Five by Five

There is in fact a very strange number of coincidences spanning the globe in the form of 5. The number five is everywhere, especially in combat arts. For instance, the WuXing cylce is the cycle of the 5 movements of energy, the movement from wood to fire to earth to metal to water and back again to wood. The repetition of one energy is very important, as you will see soon enough. There are also, 5 controls, wood breaks earth, earth absorbs water, water extinguishes fire, fire melts metal, metal cuts wood.

It is these controls that one uses to combat pressure points to effect knock outs, with proper use of fa jing, one may even be able to kill. These five energies are also represented in Kiai-Jitsu with vowels and consonants, i.e. sounds, so the 5 energies are also 5 sounds, and even five tastes, and five emotions. When one uses fa jing boosted by the proper emotional state, the proper sound, and even the proper color and shape, one may effect a range of indications by striking a single point, or several connected points.

In Chinese music, there are only 5 notes, a Pentatonic scale. The same scale exists in nearly all folk traditions the world over, leading some people to conclude that the pentatonic system is universal.

In music, a pentatonic scale is a scale with five notes per octave. Pentatonic scales are very common and are found all over the world, including but not limited to the tuning of the Ethiopian krar and the Indonesian gamelan, the melodies of African-American spirituals, Celtic folk music and the music of French composer Claude Debussy.[Wikipedia]

Of particular note should be this: "Just as there are 7 diatonic modes, there are 5 pentatonic modes: Major (C D E G A), thirdless with major sixth (C D F G A), thirdless with minor seventh (C D F G Bb), minor (C Eb F G Bb) and fifthless (C Eb F Ab Bb). They can also be named by their corresponding diatonic cousins: Ionian pentatonic, Mixolydian pentatonic, Dorian pentatonic, Aeolian pentatonic and Phrygian pentatonic. The logic here is that the Dorian scale starts on the 2nd degree of the Ionian scale, just like in the diatonic system. An example of a song based on the Dorian pentatonic scale is Scarborough Fair (Paul Simon version), which uses the 3rd and 6th notes only in passing."[Wikipedia]

This story about pipes found in Wicklow Ireland which are more than 4000 years old are a bit of a mystery, as no one is quite sure how they were made. The connection begins to get hairy when one starts dipping into the Pythagorean Scale.

Deriving the pitches in a pentatonic scale from stacked fifths leads to a Pythagorean scale of {1/1, 9/8, 81/64, 3/2, 27/16}. Deriving the pitches from the major scale leads to a just scale of either {1/1, 9/8, 5/4, 3/2, 5/3} (a 5-limit pentatonic) or {1/1, 9/8, 21/16, 3/2, 7/4} with blue notes of the flatted fourth and flatted seventh. The blues scale can be tuned {1/1, 7/6, 4/3, 7/5, 3/2, 7/4}. There is also the pentatonic scale used by the Wagogo people of Tanzania who tune their instruments thus: {1/1, 9/8, 5/4, 3/2, 7/4}. This anhemitonic scale can be thought of as a section of the harmonic series, from the 5th or 6th overtone up to the 10th, transposed to other octaves.[Wikipedia]

Around the middle of the 6th century B.C. (550's), Pythagoras developed a 7 tone scale (c,d,e,f,g,a,b) that was created by using a series of perfect 5th's, 5 tones of which were each a factor of 3/2 from each preceeding 5th, and one tone was a perfect fifth lower than the initial tone (a factor of negative 3/2, which is the same as a positive 2/3).[1][2]

But let's get back on track with this 5 stuff. The Celts had aform of writing, 5 sets of 5 characters that are, I believe, erroneuously linked to an alphabet, and to trees. The tree hugging Druids are a modern perversion of history, widely embraced by the new age. The Ogham script may actually be a form of musical notation, and this would beg the question of why they put music scores on rocks. Why indeed.

I submit that the Celts left behind no writings because they needed none, they had a successful method of oral transmission that was later adapted to the Bardic traditions, they didn't need to note things down. The Celts were obviously descended from the Aryans, and there is enough evidence to point to the Aryans taking part in an ancient advanced and antediluvian society, that like our society was advanced beyond inscribing things on rocks, which is why they too left no writings.

There is a connection between all of these societies and it is the pentatonic scale, and it is part of an understanding of the frequencies at which a thing vibrates, and it translates to an esoteric tradition that included esoteric martial arts that were spread out and devolved due to a series of post diluvian cyclic catastrophes leading to multiple attempts by various cultures to recreate the former knowledge in the martial arts, erroneusly starting with the physical to understand the energetic.

This work to rebuild the martial arts has further been polluted by the knowledge prostitution that has been taking place for more than a millenia because of pathocratic uses of martial arts as tools to gain power and money.

Anti-Trust

In today's day, people still question why we shouldn't believe historians. Anyone who has read Fulcanelli would have encountered his anecdote about a certain historian who, having theorized that the Romans were in a certain place at a certain time, snuck out and planted Roman coins around the area in question as proof. If memory serves, though it probably does not, the coins were of a more modern variety than would have existed at the time he claimed. I am not sure, but the story stuck in my mind.

In 1492 everyone in the world was sure, so sure, that the world was flat, as we understand it, in 1493 they were sure of the opposite. Scientists were so sure that it was not important for a doctor to be clean before operating on a patient, until a man came along with proof that the mortality rate of patient severly dropped when surgeons washed their hands before operating. The breakthrough was violently opposed.

The only consistent thing science has shown is that scientist are normal people who pretend that they are logical and knowledgable. Wasn't it Albert Einstein who once said that first an idea is violently opposed, then ignored, then accepted as obvious truth? Why do we put so much faith in these comical people? What have they given to us? The nuclear bomb? The television, 500 hundred channels of shit? Cellphones so every freaking teeny bopper can run around playing so stupid Digipet Game and sending SMS messages to their friends about the latest Cardcaptor episode that just aired simultaneously on channels 50-123?

Science has done alot, I mean, look at the internet, I wouldn't be able to talk to you right now without them, so what does that tell us? That sometimes it's good, and sometimes it's bad, nobody is perfect, and just because something is logical, doesn't make it right. For instance, Aristotle the great philosopher used logic to explain that women were actually men born with a birth defect, that is, lack of a penis. We now know that it's almost the contrary.

Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom are all different things, Science as a method can only give us one thing, and one thing only, that is information, we must provide the knowledge and the wisdom that comes from it.

Around the world in 80 days

There are a number of disputes as to the origins of martial arts, even so, it is simple enough to deduce that martial arts as we know them, not simply pugilism, are split into two sides, that of the mental or spiritual, and that of the physical. In truth the division is into many more parts than that, but such a breakdown would not be conducive to what I am attempting to show here, I will outlay the breakdown in a later post, but one can safely say that there is an esoteric and exoteric side to martial arts. Even when on considers just the martial art of pugilism, you again have this basic halving of esoteric and exoteric.

It seems that, considering the Aryan Celtic religion that we can safely say that the esoteric comes from the north, there are other connections that lead to this belief that will be discussed at length later, and the exoteric come mainly from the south. That is the influences that acted upon what we now know as martial arts. In that time, about 1600 years ago, the two martial arts had descended from a previous martial art that had itself been split over 12,000 years before.

When this early proto martial art was split, both the esoteric and exoteric aspects went in differing directions. One part went to Africa via South America to come up in India and meet its former half that went to the northern areas, brought their by the Celts, and then descended down to India to meet the southern half. The evidence for these movements is layed out in Secret History and other books by varying authors. Adjustments in chronologies are made via alternative materials and Dendrachronology as Carbon Dating is flawed.

The southern martial art was a mainly physical martial art with a few spiritual ideas tacked on after the split that were subjectively added by practitioners who were not aware of the meanings of the movements as is. This art was supposedly called “Kalarippayattu” and was mixed with Buddhist Philosophy that may have been influenced by certain northern beliefs. The northern martial arts that were more centered around Energy and nature were mixed with this southern branch and may have been taken to China by the Bodhidharma, founder of Chan Buddhism. This is all based on hearsay and speculation. The fundamental aspect of this entire essay is simply that the martial arts were split over 12,000 years ago, they slowly made their way into Southern Asia, and then finally around 1,600 years ago, they were fed into China. This is a tracing of the main line, smaller lines broke of and rejoined the whole throughout the course of what was in fact a Martial Art de-evolution from a Proto-Martial art that was profoundly effective to a purely physical caricature that is little more than a workout routine.

All cultures did at one point or another develop a martial art of one sort of another by themselves, and these arts mixed and mingled with the split parts of the Proto-Martial art to bring us the many varied martial arts. The mystery is not the southern style, we see clear evidence of its procession and its child martial traditions, the mystery is the dark unknown area to the north. We know that the Celts were fierce warriors, that they were martially superior at one time to even the Romans who cowered before them and were at one point made to pay tribute to the Celts as reparations for the Roman treachery in regards to the Scythians.

We know that at some point, the Celts lost their superiority while the Roman war machination had not increased in skill by much, and that eventually Julius Caesar stamped them out, even though he had a policy of religious tolerance, the “Mysterious” powers of the Celts scared him. We also know that the Celts were primarily nomadic, and yet they built massive megaliths that puzzle historians and archaeologists to this day.

Many border historians not part of the core groups claim that the Celts had some advanced knowledge of energy and astronomy that we even today do not possess.

Today, martial artists are attempting to do with physical routines that which may have previously been attained by pure mastery of energy. We are in effect witnessing the echo pretending it is the voice.

The Aryan Connection

We often judge cultures that have come before ours as “primitive”, a phenomenon that any normal and reasonable person considering the facts should find funny and ironic to say the least. For instance, we, today use massive weapons that destroy soldiers and civilians alike, shells coated with depleted uranium that slowly poison a population long after a conflict is resolved. We leave behind massive mine fields and weapons caches so that the local children can find them, or small time arms dealers can turn a profit.

We are a hypocritical culture, claiming civility and morality, sometimes even a morality backed by a God, and yet we violate the rules set down by our gods and our laws. How can murder be illegal when the state murders those who murder? How can theft be illegal when states steal from others, and often times, the entirety of land we live on was stolen from another people. In the case of America, not only did we take their land, we eradicated their people.

Who are we to judge any culture by their violent acts, if we do, as Dostoyevsky says we should, judging a society by the criminals it produces, then the 20^th century and now the 21^st, would be utterly barbaric.

The Aryans of old are judged primitive by all modern historians because of several factors, firstly, they came before us, so obviously they were less advanced than us, secondly, they did not leave any writings behind. If a culture doesn’t write they are obviously not as developed as we, who write all of the time. The Celts, Aryan descendants, are viewed similarly, and for the same reasons.

It is claimed that the Aryans were a nomadic people, tribal, and that they worshipped a storm god who enjoined war and conquest. They were undeniably good at it, as they spread out from the Steppes to leave descendants in Ireland to perhaps even Sparta and into India. The Indians said they had blue skin, we attribute this to war paint, but if you look at a very pale person, you will perceive a blue tint to the skin, different to the darker skinned peoples of the south. A black person is not black, but we called them that because they were so different. Native Americans weren’t really red, but we called them red. So it is more likely that their pale skin, and not war paint won them the blue skin moniker in the south.

Claims have been made that the Aryans called themselves that because it meant Noble or Superior, and that is how they felt in regards to the conquered. Aside from the fact that this is a poor assumption at best, it has been used for and against Aryans, the Nazis based their claim as being superior to all others on their Aryan heritage, and others have claimed that their incivility shows through because of such a claim. However; no one bothered to ask the Aryans how the name came about, and no one could, so we will try to leave assumptions as far away as possible.

We will simply make deductions based on evidence that is apparent, the Aryans were good at warfare, the Rig Veda praises Indra the god of conquest who smashes cities and slays enemies, we of course assume that gods fictitious creations, never realizing that nothing can wholly be created from nothing. Could it be that when the Aryans layed siege to a city, they really “smashed” it? We assume that the “primitive” Aryans could not have had anything beyond spears and primitive siege engines, because if they had something more powerful, we would know about it. Or would we?

Regardless of the particular details of how they accomplished their conquests, they were a powerful warlike group of people, which means that they would have brought with them various arts of war. Their godlike status and the mythic tales of their entry into India may have been “standard” religious caricaturing, or perhaps it was based on some facts, perhaps they were really able to do things that appeared to the local peoples as magical.

The Weirding Way

I first encountered the term Weirding Way in regards to the martial art of the Bene Gesserit of the Dune Saga. The name has a special interest because when the roots of the words are traced back, Weirding way literally means "path to control fate", which was in effect what the BG were really trying to do with their breeding programs. Part of this martial art, which was the basis for the Jedi powers in Star Wars, was the Voice (Jedi Mind trick anyone?) and the use of sound to kill, as well as being able to speed up your movements and control every muscle in your body. The Bene Gesserit were said to be able to bend the tip of their small toe without moving a single other muscle.

This of course is all pretty fiction, but most people wouldn't bother to make a connection between a fictional idea and reality, I am not among them, I personally do not believe in fiction, or more exactly I do not believe in non-fiction. Classifications like fiction and non fiction are misleading, as there are many writers who write non fiction who are wrong, either by accident or intentionally, and again many writers who disguise truth in fiction to avoid attack. Political satire is fiction, and often dismissed as such, but we relate to it and laugh at it because it is true, often painfully so.

In the movie V for Vendetta, V says that fiction can be used to tell the truth and that truth can be used to tell a lie. What is the matter if one person sees truth in fiction, and it leads to discovery? Is the discovery lessened by the fact that the catalyst of the discovery was fiction?

How many great scientific discoveries are based on dreams? Are dreams not a form of subconscious fiction? And if we are inspired by our dreams to discover or create, are our creations lessened? I think not, in fact, the truest form of inspiration is fiction, truth is not a matter of perspective, but it is unfortunately always subject to interpretation, fiction can allow us to interpret terrifying truths and maintain our sanity. For instance, was the Matrix not the exploration of man trapped within a very real illusion as he is fed off of by machines? Dispite this link to a number of ancient esoteric traditions, the fiction permitted us to analyze how we view reality and objectivity, how we feel about destiny and freewill, and all in an intertaining way, for most people, it is painful to consider these things because they cannot yet understand them.

So fiction is a good thing, but an equally bad thing today, because we all too easily dismiss fiction as something completely outside the real, it is a two edged sword, it allows us to communicate deeply with people, but it allows them to reject any truth it brings on the basis of its nature.

As a fan of Sherlock Holmes, I was turned on at an early age to the processes of deduction, which despite the fact that the stories of John Watson are fiction, they do teach an applicable process of detective work, or reason and deduction, and also that inorder to properly use these tools, we must gain deep and specific knowledge about what we wish to deduce from and reason about.

Now, I have no intention of becoming a consulting detective of any kind, though I have spent some time studying varying degrees of criminology out of love for this singular character, Sherlock Holmes, but mine is but a passing fancy in the world of criminology, I learn only those things that apply to my field of expertise, the Martial Arts.

I have spent the better part of my life trying to find an actual martial arts teacher, or martial artist. If we investigate the word Martial we find that it stems from Mars the god of war, Martial means of Mars, or like Mars. So an art that is of Mars is one that pertains to the execution of war. May I ask you briefly how many wars have been fought entirely through pugilism? How many wars have hinged on the aptitude of its soldiers in the arena of fisticuffs?

How many kicks landed does it take to win a war? Surely wars have been won or lost due to several individual non leathal Judo matches? No? Well, if the execution of war has nothing to do with Punching and Kicking, or at the least, the whole of the War does not singularly include fisticuffs, Kicking, and Judo matches, then why are they called Martial Arts?

Some might argue that they were Martial Arts hundreds of years ago when battles were faught like that.

That is simply, and utterly not so. In fact, battles of any sort have NEVER been settled, won, or lost, based on the soldier's aptitude for punching someone in the face repeatedly. It is admittedly a desirable skill to have in case one needs it, but with hundreds of archers shooting volleys of arrows at you, men on horses with spears chasing you down, dogs, traps, and armored knights bashing at you with swords that weigh more than Rebecca Stamos, your performance abilities in Kata, your knowledge of pressure points, and your stretch armstrong kicks will do exactly dick squat in a real battle.

The bow and arrow was invented more that 50,000 years ago, the spear before that. In 50,000 years, a war has hinged on the soldiers abilities in the areas of arms, strategy, and their control of personal fear, not on how well they can punch.

In China, Kung Fu and the other arts are not called Martial Arts, they are called Boxing. Now, with all due respect, as a skill, Boxing can help to save your life if you no longer have a weapon, and unarmed combat is an intergral part of military training, but it is not the most important part, and is certainly not the only part.

Judo and Karate are valid, in theory, forms of non-lethal civillian self defense. Though as they are taught today they are ridiculous shadows of their former selves. I have studied Karate, it is, as it is taught in the west, the dieing revenge of the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The masters of Japan weren't idiots, they could see that any country capable of such an act was without merit, but to refuse to teach them would elicit their anger, and they would spy and find out secrets anyway. Why not just teach them a dance routine, tell them it's all a bunch of punches and blocks, and let them think they have the secret knowledge, and then they will leave us all alone.

Yes, I understand that this is a historical simplification as to what really happened, and yes I freely admit to being slanted and biased. A writer who claims to be unbiased is lieing, always. Everyone has an agenda, sometimes it is a good and beneficial agenda, and sometimes not, but bias is what we all have, lots and lots of bias.

The common misconception today is that martial arts as we define them now are exclusive to Asia, infact the answers.com version of martial arts specifically states that they are a number of asian arts. Now of course we all know that there are brazilian martial arts like Capoiera, and Russian martial arts like Systema, but few people realize that the Scottish and Irish and other European[1][2]peoples have martial arts that have survived in the form of folk dances while holding weapons, that the Canary Islands have a martial art called Juego Del Palo, a form of Jodo, the Spartans of Greece had a various intense martial arts, in fact we get the word Gymnasium from the Spartan practice called Gymnopaedia. [See Also: Fencing]

On top of this, all of these martial arts are suspiciously similar. For instance, the Irish and Scottish martial arts are dances with weapons intended to teach them how they are used, they also fought and practiced naked, painted themselves blue, the Spartans on the otherside of europe did the same, performing nude dance aerobics and fighting covered in oil. In the east we have Taiji, often practiced and performed to music, and in the west Capoeira which has the most fundamental integration of music and dance.

It is also suspiciously odd that all of these areas have similar techniques, one can regard training texts for Knights in medieval europe and see similar techniques found in all martial arts, from Silat and Kungfu to Ju-Jutsu etc.

The other interesting point is the use of Drums and music composed in the Pentatonic scale, Celtic and Chinese music was Pentatonic, a study of the Lascaux[1][2] caves indicates they were used in shamanic rituals with drums identical to Siberian shamanic practices, which may indicate a link to south american shamanism and Capoeira, although a tentative one. Remember deductive reasoning, if we can safely draw a connection between drums and music and dance, and then dance to martial arts, then we can safely assume that where ever else we find identical evidence we can draw a similar conclusion. In South America we have a strong shamanic influence, we have rituals based on the ingestion of psychedlics and ritual dances, then we have a martial art centered around a muscians who is the leader playing for the warriors (followers). Therefore we can infer that there may be a connection between south american shamanism and Capoiera, just as we can infer that there is a connection between european martial arts and european/eurasian shamanic practices.

Therefore; if we have two separate occurrences that share significant clues and each lead to similar conclusions, then we can infer, tentatively, that perhaps they shar clues because they are in fact connected.

In fact, all we have are tentative connections that indicate many things but prove nothing, in fact, it almost seems contrived how splintered the martial arts is today.

Those of you familiar with the study of ponerology will understand immediately how martial arts federations are not in any way immune to pathocracy, in fact, due to the violent nature of what is studied, they are drawn to it. However, lacking as pathocrats do in any creativity, we see alot of stagnation to the point of entropy in martial arts. I can count on my hands the number of martial arts masters and grand masters who are innovators in their fields and still have fingers left over.

Another serious problem that crops up is that of the internal martial arts which have for the most part been entirely co-opted by pathocratic newagers, others simply copy movements and attach a faux taoist philosophy on top in order to sell it to new age savy pseudo bohemian coffee shop rejects. Such hamfisted philosophy transplantation is tantamount to putting a Big Mac in a Whopper wrapper.

In another vein, we can trace certain esoteric traditions emerging from the Caucases region and spreading out into China and India, as well as into the northern regions, and across the ocean to the west. At the same time we see a similar effect in martial arts, although we cannot pinpoint just where it all started, we see a similar explosion pattern. We could surmise that along with esoteric practices, a certain martial way, a grouping of movements, exercises, and strategies originated in the same area and spread out influencing the world. We can also suspect that this martial art is far older than the age we believe for the ancestors of our contemporary martial arts, in fact, it may be so old, it is antediluvian.

This martial art, if it exists, would be the mother to all current martial arts, and it may very well be, if it is so closely tied as I suspect it is to Shamanic and Esoteric traditions, a Weirding Way.