Customer Reviews

Baguazhang: Fighting Secrets of the Eight Trigram Palms

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

After reading this book, I feel Erle needs to take a long vacation, and then begin a course in a class on ethics in publishing.

The stuff in this book is a complete and total fabrication of nonsense. It rots from the outside in. Erle should really stick to doing taiji, that is what he is competent in at least. Bagua is NOT his bailiwick! This book is a complete and utter dismal product. If you wish to see a book, and know what NOT to look for in a book on bagua zhang, this book fits the bill, totally and completely.

I would put this book on the same scale as those by Ashida Kim.
Published just to part the gullible from their money. If you epect this book to have the same flavor andauthority of his taiji materials (such as they are), you are barking up the wrong tree here. This book was produced to seperate the unwise and unwary from their had earned cash.

In fact the last couple of Erles attempts at writing, like his "Book of Qi", for example, have been total trash. If you want better books on Bagua, you still have to go to the Chinese sources for the best. Other than that, I woul much rather recommend books by Dan Miller and Park Bok nam, followed closely by John bracy, and then some of the stuff put out by Jerry Alan Johnson (if you like your bagua to have a shaolin flavor).

The absolute best materials are those put out by Liu Jingru and C S Tang "Dragon Stretches its Claws", and secondly by Joe Crandall, and his bagua zhang series of translated works. But be forewarned, Joe Crandall does make errors in translating the books he puts out, but since he does a better job of it than just about anyone else, he can be forgiven for his minor errors.

Now, to conclude this review: Avoid, with all due care, this worthless excuse for a bagua book. I wouldn't even use the pages to wrap fish with. I might wrap used pampers with them though, as that is all they are fit for.

When I 1st started reading this I wanted to laugh at the humorous misinfo Mr. Montaigue passes off as bagua. Then I realized that people have had so little access to the art they actually believe this absolute piece of garbage. 1st off, to claim bagua is essentially a dim-mak art is to show that Erle is quite entirely ignorant of the true nature of our work. It can play a factor but a small part of it. We don't simply 'pounding palm'-crash thru defences and poke at 'death-points' you poor fool. Much needs to be understood about how the gings are developed & nurtured. Your supposed techniques are external not internal, I'm sorry you have decieved yourself so long. Maybe your teacher never explained it, didn't know it, or hid it from you; either way U do not understand. I cross referenced Mr Montaigue's website & witnessed an even more disturbing example of fajin (external fajin?) If you really believe that is fajin you need to find a teacher to bring you back to the beginning. There is more to the power than those 'techniques' that leak out your Qi everywhere (& even worse what is there is off focus anyway). There is much to be said about the pure subtlety of what is expressed by bagua rather than take it down to this disgraceful level. I feel most sorry for people like the guy from SD that loved this book...do yourself a favor and keep this book as a reference to what baguazhang is not...or ignore what I'm trying to share with you & learn some fake external form of an internal art. You've been warned.

The information is good, and looks almost exactly like Chian rong-qiao's form presented in his book.
It took me a lot of time to understand this book, and unfortunately with such a complex art as bagua, you will find it hard to comprehend exactly how some of the forms are performed.
In the fourth palm change, the spinning around to a point behind you is so obscure, you can be sure to throw in the towel right away.
The rest of the book is great though, however expect to have to xerox the pages into a flip book to make it easier to work with when training, otherwise the book is so cumbersome it is rediculous unless you have book holders.
I recommend getting park bok nam's 2 books on pa kua chang also, so that you can understand the concepts a bit better.
Looking back I thought this was easy, but to a beginner, you might as well have cancer, as it is so difficult to start out with this book, as with any book, however by far this is one of the *BEST* I have seen.

Ok someone must have blown up a fish market because something stinks! Not even suitable for a new student of BaguaZhang, and here Erle is claiming his book to show a "complete" system of BaguaZhang? HA! Fat chance. So what does this book have going for it? Some basic application and dim mak points are shown, but on some little kids? Just what is Erle suggesting BaguaZhang was used for? I shudder to think. I have always questioned Erle's background and credibility, I think the so called"expert" and "secret" information he shares in this book more then answers any question about him I my have had in the past.

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 just read the bagua book and I am now looking for a teacher! The information shows the whole bagua system and not only one part of it as others have shown. I was amazed to find that bagua is a real street fighting art and the deadly strikes to dim-mak points are awesome. What intrigued me was the linear form which I have only ever heard about in the past but which has now been published for the first time. It will take some time and effor tto actually learn the linear form. So it is also essential to have the video tape on this form. I use the book as back up when I am not near a vcr.

Mr Montague has done what no others have been able to in presenting this art in written format. The art comes alive for the first time and shows that it has some realistic substance just as I thought it would. It is difficult to actually learn from books, however, Mr Montague shows in this excellent work that bagua is truly one of the great fighting systems.

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.