University Of The Professional Guilds sprang from a Franciscan logos or germ.  It began in the Spring of 1968 with the idea of a family who would live monastically using elements of Columban, Benedictine, Franciscan, and Jesuit pieties.  The purpose was practical: to be a refuge for those not trying to beat the world at its own game, and firstly for myself.

This idea became an ideal which was called Franciscan family monasticism.  This ideal was announced, finally, in 1969, at the home of The Rev. George A. Graham, a Baptist clergyman living, then, on the north side of Chicago.

The location of this announcement is significant.  Chicago was imprinted with Adwaitha / Vedanta philosophy, since the 1890s, by Swami Vivekananda, the great disciple of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa.  Vivekananda represented Saivite religion.  Christianity and Judaism are distillations, separately, of Saivite religion.  This is why the Swami found welcome on these shores.  He was visiting kith and kin, calling to remembrance and asserting in a leonine tone the glory of their ancestor, the Indian way of life, which is called Sanathana Dharma.

In 1984, after the family formed, their nature and home was given a Vedantic name: Adwaitha Hermitage. In 1986, we conflated the homeschooling curriculum, such as we developed, calling it Quintivium. In 1994, elder son put Quintivium online as The Homeschooling Homepage. His is the first homeschooling website on the World Wide Web. In 1999, Adwaitha Hermitage went online as a registered domain name. It has undergone expansion and curation continuously ever since. The Homeschooling Homepage is linked from Adwaitha Hermitage website since the latter’s inception.

Quintivium and The Homeschooling Website organize the academic curriculum to support the four Varnas — callings in life, duty stations: Teacher, Soldier, Producer, Worker. These four conduct the business of society. I added an Overview activity, call it Sage or Philosophy. The model for Quintivium is The Sarva Dharma Symbol (see also here).

Early in the 2000s, I kept The Homeschooling Homepage as a front end for Quintivium and made a new front end for it, named Sri Sathya Sai Baba Virtual RishiKul, soon renamed to Sri Sathya Sai Baba RishiKul.

Soon after that renaming,  Dr. Kazimierz Borkowski at the Centre for Astronomy, Dept. of Radio Astronomy, Nicholas Copernicus University, Torun, Poland began mirroring RishiKul. In email exchanges I thanked him for doing this and asked if he would accept updates to his mirror as I made them available. He readily agreed to do that. So it has gone for us between then and now. I am deeply grateful to Dr. Borkowski for mirroring RishiKul all these many years, twenty or more now.

In January of 2021, I felt need to reorganize the academic curriculum from that originally set forth — Quintivium — to support the four Varnas. I received — or developed, take your pick — an urge to reorganize Quintivium with a mission to restore the authority of the five Professional Guilds: Theology, Medicine, Military Arts, Law, Pedagogy.

This reorganization does not nullify original Quintivium, based as it is on support of the four Varnas-plus-Overview. Curriculum contents of Quintivium remain the same, mostly, at University Of The Professional Guilds. And the Varnas, along with subject areas implied by their existence, remain present.

However, when distributed across the five schools of the Professional Guilds, placement of those subject areas, those contents of Quintivium, changes significantly.

When the mission moves from supporting the four-plus-one callings in life (Varnas) to restoring the authority of the five Professional Guilds — Dharmasthapana, Restoration of Proper Conduct — distribution of the subject areas of the academic curriculum is unique to the new mission.

A Quintivium is the curriculum of both RishiKul and University Of The Professional Guilds. However the missions behind these Quintivia are different. To support the Varnas-plus-Overview, the academic curriculum, Quintivium, looks like this. To restore the Professional Guilds, the academic curriculum, Quintivium, looks like this.

Five-ness underlies Quintivium for RishiKul and Quintivium for University Of The Professional Guilds. In all things maintain pentagonal structure, to ensure against ingress by assaulting forces, themselves a constant of life.

The pentagon, along with its solid, the dodecahedron — 12 pentagons joined together by sides — is nature’s strongest structure, her impregnable fortress and maximum span of control. The root of five-ness is the Five Elemental Principles — Ether, Air, Fire, Water, Earth — combinations and permutations of which comprise the universe.

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Life is like a train journey. Young children have a long way to go, but elders have to alight from the train pretty soon. You must learn to make your journey comfortable and happy. Do not carry heavy unwanted luggage with you. That will make the journey miserable. Do not indulge in fault finding and in picking quarrels with others. Don’t desire to have the best things for yourselves only. Share with others around you the good things you are given. Anger, hatred, envy, jealousy – these are the heavy luggage I asked you to avoid taking with you on the journey. I must give the elders and parents some advice. Do not set bad examples for these children to follow. If you are truthful, just, calm under provocation and full of love in all your dealings with others, then children too will grow up in Sathya (truth), Dharma (righteousness), Shanti (peace) and Prema (love).