A translation of two books on the philosophy of the Itto School of Sword Fighting. 1. The Twelve Rules of the Sword2. The Sword Manual of Kanamaki JizaiThe first is attributed to Ito Ittosai the legendary swordsman of the 16th century. Ittosai travelled the country and fought the head students of 33 schools, winning every time. The second is a 16th century instruction manual attributed to Ittosai's teacher Kanamaki Jizai.
An unearthly adversary descends on an idyllic fantasy world, corrupting magic against good and slaughtering innocents, and only a single man can stop him.
OVER TEN MILLION COPIES SOLD #1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER What are the most valuable things that everyone should know? Acclaimed clinical psychologist Jordan B Peterson has influenced the modern understanding of personality, and now he has become one of the world's most popular public thinkers, with his lectures on topics from the Bible to romantic relationships to mythology drawing tens of millions of viewers. In an era of unprecedented change and polarizing politics, his frank and refreshing message about the value of individual responsibility and ancient wisdom has resonated around the world. In this book, he provides twelve profound and practical principles for how to live a meaningful life, from setting your house in order before criticising others to comparing yourself to who you were yesterday, not someone else today. Happiness is a pointless goal, he shows us. Instead we must search for meaning, not for its own sake, but as a defence against the suffering that is intrinsic to our existence. Drawing on vivid examples from the author's clinical practice and personal life, cutting-edge psychology and philosophy, and lessons from humanity's oldest myths and stories, 12 Rules for Life offers a deeply rewarding antidote to the chaos in our lives: eternal truths applied to our modern problems.
Vulcan the god has a hard task to perform for his bored and restless colleagues — forge 12 magic Swords, quenched with human blood, and scatter them across the world. Each Sword possesses a different power. With them the gods will play a new, grand, and glorious Game. Mere humans foolishly striving for dominion, wealth and glory, are invited to risk their puny lives by joining in. (Later, the gods realize with horror that something has gone wrong in the forging, and with the Game. The Swords are much too powerful, controlling chance, enhancing fortune, changing destiny. And lethal even to their divine creators.) Jord the Smith, drafted to help Vulcan in his task, loses his right arm in the process (receiving the Sword Townsaver as pay). He is too weak to claim Mala, his bride-to-be, who joins a traditional fertility rite, where her partner might be the enigmatic Emperor, his face hidden by a leather mask. Nine months later, she gives birth to Mark. Thirteen years pass, then Townsaver wipes out a raiding party on orange-furred warbeasts, sent to Mark’s village. It falls to Mark to carry the blade away to hide or destroy it.
The most detailed and comprehensive treatise on swordsmanship ever written, Gerard Thibault's Academy of the Sword offers an extraordinary glimpse into a forgotten landscape of ideas, in which Pythagorean sacred geometry illuminated the lethal realities of rapier combat to create one of the Western world's only thoroughly documented esoteric martial arts. Translated by the widely respected occultist and scholar John Michael Greer, this stunningly illustrated and precisely detailed manual of Renaissance swordsmanship is a triumphant document of Renaissance culture-as well as a practical manual of a martial art that can still be studied and practiced today.
Includes photocopies of the handwritten calligraphic copy of The Hundred Rules of War by Tsukahara Bokuden, with transcription and analysis in Japanese by Hori Shohei, and English translation and notes by Eric Shahan.
“Lobster is served three ways in this fascinating book: by fisherman, scientist and the crustaceans themselves. . . . Corson, who worked aboard commercial lobster boats for two years, weaves together these three worlds. The human worlds are surely interesting; but they can’t top the lobster life on the ocean floor.” — Washington Post In this intimate portrait of an island lobstering community and an eccentric band of renegade biologists, journalist Trevor Corson escorts the reader onto the slippery decks of fishing boats, through danger-filled scuba dives, and deep into the churning currents of the Gulf of Maine to learn about the secret undersea lives of lobsters. This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.
This book by Anatoliy Anshin documents the life of famous Japanese swordsman Yamaoka Tesshu and his historical role in the end of the Tokugawa era. Written for martial arts practitioners and those interested in Japanese culture and history, Anshin draws from his doctorate dissertation to create the first critical biography on Tesshu, over 120 years after his death in 1888. Among practitioners of Japanese martial arts both in Japan and overseas there is hardly a person not knowing the name of Tesshu, who is also famous for his calligraphy and pursuits of enlightenment in Zen Buddhism. Despite this, for over a century Tesshu’s figure, buried under numerous anecdotes and mythical stories, has presented a contrasting combination of broad popularity with the absence of critical biographies and the lack of verified data. Based on scrupulous investigation of primary and secondary sources, Anshin’s book shows that Tesshu’s whole life was an uncompromising quest for the authentic Japanese swordsmanship, which had been practically lost by his time. Anshin further analyzes how this quest eventually led Tesshu to play the central role in the bloodless surrender of Edo Castle - one of the most important events in the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Looking at everything, from the beginning and development of Tesshu’s thoughts and belief systems to establishing his own swordsmanship school called Itto Shoden Muto-ryu, Anshin chronologically highlights Tesshu’s dramatic life path. This path reflects like a mirror centuries-old cultural history of Japanese warrior class, the samurai, and its martial arts.
