An Education that Pays for Itself & Guarantees a Career in Trading
Who is it for?
College students
- Who feel like the education they are receiving is a waste of time and money;
- are seeking something different that could give them an edge in life to build their own career in trading and beyond;
- would rather invest the $100,000+ college fees into an independent study path towards a successful trading career or self-started enterprise;
- need a hands-on apprenticeship-like training in a field that does not normally accommodate one.
Independent thinkers
- With an interest in the nexus between sacred geometry, astrology and cutting edge science.
- Who believe that real truth is not found a classroom, but in real-life experiences and in trying out things that inspire them.
High school students
- Who are bored with classes and looking for something more interesting and exciting that they can begin now with a view to developing a career.
- Who would like to use trading as a means to self-employment, and ongoing education.
Introduction
It seems that modern society and the 21st century economy have all but forgotten the younger generations. With over 50% of people under 30 living at home, and most saddled with massive student loan debt, it is long overdue that the youth of today think twice about wasting $10’s to $100’s of thousands on a college education that has very little value, teaching almost no original information and failing even to guarantee graduates a job in their field.
College education today is what high school education was 50 years ago, and America is falling lower and lower in its educational rankings until it is now one of the lowest in the western world. As the same time the college tuition has reached insane levels, where parents must either dish out the cost of a small house, or students must take on debt that will cripple them for 10, 20 even 30 years to come, potentially blocking them from affording a house or a good life until middle age.
These are distressing developments in our modern world, and every young person should think long and hard about his options before he dives into college and potentially wastes years of his live and a small fortune on an education that will teach him nothing that cannot be learned for free from books at any public library. A college education today no longer guarantees anyone a decent job, and with wages that have not risen for two decades, there is little incentive to take these jobs anyway. Most students with college degrees end up working at Starbucks which they did not need an education to do in the first place.
Really, unless one is studying a technical science like engineering, law or medicine, or anything requiring a specialized degree to work in the field, college has very little to offer at all. Most business leaders will tell you that they generally did not learn the foundations of their business in school, and in fact, business school is more for training people to work in businesses than teaching people who to created them. A college degree has little impact on one’s ability to become an entrepreneur and absolutely no value in learning to become a trader, since that subject is not taught in any form in college.
A liberal arts degree is all but useless in the modern working environment, with the information taught in such programs being limited at best, with little application to making money or surviving in the modern world. In fact, modern universities who supposedly teach the “liberal arts” do not even know what the true liberal arts really are! There are seven liberal arts, the Classical four of Arithemetic, Music, Geometry and Astronomy, and the Medieval three, Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric. A real liberal arts education would be of some value, but few, if any, of these subjects are even so much as discussed in a modern “liberal arts” education. (For more information on this subject, see our article on the Liberal Arts.)
So with these points in mind, the perceptive student will wonder whether there is not a better approach to his or her education that may cost less money, teach more original, valuable and interesting knowledge, and provide opportunities that are not and cannot be provided by college. The answer is YES, all of this is possible through a more open minded approach to education.
For example, the education provided through our materials and programs explore ideas, theories and branches of science that are not so much as even discussed, let alone taught, at almost any modern University. Subjects like cosmology may be explored in the physics and astronomy programs, but they are not the cosmology that was known and studied by the Ancients and the great minds of the past like Pythagoras, Plato, Leonardo da Vinci, Kepler and Newton (see more about this in our Origins of the Tradition article).
An Education in the World’s Great Wisdom Traditions
It is our premise that the great wisdom traditions of the past have been lost or suppressed by more superficial and materialistic traditions which have no greater validity or application than the original Tradition from which the modern debased arts and sciences were born. Rather, the great systems of knowledge of the past and the alternative systems of learning that have survived to present times, provide a far more integrated vision of reality than the downgraded systems of knowledge taught by modern academia. Our programs revive this great lost wisdom and use it to develop applications in fields and explanations of processes and systems which the most advanced scientific and economic theories are incapable of accomplishing.
Fields like financial market forecasting and Cosmological Economics are not taught in any college or university, and are even considered impossible by economists and scientists, though they are readily proven by historical record. The Federal Reserve and people like Larry Summers, president of Harvard, claim that it is impossible to forecast the markets, and yet it is done by proponents of our Tradition… It may be impossible to them, which is why they lead society from one economic disaster to another, but it IS possible by those with the right education and training, at least to some degree of probability, which is of great usefulness.
So these are just a few small examples of where an independent, non-academic education can take the open minded and intelligent student, who is more interested in self-reliance and ancient wisdom, much further than the social mores and limited thinking of main stream society.
Can a young person today find a quality education outside of the college or university environment, and even perhaps a better education that can be attained through college? Our answer is a resounding YES!
With the money that it would take to pay even the conservative cost of a 4-year college, someone could buy every book in our catalog and then pay for 5-10 years of living expenses, and still have enough money left over for a trading account where they can begin practicing their own self-taught occupation of trading, and fund their own education. What education do you know of that teaches its students how to pay for their own education as they are engaged in it?
Our educational programs are more than sufficient to provide an education equivalent in depth and quality to any university, but also have the potential to extend far beyond the limited fields taught by standardized institutions. And it will do so while also providing a pathway to a self-contained occupation which can be done from anyplace in the world, working on an independent schedule, without ever having to be employed by anyone but oneself. Some call that freedom…
This is what most people dream of, but have no idea how to accomplish. In fact, this is even what most middle age professionals dream of, after having gone the college route, and spending 20-years in a career of corporate indentured servitude from which they dream of escaping into self-employment through trading. We know this, because this type makes up the bulk of our clientele. The second largest group we educate are those who never find the escape route, so reach us around the age of 65, after retirement, only now, for the first time in their lives being able to pursue their own interests. Our college directed programs are just trying to save young people from the trap of 20-40 years of misery and servitude, so they can instead spend a lifetime pursuing their real interests and dreams.
Please understand, we are not completely against institutional higher education, we only believe one should only go there if one has a clear and specific focus or goal they are going there to accomplish. One can always begin one’s intellectual explorations on one’s own, for a meager cost, and later on, if the student finds a field of knowledge that excites them immensely, they can always then go to a University to obtain a credentialed degree in the subject which can then be used for a professional career or allow them to become an academic specialist in their field, but with a specific focus and intention in doing so.
A non-academic education and training has other potential outcomes. Someone who becomes highly proficient at trading will find the doors of Wall Street wide open to him, education or not, since Wall Street cares only about ability, and not academic credentials. In fact, it is commonly known in trading circles that a college degree does nothing to help a trader, as that time is generally more street smart than book smart. Alternatively, a successful trader, whatever his age will always find many people who offer him funds to trade, and a career as a money manager may be organically born, leading to the development of a hedge fund or other such services. A college degree is not required for such professions.
From another perspective, an education as a Renaissance thinker who’s mastered the scientific and esoteric traditions of the past, as well as the alternative fields of thought of the present, those which are often consciously ignored and excluded by the academic world, may discover other entrepreneurial opportunities of unimaginable kinds. Modern companies, software, apps, games, books, films, and even technology is often developed by non-academic dreamers and visionaries who owe NOTHING to any school, college or academic tradition. Just ask Bill Gates, Buckminster Fuller or Mark Zuckerberg, all college drop outs… or Leonardo da Vinci, Plato and Pythagoras, for that matter, all trained in the arts and sciences of the Esoteric, Temple or Hermetic Traditions.
Impressive Options for the Independent Thinker
There are endless and far greater options available to the original and independent thinker than to the cookie cutter “liberal arts” graduate with a diploma barely worth the paper it’s printed on. It is only up to the intelligence and creativity of the student, turned researcher, turned seeker, turned master of his or her own fate that will define one’s future, and that future will not fall into some corporate box, or stifling slave occupation the like of which most people find themselves trapped today.
For those who want to explore the “road less traveled” and who want to become independent, self-reliant, and creative thinkers, this kind of education is for you. There is not one clear path that everyone must follow here, but a library of vast resources of genius ideas of the greatest thinkers of the past 3000+ years lying in front. These resources will ignite the flame of knowledge and open the doorway of individual experience that will be different for each person according to his or her own interests and inclinations, ultimately leading to a goal that he or she will define for themselves.
We Provide the Map
We provide the materials and the guidance, the map and the territory to point the seeker in the direction that his or her own Spirit longs to follow on an individual quest for truth, wisdom and self-realization. We are merely the Sherpa, the guide along the path, helping to point out the way, the books, the studies, the fields, the applications, but each person will move in the sequence, speed and direction that they desire for themselves.
For 1000’s of years, for intellectual and spiritual seekers, this was how most education was engaged, as an individual quest for knowledge and experience, often guided by teachers, or through apprenticeships. Around the time of the Industrial Revolution the love of learning was boxed up and turned into a practical training to create works to run the machine of society, and as a result education was dumbed down so as to produce worker drones who accepted their place, without ever asking the greater questions of reality and existence.
But students of our day now have a choice. Our society no longer has enough places for every wannabe cog in the wheel, as manufacturing jobs are passed to foreign lands for slave wages. The cost of college now is not worth what it provides or where it leads, in all but a few cases these days. And for that cost, one can gain so much more, if only one takes the time to look and see what is available.
A Vision for Self-Propelled Learning
As you can see, with our College Student Study Guide we are not giving some short and simple list of books or studies, but instead are laying out an idea, a vision, a possibility of an independent study that will be self-propelled and self-engaged and even potentially self-funded. We will point you to the various options available through the Institute here, perhaps Gann, Baumring, Ferrera, or perhaps a different approach, Music, Astronomy and Cosmology, perhaps mathematics, art and geometry, perhaps metaphysics, astrology and occultism… The fields are many and as varied as those who explore them. What we encourage is an exploration driven by YOUR interests and impulses, not ours…
For those young people who find the idea of envisioning and following your own path to be exciting and engaging like nothing else you’ve ever imagined, we are most happy to help you design your own educational program, leading in whatever direction you are most inspired. It can be built around a practical goal like trading if desired, or it can dive deep down the rabbit hole of profound knowledge and incomprehensible meaning if preferred. It’s all up to you, though we are always here to help and to guide…
Where to Begin
We suggest you begin by reading more of the material on our websites, such as the other study guides listed here, as well as reading the descriptions of the books that they point to. Study our introductory articles which lay out this tradition and the interconnected fields of knowledge which it explores. Pick someplace to start and buy a book, or a course, or a handful of different types of books to begin exploring new ideas and fields of knowledge that you never knew existed. Begin with something fun, that will excite your mind and inspire your interest to dig and to seek further.
Unlike most “school,” this kind of education is meant to be FUN! As you progress, it will become self-propelling, each study leading with excitement to the next and the next and the next, in a never ending flow of inspiration and creativity that will never be completed even to your dying day. The great thinkers never stopped their work until they were simply pulled from this Earth. It was their purpose for living, and real education leading to self-realization will be the same for you too.
People who learn to educate themselves and develop a true love for knowledge and wisdom never stop seeking and learning, because they are fascinated by this world and the endless mysteries it contains. They develop a never ending thirst to understand and know more. THIS kind of education will develop in you such a thirst and love for knowledge, and where it will lead you is something that only you will ever know…
To help guide you with your first explorations, we suggest you take a look at the following links, which will lead to Study Guides, Articles, Authors, and Categories which are all quite fascinating and lead to wider paths. Explore for yourself and find your own way! Also see our book category, Introductory Reading List, to find a selection of fascinating books that will give some first introductions to many of our most interesting fields and studies. But also feel free to contact us and tell us what you are interested in and we will be more than happy to provide you with some personal recommendations to point you on your way…
Read these sections, explore ideas find your interests:
After reading through all of these sections, perhaps even multiple times, you will FEEL what is of most interst to you. START THERE! And if you are still not sure, try exploring further through our Introductory Reading List to further broaden your horizons until you find something that really excites and interests you. Then contact us and let us guide you further! We will recommend a wider list of specialized books for you to introduce you to deeper ideas in your fields of greatest interest, and you can continue from there.
Sean Erikson
Alexander Straker
Johannes Sundberg
Dr. Lorrie V. Bennett
