We first encounter the magical aspect of the world in Beauty’s dream of the Beastory, the creation myth that explains the origin of the Beast. It is the type of magic that abounds in the most ancient myths of creation, when women were understood as the creative force and the source of magic was harmony with nature. It is characterized by vibrant color and the personification of natural elements and supernatural events.

Beauty’s contemporaries are unable to recognize the mysterious properties of nature. They live on the brink of the industrial revolution, characterized by man’s subjugation of nature. Their civilization is an echo of the boy/beast who swallows the moon to possess it. But the magical belief systems of their ancestors, although nearly forgotten, remain buried in the roots of their culture and persist as a dim and distant background.

As Beauty emerges from her dream with new eyes., her journey of discovery begins. She willingly gives up the trappings of the material world to enter the world of magic, which has its source in nature. There she makes parallel discoveries of deep romantic love and her own feminine power to embody nature.

In order to accomplish her transformation, Beauty must encounter her opposite-- Beast. Beast’s original sin created the rift between humanity and nature that is the source of all suffering in the story, His confusion of desire with love, possession with partnership and control with compassion leads to his personal romantic loneliness and mankind’s spiritual emptiness. Beauty’s natural compassion enables her to see beyond his beastly surface to the magical child in his soul. Their physical separation enables them to develop a relationship based on their inner beings rather than outward qualities. They each open the doors of discovery for the other. Their greatest discovery is a deep and genuine love that transforms them both on the inside long before the physical transformations that end the story.

Both of our heros must pass a final test before the transformations are complete and the world can reap the rewards of the hero’s journey. Beast must let Beauty go and risk losing her. Beauty must first discover that her identity and power derive from within herself, not from male authority figures. She must reject her father’s values and choose Beast despite his otherness.

Beauty’s transformation gradually brings magical nature from the background into the foreground. She discovers that she is the ‘Beauty of the World,’ a part of nature, and creator of life. She heals her father, she heals Beast and she restores the magical enchantment of nature to its revered place in the world.