Good question!
The word ‘Academy’ always brings to mind research, studiousness, and, yes, an air of a traditional male-based ivory tower.
We can trace the Academy origins back to “Plato’s school of philosophy, founded approximately 385 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the goddess of wisdom”
If Academy was the original school of philosophy, we need to remember that Philosophy is made of two words: Philo (Love) and Sophia (Wisdom).
As a sanctuary of the Goddess Athena,
and a school dedicated to the Love of Sophia –
It’s time we Reclaim Academy as:
Passion for Learning through A Feminine Lens!
Self Knowledge, the understanding of who we Are, is at the heart of learning. The traditional Academy was not founded as a detached, scientific observational course of study. It was created as a passionate path, in pursuit of Wisdom entered into via a Gateway of the Goddess. A journey into our depth, as people, and as women. A mirror through which we delve into the relam of “Know Thyself” as Socrates invited us to do.
Like many traditions lost to us through the ages, the pursuit of Wisdom – the Original path of the Academy – can be reclaimed and revived, as a Divine Feminine path.
My own journey begun by pursuing and discovering the innate wisdom of our cyclical rhythms as women, in a course of Self Study. Having suffered from severe monthly emotional swings, and refusing to believe nature intended half-of-humanity to suffer by design, I set out to find another way.
My search led me to indigenous cultures, and their profound honoring of women’s cycles as the cycles of life. I didn’t study this in Western academies. I learned it in the true Academy: the path of Sophia, the sanctuary of Athena.
This is why I named the path I now offer women – the ‘Red Tent Academy’. The act of Reclaiming the word Academy mirrors the entire path of Reclaiming our Cyclicity: restoring the central role our Womanhood’s design plays in our Psyche, and learning how to offer it to other women as a path of Wisdom, rooted in the Divine Feminine.
