What got lost when Escrima became sport
For most Western practitioners, Escrima (also called Arnis or Eskrima, depending on region) is known as a Filipino stick-fighting art — fast, practical, weapons-focused. This image is correct as far as it goes. But it misses something fundamental: the older layer of the tradition was deeply shamanic.
The Philippines, before Spanish colonization in the 16th century, was a complex of Austronesian societies with their own animist spiritual traditions. The Babaylan — animist priest-shamans, often women — were central religious and political figures. The warrior arts of the islands were integrated with the Babaylan tradition: combat was understood as a spiritual act, not just a practical one.
The Babaylan tradition
The Babaylan were not peripheral figures in pre-colonial Philippine society. They were keepers of the ancestral knowledge, healers, diviners, and ritual specialists. Warriors trained under Babaylan guidance, and many traditional martial-art forms incorporated invocations, protective rituals, and connections with ancestor-spirits.
Spanish colonization systematically suppressed the Babaylan tradition and tried to eliminate the integration of combat with shamanic practice. What survived survived underground, in family lineages, in coded form. The Babaylan tradition itself was nearly destroyed but never completely extinguished — and the shamanic layer of Escrima has reemerged in recent decades through serious researchers and traditional practitioners.
The animist layer
For the traditional Filipino warrior, the world was alive. The mountains had spirits. The trees had spirits. The ancestors were present, accessible, and to be honored. Combat without the right relationship with these spirit-presences was considered incomplete — not because it wouldn't work, but because it would lack the necessary spiritual integrity.
Specific practices included: invoking ancestor-protection before combat, ritually consecrating weapons, using protective tattoos (still found in some traditional lineages), and practicing in places considered spiritually charged.
Why this matters for the Taguchi-Ryū synthesis
When Mark Hosak integrated Filipino Escrima/Arnis into the Taguchi-Ryū curriculum, he did so not despite the shamanic layer but because of it. The Filipino arts at their deeper level share something with the Japanese warrior-mystic tradition: the recognition that combat training is also spirit-training, that the warrior moves accompanied by spirit-presences, that the body is a vessel for something larger.
This is why the integration works. The Filipino weapons depth (sticks, blades, dagger-work, empty-hand applications) joins the Japanese spiritual core (Kuji Kiri, Shingon connection, mediumistic dimension) without contradiction. Both traditions, at their deepest layer, are pointing at the same field.
Pekiti Tirsia Kali and other living lineages
Among the modern Filipino combat arts, certain lineages have preserved more of the older spiritual layer than others. Pekiti Tirsia Kali — a Visayan family lineage — is one of the more well-known. Mark has trained with Pekiti Tirsia and other Filipino lineages through long-standing exchange partners over decades.
What these lineages preserve is not stage shamanism. It's a quiet, embedded recognition that the techniques exist within a larger spiritual context. The forms are taught the same way you might teach Karate forms — but underneath, the practitioners know what tradition they're standing in.
How Escrima integrates with Ninjutsu in the Taguchi system
Within the Taguchi-Ryū, Escrima provides the weapons depth that complements the Ninjutsu core. Stick work, blade work, empty-hand applications flow into each other. The Filipino concept of "Sinawali" (woven movement) finds resonance in the Ninjutsu sensitivity work. The Babaylan substratum aligns with the Yamabushi-Shugendo orientation.
The result is a warrior path that has weapons authenticity (Escrima depth), spiritual depth (Ninjutsu-Shingon core), and the close-range refinement of Wing Chun. Three traditions, one practice — all bound by Kuji Kiri as the spiritual axis.
For English-speaking practitioners interested in the integration of Escrima with the deeper Asian warrior-mystic traditions, the Japanese Grimoire Society is the home community.