Pascale told me she had dinner once with a guy who was educated, handsome, rich - and a supporter of Jean-Marie le Pen. She walked out after the first course. In this book Beverley says her sole object is to seek and project Truth, Beauty and Harmony.
Reading this tome I began to wish that I felt as sure about anything as Beverley seems to be about everything.She says that by the early centuries of the Christian era exercises of unarmed combat "the heritage of all cultured Chinese" became known as kung-fu. It is not so.
In her history of the art she calls Chang San-feng a nobleman who was by birth (she wrongly states this was in the 11th century) obliged to practice Shaolin martial training. There is no evidence for this. She has him deserting the army when there is no evidence he ever joined an army. She says the name T'ai-chi Ch'uan was coined in the 15th century. There is no evidence for this; available evidence suggests the 19th century when this term was used in the Tai Chi Classics. She says it was developed by Buddhist monks, but the only Buddhist connection I know of was when Wang Lan-ting in the late 19th century sought sanctuary in a Buddhist temple after killing some Manchus.
She is mistaken in her discussion of weight distribution. She accepts names like Strum the Lute, but renames "Parry and Punch" as "Open and Drive", "Single Whip" as "Bird's Beak", while "Kick" is called "Release"; "Shoot The Tiger" is "Release The Tiger". She calls the original terms "uninspiring, uncreative and unnecessary". Self-defence and traditionalists who are not in tune with the New Age need to be filtered out.Of course all this can only be properly transmitted to Westerners by women who because of their previous incarnations in China (Beverley was the daughter of a nobleman and has her personal guide who uses the vibration of his life as the poet Li Po - a notorious boozer) are in tune with the relevant spiritual energies, unfortunate Western males such as I being culturally conditioned to masculine dominance have a longer road to travel, before we can express the essentially feminine energies of the Tai Chi form.
Beverley says (so it is true) that the only sword in Tai Chi Chuan is the metaphoric and symbolic, double-edged Sword of Truth. The book reminded me of "Foucault's Pendulum" where Rosicrucians, Freemasons, Knights Templar, The Torah and all kind of things appear. Beverley talks of Jesus and Buddha and Prana and Hara and Kundalini and etheric energy movements, and auric effects. On the other hand she also reminds me of "The Modern Parents" in "Viz". The translations she uses of the Tao Te Ching and the Tai Chi Classics are poor and misleading; this perhaps explains some of her opinions, though she has some sensible things to say on posture, clothing, practicing a traditional long form rather than one of the modern short ones and doing the form on the other side.
The second half of the book consists largely of discussing Tai Chi Chuan from the Spiritualist point of view. It includes testimonies of mediums and students of Beverley of what they saw and felt during Tai Chi practice. This includes, colours, fire, Devas, being Chinese and
the 3rd century personality whom Beverley uses to talk to the T'ai-chi archetype.
Now there actually is something in this. Firstly, during the Ching dynasty in particular, Fu Qi, or planchette writing was extensively used to contact the spirit world in general and Chang San-feng in particular. Beverley does not mention this tradition at all and is presumably keeping it secret as her previous incarnations would be aware of it. I have seen spirits myself on four occasions. The first time being in Hong Kong shortly after learning Nei Kung. However, I've never seen or felt anything such as is to be found in the testimonies in Beverley's book. It's not something you can argue about. She and her students presumably believe what they say, so it's all True, Beautiful and Harmonious - for them.
The book is published by The Healing School of T'ai-Chi. (RRP £14.99; ISBN 0-646-19580-8)