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.

Father Josiah Trenham is a native Southern Californian. He was ordained to the Holy Priesthood in 1993, and was awarded the Ph.D. in Theology from the University of Durham, England, in 2004. He has served as pastor of St. Andrew Orthodox Church in Riverside, Ca. since 1998.  Father Josiah was married in 1988, and has ten children and five grandchildren.

Father is the founder and director of Patristic Nectar Publications, a company dedicated to “nourishing the spiritually thirsty with the sweet teachings of the Holy Fathers” in quality audio recordings. PNP produces both recordings of patristic works as well as recordings of lectures and homilies available in direct download formats Patristic Nectar Publications. Father Josiah’s weekly homilies and additional theological reflections are published weekly and listened to by thousands all over the globe on The Arena podcast. He also releases online video reflections and interviews on Patristic Nectar Films. Father has conducted interviews for Patristic Nectar Films with numerous religious leaders of Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant traditions including Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco, Metropolitan Kallistos Ware of Oxford, England, Pastor Jim Garlow of Skyline Church, San Diego, and Prof. Wesley Hill of Trinity Seminary, PA.

Father has served as a professor at California Baptist University (2004-2011) and the University of St. Katherine (2011-2017). He served as a member of the Secretariat of the Assembly of Orthodox Bishops from its inception in 2010 until 2017. He has conducted numerous diocesan, parish, and clergy retreats and seminars for every Orthodox Christian jurisdiction in America and in Canada, and has spoken at numerous colleges, universities, and international gatherings. Father Josiah’s books and articles have been published by St. Herman Press, New Rome Press, Zoe Press, St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Journal, Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies, The Journal of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, CIVA: The Journal of Christians in the Visual Arts, Divine Ascent, The Word Magazine, OrthodoxyToday.org, American Orthodox Institute, Sourozh, Pemptousia.com (Vatopaidi Monastery), Eastern Churches Review, and more.

Mary Harrington is a journalist and author of several books, including bestseller Feminism Against Progress. She stands against the idea that gender differences are only societally defined. And Harrington believes this socially liberal view demeans women.

Harrington tried her best to avoid this career as a writer and commentator. After graduating from Oxford University with a First in English Literature, she tried several disparate occupations. Her roles included life as a janitor, secretary, startup founder, art curator, club promoter, commercial copywriter, corporate marketing manager, psychotherapist and stay-at-home mom.

In this latter capacity, she began writing for a very small audience of other moms, who encouraged her to pitch her articles more widely. Her work quickly drew attention from the UK’s UnHerd, a digital magazine seeking fresh voices and perspectives on British culture and politics. She wrote her first column there in 2019, and quickly became a regular columnist and popular voice.

Since then, Harrington’s work has been published in First Things, American Affairs, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, The Spectator, the New Statesman, the London Times and the Mail on Sunday among many others. She is a contributing editor at UnHerd, where she writes a weekly column, along with Reactionary Feminist, her own weekly Substack on culture and politics in the cyborg era.

Her first book, Feminism Against Progress, argues that technology has turned a well-intentioned movement for gender equality into a pseudo-religion working against the interests of all but an elite class of women. Harrington argues that defending the interests of ordinary women means embracing a reactionary feminism that stands up for life, for gender differences and for solidarity between the sexes. Louise Perry described it as “like downing a packet of tangfastics after a lifetime of gruel.”

With diverse life-experience and a wealth of journalistic accolades, Mary Harrington cuts through the ideological conflicts that dominate popular culture.

Deacon Seraphim Richard Rohlin is a software developer, Germanic philologist, and now ordained deacon in the Orthodox Church of America (OCA), living in Texas with his wife and children. He speaks and publishes on Germanic poetry, the Inklings, and the Sacramental Imagination. He regularly contributes to Jonathan Pageau’s The Symbolic World YouTube channel through the Universal History series. Along with Jonathan Pageau he has co-presented a 6-week course studying the epic poem Beowulf, as well as several courses on Dante's Divine Comedy (Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso). He has also hosted his own course on this platform, Tolkien and Universal History.

Richard co-hosts The Amon Sul Podcast, and has published several works of fiction and non-fiction. He’s currently working on a collection of essays called Finding the Golden Key: Essays Toward a Recovery of the Sacramental Imagination. His superhero pulp novel Guardians: The Eye of Horus is currently under development as a graphic novel. Richard is also a life-long tabletop gamer and wrapped up a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign to produce Amboria: Roleplaying in the World Under Starlight.

Heather Pollington is an artist and designer who’s been involved in many key creative projects at The Symbolic World. After a Bachelor of Fine Art and a Masters Degree in Production Design, Heather spent twenty years working on some of the world’s most famous Hollywood movies and franchises. Working mainly as a Graphic Artist, Designer and Scenic Art Director, she designed key props, graphics, scenery and textiles for the likes of Harry Potter, James Bond, Mary Poppins, Hellboy, Pirates of The Caribbean and many others. She has been privileged to work with many Oscar and Bafta winners, has been recognised with numerous awards by the Art Director’s Guild and has been featured in exhibitions and publications.

Working for Disney in 2017 on their live action fairy tale franchises, Heather discovered the medieval world of art with new eyes. It lead her back into church and on a path trying to understand the ‘strange fire’ that she saw burning in these mostly discarded medieval images. This drew her to The Symbolic World. In 2021, she designed The Symbolic World logo, website, and branding. She then worked at the heart of the newly established Symbolic World Press, developing the brand identity for courses and publications. Most significantly she conceptualised and designed the visual world of ‘Tales for Once and Ever’, a fairy tale series of eight books written by Pageau, illustrating three of the books so far and holding Art Direction and Design credits on the others.

Heather, after being received in to the Orthodox Church, studied under renowned iconographer, Aidan Hart on the icon course at the King’s Foundation School of Traditional Arts in London. She has also recently collaborated with Dr. Martin Shaw on his project named ‘The Merrie.’

Annie Crawford is a cultural apologist and classical educator with a Master of Arts in Cultural Apologetics from Houston Baptist University. She teaches apologetics and humanities courses and is co-founder of The Society for Women of Letters. She has written for The Blyth Institute, American Thinker, Circe Institute, The Worldview Bulletin, Classical Academic Press, and An Unexpected Journal, where she is a founding editor and writer. She has had multiple discussions with Jonathan Pageau on the Symbolic World podcast about the works of C.S. Lewis and has also offered two C.S. Lewis-related courses for The Symbolic World, including on Till We Have Faces, and the Space Trilogy.

Kale Zelden is a long-time prep school teacher of literature and humanities at Portsmouth Abbey School in Rhode Island, where he guides students through the great works of Western civilization—from Homer and Dante to Milton and Lewis. Kale writes The Underneath, a Substack exploring new emanations and emergences of old patterns, where he connects modern seekers with buried and forsaken wisdom. His work examines what he calls “the underneath”—that form of knowing that is real but cannot be rationalized, the deeper truths that modernity’s focus on the measurable and verifiable often misses. He hosts a podcast by the same name and has taught courses on Dante’s Divine Comedy.

Kale shares threads about patterns, observations, and the enduring relevance of old books. His presentation on the nature of epic will draw on his background teaching the classical tradition and his conviction that the metaphors we live and the epic stories we retell shape the civilization we build.

Deacon Nicholas Kotar is an author of epic fantasy inspired by Russian fairy tales, a writing instructor and speaker, a freelance translator from Russian to English, the resident conductor of a men’s choir at a Russian monastery in the middle of cow country, and a Grammy-nominated vocalist. He has written several wonderful books including the Raven Son series, Cantos of Arcadia, and several translations and retellings of Russian texts and stories. He has hosted a successful podcast called In a Certain Land. He is also involved at St. Basil’s Writer’s Workshop and writes regularly on Substack.