Symbolic World Summit Oxford

Join Us in Imagining Paradise

The Symbolic World Summit at Oxford: Paradise Imagined will gather speakers from across theology, storytelling, biblical interpretation, and symbolic thought to explore the many ways Paradise has been seen, lost, guarded, distorted, and sought. Together we will consider Eden and the Otherworld, the expulsion of the evil one and the return to the Garden, the city as a garment of skin, and the strange overlap between biblical cosmology and the deep mythic patterns of folk tradition.

Featuring talks from Dr. Martin Shaw, Aidan Hart, Fr. Jacob Siemens, Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick, Dcn. Seraphim Richard Rohlin, and Jonathan Pageau, this summit will invite participants to think beyond modern categories of “myth” and “history,” “imagination” and “reality.” Paradise is not simply an idea. It is an image of the world healed, a pattern of perception, and a promise that reshapes how we understand creation, fall, exile, repentance, and return.