When I was a kid my class went on a field trip to watch a stage production of it and my friends and I were like



In one of my economics classes, we saw the story as an allegory of 1890s populism and support for the bimetallic standard against the "wicked witches" (railroad barons of the West and Wall Street tycoons of the East). The Wizard of Oz is the president who deep down is like them but to everyone else has to put on a facade the please their warring interests. The Scarecrow is a farmer, Tin Woodsman a factory worker, and the Cowardly Lion is a populist leader. The Silver Shoes are all about how farmers and laborers wanted both silver and gold to back the monetary system and all the economic problems they had. Thank God the gold standard is over and done with, all that economic volatility was just crappy.

I don't know if the author was into LoA and I doubt he intended it to be about that. But I heard he was into the Theosophical Society of which Helena Blavatsky was a founder. She was one of the first esoteric authors to use "Law of Attraction" in her books. Theosophists compared world religions and spiritual traditions to form a doctrine for what "truth" is. Out of this came other stuff, like New Age authors. So it was proto-New Age. She was also into Kabbalah, which Neville Goddard studied with Abdullah to form the core of his teachings.

Not sure how legit this is, but it's pretty interesting: http://vigilantcitizen.com/moviesandtv/the-occult-roots-of-the-wizard-of-oz/2/

Last edited by Colonel Roosevelt (12/22/2016 10:52 am)