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The number nine has significance in the ancient Chinese classics and in the Chinese numerology. For this post it involves nine parts. The first part being the foundation on which everything is based (no pun intended). The next five parts deal with a symbolic relation to the five elements, also a part of the Chinese belief system. The five elements being "metal, earth, water, fire and air." The next part is the one that is linked to the mind while the next part is linked to the spirit. The final and important last part that brings it all together into one whole or wholehearted singularity is you, the human or person.
These nine parts symbolically tell us the story of how one achieves master of any discipline and for our discussion/post the martial arts. It symbolizes how we can achieve a mastery of the fundamental principles of martial systems. It also is representative of the ken-po goku-i. The gokui is made up of eight parts and the ninth being the practitioner while my version consist of the nine parts that symbolically include the practitioner, i.e. the ninth is the sense of touch to coincide with sight and sound.
Symbology was an important part of transmission of all things. For martial arts of Asia it was a huge part of the belief and cultural systems the Chinese used in their earlier times, i.e. such as the symbolism used in the I Ching or book of changes for divination of the present and future through an understanding of the past, the people and the way of the universe.
This is an effort to connect the ancestry of modern martial arts. One of its core beliefs is the whole of the parts, to create a holistic one-ness in practice, training and application of the system by bringing all the individual parts, as taught, trained and practiced, into one wholehearted system. Leaving any one part out of the equation results in a different solution that is often skewed or out of sync with the many esoteric principles of martial effectiveness.
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