The Symbolic World Masterclass is a 6-lesson odyssey into the architecture of meaning. Here’s what you’ll explore:

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Lesson 1: Symbolism Piercing Through the Secular Mind

This opening session lays the groundwork for the entire 6-week journey into symbolic vision. Jonathan Pageau introduces the core crisis of our age: a breakdown in meaning, coherence, and the sacred structure of reality. Through a sweeping yet accessible exploration of philosophy, theology, and cultural critique, he exposes how modernity has split heaven from earth, facts from values, and being from purpose. Drawing on rich biblical images like the Tower of Babel and the Whore of Babylon, Pageau reveals how symbolic thinking offers not just understanding—but healing. This lesson is both a deep dive and a call to reawaken the ancient pattern that unites the world.

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Lesson 2: The Architecture of Reality – Meeting of Heaven and Earth

What does it mean to say “on earth as it is in heaven”? In this lecture, Jonathan Pageau takes you deep into the symbolic structures that underlie our world — not just in theology, but in everything from nature to politics, daily life to ancient myth. Using imagery, analogies (including knitting groups and Christmas trees), and scriptural references, Pageau unpacks how meaning, purpose, and pattern are woven into the fabric of reality. This is not just abstract theory — building on last week’s foundation, this session invites you to see how those ideas take shape in the real world, revealing a vision of reality that is structured, meaningful, and deeply human.

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Lesson 3: Up and down the Holy Mountain 

It’s head and bodies all the way down. In this lecture Jonathan Pageau explores the fractal structure of reality, heaven and earth, head and body, unity and multiplicity. Using biblical texts, Christian theology, architecture, and storytelling (like Jacob’s ladder and Jack and the Beanstalk), Pageau illustrates how cosmic patterns repeat across all levels of existence—from individuals and communities to space, time, and sacred buildings. The lecture also examines the symbolism of time as cyclical and hierarchical, culminating in reflections on prayer, virtue, and the human role as a unifier of creation.

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Lesson 4: The Subtle Dance of Opposites

In this lesson, Jonathan Pageau explores how opposites—such as unity and multiplicity, center and margin, heaven and earth—interact to shape meaning. Using biblical imagery like the cherub and the vision of Ezekiel, he explains how symbolic structures hold the world together, mediate divine order, and reveal purpose. The session also looks at how symbols can both unite and divide, depending on their orientation.

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Lesson 5: Garments of Skin – The fall of man and civilization

This lecture is primarily a continuation of Week 4 material. Jonathan Pageau spends the majority of the session unpacking the symbolic tension between right and left—a foundational pattern representing the dynamic between identity and otherness, concentration and dispersion, law and mercy, and inclusion and exclusion.

In the final stretch of the session does Pageau transitions into Week 5 proper, setting the stage for a discussion of story structure, fractal narrative patterns, and the symbolic logic of fall and return—themes that will be carried into the next lecture.

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Lesson 6: Living Symbolically today

In the final session, Jonathan Pageau brings the masterclass to a close by revisiting key insights from previous weeks and focusing on how to apply symbolic thinking in everyday life. He explores the concept of the “garments of skin” as a powerful image of civilization, technology, and the human condition after the Fall. The lecture examines how external structures—like culture, art, and even AI—can either lead to fragmentation or become vessels of divine meaning. Pageau challenges us to live attentively, offering our actions toward higher purposes, and to participate in cultural renewal through beauty, humility, and sacrificial love.