In my nearly thirty-year experience in the martial arts, I have seen some interesting things. Most of them are ordinary, some spectacular. These include mere human feats of incredible jump spin-kicks, power breaking and manipulation of opponents. Sometimes these demonstrations have crossed into states of metaphysical events.
Martial arts often suggest a level of skill beyond the mere physical, and hint at an intangible or esoteric knowledge. This skill is recognized not only as a fighting skill, but also a healing skill.
From the earliest times, Warriors and Occult practitioners, or Shamen have been closely linked. Going to battle was a spiritual event, involving preparation and in some cases, inducing a trance state. The Vikings were known to have taken mind-altering mushrooms before going into battle, hence the term “Berserker” (Berserk). They went nuts and killed things. That warrior cult was also steeped in pagan gods, divination and superstition. They were a warrior culture, yet given the opportunity, they melded with the populations they had just kicked the crap out of and helped build much of Europe.
Other aboriginal cultures across the world have their warrior cultures closely linked to shamanic experiences also. Anyone who has read the Carlos Castenada books with Don Juan the sorcerer have a look into native American Indian culture and warrior spirit. Part of coming of age in warrior cultures has often been linked to taking psychedelic drugs or experiencing extreme hardships under the guidance of elders.
With Japanese martial artists such as Aikido founder Ueshiba, there were cults such as the Shinto O-Moto Kyo, that were based in natural science of every day living, and the older and revered Chinese occult systems. Chinese “Tao” is Japanese “Do”, and the esoteric knowledge of each has the same root. Nearly all cultures revered the sword as a spiritual tool, some bearing generations of blood.
Perhaps no esoteric system is better known than the Chinese five-element theory that governs acupuncture and pressure points. An unknown number of people partake in the healing arts provided by these techniques, yet they are hardly recognized by modern medicine today. Contemporary medicine looks upon Meridian theory as placebo therapy, yet in a martial as well as a healing application, the results are “striking” (pun intended).
The five-element theory is akin to the child’s game of rock-scissors-paper, where there is a healing aspect as well as a destructive nature. Wood feeds fire, fire creates earth, earth produces metal, metal leads to water (somewhat obscure, possibly water witching). The destructive cycle is just the opposite; metal cuts wood, wood penetrates earth, earth dams water, water cools fire, fire shapes metal. While each element relates to a meridian, combinations of strikes in the destructive cycle on meridians can cause knockout and damage. Experts more knowledgeable than me may expand on this.
The point is, there is a lot more to the skills involved in both healing and killing than most martial schools offer. Pressure points, sacred sounds used in ki-ai’s and much more.
From an internet search, there are scores of articles by Christian authors that indicate their fear of these ideas. Too bad for them. They may be missing out on a whole bunch of stuff that was known to the old Christian Gnostics that are abhorrent to modern evangelicals today. For instance, the Knights Templar was a Christian warrior society that found enlightenment in the middle-east, and incorporated it into their Christian rituals. The Templers were a Christian Knight organization that was created to guard passage to the holy lands from Europe. They built their fortress on the Temple mount In Jerusalem, and are said to have found the holiest ancient Gnostic (self enlightened) Christian relics. The Templars, according to author Jim Marrs (“Rule By Secrecy”-Harper-Collins), cut deals with and gained esoteric knowledge from “The Assassins”, the Hashish cult-for-hire in middle age Islam. Speculation is there was much information exchanged. Upon their return to Europe, the Templars used sacred geometry to build the Gothic Cathedrals, celestial navigation, and the first banking system. All this was built on Arab culture, and it revolutionized Europe. They were a Christian martial society, and on Friday the 13th 1307, many of the Templars were rounded up by the church, tortured and disbanded, partly for their esoteric and non-conventional knowledge. The contemporary Catholic Church may be the worlds largest practitioner of ceremonial magic, with the ritual cannibalism of the wafer and wine, or the methods of choosing a Pope.
Then there is the dark side. The Japanese Yakuza and Tong Chinese Mafia have long had blood rites. Secret societies such as Ninja clans developed many black-art techniques, the same techniques that are seen today in drug-induced interrogation, water-bording etc.
In the past, I have written about other cult-like schools. In Portland Oregon, there was a school called “Poekulean” or “A rose with thorns”. This was primarily a woman’s self-defense school, and they had candlelight rituals with knives involved. Now, this was an Indonesian-based school, and such is the nature of those arts, but it freaked a lot of women in Portland out, to the point where a critical article in a weekly paper was written.
I have also witnessed some “No touch knockouts”. I am telling you, these are very controversial, and don’t always work, but when they do, they do. There is an element of the Master-student relationship that is conducive to achieving the no touch knockout. I believe it involves hypnosis similar to that experimented with by Anton Mesmer in early European culture. I have also seen these attempts at knockouts go very bad. Hardened athletes and skeptics are more resistant, suggesting an element of Hypnosis is involved.
There is however, something that does happen. George Dillman’s Ryukyu Kempo group hooked students up to medical recording equipment and performed no touch knockouts on them. The results were startling and cautionary. Over cold drinks after a seminar I discussed this with experts Jack Hogan and Dan McCusky, both who had witnessed Dillman’s experiment. In their opinion, people went out very heavily, and were difficult to recover. They felt there was a tremendous amount of psychic energy involved. This practice can come at the physical expense of the practitioner. One of the men who was knocking people out urinated blood afterward, indicating that it had affected the prenatal Chi residing in his kidneys. Hogan and McCusky hinted that this art was possibly taken further, and commented that “There are some things that people just shouldn’t be doing”.
Most of us practice martial arts for health, self-defense and self-improvement. Just how far down the path we go, and which turns we choose are up to the individual. Through modern methods such as biofeedback and brain imaging, we are now able to see how shamanic practices of the ancients actually work. How they are used is a different story…
