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Magic and the martial arts

  
 
Orrin's Prick Up Your Ears
17:03 / 26.08.04
I've practiced a number of martial arts for years now and I'm really interested in the different quality of experience offered by systems that approach the same problem from different angles. I've seen a lot of relativism on this board and what I'm really looking for is some discussion of the notion that 'style is unimportant, it's all about the practitioner'. When applied to martial arts, this is relevant, but overstated. I'm wondering how it relates to magical traditions.

Incidentally, I'm just leaving work so this is not going to be a terribly sophisticated post. Sorry!

First of all, I'm assuming that a comparison can be made between the way 'martial arts' relates to 'fighting' and how 'magical traditions' relate to 'magic'. In my experience in the martial arts, I'd say that it was perfectly possible to practice a tradition diligently while getting minimal gains in practical fighting ability. Gaining experience in the system, perhaps, but little else. In martial arts, this has nothing to do with lineage or even techniques as such, but is more about training methodology. All the preparation and conditioning in the world can't replace a single hour on the mat or in the ring when it comes to learning to fight and this is something I feel is neglected by many classical systems. If this also applies to magic, then maybe the tradition in which you choose to practice does have an affect on your success 'in the real world'. Some traditions would then be more practical - 'better' - than others and while I agree that the quality of the practitioner is generally more important than the system, this doesn't mean that all systems are equal.

To give an example which might cross over into magic, some traditions in martial arts seem to have fallen into the trap of petrifying as 'styles', where the movements are seemingly performed for their own sake, divorced from the crucible of conflict, which is, really, the point (perhaps the organisation has become bigger than the practitioner, or maybe tradition is outweighing expediency). So, while we'd all agree that reading about something — "empty theory" - is no substitute for experience, I think that the quality and context of that experience is also vital. If my coach told me to practice backstroke on the floor of my bedroom but I never got my feet wet, although it might help a little if I fell into the sea, I'd still bet money that I'd sink like a stone! A swimming pool isn't quite the sea either, but I'd rather train with people who practiced there than train in my bedroom and take it my ability to swim on faith.

The reality of conflict can be seen as a good test of the validity of a system that purports to teach someone how to fight. Is there a similarly objective component to magic that would allow a comparison to be made between the practical worth of various traditions? Can we shove them all into a metaphorical cage and let them duke it out, or is this where the analogy falls down?

I know that 'ranking' systems of magic is missing the point wildly and ignores all those questions relating to the subjectivity of magical experience for which the martial arts acid-test of surviving a bar-room brawl doesn't really apply, but hell, if magic is tit-for-tat, I think practical questions of what tit for which tat are appropriate as they do seem to vary according to the tradition. Fighting is fundamentally a pretty simple affair and the experience of every practitioner of any style when actually faced with conflict will be, largely, the same. But how they respond will come down to the training they've had, so would it be possible, as with the martial arts, to come up with a consensus of what constitutes a 'realistic style' or 'good training', so we don't find ourselves wasting time?

I want good tit for the least possible tat. Ta! D

This whole rambly mess was sparked off by a recent post on the 'Holy Guardian Angel' by Gypsy Lantern, in which he said: "A magician is a magician. Like how Pencak Silat is very different from Brazilian Jujitsu, but you can still kick someone's head in." I was going to reply in the thread but it got so wildly off-topic that I thought I'd better create a separate one.

[Happy birthday Gypsy, if you read this! It was nice to meet you and I really enjoyed your talk in the Devereux the other week.]
 
 
Z. deScathach
07:57 / 27.08.04
Hmmm. The ptoblem is that success in magick is an enormously subjective thing. In terms of fighting, at it's barest essence, you weither survive or you don't, (unless it's one of those "challenge" things, or a match of some sort.)IMO it's impossible to rate systems of magick for that reason. It really boils down to who spends the most time in training, and whether they try to relate that magickal training to their life. Even then, a determined skeptic can pretty much refute any success in magick as being caused by something other than the practitioners working, (unless of course, you're talking about "the weird zone", a situation that is bizarre and has physical effects witnessed by more than one person, in that instance, they simply call you a liar).
 
 
Orrin's Prick Up Your Ears
09:38 / 27.08.04
I'm being a little facetious and I do agree that it's probably not as simple as 'tit for tat', although I think that 'religion' would be a better name for magic that is done for other reasons than simply getting results! If you don't desire something, why do magic in the first place?

(I know it's wishy-washy and that I'm really treading on a tiger's tail, but I've also heard some discussion here of a commonality of magical experience which suggests that the notion of magic as totally subjective is at least under debate. With an objective component, no matter how slippery, we can talk about magical training as a response to something, I guess, rather than as a private game, making the comparison with martial arts training a little more valid, since experiences can be shared, advice given and approaches/strategies compared. The purpose of this board?

Thoughts?
 
 
Lord Morgue
10:56 / 27.08.04
Hmm. I guess this whole thing incorperates the question of empirical evidence of results in magickal arts, which most systems are set up to avoid, with the exception of Crowley, who proscribed the application of scientific method, keeping a journal of what works and what doesn't, trial and error, more results-oriented. And you don't get much more results-oriented than the martial arts, either you're standing after or you're not.
The "dry land swimming" comment tells me you've read up on Bruce Lee. His Jeet Kune Do style is all about individual expression of the martial arts. Thelema seems to me to be a similar expression of the magickal arts, the emphasis on "whatever works" and individual exploration, rather than static doctrine and dogma.
Our George is an exponent of both Jeet Kune Do and Thelema, isn't he?
"I am cool as Bruce Lee."
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
10:58 / 27.08.04
Great thread. Pressure testing for sorcery. Tenets of realistic martial arts applied to occultism. Way too busy to get properly involved in this thread till the weekend, but a few thoughts.

The ptoblem is that success in magick is an enormously subjective thing.

Well... I think it depends on what you're talking about. How you happen to be defining magic and what that definition does or does not include. Success in magic can be as objective as success in fighting, if you're talking about results sorcery. Charlie the sorceror makes a bag for Jimmy the jobseeker. Jimmy gets the job. The working was a success. Jimmy remains on the dole. The working was a failure. Same criteria can apply to the full range of sorcerous activity from cursing to divination. Did it work? Can you deliver the goods? If you're trying to measure a magician's degree of "enlightenment" or something, then the model starts to fall down.

I think you can probably extend the parallels between magical trads and martial arts styles quite far. Different traditions in occultism tend to emphasise different areas. For instance, there seem to be a few observable points of commonality between Vodou and Tantra, but they have a very different emphasis. There's a lot of profoundly interesting theoretical and practical stuff in one that you won't find in the other, and vice versa.

Perhaps you can draw parallels here with martial arts styles. A real fight will often go to the ground fairly quickly, therefore expert stand-up fighters are at a big disadvantage when faced with an opponent with good ground fighting skills. This was evidenced in various ultimate fighting and mixed martial arts tournaments where brilliant upright fighters were repeatedly beaten by fairly average ground fighters when brought to the ground and forced to play their game. My mate Vince, former debt collector in the roughest areas of Newcastle, with a background in boxing and Wing Chun, has just been out to LA for 6 months to train up in Brazilian Jujitsu with the Machado's. This is an art that strongly emphasises the groundfighting skills, so he figures brushing up on that will make him into a better rounded fighter capable of moving between the various different games that a live combat situation might entail.

I think you can, in a loose sense, use this cross-training model as a basis for investigating other magical traditions, which may emphasise different areas to whatever tradition you happen to have your grounding in. I think this is slightly different from the chaos magic approach of paradigm swapping. The latter approach could be criticised for encouraging practitioners to superficially skim the surface of another culture's magical traditions without really engaging with them. Taking the surface elements and applying them to a western ceremonial/chaos magic set of practical techniques and broad conceptual framework. Whereas the cross training model encourages a deep long term involvement in another tradition in order to fill out the gaps in your knowledge base and try to become a better rounded magician. A comparison might be made between someone going along to a couple of kung fu classes and reckoning they know the art, and the professional boxer going out to Brazil for a year to train with the Gracies.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
11:01 / 27.08.04
I guess this whole thing incorperates the question of empirical evidence of results in magickal arts, which most systems are set up to avoid, with the exception of Crowley

Gah!

(spits out coffee all over screen)
 
 
trouser the trouserian
11:25 / 27.08.04
I think that 'religion' would be a better name for magic that is done for other reasons than simply getting results! If you don't desire something, why do magic in the first place?

What kind of "result" are you talking of here? IMO a great deal of magical activity does not produce 'results' in the sense of "I did this operation and manifested result 'x' ." Often, 'results' are quite nebulous and related to one's sense of selfhood, general enjoyment of life, health, developing new interests, etc. For example, through my involvement with magic, I've met hundreds of wild, wacky, fascinating people, travelled to at least 3 countries I probably wouldn't have gone to otherwise, and had several relationships which were at least kicked off by a mutual interest in magick.

Perhaps it might be useful to distinguish between short-term "results" and longer-term "outcomes"?
 
 
Orrin's Prick Up Your Ears
13:03 / 27.08.04
There's a lot to talk about here.

"A comparison might be made between someone going along to a couple of kung fu classes and reckoning they know the art, and the professional boxer going out to Brazil for a year to train with the Gracies." Gypsy.

I think this is valid, but it also depends on the art. This would be the case for most classical arts, I think, as they build technique slowly (inefficiently?) through form practice, repetition, etc. You need years of dedication to get many transferable skills out of that approach (that's from my personal experience of three years of Silat training, for example) and you're wasting your time with less. But with other systems, especially sport-based ones which privilege 'mat-time' or gaining experience through struggle, like Muay Thai or BJJ, you can gain a lot through going along to a couple of lessons. Basically, you don't just get 'taught'; you also get to fight and that time is never wasted. Look at the UFC again and how quickly the wrestlers learned to stifle BJJ submissions, or how fast the strikers learned to sprawl from takedowns. Simple, practical skills that could be learned quickly and added to the skill-set of the fighters, so real in-depth knowledge of BJJ (advanced knowledge of submissions and a dozen ways to pass the guard) was a luxury: useful, but not necessity for success.

However, I will say that while being 'well-rounded' is important, being a gadfly and flitting around all over the place, never settling, is unlikely to get you there. All the best cagefighters I know (and I know a few through training in BJJ and Pancrase – my coach is the Cage Rage welterweight champion) excel in something. They all start off as great wrestlers, or great strikers, or great BJJers, then add the other skills, building on their base and elim. But it's the base they rely on when it all goes to cock.

Is magic the same, maybe?
 
 
Orrin's Prick Up Your Ears
13:22 / 27.08.04
"Often, 'results' are quite nebulous and related to one's sense of selfhood, general enjoyment of life, health, developing new interests, etc. For example, through my involvement with magic, I've met hundreds of wild, wacky, fascinating people, travelled to at least 3 countries I probably wouldn't have gone to otherwise, and had several relationships which were at least kicked off by a mutual interest in magick."

You could say this about ballroom dancing, or owning a Mini and being a regular at some sort of 'Mini Owners Club', or something equally dreadful! Contacts, new experiences and the company of like-minded people come with any 'hobby'. (Man, I hate that word!) Not trying to be baity, but although I'm sure there are bored people hanging out at revolutionary anarchist meetings who are just there for the coffee and company, I wouldn't try and judge the goals of the wider organisation by their standards!
 
 
illmatic
13:42 / 27.08.04
Weird that you started this thread, as one of my big interests over the past 9 months or so has been "reality based" self protection stuff which grew out of my martial arts training (though all I've done so far is read up on it, I haven't done any training in this area so far). The reality based stuff stuff is interesting as the emphasis is very different from even the ground fighting of BJJ etc. There's a lot of stuff about awareness, avoiding fights and confrontations in the first place, de-escalation, attack patterns (ie being aware of the body language which will tell you if someone's building up for an attack), and escape after it's all over, as well as a knowledge of the law in relation to self-defence. It's a fascinating area - I'd recommend the books of Geoff Thompson (the most prominent exponent of this kind of thing) if you're interested in looking into it. He's an ex-bouncer and most of the "reality" guys are people with a lot of experience of real world violence. Eminently sensible and logical most of it (even if something as macho as an interest in fighting is perhaps not).

Don't know where I'm really going with this, but I'd say I kind of disagree with this:

the crucible of conflict, which is, really, the point

though I understand the thinking behind it. What reading all this reality based stuff has made me realise is that in my training I'm not - primarily - learning how to fight either in a ring or in a street fight (very, very different arenas BTW). I've picked up some skill that might be transfered to that area - maybe - but the goals are different. I think this is akin to AoG's point above about different "orders" of intention. So what am I learning then? - Well, I'm reorientating my relationship with my body for one, and I've hugely improved my co-ordination. Learning to move with a bit of fluidity feels to me like it's having some kind of effect on my character. I've also picked up on a lot of "intangible" benefits - from just a sense of acheivment to more subtle things such as learning about letting go, not striving, clarity of intention, "emptiness" and balance. There's a quality of "rightness" about things I do sometimes which I know comes from my martial arts practice. These qualities aren't a formal part of the training, it's just crossed over. As if by magick!

BTW, one crossover point I did notice between magick and "reality" stuff - all the top practioners - Gary Spiers, Geoff Thompson and all the others - spent a lot of time learning and assimilating traditional arts before rejecting them, where as a lot of the trainers who've sprung up in this field after them haven't got the same pedigree and depth of knowledge, and as a consequence are offering second rate training. This reminded me of the way that most of the prominent chaos magicians had done similar sorts of traditional training, and gone off to be very creative with it, while their "imitators" are frequently somewhat lacklustre to the say the least.
 
 
Lord Morgue
14:41 / 27.08.04
"spits out coffee all over screen) "

Well, yeah, your mileage may vary if you have enough ether, heroin and methylated spirits in your system to kill a herd of wooly mammoth.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
15:39 / 27.08.04
that's from my personal experience of three years of Silat training, for example

Brief threadrot aside: Who did you train in Silat with, if you don't mind me asking? Did you train in London? I have 3 years Silat myself, and as far as I'm aware there's only a couple of Silat classes in London.
 
 
Orrin's Prick Up Your Ears
15:40 / 27.08.04
"What reading all this reality based stuff has made me realise is that in my training I'm not - primarily - learning how to fight either in a ring or in a street fight (very, very different arenas BTW). I've picked up some skill that might be transfered to that area - maybe - but the goals are different. I think this is akin to AoG's point above about different "orders" of intention."

Sure, there are side benefits to training in anything, but I'd disagree that the primary goal of these arts isn't, in the end, fighting. Although they've become codified and calcified and while many cultural and spiritual practices have constellated around them, these systems were originally ways of preparing soldiers and citizens for physical survival in a conflict situation. Fighting is how they advertise themselves and I think that we really can judge them on how well they prepare people for it.

So, really, I'd say that yes, fighting and martial arts are worlds apart. But I don't think that they should be!

I always found it rather ironic that the new 'revolution' in the martial arts in the last few decades is really continuing the work of Bruce Lee with his (then) heretical crosstraining of kung-fu with boxing and escrima and the rediscovery of Western systems, when the modern expression is partly a reaction against the popular image of martial arts as portrayed in films like his! It's an attempt to bring these arts back down from the mountaintop to the pavements and battlefields where they began. Of course, the last decade has seen an explosion in this after the catastrophic drubbing (many perceive) the classical martial arts took in the first few Ultimate Fighting Championships in the mid-1990s, mostly at the hands of the results-oriented kickboxers and grapplers.

But this is all getting off the point a little. Bringing it back to magic, we can see how many classical martial arts, overcomplicating themselves through decades of peace, distanced themselves from practical application to concentrate on the aesthetic, the spiritual, and all those other 'added benefits' you mentioned. My question would be, can the process by which the classical martial arts were 'field-stripped' and reduced to their essentials in order to prepare them for the reality of combat, be compared to the movement in magic that includes chaos magick and this whole postmodern, results-oriented magickal consciousness? How far can we take the parallel?
 
 
Orrin's Prick Up Your Ears
16:03 / 27.08.04
Hi there Gypsy.

Yeah, I checked out your webpage and thought it was really interesting that you were a Silat guy and a wrestler too. I was meaning to have a chat with you about it as I always like talking Silat.

I've studied two systems. I did a year in Seni Silat Haqq Melayu from Malaysia about five years ago, under a local teacher in St Albans, but stopped training when the teacher quit. That was a very form-based system. Much more 'art' than 'martial'.

In London, I did about two years of training in Pencak Silat Harimau Minankabau ('Silat of the tiger' from the jungles of Sumatra) under the brilliant Gury Randy. That was a different kettle of fish! They were fucking amazing and I was obsessed with it for ages. I've visited Sumatra twice in the last two years on my own back and met up with some native teachers while I was there. Best of all, I had an incredible tiger vision while sleeping in the jungle, which I was very grateful for. Man, I could talk about their tiger worship all night. Actually, I'm giving a talk about it next year at the Wyrd Weekend in Exeter.

I've been meaning to go back to Silat for ages. I stopped a couple of years ago because I had a bad bereavement that made it difficult to train (it gave me a perspective which made the 'tiger mindset' seem unhealthy, so I thought I'd take a break and clear my head) and then I broke a couple of ribs wrestling a few months later which put me out for ages. By that point, I was already training several times a week in BJJ and I didn't have the money or space for Silat too. That's a shame, I think.

Which Silat did you study? I'm interested.
 
 
SteppersFan
18:54 / 27.08.04
I'd disagree that the primary goal of these arts isn't, in the end, fighting.

To echo Illmatic, seems to me (only a few years of judo a long time ago) that the primary goal of these arts is survival and peace. Certainly from a social perspective. And is the "ultimate" aim of martial arts the training of the mind and spirit, or learning how to knock seven shades out of someone? I'd have thought the latter.

Seems to me that this discussion illuminates the distinction between sorcery -- magic for results, or low magic as it used to be called -- and magic for spiritual development. To me, the former is a stepping stone to the latter. Maybe there's some sort of dialectical unification of the two approaches though.

Again echoing Illmatic, I think the harvesting of pleasant relationships from magic is an admirable result. I don't have too much of a problem with the term "hobby", either. To me, magic as a category of outlooks and perspectives is as important as magic as a category of activities.

Is there a similarly objective component to magic that would allow a comparison to be made between the practical worth of various traditions?
I think it's horses for courses. I'm tempted to suggest the "path" you choose might be the one you "need". Though it seems to me the path chooses you.

As for: "I want good tit for the least possible tat": there is no tit. There is no tat.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
11:37 / 28.08.04
I checked out your webpage and thought it was really interesting that you were a Silat guy and a wrestler too.

I'm not actually a wrestler. That was just me fucking about on the biog section of my website, I'm not really an art thief or orchid smuggler either...

I did used to train Silat in London for a few years though, Gerak Ilham Bugis Makassar Pencak Silat under Bapak Alrashid. I havent trained for years because of a hip problem, but still keep in touch with the class. I went along to the UK Silat championships a couple of months back, which was really good. Indonesian demo team were amazing.

Did I meet you after my talk? What did you look like?
 
 
illmatic
12:00 / 28.08.04
Orrin: Fighting is how they advertise themselves and I think that we really can judge them on how well they prepare people for it.

Not my style/teacher, mate! I've never been given the hard sell about how it's the ultimate in fighting techniques. Martial arts is a broad church and there's room for all sorts of motivations as long as you're aware of what you're doing and why you're doing it. As I said, I'm much more interested in the "secondary benefits" I listed above, and I have developed an interest in reality based self protection type stuff as well (compartively recently). I think if you're talking about fighting, I have to ask which sort of fighting, and what your intention is. If it's competive fighting in a ring (a la UFC) with the intention being to fight and test yourself, obviously, BJJ etc is going to give you an excellent base. If it's dealing with real world brawls and crime - and the intent is survival, then I think the "reality based" stuff is miles ahead, and gives a lot of advice which the more competive stuff misses out - ie. avoidance, awareness etc. All very important if your primary goal is getting home in one piece. Different intentions, different training. I'd add that on the few internet sites I visit that discuss this sort of thing, they act as a community which validates the decision to walk away, to not get involved, going against our normal macho conditioning. Moreover, this stuff is applicable to both sexes and all age ranges, not just the fit you men who're attracted to NHB, BJJ etc.
 
 
Orrin's Prick Up Your Ears
22:11 / 01.09.04
Hey there Gypsy

I was the tall guy with the leather jacket. Spoke to you about Palomayombe just before your talk and asked a couple of questions in the Q&A, one about whether you considered your approach to Hoodoo - expansive, unafraid to connect with the immediate urban environment and community - to be a 'working class' approach, as opposed to the more usual middle class 'Faustian' elitism. The other was about whether or not you considered yourself to have moved from a chaos magick/conceptual approach to actually having 'settled' on a particular religion.

I know of Gerak Ilham, although only by reputation. My guys weren't really associated with the Persilat affiliated schools. I think it and Perisai Diri were the only two kinds of Silat allowed at the championships, as none of the rest are part of the Indonesian government's international Silat body. I have to say, my Guru was really down on sport-form Silat (and government-sponsored Silat) as he felt it 'watered down' the art. Real traditional Silat, even in this country, is really secretive, magical and nasty and I can't get my head around people performing it in public as a spectacle, but that's my own training background speaking through me, really. You'd have loved the guys I trained with before. Tough, mostly black class with Cuban Palomayombe as the art's spiritual base. Probably another reason why the group doesn't get on with many of the Islamic Silat organisations like Persilat, i'm sure, but, ironically, a hell of a lot closer to the tiger-worshiping animism, spirit possession and ancestor worship I found when I stayed with the Sumatran highlanders who still practice Silat.

Hell, this is getting really off-topic. Mail me sometime - it'd be good to go into this stuff in more detail. You guys ever get together in London over a pint?
 
 
Orrin's Prick Up Your Ears
22:51 / 01.09.04
Illmatic

Fighting and self-defence/survival are two completely different things. I agree with you totally. There's some crossover, but the intention is completely different. One's duelling, the other's assassination - only awareness can help, in the end. That, and good skills with conversation and confrontation. Geoff Thompson knows what he's talking about, after all. However, I've got to say that the amount of bouncers, bodyguards, police and army who train in 'sport fighting' arts like mine probably shows that they're not _completely_ useless for self-defence either and Geoff himself recommends frequent all-out 'testing' in fights as close as possible to the real thing, to make sure any 'reality based' systems you're doing are actually keeping it real. So I guess we need both.

Good point on how fighting is the province of the young, fit male though. But I guess that's why knees and groins, eyes and fingers were invented ... and running shoes of course 3

"BTW, one crossover point I did notice between magick and "reality" stuff - all the top practioners - Gary Spiers, Geoff Thompson and all the others - spent a lot of time learning and assimilating traditional arts before rejecting them, where as a lot of the trainers who've sprung up in this field after them haven't got the same pedigree and depth of knowledge, and as a consequence are offering second rate training."
This is a good point, although I will say that the main environment where someone like Geoff Thompson did his real learning wasn't the dojo, but the nightclub door. Experience was the teacher here and I'm sure his 'pedigree' or belt colour didn't matter much on a friday night! His previous training in trad Karate would probably have given him discipline and physique though, even if the skills weren't completely transferable, but I suppose any good athlete with a work ethic would have the same 'background'. For an example, look at Frank Shamrock: greatest Pancrase champion ever (maybe NHB too), but no martial arts background at all before he started training in mixed martial arts (wrestling, Thai boxing, BJJ) for his first fight at the age of 20-something. He was a good athlete, nothing more. Within 3 years he was the King of Pancrase and he's now one of the world's most respected trainers, despite not having a single belt in anything. Is there an equivalent magician? No trad training but bloody good?

Could we pull this back into magic a little? Reviewing some of what has been said, there seem to be people here who think that magic is an act of accomplishing a desire and those who see it as a means for enlightenment, or spiritual enrichment. I'm sure most people are probably in the middle somewhere and I suppose I am too. But I do think that to call itself 'magic' as opposed to 'religion' (ritual action for a spiritual reward later on?), you should be able to actually _accomplish_ things in the world, or 'concensus reality', or whatever. In which case, I'd continue to ask whether we can come to a concensus as to what constitutes a potent, 'realistic' tradition of magic. What set of skills do I need. A punch on the nose or a knee in the bollocks _works_. Definitely. It can be demonstrated anytime. What's the magical equivalent? Give it to me straight guys!
 
 
Orrin's Prick Up Your Ears
22:54 / 01.09.04
Just qualifying that last post: by 'give me it straight guys' I didn't mean 'give me the magical equivalent of a punch on the nose guys'. Thanks!
 
 
illmatic
09:43 / 02.09.04
Hey Orrin

Please don't think I'm saying cage fighting etc is no good for self-defence! Far from it, I've got a huge amount of respect for the people involved, and think the skills are definitely transferable, it's just I don't think it's the be all and end all (which is the way it's chatted about sometimes on the net). I'm more interested in SD myself but that's because I want something with a little practicality to go alongside what I do already, and I haven't got the time/inclination to train up in any other discpline. (In theory, I'd like to learn some grappling but I guess if I really wanted to do this, I'd be doing it).

To get back to the magick, I dunno - with regard to the "what works" question, I'd refer back to AoGs' post above. I wouldn't draw a clear line between sorcery ("casting spells") and the other less definable skills. I mean teaching someone relaxation techniques or doing divination are both techniques with real world application, even if their not bingo bango, "got my result"type sorcery, aren't they? Exactly what kind of applications are you looking for?
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
23:29 / 04.09.04
Thought I’d hit the revive on this thread.

Yeah, Gerak Ilham primarily teaches sports Silat, but I always got the sense that you had to prove yourself as a decent athlete in the sports capacity before you learned anything else. Basically prove to Bapak that you could fight competently and were therefore worthy of being taught other dimensions of the art. His senior students and those who had been out to train in Indonesia would always cryptically hint that I’d only seen a tiny fraction of what there was in Silat. It’s secretive, like you say. I think the sports Silat is really just the public face of a lot of those schools.

I can understand your teachers reservations about Government sponsored Silat watering down the art, though. Persilat seems to have this thing now where affiliated schools learn a standardised demonstration form incorporating elements of lots of different styles of Silat.

I actually designed the brochure for the Persilat championships this year, and commissioned a mate of mine to do their logo. Quite weird seeing Silat fighters from all over the world wandering about with my comic artist friend's drawing stuck onto them.

Have you ever done any Escrima? Quite interested in looking into that at the moment, the Bob Breen academy teaches it in London, and comes highly rated.

And yeah, meeting up for beers tends to happen a fair bit. PM me at some point, Friday nights are usually good.

I’ll get round to relating this stuff to magic in a minute. But in the absence of a forum called “the gym”, I don’t think discussions of martial arts are really that out of place here.
 
 
Orrin's Prick Up Your Ears
16:29 / 05.09.04
Hey there Gypsy

I've heard that some of the Persilat schools of Silat teach the 'true' art to the elite but keep the sports stuff for the low-end guys as a test of loyalty. That may be true, although I'd rather train somewhere where they teach you the real stuff from the start, like Richard De Bordes or Steve Benitez 3 Love to see the sort of thing you were doing though as I know very little about the tech of Silat from Sulawesi.

I haven't done Escrima although some of my mates have a fair bit of experience, including one of the top guys in my Silat class. The footwork is supposed to be very similar to Silat (all the triangle stuff) and the emphasis on parries and every hand being a blade (no blocking). It's related to Silat, without a doubt. Bob Breen's Academy is always reliable, so that might be a good place to start. White Eagle Eskrima is related to the Dog Brothers in the US, so it's going to be full-contact (or at least, bruise-contact) stickfighting. The Escrima equivalent of MMA or cage-fighting and supposed to be very good. It'll be a test.

I'll PM you, if I can figure out how to do it!
 
  
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