Gatekeeping

 

There's something about the word "gatekeeping" that makes people kneejerk. People talk like it's Always A Bad Thing, they accuse people of doing it when they don't get something they want. Be a doormat lest someone accuse you of "gatekeeping!"

This is why we have idiot readers all over youtube. It's why we have so many cringy bad books and decks. People have been throwing the gates wide open for decades now, letting every Tom, Dick, and Harry in. "Anybody can do this!" And your listing gets buried under a flood of dilettantes practicing unlicensed psychology with a cheesy deck. You see magazine articles saying "Tarot doesn't predict the future." Etc.

Would you throw your front door open and let in every random person on the street?

In myth, everything worthwhile has some kind of threshold guardian. If you want in, you have to face the guardian first.

"With the personifications of his destiny to guide and aid him, the hero goes forward in his adventure until he comes to the "threshold guardian" at the entrance to the zone of magnified power. Such custodians bound the world in four directions—also up and down—standing for the limits of the hero's present sphere, or life horizon. Beyond them is darkness, the unknown, and danger; just as beyond the parental watch is a danger to the infant and beyond the protection of his society danger to the members of the tribe. The usual person is more than content, he is even proud, to remain within the indicated bounds, and popular belief gives him every reason to fear so much as the first step into the unexplored"

- Joseph Campbell

The guardians are depicted as fearsome, like Cerberus above with his three toothy heads and his viper tail, or the Nio temple guardians of Japan:

And like all mythic things, they can be interpreted on various levels: Psychological, spiritual, or mundane. They serve an important purpose.

The most dangerous labor of Hercules was the 12th and final one: he had to kidnap Cerberus and present him to Eurystheus. It's telling that Hercules did not slay Cerberus as he had the other monsters he'd battled. He simply subdued him, brought him to Eurystheus, and then returned him safely to Hades, where Cerberus resumed guarding the gateway to the Underworld!

There was a time when morons were terrified of things like Tarot. Now, only the talibaptist types are scared off. It's been entirely too welcoming for years now. "Anybody can do this!" "Death means transformation!" Etc. And we're seeing the results of that, Tarot's been going to hell in a handbasket. Pirate decks, AI, plagiarism, useless books and websites, etc. That's what happens when you throw the doors wide open and invite everybody.

A friend once told me that "the key to a successful esoteric subject forum is making sure that the idiots are too scared to join it." I agree, but I'd like to add that many are not so easily intimidated, and those have to be screened out.

We need a lot more gatekeeping if we're ever going to turn this around.