L. Frank Baum

The author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz joined the Theosophical Society in 1892 and wrote admiringly of it in his newspaper columns before Oz existed.

The cleanest bridge on the whole bench to ⌸ the screens: a founding text of American children's fantasy, written by a member, in which a seeker and her companions walk a coloured road toward a hidden authority who turns out to be a man behind a curtain — and who tells them the qualities they sought were theirs already. ⚠ Read as allegory this is irresistible and mostly unprovable; Baum did not say so. It is placed here as documented membership plus an open question, and the room says which is which.