Baguazhang: Fighting Secrets of the Eight Tigram Palms [Paperback]

Having heard Earle Montague's name mentioned as a serious practitioner for many years, I was excited to see that Amazon was now carrying his Bagwa book. What a disappointment! The book presents very little new information for even beginning students. The highly-touted 'classic forms' are poorly presented and nearly impossible to follow. The worst flaw (to me) was that Montague's demonstrations of martial applications employ a teenage girl and a child as models! While these may be family members, to see the author triumphantly employing the 'superior moves' of Bagwa against a little girl is downright embarassing! The best I can say about this work is that it has a nice binding. Serious students should instead check out Park Bok Nam's and Liang Shou-Yu's widely-available, classic texts.

I've seen the criticism of Erle's BaGuaZhang book & felt compelled to offer a few words in his defence, since his training materials have been a big help to me. He provides certain insights into ChiKung & BaGuaZhang that are not easily found elsewhere-- insights that have proven their worth to me in actual practice. The scope of his materials is perhaps only matched or exceeded by the training videos offered by Dr. Xie Peiqi & He Jinbao (via Plum Flower Press).

That said I would not want to use this book without the BaGuaZhang videos he provides via his website.

Park Bok Nom's books on the subject are excellent & provide much more on fundamental training practices, but stop short of the forms. Whereas, Erle's stuff tends to emphasize the forms & their application. Together, a beginning student might just have the best resources available, short of personally training with a truly knowledgeable teacher. "Baguazhang: Emei Baguazhang" by Liang Shou-Yu, Yang Jwing-Ming & Wu Wen-Ching is another good resource.

As far as accusations that Erle's BaGuaZhang is fake... you hear a lot of that kind of bad-mouthing going on between the students of various branches. Each seems to have their claim to being the most authentic. Personally, the deeper I get into BaGuaZhang the more commonality I see: Luo De Xia is a respected BaGuaZhang artist who I also study and his teachings are not terribly dissimilar from Erle's. You need to get past the superficial differences & get to the principles at work. If Sun Luc Tang's or Ch'eng Ting-Hua's or Jiang Rongqiao's branches of BaGuaZhang are under suspicion, then Erle & Park might be accomplices.

Regarding "fa jing", Erle's approach is less mechanistic that most other's I've seen, but taken along with those who instruct on the "proper" body mechanics (like Park Bok Nom), his "angle" is worth at least considering, especially for those practicing nei gong.

And when it comes to "dim mak", who the hell knows? This stuff, it it can really be made to function, is so advanced that there are very few authorities who can meaningfully address the subject. Meanwhile, most of us have a lot of practice to do just to master the more physcial aspects of BaGuaZhang.

Erle's approach is more free-wheeling and less heirarchical than most you'll find. This may rub some people the wrong way-- those who prefer something a bit more formulaic. Clearly, Erle is doing a lot of creative and interpretive work. As there should be. We must think for ourselves, practice, research and explore; and not rigidly follow someone else's "way". This is implicit in the I Ching. And this is why there are so many different schools of BaGuaZhang-- every teacher evolves their own way of doing it based on a common framework of principles. Erle definitely has insights worth considering, as do many other BaGuaZhang teachers.

Practice then consider. There is no other way. Talk is cheap.

This book is embarrassingly poor. The continuity from photograph to photograph can only be followed by someone knowledgeable in this form of Baqua and even then it is a challenge. Some of the interpretations of the forms are clear and make sense. Other interpretations are such a reach as to be, well laughable. Frankly Mr. Montaigue may well be skilled in what he is teaching but this effort does him no favors. However the paper stock in quite nice.

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