I feel like an ass writing this, but it’s stuck on my mind.
Is Erle Montaigue crazy? Now, I’ve never met him, and I’ve heard mostly good things about him, and he seems to know what he’s doing on his tapes.
However, this is concerning his “Old Yang Form.” He says it was the original form, and Yang Chen-fu changed it to the lesser active version. In other words, he took out all the fa-jing movements etc. I don’t have to explain here, because you guys all know the story.
But essentially, Erle seems to be the only one who knows this form (as far as I know, maybe there’s big group of Old Yang style people somewhere I don’t know about). Now, normally, assuming the person is of good credibility, which Erle seems to be, I would think “Cool, he must have been taught an uncommon form by some old taiji master.” However, the following information is suspect (bolded is important, italics are my comments):
From his downloadable book on the Old Style, luchanbook.pdf:
“Those who were unfamiliar with it and who were perhaps a little jealous that this blue eyed westerner was perhaps one of the only people in modern history to have received such information, said that perhaps Erle Montaigue simply invented this form.”
no problem yet. I can see how people could be jealous, can’t you?
"Some even went to great lengths to find others who had trained with me many years back to try and gain fuel for this fire such was their evil intent!
This did not worry me and I was in a way slightly flattered to
think that such people should think that I was of such genius to
have invented such a perfect form of self-defense and self
healing. "
Now, there’s nothing wrong with this per se, but the way he phrases it makes it kind of sound like he’s deferring illusions of grandeur to downplay himself in other’s eyes while he himself takes comfort in having invented (made up) a form that he will convince everyone else is so “perfect.”
“However, as much as I would like to think that I
invented this form,”
Eh? I can’t help but wonder why he would “like to think he invented” it?
“nowadays new information has come to
light with others producing books with very old Chinese
masters performing what amounts to the Old Yang Style.”
“what amounts to,” eh?
However, it does not really matter who invented this form, my
self,…
really…
"…Yang Lu-ch’an or my teacher, Chang Yiu-chun,
here he’s saying it doesn’ t matter, attempting to take people’s minds off the fact that he could have made it up himself.
“the fact remains that whoever learns this form or even sees it performed looks on in awe at such a beautifully powerful and ‘still’ set of…”
Alright. I’m not trying to píss people off here or anything, so I don’t want “stop questioning my teacher’s authenticity!” as a reply. I just want to hear other people’s opinions.
As far as my experience, Erle has been nothing but extremely helpful and polite anytime I emailed him, and never tried to force me to buy anything from him, unlike some other people ::coughjameslacycough::
So, I’m not trying to discredit Erle. I’m trying to get some opinions on what I’ve pointed out because I don’t know what to make of it myself.
And also, I don’t want to bother learning the old Yang form if it’s not “real.”
Note: There was something somewhere else on his site where he made refrence to the same thing (ie. “I could have made up this form.”) but seriously I cannot find it again. If I do find it I’ll post it.
btw the text I quoted is on pages 1 and 2 (book page numbers, not adobe acrobat pages) of chapter 1.
Iron
