Discipleship (and Initiate Training)

When CrossSwords students begin (at the age of 11 or older), their training consists of one-on-one private lessons called: Discipleship. These Discipleship sessions are held with a CrossSwords Master assigned to each student, who personally commits to devote their time to be that student’s master (or teacher), and to train them up to the best of their ability take them on as their apprentice. Students continue move into the first stages of their training exclusively in this Discipleship mode, until their Teacher feels they are ready to receive an invitation to a degree of Fellowship.

Each students enters the academy as an Initiate: the first tier of levels which include novice (white belt), paige (green), and apprentice (blue). During these first ranks, each student will begin the elementary instruction in the sword, start to ask the preliminary philosophical questions (such as: who am I? what does it look like for me to grow? and what does the seeking the true, the good, and the beautiful look like?), and will be sorted into one of the school’s 3 Training houses (Wisdom, Virtue, & Ardent), for which they will earn points and train alongside as they enter Fellowship.

As a student advances in rank, they will be invited to higher degrees of Fellowship, but will continue to engage one on one with their master in Discipleship lessons (timing and frequency varying at their Teacher’s discretion). Discipleship represents the first step in all Knight’s training! Yet, even after a student graduates to higher and higher marks of rank, and even when they no longer see their master as a regular student, they will come to find their teacher to have become a life-long friend, and fellow student with them of the ancient Way.