For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by the martial, meditative, and magical arts. As a child, I re-watched Bruce Lee and Shaw Brothers films endlessly, then searched out every book I could find that even vaguely hinted at hidden or mystical training. Dim Mak, Kuji Kiri, astral projection, internal power, meditation, esoteric Buddhism — if it suggested there was something deeper behind ordinary human capacity, I wanted to know about it. I probably spent far too many hours annoying the staff in local bookshops, hunting for anything that pointed toward those mysteries.
Some readers may wonder why a series on martial arts belongs on Perseus Arcane Academy. The answer is simple: the martial and magical paths are much closer than they may first appear. Both demand body training (yes some may disagree), attention, discipline, will development, breath, posture, energy work, endurance, and the capacity to face fear rather than fantasise about transformation. Many serious magicians have also been martial artists, and many martial traditions contain meditative, energetic, and spiritual dimensions that overlap naturally with magical training.
So, as the first official post in the Martial Odyssey series (though we have some other posts that fit this category), I thought it would be useful to share part of my own journey as we now have hundreds of posts with me asking others about their journey. My magical path has already been discussed elsewhere, especially in my conversations on The Bard Inn with Phil Rice. This post focuses instead on the martial side of the journey: the teachers, mistakes, training halls, internal work, hard lessons, and strange turns that shaped my understanding of what practice really means.
Early Years
My training began officially after many years of buying books and magazines (Combat, Martial Arts illustrated and Inside Kung Fu) with an amazing teacher just 15 mins drive from my family home at the time. I was 12 or 13 and found a teacher of Tai Chi Chuan, Xing Yi Quan and Baguag Zhang in a little village. He had a beautiful garden with a courtyard where we trained early morning on the weekend. I loved it as it felt like a real movie scene freezing in the snow, doing 2-3 hours of energy work, tendon work and holding postures for what seemed like eternity. It was everything I needed, he quickly got me doing Xingyi instead of the Tai Chi as it suited me more, at that age I wanted the fight material not the longevity material. I learned about his teachers who had all studied extensively in China, he also taught some Yiquan concepts as well, which is another system that he trained extensively in. Now if I had stuck with this teacher, I would probably have achieved a lot of the things I wanted to achieve much quicker, but being a teenager, I thought I knew better which took me away from this teacher towards Southern Mantis.
Southern Mantis
While training the Xingyi Quan with my first teacher I was getting itchy feet. We were at different stages of our journey, he was experienced, having adventures, multiple teachers and a mastery over his arts. While I was a teenager seeking a way to overcome fear, seeking to prove myself while still seeking the mysteries.
Now I look back and think gosh I wasted that opportunity, I should have just gone to boxing and wrestling for a year or two to get it out of my system. Instead I actually chose to leave the internal arts and seek my answers in the southern Chinese arts. Namely Chow Gar Tong Long and Hung Gar, these arts were combined into what was called ‘Steelwire Mantis’.
At the time I first visited this school they were based in Mile End, East London under an old railway arch. This was the stuff of Shaw Brothers! It was dark, intimidating and had a unique aroma, half stale sweat and half the wonderful smell of DitDar Oil, (Fall Hit Medicine). It felt like you were entering an episode of Kung Fu with David Carradine. So it was perfect!
My parents drove me up the first Sunday to train as we lived about 1.5 hours north of London at the time. So what I discovered in the first class was how weak I was! My first class and I am going from sketchy memory here but I believe it was my first, I was given over to the legend, Sifu Tony Clements. He had me warming up with the Swinging punches that swelled your hands up, doing sets of mantis press ups all to his count. Then it was stance work, then it was grinding arms, before I knew it class came to a close and I was eager to learn more and more, I walked out on unsteady legs. I trained and perfected everything taught to me on weekends during the week. Class time should never be wasted by doing something I should have done on my own.
The Temple School in this time was a very well known, famous and infamous school. Sifu Tony Leung the teacher had a monthly column in Combat magazine, which at the time was one of the top martial arts magazines in the UK. He used the position to voice some quite vocal opinions about Kung Fu, which led to lots of challenge matches occuring or at least threatening to.
It made this quite an exciting part of my life that I looked forward to. A year after I joined Mile End, we made the move to Angel, Islington. This was another exciting time as after some school politics a position as receptionist opened up, I jumped at it. I began living, working and training at the school. It was really my first job and I was rubbish at lots of basic things. But with the help of some friends I slowly learned what I did not know and was taught HK style cooking, as I prepared the evening meal for students after training. Looking back I have no idea how I did that as cooking for 6-7 people after training was a real stress! I always saved my friend John the big bits of Chicken as a thank you for all his help. Days were filled with training, mugs of tea at the chapel street market and kebabs on Saturday night on Angel high street.
To train in such a place was amazing as there was a huge buddha in one corner of the school, racks of weapons, and best of all wooden dummies with mechanised arms. Sadly the arms did not last for long as people were practising their arm breaks… but amazing to have them working at first.
I met many characters back in those days and got to hang around the seniors who were all light years ahead of me in literally everything. This was great for knowing hard training, taking a hit, replacing any kind of deodorant with the aroma of DitDar and bruises.
After a year or so I met another practitioner from Hong Kong. This individual mentioned we were missing some important pieces of the puzzle. At least from the Chow Gar perspective, as it is filled with internal training and important details that make or break your benefit from the exercises. So I and some others got curious, then some more internal drama began where it seemed like there were some significant differences between our understanding and the training in Hong Kong. He was showing neck training and all sorts of exotic neigong we only hear about before but never got to train. A lot went on at that time that I shall keep private but in the end…
Short story – I left and started with the new teacher as did a number of others. Though I do want to say my time at the temple school despite how it ended was a time of excitement and living the dream. If you love Kung Fu, to be able to do it everyday is hard to beat.
This new training, it was a closed group training in a little flat in Colindale north london. It was an interesting dynamic with all the different characters and it was a good experience to learn not to be influenced by group dynamics. In the early days it was exciting and we felt like finally this is it. We got the real deal. We were learning the interpretation of Chow Gar Mantis from the Man Sek WIng branch, based in Shatin, Hong Kong. Our plan was to eventually all travel to see our Sigung in Shatin, and pay our respects to the main school in Mongkok.
The training was a lot slower and steady, I gained some deeper strength and power and lost some athletic ability. Certainly the emphasis on internal was there much more than the Steelwire mantis which seemed to have a different idea of internal training, a very hard style.Then very quickly the summer of 1997 arrived and our plan to go to Hong Kong arrived.
This was an amazing trip, I was going with very little money, thankfully a fellow student had a friend in Wanchai so we all slept on his floor. You can imagine how this was if you are familiar with the size of properties in HK.
Our daily commute to training was a bit more involved back then in 1997! Instead of being able to get the MTR to Shatin we had to get the bus which was quite a journey. At that time Shatin was a small little village in the countryside not the developed place it is today. What we went through with Sigung during that trip was like a movie ( I know I keep using that idea but it is true). He completely corrected all of our basics and forms then went on to the gold, the neigung of Chow Gar Mantis or as we were told at the time the gengs.This was special training where you put your body in a position for the soft tissue/fascia to activate and train. Signs of this training are where hollows of the body are filled, testicles can be pulled into the body, neck strength and rib power. There is a lot of exaggeration when it comes to this training and I am sure I did not get it all as there is always another master with the ‘real secrets’ claiming what you have is second rate. But at that time I was very pleased, really felt like we were making progress. Plus Sigung was as genuine a teacher as you could ever wish for. A truly good man, though he spoke no English and I spoke barely any Cantonese, his warmth and true wish to help us came through fluently.
One thing I noticed while training in the Shatin class was that I was so weak due to not playing the game properly, I was not using my body properly. So embarrassingly one of the kids, a 14 year old, was stronger than me in ALL of the exercises. I was not connecting my elbow to my waist, nor using my back or at least not doing it as well as this group. So some of the students enjoyed just holding me out using back power… I think there was a feeling of not letting us get it so easily, despite hopping on a plane and training for years. This kind of thing hit me harder back then, though, nowadays I am used to it and it is the nature of joining a new group and disturbing the pecking order.
Thankfully I think Sigung saw this and made sure that I and the other students that travelled over from London got enough to work on for the next year or so.
While in HK we were fortunate to be introduced to lots of other Kung Fu groups and individuals, for example at one evening in the park restaurant in Wanchai who should I be sitting next to while he tells me why my body is a terrible fit for Hung Gar…
If you know your movies then you know who this is! That was a real highlight of the trip for me, he sat there eating pigeon, he then discussed how training methods fit different body shapes differently. He was focusing on Hung Gar and wanted me to see how southern mantis suited me. Though I love Hung Gar and missed it from my time in the Steelwire Mantis all his points made sense.
This trip to HK really made me fall in love with the place. I have been back I think 5-6 times since then and love it each and every time. Though unfortunately my other visits have not been Kung Fu focused, I always keep my eyes open in the parks to see if I can spot any training.
After HK we went back to normal training in London. This was great and we soon moved to an actual school hall as more and more students were coming. Good times, great training, CNY dinners and wonderful conversations were had. Though after a few years I started to seek more.
Internals & Silat
It was time to return to what has originally inspired me so much…Xingyi Quan. I wanted to really finish the system and understand its methods. As at that time I knew the fists, I knew some basic neigung, but nothing seemed super powerful, at least not by mantis standards. So it dd not match up with the legendary stories of Sun Lu Tang
So I discovered a few teachers, went to train with them, some in London, some in the north of the UK. All of them made it seem like a huge marathon, longer than it takes to be a medical doctor for them to impart these skills. So I continued to search and then I found Alex Kozma and his book Esoteric Warriors (if you find the book do not buy it, go directly to Alex’s site and get something from him – better for him and better for you).
I began travelling down to Alex’s little courtyard down in west london, this had a lovely feel to it, nice friendly students, very different to other places I had been. Alex would teach Bagua, Xingyi and Tai Chi to a handful of us on the weekdays and then on the weekend a bigger class usually in the beautiful Holland Park. I loved this period of time as driving down on a sunday morning, training for two-three hours and driving back via hertfordshire sometime was a real treat. I devoured everything Alex put out, one of my favourites sadly not available any more ‘Beyond the Mysterious Gate’. This was a combination of Alex’s experiences and featured his adventures on Emei Shan very prominently and Ziranmen. Remember this fact as it is important for later.
As you can see from the video, training in Holland park was wonderful, it was also an opportunity to hear further stories from Alex about his training and adventures in Asia. I often say I think Alex must have inspired thousands of us over the years to pack a bag and go on an adventure!
Anyway, one day after training Alex invited me to a special event over at the Silat school of Steve Benitez. I had already heard about the get together and planned on attending. This was going to be the first time Guru Ma, the mystical teacher of Steven Benitez and Johnny Silman did a public event in the UK (I think, I could be wrong).
This was quite a big event as Guru Ma was always mentioned in the interviews that Alex Kozma did with Steve Benitez. She has quite a life story and the meeting of Steve and Johnny was also a bit of an interesting story (you see more on Johnnys WAI Silat Channel). The short version is that after doing a Rice fast in London seeking a new teacher, Steve was ‘led’ to Holland. He got over to Holland, jumped on the train and got off at a seemingly random station where he entered an Indonesian restaurant. There he was given a flyer for none other than Guru Ma. Whether it is true, false or a bit of a mix who knows I learned over the years to take everything with several kilograms of salt no matter how sincere the individual may be.
So yes, meeting Guru Ma was very fortunate (we later went to her school in Holland) and that evening she spoke a lot about group fighting and was advising the girls training how to move together to defend themselves as a group fighting multiple attackers.
This focus on multiple attackers, spacial awareness, footwork etc was a major theme throughout my Silat training.
Not long after this event Alex announced that he was returning to Asia for more adventures and training. I was a bit disappointed as I thought I would be able to go through the Xingyi and Bagua with Alex as I really liked his practical but very deep method.
So now I was in need of a new teacher, after some thinking and discussions about what I was after. I began training the Silat, at that time it was known as Wally Songo Silat named after a saintly council of nine.
The Silat was full of tough training, especially the ground training. I really enjoyed this when it was down at a local community centre. It was really intense and had a great feeling of community, I actually learned how to survive on the ground here after getting choked out ALOT.
Roughly a year or so later after training as much of the Silat and attending the Essenic Sunday teachings, this was the spiritual side of things. I heard we were moving into a center in Hendon Central, so close to where I used to train mantis in Colindale. After opening there was going to be a 40 Day practice (Rexa), something that Steve and Johnny had done with their teachers. This was a time of teaching, training, challenges and overcoming fears. So hearing about this I thought it is absolutely something I wanted to do and already knew that I would probably hate every second of it. Like most things that cause change the process is not usually pleasant.
So for 40 days we would meet at the new studio at the very latest for 10pm. Though many of us would have already trained in the evening class. The night time training would go from 10pm until 2 or 3 am …for 40 nights! To make it more challenging I actually lived 1.5 hours away at this time. So I either drove back after or slept in my car or the studio.
Lots happened but some of the highlights, one of our first tests was sitting for THREE HOURS in a horse stance (In Silat a Kuda Kuda). Not a high stance either at least medium depth…if you quit you were out of the 40 days. I have never seen so much sweat, no grappling class, no sparring class ever had more sweat than that 3 hour challenge. Another aspect we were introduced to which I am sure will raise a few eyebrows was something called Rexa Diri.
It was a practice of postures and some prayer or mantra which when combined gave what is supposed to be a divine protection. We learned a rare branch of this system given to Steve by one of his teachers in a 40 day practice he did in Indonesia. According to stories it works, according to Steve it works and he has used it, though I have never used it or seen it used. Part of the deal in receiving this was that you had to practise/charge the method twice per week between 11pm and the early hours.
So the completion of these 40 days was pretty epic, it was also the time I met my wife. So happy days. Just a month or so later I had a pre-booked adventure – Emei Shan, the mysterious mountain full of hermits and secret knowledge. See below to see this adventure.
I stayed at the school for several years, completing several 40 day practices during my time there, moving to London and sharing a house with the inner circle while Steve and family lived in a flat above us and also eventually becoming the general manager prior to leaving in summer of 2008. So I really took this time (5-6 years) seriously, learning a lot about myself, groups and most of all knowing I was sick of living in London and wanted to get away. Alex Kozma recommended Taiwan to me in July, in August we sold everything and arrived in Taiwan in September.
Emei Shan
I discovered this while working at the bank, my boring office job. Most days we had a quota to complete, usually, I completed mine in the morning so I spent the afternoon reading about mystical teachers, martial arts and all sorts of amazing articles. I would send them to my work outlook account and read away. I was still completing more work than some of my colleagues so please don’t judge me too harshly. So one day I found the adventures of a man called Linhai, wow everything I had wanted to do he had been there and done it.
Here is a snippet of the original text I saved from many years ago that made me know that I wanted to go to Emei Shan with Linhai as I knew Alex would not be around to do it again, so Linhai would be the perfect guide as at that time my mandarin ability was nonexistent:
Emei Mountain is the sacred abode of Samantabhadra and the store house for the Avtamsaka Sutra. As it says in the Avatamsaka Sutra all Bodhisattvas who wish to accomplish the ultimate state of Buddhahood must do so by completing the teachings of Samantabhadra. That’s why Samantabhadra is called the king of the Bodhisatvas and is the source of all the different shools be it Pure Land, Zen and Vajrayana. Today the most senior master on Emei Mountain is the 102 year old Abbot Grand Master Tongyong. He has spent ninty years on Emei Mountain keeping the lamp of dharma burning for the new generations of dharma masters. His disciple Master Zhaokong is the abbot of the Baoguo Temple where hundred of monks uphold the pureland and pilgrims from all lineages, traditions and religions come to bask. The famous Terton Khenpo Jigme Puntsog also has a very large monastery growing where the Emperor Kangxi, who was an emination of the Buddha Manjushri, stayed in retreat. The Chinese government just spent three hundred and fifty million dollars rebuilding the Hua Zang Temple of the Golden Summit where our system comes from and it includes the world’s largest golden statue which is twenty stories tall. There are many miracles that have occured on this holy mountain since ancient times and even with our own groups. Ah, the magic and mystery of this fascinating land can only by Buddhas be told. May you achieve the realization of the sublime dharma and enjoy the Emei Pureland, Amituofo!!!
So, from that you can see what an amazing place it is, add to this what I had heard from Alex Kozma about the place. He had met many hermits hidden away off the main trails. It was and I would say arguably still is a place of magic and mystery.
The trip itself was wonderful, I was fresh from my Silat training and had recently completed the 40 day practice so having some time away was very much needed. A change of scene outside of London. It is also the first time I met someone who has since turned into one of the most well known magicians in the Franz Bardon tradition – Bob from Sixty Skills. I know he will be sharing more about the system in the coming years so I shall say no more and let him provide the details, as he has way more experience with the system having returned to train the system again with Linhai in subsequent years.
Asia
Now let us get back to the story, in September 2008 we arrived in Taiwan. My mission was to find an internal teacher to complete the Xingyi and Bagua training, I tried all the names and discovered a little of the politics of training in Taiwan. One teacher saying ‘that group copy us’ and that group thinking they are being copied. I did find some gold thought thanks mainly to Alex already discovering it.
Firstly Master He of Yin style Bagua Quan. What an amazing individual, this is real Kung Fu, real body training. Honestly if I was 18 again, I would probably train with Master He, I highly recommend you read Alex’s interviews with Master He. It is one of the very few systems with genuine inner training, not all about feeling and energy but genuine training of the connective tissue, knowledge and training of how these lines of force connect to the organs, how to train the dantien (not the BS modern version either the real training of building it). This is knowledge going all the way back to the founder of Bagua, inclusive of Qing Gong – Light Skill.
I cannot say I am a student of Master He, though I did attend many classes which were 4 hours long on Sundays and learned more in each class than I have in months or years with other teachers. I also revisited in subsequent years taking friends to see him as an example of a real teacher of internal arts. But at that time I still wanted the combat side and this is not something covered with Master he, I respect this as he is honest that he is not a fighter, nor am I but being from the UK, and at that time wanting Kung Fu to be part of my future, one has to be ready to back up their Kung Fu, so I continued my search. I will leave you with the video below which is an interview by Alex with Master He.
Some of the wonderful moments of being in Asia, is the fact that in literally every park you will find someone who does some training.
So I would often just sit out in the parks and find people, one of these occasions led to a regular unofficial teacher. I used to meet him early morning at CKS Memorial park, I would bring him some tea and he would teach me his approach to the five fists of Xing Yi Quan and Nei Gung. I later found out he was also a known Chen style teacher. I liked him as he was no nonsense but still very happy to help me as long as I trained hard. In this pic I believe he is early 80’s! He would often ask me to hit him to show off his neigong. What a lovely teacher and memory.
Finally I found my teacher
So this is something I have never shared too much for various reasons and still feel a little uncomfortable writing about. I also did not want to be someone who was seeking status off the backs of others (I am very much at the lower end of skills when it comes to his students) . As the person who I found to be the teacher I needed, not the one I wanted, was someone whose skills and legacy are off the charts, someone who has done more for more people than many including those people will ever know.
I always used to hear people talking about the presence of this master or that master and then when I went to meet that master, I was often very disappointed as they were nothing like was described. Often the measurement of ability is often greatly overestimated in internal martial arts circles as in general there is never any real pressure or reality. Face is often put first, protect the lineage, protect the tradition, never putting it in a position to look bad.
So in short I was used to teachers sounding like a superhero but actually when I met them I realised they would not do too well against a 3 month boxer and would struggle with their fitness in basic activities. Sad but true. This is mostly directed at the internal guys, the externals and the Chinese wrestlers were always impressive.
But with this teacher there were many stories, and to be honest upon working with him, they were all true. This teacher had nicknames within the Police, the man with the black eyes among others. I heard that from him in one of the last times I saw him in his apartment in Taipei. He is one of only a handful of people I would call a master level teacher. He taught me about vital, astral and mental expressions of energy before I had ever grasped them in Hermetics.
I say that as he was so far ahead on everything from mental clarity, mysterious happenings, ability to deal with violence, ability to find success in the most challenging of circumstances. He was also a man who was not afraid to make huge scary decisions that completely uprooted his life.
His youth was also wild attending college in the US having Carl Sagan as a teacher and inspirer, he was a superstar musician and generally good at anything he put his attention to.
Our time together was challenging, it was the hardest thing mentally I had ever done and probably to this day still is. All of our training had to be logged and at the end of the level we had to present our log. Training was all about propagation, attrition, set percentages to guide our standards. A clear process for repeatable results.
Sadly, he has now passed on. But he left behind something rare: a body of work that quietly shaped far more people than most will ever realise. His influence was not always public, and it was not the kind of legacy that needs advertising. It moved through training, through institutions, through students, and through methods that continued to be used long after people forgot where they came from.
For me, his importance was more personal. He changed the way I understood training, standards, pressure, and results. He was one of the few people I met whose reputation did not collapse under direct experience.
He did not force himself into your life or offer unwanted advice. He was simply a clear example of what happens when discipline is prioritised over performance, image, or status. The closer I got, the more I realised how much there was behind the stories I heard about him.
Why Share My Journey?
Perseus has now spoken with hundreds of practitioners, including serious students, long-term practitioners, and teachers in their own right. In these conversations, we often ask people to speak honestly about the paths, teachers, mistakes, disciplines, and turning points that shaped them.
So it seems only fair to share something of my own process as well.
Much of how I found Hermetics has already been discussed in my conversations with Phil Rice on The Bard Inn, so this post focuses on another major thread of my life: the martial journey. This is the beginning of what I am calling Martial Odyssey — a look at the training, teachers, hard lessons, strange encounters, and long detours that shaped my understanding of practice.
The point is not nostalgia, though it is nice to look back. It is to show how training changes a person when it is taken seriously, and how the martial, meditative, and magical paths often meet in the same place: the body, the will, the breath, the discipline, and the willingness to keep going…until.