solely to pleasure children of today," who have, he believed, "a wholesome and instinctive love for stories fantastic, marvelous and manifestly unreal" (85).

On the other hand, ever since the old New Critics taught us about the intentional fallacy, nobody believes authors when they talk about their own writing. And attempts to allegorize The Wizard have already been made. The best known is that of Henry M. Littlefield, who read the book as containing political propaganda, a celebration of populist ideals and support for adding silver to the gold standard. Littlefield made a strong case for Baum's sympathies to the social issues of populism, and it seems likely that political motifs are indeed present in the story, as Littlefield said, "ina minor key, subordinated to the major theme" of sheer fantasy (224).

The Wizard of Oz can also be read, however, as another sort of allegory, a theosophical one. The Theosophical Society had been founded in New York City in 1875, with the objects of fostering brotherhood, of increasing knowledge of Eastern, particularly Indic, culture in the West, and of investigating the spiritualist phenomena that had for some time been in vogue in America and Europe. Those objects appealed to Baum. Fifteen yearsafter the founding of the Society, Baum was writing sympathetically about it in his newspaper, The Aberdeen [S.D.] Saturday Pioneer.¹ In the first issue he edited, he initiated an occasional feature called "The Editor'sMusings," in which he wrote appreciatively of the Buddha, Mohammed, andConfucius, alongside Christ, and went on to say:

Amongst the various sects so numerous in America today who find their fundamental basis in occultism, the Theosophist[s] standpre-eminent both in intelligence and point of numbers.... Theosophy is not a religion. Its followers are simply "searchers after Truth."... TheTheosophists, in fact, are the dissatisfied of the world, the dissenters from all creeds. They owe their origin to the wise men of India, and are numerous,not only in the far famed mystic East, but in England, France, Germany andRussia. They admit the existence of a God--not necessarily a personal God. To them God is Nature and Nature God.... But, despite this, if Christianity isTruth, as our education has taught us to believe, there can be no menace to itin Theosophy.

Thereafter, Baum returned several times to a discussion ofTheosophical themes. In another "Editor's Musings" (22 Feb. 1890), Baum discussed fiction with a Theosophical content:

There is a strong tendency in modern novelists toward introducing some vein of mysticism or occultism into their writings. Books of this character are eagerly bought and read by the people,both in Europe and America. It shows the innate longing in our natures to unravel the mysterious: to seek for some explanation, however fictitious, of the unexplainable in nature and in our daily existence. For, as we advance in education, our desire for knowledge increases, and we are less satisfied to remain in ignorance of that mysterious fountain-head from which emanates all that is sublime and grand and incomprehensible in nature.

Baum went on to discuss authors who demonstrated this tendency. After the obligatory nod to Shakespeare, he mentioned Bulwer-Lytton,H. Rider Haggard, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Mabel Collins (a Victorian novelist and mystic who was prominent in the Theosophical Society at the timeBaum was writing). He concluded:

Mr. Lovell has taken an important step in publishing an "Occult Series of Novels" but one which we understand is liberally paying him. The appetite of our age for occultism demands to be satisfied, and while with the mediocrity of people it will result in mere sensationalism, it will lead in many to higher and nobler and bolder thought;and who can tell what mysteries these braver and abler intellects may not unravel in future ages?

It is clear that Baum's mind was already turned toward the expression of mystical and theosophical ideas in fiction. His own pressing need for money and his constant alertness for new ways in which he might make it could hardly have failed to note the entrepreneurial aspects of the public's appetite for such fiction. Only Baum had not yet discovered where his own talents lay.

That discovery was to be made after he left South Dakota and moved to Chicago. There he told stories to his four sons and was encouraged by his mother-in-law to write them down. The result was a number of children's books, reaching their high point in 1900 with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.During this period, Baum had not lost interest in Theosophy. On the contrary,in 1892, not long after moving to Chicago, he and his wife both became members of the Theosophical Society. They were admitted to the RamayanaTheosophical Society in Chicago, having been recommended to membership by Dr.and Mrs. W. P. Phelon.² Baum's mother-in-law, Matilda Joslyn Gage,who is best known as an activist and historian of the Women's Rights movement,was probably the catalyst in Baum's Theosophical interests. She had become a member of the Rochester Theosophical Society as early as 1885, well before Baum showed any interest in the subject.³

Baum's sustained interest in Theosophical matters isattested by his niece, Matilda Jewell Gage, who continued to reside inAberdeen, but visited the Baums after they later moved from Chicago to SanDiego, California. She recalls that her uncle and her grandmother hadTheosophical interests and kept Theosophical books in the house, one title she remembers being The Devachanic Plane, a book by the early Theosophical writer, Charles W. Leadbeater.⁴ How long Baum maintained an active interest in Theosophy is unclear, but he certainly did so during the period he was evolving the story that was to become The Wizard of Oz.

Baum's Theosophical interests have not been widely known, but there is ample external evidence to show that he was sympathetic to and involved with the movement in the 1890s. There is also internal evidence from his writings, specifically The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. There is not time today to present a full-scale Theosophical reading of the book, so a few indications must suffice.

A central Theosophical teaching is reincarnation,specifically that after death the personality disintegrates, but the core of the individual's identity has a period of quiescence in a state of undifferentiated consciousness (called the devachanic plane), and then,impelled by its unsatisfied itch for life, returns to birth in another humanform. Further, Theosophical teaching is that the personality, which is developed anew in each incarnation, has three main constituents: the thinking mind, the affective or emotional psyche, and the physical organism through which the other two function. These three constituents of the personality are developed in embryo in the order named: mind, emotions, body.

There can be no doubt that belief in reincarnation was held by various members of Baum's family. His mother-in-law, Matilda Gage,once wrote to one of her grandchildren:

There is one thing I want you to remember first of all: This is that what is called "death" by people is not death. You are more alive than ever you were after what is called death. Death is only a journey, like going to another country. You are alive when you travel toAberdeen just as much as when you stay in Edgeley [North Dakota], and it is the same with what is called death. After people have been gone for awhile, theycome back and live in another body, in another family and have another name.[Cited by Wagner 6.]

To be sure, reincarnation is not explicitly mentionedin The Wizard, but the plot of the story allegorizes the concept. [There follows a summary interpretation, as in "The Wizard of Oz: The Perilous Journey."]

The theme of self-reliance is central to TheWizard, as it is to Theosophy. For example, the best known work of thatMabel Collins whom Baum mentioned as a novelist is a collection of aphorisms called Light on the Path, in which these sentiments appear:

Desire only that which is within you....For within you is the light of the world--the only light that can be shed upon the Path. If you are unable to perceive it within you, it is useless to look for it elsewhere. (17)

The Wizard of Oz came to Baum as a kind of inspiration. Baum was a remarkably motherly man. He looked after his children--all boys--in their sicknesses and accidents; he comforted them in their sorrows. He told them bedtime stories. Baum's stories became so famous that neighboring children would come to the Baum house every day to hear the evening tale. One evening a story come to Baum that he recognized as having great potential; so after the children were put to bed, he jotted down the essentials of the story on such scrap paper as he had at hand. The result was the outline of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. In later years, when asked how he had written the book, Baum said,

It was pure inspiration.... It came to me right out of the blue. I think that sometimes the Great Author has a message toget across and He has to use the instrument at hand. I happened to be thatmedium, and I believe the magic key was given me to open the doors to sympathy and understanding, joy, peace and happiness. [Cited by Hearn 73.]

Baum certainly did not set out to write an allegory, but he was inspired to write a story that, like all good fairy tales, has depths of meaning of which the writer himself would have been only dimly aware.Nevertheless, as shown earlier, Baum's background and beliefs were such as to fit him for the writing of a fairy tale that is also a Theosophical allegory.

Notes

1. For access to the file of this newspaper, I am indebted to Janus Olsen and Dolores Campton of the Alexander Mitchell Public Library inAberdeen, SD, and to Barbara Rystrom of the University of Georgia Library.

2. William P. Phelon was one of the organizing members of the American Section of the Theosophical Society in 1886, when it was established as a semi-autonomous unit in the international organization.

3. The evidence for the Baums' and Matilda Gage's membership in the Theosophical Society was kindly furnished by Grace F. Knoche and Kirby Van Mater of the Theosophical Society with headquarters in Pasadena,California. Their membership roll enters the names of Lyman F. Baum and (Mrs.)Maud G. Baum of 34 Campbell Park, Chicago, Illinois, as of 4 September 1892 and records that their permanent diplomas (or membership certificates) from the international Society were issued on 5 December 1892. The name of Mrs. Matilda Joslyn Gage of Fayetteville, New York, was entered as of 26 March 1885.

4. 4. The information from Matilda Jewell Gage comes from a personal interview with her in Aberdeen, SD, in January 1985. She volunteered the title of the book in answer to the question, "Do you remember any particular Theosophical books in the house?"

References

• Baum, L. Frank, ed. TheAberdeen Saturday Pioneer. Aberdeen, S.D., 25 Jan. 1890-21 Mar. 1891.

• ---.

  The WonderfulWizard of Oz. 1900. Reprint in The Annotated Wizard of Oz, ed.MichaelPatrick Hearn. New York:Clarkson N. Potter, 1973.

• Bettelheim, Bruno. TheUses of Enchantment. New York: Random House, 1977.

• Collins, Mabel. Light on the Path. Madras: Theosophical Publishing House, 1971; 1st pub. 1885.

• Hearn, Michael Patrick, ed. The Annotated Wizard of Oz.New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1973.

• LeGuin, Ursula K. "Dreams Must Explain Themselves."In The Language of the Night, 47-56. New York: Putnam's, 1979.

• Littlefield, Henry M. "TheWizard of Oz: Parable on Populism." 1968. Reprint in The Wizard of Oz,ed. Michael Patrick Hearn, 221-33. New York: Schocken, 1983.

• Tolkien, J. R. R. "On Fairy-Stories." In EssaysPresented to Charles Williams, ed. C. S. Lewis, 38-89. Grand Rapids, Mich.:Eerdmans, 1974; 1st pub. 1947.

• Wagner, Sally Roesch. "Dorothy Gage and DorothyGale." The Baum Bugle 28.2 (Autumn 1984): 4-6.