When I applied for the one-year master in Mysticism and Western esotericism at GHF in Amsterdam, everyone around me told me it was an impossible dream. After all, in Denmark I had a son and a husband who could not just move to the Netherlands with me, so how would I manage this? My solution was easy albeit somewhat expensive: I would fly to Amsterdam once a week to follow classes, stay overnight and return to Copenhagen the day after. The decision turned out to be one of the best and most important ones I have ever made, both on an academic and on a personal level.

Personally, I found friends and colleagues whom I still strive to see as often as possible, even though we live in different countries. On the academic level, I experienced a scholarly milieu that saw me not only as a student, but also as a young scholar, enticing me to participate in conferences and submit articles for journals and anthologies. Furthermore, the relatively small number of students created a perfect environment for fruitful and informal discussions both in and outside the classroom. A specific advantage of the Master's program was the repeated practice of giving presentations on a fixed topic in the style of a conference paper, thus providing a solid preparation for actually giving “real” papers at academic conferences.

The wide historical and theoretical scope of the different courses provided an excellent opportunity to test one's own academic interests. I had the freedom to delve into subjects as diverse as ancient gnosticism, medieval kabbalah and contemporary discordianism, and the topic of my master's thesis reflected my long-time interest in theoretical subjects, on the one hand, and kabbalah, on the other. The thesis developed into a theoretical discussion of the concepts of Western esotericism and kabbalah, combined with an analysis of the function of language in medieval kabbalistic texts.

Upon returning to the University of Copenhagen, where I followed a threeyear research Master's program, this project served as the foundation for my Danish Master's thesis.