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Budo: Teachings of the Founder of Aikido

Budo: Teachings of the Founder of Aikido (New)

by Ueshiba, Morihei

Publisher: Kodansha International

Binding: Paperback

Book ID: 9784770020703, 4770020708

$17.00

Usually available in 3-5 days

Description

Morihei Ueshiba is rightly known as one of the world's greatest martial artists for his creation of aikido, the synthesis of his superb technique and his profound spiritual insight into the nature of the universe. Aikido is much more than just another fighting style, it is a holistic approach to life that Morihei described as "a divine path inspired by the gods that leads to truth, goodness, and beauty." Sadly, Morihei left few writings to explain his martial arts philosophy, preferring to teach his disciples by direct example. Aikido students will be familiar with photographs and film footage of Morihei as an old man, effortlessly defeating his much younger opponents, but very little has been published about Morihei's prewar years, when he was perfecting aiki-budo, as aikido was then known.

In 1938 Morihei wrote Budo (Martial Way) as an instruction manual and a statement of the aims and spirit of his martial arts philosophy. Budo, however, was never made available to the general public, and it even contains the injunction that "these techniques ... should not be disclosed indiscriminately to the public." Now with the worldwide popularity of aikido rivaling that of judo and karate-do, the Aikikai Foundation and the Ueshiba family have decided that it is time for this historic treatise of the martial arts to be translated into English, and made available to general readers and students of aikido all over the world.

Reproduced faithfully from the original, this seminal work contains one of the founder's few personal statements of his basic principles, expressed both in prose and mystical poetry. The text is accompanied by photographs of Morihei illustrating the aikido techniques he describes. This martial arts classic is preceded by an introductory biographical essay on Morihei by his son Kisshomaru Ueshiba, the present chairman of the Aikikai Foundation. This enlightening work recounts the founder's early life, his inspirational 'encounter with the religious mystic Onisaburo Deguchi, and the spiritual revelations that led him to develop the art of aikido. The volume concludes with a series of action photographs of the founder demonstrating aikido techniques, taken at a private dojo in Tokyo in 1936. This section also includes selected photographs of Morihei in action in 1951. The more than 400 historic photographs shown here provide an unequalled opportunity to observe the lifelong devotion to aikido and the continuity of performance that characterized Morihei's approach to his art.

The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness
Watts, Alan W
New World Library

In describing the effects of mescaline, Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception literally opened a door. Watts walked through it with this classic account of the levels of insight consciousness-changing drugs can facilitate "when accompanied with sustained philosophical reflection by a person who is in search, not of kicks, but of understanding." Watts and peers including foreword authors Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (then Harvard professors) anticipated physicists recognizing the individuals "inseparability from the rest of the world," the work of New Age thinkers who combine scientific findings and spiritual experiences, and federally funded clinical trials utilizing psilocybin to treat a variety of conditions. More than an artifact, The Joyous Cosmology is both a riveting memoir of Watts’ personal experiments and a profound meditation on our perennial questions about the nature of existence and the existence of the sacred.

Includes Watts's article "Psychedelics and Religious Experience"

Price: $14.00

Make Magic of Your Life: Passion, Purpose, and the Power of Desire Make Magic of Your Life: Passion, Purpose, and the Power of Desire
Coyle, T Thorn
Red Wheel/Weiser

"Working magic means showing up with your demons and your divinity, your sorrow and your joy. Alchemy only happens when we are willing to go through the processes of gathering together, refining, pouring, and solidifying. In the end, we have something fine to hold."

For pagans or anyone with magickal leanings everywhere, internationally known pagan and mystic T. Thorn Coyle offers a unique path to make everything in one's life alive with magic in Make Magic of Your Life.

Coyle shows how to achieve harmony and balance, and find your true purpose by activating the magical Qabalistic formula known as The Four Powers of the Sphinx: to know, to will, to dare, and to keep silent.

Coyle shows readers how to draw on the four powers of the sphinx to discover their "soul's possibility," their life's work, that which they most long to do.

In Make Magic of Your Life, Coyle explains how our deepest failings are often the very things that fuel our life's work, keep us human and whole, and even make us act as though -- like Prometheus -- we can steal fire from the Gods.

Price: $18.95

Cave and Cosmos: Shamanic Encounters with Another Reality Cave and Cosmos: Shamanic Encounters with Another Reality
Harner, Michael
North Atlantic Books

In 1980, Michael Harner blazed the trail for the worldwide revival of shamanism with his seminal classic The Way of the Shaman. In this long-awaited sequel, he provides new evidence of the reality of heavens.

Drawing from a lifetime of personal shamanic experiences and more than 2,500 reports of Westerners' experiences during shamanic ascension, Harner highlights the striking similarities between their discoveries, indicating that the heavens and spirits they've encountered do indeed exist. He also provides instructions on his innovative core-shamanism techniques, so that readers too can ascend to heavenly realms, seek spirit teachers, and return later at will for additional healing and advice.

Written by the leading authority on shamanism, Cave and Cosmos is a must-read not only for those interested in shamanism, but also for those interested in spirituality, comparative religion, near-death experiences, healing, consciousness, anthropology, and the nature of reality.

Price: $19.95

Arcanum Bestiarum: Of The Subtil And Occult Virtues Of Divers Beasts Arcanum Bestiarum: Of The Subtil And Occult Virtues Of Divers Beasts
Fitzgerald, Robert
Three Hands Press

Written in the great tradition of the medieval bestiaries, Robert Fitzgerald's long-awaited new work Arcanum Bestiarum re-imagines the animal menagerie in the context of bestial mystery and atavistic power. Written for the modern magical practitioner and zoophile, the 272-page volume examines the occult virtues and totemic majesties of fifty animals, theriomorphs, and their kindred. Correspondences with deific powers, atavistic wisdom, and mythopoetic emanation are examined, especially in light of the tutelary powers all animals possess.

The Tetramorph -- essentially an animalic ‘crown of creation’ -- is here transformed into the far broader and innovative concept of the ‘Theriomorph’, or, the Zodiak Entire of Creation as an apotheosis of the animal form and zoötype… One of the greatest of virtues possessed by the Human is its bestial heritage, both spiritually and genetically. These attributes are often seen as primitive, chaotic and dangerous to civilized culture by the custodians of moralism and religion today, but the fact remains that it is our animal heritage that makes us what we are, or, more accurately, what we should and can be.

Special attention is given to the zoomorphic aspects of alchemy, which historically used the bestial emblemata as veils of the stages of the Great Work, as well as shamanism and witchcraft, bodies of knowledge particularly rich in the lore of animals as spirit-helpers. The work is an emergent strand of magical investigation long part of the author’s private life, where he has worked in the ecological field of wildlife rehabilitation, especially raptors.

The text is graced with fifty-five original woodcut illustrations by artist Liv Rainey-Smith, prepared especially for this title in close collaboration with the author. Amongst the more ambitious renderings in the work are the occult cryptofauna Homunculus, Manticore, Ouroboros, and Basilisk, as well as animals prominent in the ancient dawn of magick: the Bear, Goat, Viper, Peacock, and more. Completing the design elements is an original typeface designed for the work by calligrapher Gail Coppock, serving to illuminate this grimoire of the Magician’s Primal Eden.

The book is 272 pages, printed in two colour ink on heavy stock, and illustrated throughout.

Standard Edition: 1400 copies, in hardcover with dust jacket.

Price: $75.00

Scottish Witches and Warlocks. (Witchcraft of the British Isles Series, Book III) Scottish Witches and Warlocks. (Witchcraft of the British Isles Series, Book III)
Howard, Michael
Three Hands Press

In the village of at Cullen in Forfarshire, an arrest warrant was served in January 1657 for one Margaret Philp, accused of practicing witchcraft. Her servant, Isobel Imblaugh, testified she had seen her mistress have dealings with a spirit taking the form of a talking hare. Imblaugh said she had seen Philp put out a bannock, a jug of beer and a piece of meat for the sprite, and the next morning all was gone. On another occasion the spirit-hare allegedly entered the house through an open window and drank beer left out for it in a bowl. Far from an isolated account, magical traffic with such spirits was well-documented into the 19th century, when Highlanders left offerings of milk at prehistoric burial mounds and standing stones for the faeries known as brownies. Magical intercourse with fairies was but a small part of Scottish witchcraft belief, which also held that witches stole milk from their neighbor’s cows, raised storms to drown those at sea they disliked, produced wasting diseases to make their enemies fall ill or die, keep a baby inside its mother’s womb beyond her normal term, and transform themselves into animal forms so they could roam the countryside causing mischief and mayhem.

Scottish Witches and Warlocks examines the folk beliefs and magical practices of early modern Scotland, constellated especially around witchcraft. Treating matters of spirit-conjuring, herb-magic, and the Diabolical pact itself, it includes accounts of such peculiar personages as Isobel Gowdie, the Aberdeen Witches, Dr. John Fian and the North Berwick coven, Sir Robert Gordon of Gourdeston, and the Witches of Auldearn. Containing a number of illustrations, it is the third book in Michael Howard's Witchcraft in the British Isles series.

Also available as Deluxe hardcover, limited to 250 copies

Price: $23.50