Fairy Tales for Grown-Ups: Rediscovering Myth and Meaning through Tolkien, Lewis, and Barfield

What if the fairy tales were never meant to end in childhood?

Fairy Tales for Grown-Ups is book 4 in the Mystical Vision of the Inklings series. It invites readers on a luminous journey through myth, literature, and the mystery of being human.

Drawing inspiration from Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Owen Barfield, these essays unveil how ancient stories still speak to the modern soul — how dragons disguise themselves as ideologies, and how even the smallest act of wonder can awaken the knight or princess within.

This is a paperback. To buy an e-book, please click here.

From Dante’s Inferno to Middle-earth, from Leonard Cohen’s broken hallelujahs to Heidegger’s meditations on gratitude, this collection explores what it means to remain fully human in an age of machines. Each essay reveals a facet of the world’s “deeper magic”— where light hides in the cracks, words reverberate with the music of the spheres, and beauty saves the world.

Whether you seek spiritual insight, intellectual renewal, or poetic refuge, Fairy Tales for Grown-Ups will draw you into a circle of thinkers and dreamers who still believe that imagination is not escapism, but the escape — from prison to reality.

Return to the stories.
Rediscover the meaning.
And find again the courage to live in an enchanted realm.

- "I wish priests would give sermons like this. If they did, I would go to Mass regularly again." -- Stephen Janson, Substack.

Curious facts you will learn:

1. Why Tolkien saw technology as a rival religion — and how Middle-earth still warns us about the machine’s power to enslave the imagination.

2. Why Dante’s Inferno isn’t just about Hell — but about how to confront and confine chaos within the soul.

3. Why cracks, not perfection, let light in — through Leonard Cohen’s mystical insight into divine vulnerability.

4. Why Heidegger said that true thinking is thanking — and how thought itself is a form of the Eucharist.

5. Why hope is born only in hopeless places — from the manger to our own moments of obscurity.

6. How C.S. Lewis exposed modern mind games — long before “post-truth” became a buzzword.

7. Why losing your name means losing your soul — and how to reclaim your true identity in a world of masks.

8. Why AI-generated language starves the spirit — and why the next renaissance will be “all-human.”

9. How your name hides a story — and why naming is the key to becoming fully human.

10. Why the Magi’s journey reveals the paradox of wisdom — that true knowledge bows before mystery.

11. How words once carried the soul of the world — and how rediscovering their roots restores enchantment to language.

12. Why the best teachers don’t instruct—they bewilder — echoing Rumi’s call to sell cleverness and buy wonder.

13. Why Aragorn’s kingship begins in exile — and how each of us is called to awaken the sleeping king within.

14. How myth, Freud, and faith all echo one truth — the longing for the Father who gives life meaning.

15. Why Tolkien called fantasy the “escape of the prisoner, not the desertion of the soldier.”

16. Why modern abundance breeds emptiness — and how desire only awakens in the presence of limitation.

17. How humility transforms ambition — from inflated ego to inspired greatness.

18. Why Chesterton saw humor as holiness — finding miracles in socks, teapots, and everyday absurdities.

19. Why only the heart can discern the real — Blaise Pascal’s timeless insight into truth amid fakes.

20. Why beauty can save the world — literally — and how the twentieth century’s catastrophes birthed unexpected saints.

Leaf through the book here

- "This writer astonishes me. Making Jung intelligible in a few paragraphs is no easy job! In my opinion, a true education would begin with this kind of self-knowledge. We could stop pointing fingers at each other if we could truly see within." -- Tara Cox, Facebook

- "This is one of the most beautiful descriptions of what it means to be a believer/creator that I have ever read. Thank you for bringing us along for this encounter with the Living White." --Mind Altaring, Substack

- "Anyhow, I just wanted to say that I enjoyed reading your piece, because it definitely struck an emotional chord with me. Honestly, it got me quite choked up. I don't know if I was just feeling vulnerable or down, but it definitely made me re-think things… just about life in general." -- Mike W. Bandit / Oklahoma, USA.

- "This is a beautiful piece of writing, made even more so by references to two of my favorite Christian authors, Tolkien and CS Lewis. Thanks for sharing it." -- Caryn Wesner-Early, Quora