Martial Arts World News Magazine - Volume 23 | Issue 3

BUDO PHILOSOPHY
Reason and Magic (Part 1)
by Shidoshi Alfredo Tucci
Shizen culture had a very interesting insight into the elements that made up people.
They talked about the three heritages: genetic heritage,
which they obviously did not attribute to the genes, because
such discovery had not taken place, but to the ancestors; cultural
heritage, that is, those conditions that were directly related
to the environment in which you were born and raised; and
finally the informational or formative heritage, which refers to
learning and ultimately to the profession or activity to which you
are devoted.
For them, most of the people traveled in their lives in helical
paths with their highs and lows, their expansive and contractive
periods, in exchanges of energy and tension with
the environment. Life naturally possessed a
set of ups and downs in all. Energy in spirals,
had the beginning and end of tension by
finding two points that connected and established
a helical pattern, which remained
as long as energy fed that relationship.
Some people, however, spirits whose life
was called to influence many people, were
under the auspices of major forces and transited
in another type of litter that had to do
with destiny. Bruce Lee would be an example
of this. Winston Churchill, Fleming, Stalin,
Hitler, Fidel Castro, or Napoleon, for
better or for worse, these people,
even if they were immersed like everyone
else in the clashes of the
forces of energy and tension, to
which no one is alien in this Universe,
possessed the regency of
destiny.
Visible conditioners have
the greatest importance, but
the invisible ones are no less
significant, as they allude to
the spiritual aspects of the
person. For the Shizen, we
are all spirits living a material life. I know that this vision is out of
tune nowadays, where we only have eyes and ears for scientific
arguments, but we cannot forget that science is only a method to
describe our surroundings, that is, the glasses that we put on. The
advent of reason and science as a method has provided us with
fantastic tools to which we are all debtors.
The Greeks opened the door, Renaissance reopened it and
the Century of the Lights raised it up, that’s why it is extraordinarily
interesting to observe how, despite the imposition of this formula
as dominant even to establish itself as the basis of modern single
thought, it has not managed to cancel the cravings and curiosity of
our brains. People continue to read newspaper horoscopes, seeking
in the esoteric arts answers that transcend normality, and even
surrender to the idea of ancient religions, whose rational foundation
is void.
You see, it turns out we have two sides to the brain and none of
the two is more important than the other. Given the new paradigm,
Freud created psychoanalysis, establishing the idea of the subconscious,
which Jung culminated with that of the collective unconscious.
These attempts to find rational connections in the irrational,
on the magical side of our minds, led Jung himself to the doors of
magic at the end of his life.
SHIDOSHI ALFREDO TUCCI is the CEO and General Manager of the Budo International Publishing
Company, a leading publisher in the martial arts with over 35 years in the industry. He is also author of several
books: The Immaterial Dimension, The Way of the Warrior, and The Spirit. He currently lives in Valencia, Spain.
88 MARTIAL ARTS WORLD NEWS VOLUME 23 | ISSUE 3
Photo (pigeon) by natrot. Photo (hawk) by SteveMcsweeny.