The name of our Cooperative is inspired by the homonymous modern fairy tale written by L. Frank Baum, a story that can be read as a metaphor for the process of change that we hope will install in our users. Namely this metaphor is: to gain full awareness of the user’s potential and to learn new parameters which help in giving value to their lives and experiences.
From a symbolic point of view, the Kingdom of Oz can represent that intimate place where every human being re-elaborates personal experiences only with themselves. At the end of the story, Dorothy returns home and tells what happened to her, but nobody believes her.
Oz symbolises the ounce, the measure unit. For this reason, the Kingdom of Oz is also the place where weight is determined, in which we measure ourselves and give value to our life experiences. It is the place where we distinguish between good and evil, where we reflect upon what is necessary to enrich ourselves; this will allow us to face whatever will come. We can say that Oz is the place of consciousness.
Additionally, the desire of returning back home symbolizes a need proper to humankind: the need for searching for their origins, to seek answers to questions about life by delimiting the field of what we know and building walls of psychic defence. In order to return home, the witches advise Dorothy to turn to the Wizard of Oz, sovereign of the city of Emerald, endowed with extraordinary powers. On the way to the Emerald City, Dorothy deals with three aspects of human personality. First, the scarecrow wanting a brain, represents lightness of thought and action. Second, the tin man wanting a heart, represents the inability to love, to feel passion and to be interested. Third, the lion wanting to have more courage represents the incapacity of men to know how to seize situations in their favour, to "risk" or try to convert their thoughts into actions, the inability to grasp life as an opportunity. Only at the end of the "journey", these three desires can be said accomplished. Then, the whole company – Dorothy, the scarecrow, the tin man and the lion – goes to the Wizard of Oz and each member makes its request. Unfortunately, the Wizard of Oz cannot help them, because nothing can magically change; however, he manages to make the scarecrow, the tin man and the lion understand that they already have the qualities they wanted and convinces Dorothy that she already possessed the tool to go home (the ruby shoes). Therefore, the meaning of this fairy tale is that everyone's potential is already within us, we just have to learn to recognize it!
Excerpt: The Symbolism of "Il Mago di Oz" by F. Scatigno
