Learning is a form of theatre.

In antiquity, learning was married to theatre. The process of becoming schooled involved a dramatized series of events of learning that punctuated the longer process of engaging the material through memory, reading and discussion.

Even now these elements are part of the basic architecture of learning, though they have been largely eclipsed on the surface by the military models of learning that developed in modernity.

Under the surface, though, the full course of academic learning is still an initiation ritual.

When this card appears, we must sort through our ambivalent feelings towards structured learning, and appreciate that passing 'through the hoops', actually can serve an educational purpose. It teaches noetic hygiene.

So often people speak of 'research' like it was self evident - yet very rarely do it well. Research is a very technical skill, and its easy to fool yourself when outside of a circle of practicing adepts.

There is a shadow side to initiatory or academic schools - they establish an inside/outside boundary, they sometime operate as traps for unscrupulous 'teachers' to ensnare disciples. They are fraught with deceptions.

Yet there is also a true initiatory path - a Hierophant who administers the necessary staging, the necessary illusion-craft, erects the necessary hoops that produce true, independent, empowered adepts.

The process is like baking. Certain things have to happen at certain times. A learner must be introduced to their subject in stages. It is a mammoth project - a Great Work.

The great teachers are in the majority, yet the frauds and abusers so often steal the spotlight.

So find a teacher who can guide you through the mysteries, and then release you into your power. Show them respect, pay your dues.

It is easy to dismiss academic scholarship as irrelevant to practice, but it is not. For our practice to be relevant, it must stand on the foundation of true scholarship. We need teachers, and we need humility, as we pass through the theatres of initiation.

Some gates are there for a reason.

Become discerning of your information sources, and find a true Hierophant to prepare your passage.

And pay your dues.