"The Golden Key" is a story about transitions, about closing the gaps between callowness and maturity, ignorance and understanding, and between lower and higher levels of spiritual attainment. The story suggests the qualities one must have to make the transition successfully: goodness or purity of heart, experience, concern for others, willingness to be guided, an active intuitive or imaginative faculty, determination, and, above all, the desire to evolve spiritually.

For Mossy and Tangle, the desire for the unseen higher level is first aroused by the appearance of the golden key. They desire to see the place into which the key would admit them. Later, the wondrous shadows in the valley similarly arouse their desire; they long to see the land "whence the shadows fall," so that they can see (and perhaps live among) the forms which cast the shadows.

Adolescence marks a period of...