Symbolism Masterclass

By Jonathan Pageau

See the World Anew

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Do you want to see the world through a symbolic lens? 
Do you want to be able to interpret and understand any movie, story, or event?

In this Symbolism Masterclass, Jonathan Pageau will teach you everything he knows, empowering you to master the elements of symbolic thinking. He distills his decades of insight into a transformative journey that empowers you to decode reality, find purpose in everything, and reconnect with the unseen forces shaping our existence. With over 18 hours of content, it contains all the essential principles of symbolism and is the culmination of Pageau’s decades of thought.

Course Overview

Price:

$175

Course Length:

6 weeks, 18 hours

Dates:

Live classes are on Wednesdays at 2-5 pm Eastern Time, starting April 23rd through May 28th, 2025

- Participants will be given access to lesson recordings with downloadable audio

- The course is hosted on the Symbolic World Circle Community platform. Sign up as a free member here before making your purchase.

Why This Course Matters:

  • Understand any story, film, or event through a symbolic lens?
  • Break free from a flat, meaningless, and disjointed worldview and embrace a life of depth and insight?
  • Master the ancient art of symbolic thinking to enrich your heart and mind?

For over 20 years, Jonathan Pageau has explored the threads of meaning that tie the cosmos together. Now, he’s sharing everything he knows in this immersive 6-lesson masterclass. You’ll uncover the hidden structures of reality—from sacred time to the dance of opposites—and learn to live with intention in an age of distraction, confusion, and the crisis of meaning.

What You’ll Gain:

  • See the world differently: Spot the symbolic patterns in history, culture, and your own life.
  • Interpret with confidence: Decode fairy tales, Bible stories, or blockbuster movies like a pro.
  • Live with purpose: Align your days with the rhythms of meaning, not chaos.
  • Think deeper: Move beyond reductionism and embrace a richer, more connected reality.

By the end how you see, create, and participate in the world will be transformed.

Course Details

Live Course Schedule

Live classes take place on Wednesdays at 2 pm - 5 pm EST

Lesson 1: Symbolism Piercing Through the Secular Mind - April 23, 2025

Lesson 2: The Architecture of Reality : Meeting of Heaven and Earth - April 30, 2025

Lesson 3: Up and down the Holy Mountain - May 7, 2025

Lesson 4: The Subtle Dance of Opposites - May 14, 2025

Lesson 5: Garments of Skin - the Fall of Man and Civilization - May 21, 2025

Lesson 6: Living Symbolically Today - May 28, 2025

What you'll need

Everything you need will be provided, but of course you are always welcome to consult Jonathan's reading list linked here, which he has condensed into the following essentials:

St Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses

St. Ephrem the Syrian, Hymns on Paradise

St Maximus the Confessor (SVS), On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ

Other important but optional books:

Leonid Ouspensky and Vladimir Lossky, The Meaning of Icons

René Guénon, Symbols of Sacred Science

Lesson plan

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Related Content

Presenters

Jonathan Pageau

Jonathan Pageau is a renowned liturgical artist, writer, and public speaker. Through his popular YouTube channel The Symbolic World, he has become a sought-out interpreter of the deep patterns in stories. With his 2022 publication of God's'Dog: Monster, a graphic novel invented with his brother Matthieu Pageau and artist Cord Nielson, Jonathan proved himself a powerful storyteller in his own right. The project’s successful crowdfunding encouraged him to continue his efforts to reclaim the storytelling landscape by starting a publishing company called Symbolic World Press (SWP).

SWP’s maiden publication is The Tale of Snow White and the Widow Queen, the first of an eight-book series of fairy tales in which Pageau explores a new way of telling fairy tales: one which is both aware of our cultural moment and simultaneously committed to honoring the deeply celebratory of the roots these stories have planted in our common imagination.  

Jonathan’s YouTube channel, The Symbolic World, now has nearly 200k subscribers, and the community that has developed around his listenership is an active, supportive, and talented collection of artists and thinkers from around the globe. He recently launched a new Symbolic World Website, where people can sign up to access exclusive content unavailable on the regular channel, and to engage in the Symbolic World Community for timely discussions around symbolism, literature, religion, art, and culture. The site has also begun hosting paid courses, where people can sign up for an interactive deep dive into specific works, such as Beowulf, C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy, and the rebirth of Christian Metaphysics.

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