Frei Betto cunhou uma
expressão de grande verdade: «A cabeça pensa a partir de onde os pés pisam».
Efectivamente, se alguém pisa sempre em palácios e em sumptuosas catedrais,
acaba a pensar segundo a lógica dos palácios e das catedrais.
Devastadora
também para o psiquismo desorientado do «homem da rua», desarticulado e
acossado por frustrações e «fantasmas» que os meios de comunicação de massas
excitam e agravam e que a arte das «vanguardas» vem juncar com os estilhaços de
uma cultura dinamitada, com os lixos e os restos heteróclitos de uma civilização
do in-significante.
Referência bibliográfica FREITAS, Lima de. Porto do Graal – A riqueza ocultada da
tradição mítico-espiritual portuguesa. Lisboa: Ésquilo, 2006, pp. 352.
ISBN 972-8605-72-2
Na sequência dos posts que publicámos anteriormente sobre The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift e John Hargrave, o seu fundador, deixamos aqui algumas
referências histórico-bibliográficas acerca da evolução do woodcraft e, nesse contexto, um vídeo sobre a Woodcraft Folk, que ainda
se encontra hoje no activo, com vista a contextualizar esse fenómeno que,
actualmente, será remotamente associado àquilo que se considera esco(u)tismo.
Um famoso clássico sobre vida ao ar livre e
técnicas de campo trata-se de Woodcraft and Camping (1884), um
livro escrito por George Washington Sears (1821-1890),
mais conhecido como "Nessmuk". Trata-se de uma obra que, apesar de
ter mais de um século, se revela bastante actual e mostra o quanto Nessmuk
estava "à frente"... A designação "Nessmuk" é bastante
conhecida pelas características facas assim denominadas, mas o mesmo não
acontece com os escritos do autor que deu a conhecer esse nome. Para além do
referido livro, Nessmuk também escreveu diversos artigos para a revista Forest and Stream.
The American Boy’s Handybook of Camp-lore and Woodcraft(1920) trata-se de mais um clássico, desta feita
de Dan Beard (1850-1941). Daniel Carter "Uncle Dan" Beard foi um ilustrador e escritor, fundador dos Sons of
Daniel Boone (1905) que viriam a integrar os Boy Scouts of América (1910). Outro
clássico de Dan Beard é Shelters, Shacks, and Shanties (1914).
Mais um clássico: The Book of Woodcraft and Indian Lore(1913), de Ernest Thompson Seton (1860-1946). Este escocês, naturalizado norte-americano, foi um notável escritor e artista
dedicado à temática da vida selvagem. Foi também o inspirador do movimento
escotista na Inglaterra e, posteriormente, do Kibbo Kift. Outra importante obra
de Thompson Seton é Boy Scouts of America (1910). Um livro no qual esse profícuo
escritor, com mais de meia centena de obras publicadas sobre “artes do campo”,
cria os fundamentos do escotismo na América do Norte. Saliente-se que
Baden-Powell foi coautor.
O escotismo surge, em 1907, como uma forma de woodcraft, pioneira na descoberta/exploração
da natureza por parte de crianças e jovens num contexto de actividades de ar
livre. O movimento, fundado por Baden-Powell
(1857-1941), implantou-se com base no conhecidíssimo Scouting for Boys (1908),
publicado em Portugal inicialmente sob o título de Manual do Escoteiro
(1915) e posteriormente com o título Escutismo para Rapazes. Não deixa de
ser curioso comparar o original com as traduções portuguesas…
«Ao entendermos “religião” na sua acepção etimológica de ligação (do latim religāre: ligar a, unir a, atar) o que nos ocorre é o acto de andar como actividade privilegiada de (re)ligação à sacralidade da natureza ou à própria divindade. É nessa acepção, aliás, que o caminhar visto como uma espécie de “ioga ambulatório” dá sentido a essa curiosa expressão, tendo em conta também a etimologia da palavra “ioga” (do sânscrito योग: unir ou juntar, entre outros significados).»* Mas uma abordagem profana surge com igual validade como forma de atingir uma (re)ligação simultaneamente ao meio envolvente e ao si, afinal ao (macro e micro) cosmos, se esta constituir uma manifestação plena da «ciência do concreto»** que tão somente exige elevados níveis de atenção e a plena vivência dos sentidos. É neste contexto, sagrado e/ou profano, que a caminhada Chi Kung (Chi Kung Walking) surge como um modo privilegiado de (re)ligação ao todo, com notórios e notáveis benefícios para a saúde e bem-estar dos praticantes.
«Many people read, talk, or watch TV while exercising to make the time go by faster. However, to get the most healing benefits from walking, Traditional Chinese Medicine teaches us that the mind should be focused, thus walking becomes a Qi Gong exercise known as walking meditation. Walking meditation is a simple yet profound healing experience; no distractions, just awareness. It’s not about talking or socializing or thinking while you’re walking; your mind is peacefully presente and relaxed.»***
*Pedro Cuiça: Passo a Passo – Manual de Caminhada e Trekking; Lisboa: A Esfera dos Livros, 2015, p.31.
**Cf. A feliz expressão utilizada por Mircea Eliade na sua obra La Pensée Sauvage(Paris: Plon, 1962)
*** Lisa B. O’Shea – New Health Digest, June 2004; disponível em:
Há quem leve o cão a
passear mas, no meu caso, fui eu que me levei hoje a passear pela multifacetada
e cosmopolita Lisboa. Deve ter sido porque me estava a sentir algo engaiolado,
como um animal doméstico (mais precisamente aquilo a que os anglo-saxónicos
chamam "pet")! Agora, depois de uns bons quilómetros de caminhada,
estou pleno de mundo e de fantástica luz invernal... apesar do jardim que me
surpreendeu em Al-fama se encontrar à sombra.
Midnight
on the Chogo Lungma La. Moonlight. The steady sweep of the icy blizzards of the
north cuts through canvas and eiderdown and fur. Roland Rex, peering out for a
moment from his tiny tent upon the stupendous beauty of the snows, almost
wonders that the stars can stand before the blast. Yet, dimly and afar, a speck
of life stirs on those illimitable wastes. How minute is a man in such solitudes!
Yet how much man means to man! No avalanche, not the very upheaval of the
deep-rooted mountains, could have held his attention so close as did that dot
upon the wilderness of snow.
So
far it was, so heavy the weight of the wind, so steep and slippery the slopes,
that dawn had broken ere the speck resolved itself into a man. Tall and rugged,
his black hair woven into a web over his eyes to protect them from the Pain of
the Snows, as the natives call the fearful fulminating snow blindness of the
giant peaks, his feet wrapped round and round with strips of leather and cloth,
he approached the little camp.
Patient
and imperturbable are these men who face the majesty of the great mountains:
experience has taught them it is useless to be angry with the snowstorm. A
blizzard may persist for a week; to conquer it one must be ready to persist for
many weeks.
Members of Ndembo Lodge (c. 1923), from left: John Hargrave (White Fox), Leonard Pember (Silver Fox), Aubrey Colebrook (Tiger Moth), J. E. Williams (Running Panther) (seated) and Cecil Mumford (Little Lone Wolf) (ROSS & BENNET, 2015: 32)
By
this time he had distanced himself from the ‘wan spirituality’ of his
largely female Theosophist supporters: ‘I know that I have only to let out a
little pseudo-Swami-yogi-Rishi-Pranayana Wanamanaism to fetch both people and money…
but this sort of Kagmag would push us right off the trail’, he wrote in August
1923 to A. C. Garrad, a Kinsman who took Eastern esoterica very seriously and
must have felt rather taken aback by the comment. As a virile leader, Hargrave
was drawn towards ‘magic’ rather than ‘spirituality’ – a perfect example of
Alex Owens’ insight than in turn-of-the-century England ‘magic and mysticism
were in effect subtly gendercoded, with magic – “intellectual, aggressive and
scientific” – assuming a masculine status’: mysticism, by contrast, was
‘associated with emotionalism, a sense of rapture, which did not accord with
the intellect-driven will to know characterizing the magical endeavour’. Later
in life Hargrave was even more critical of Theosophy’s perceived wishy-washyness.
He recalled the Dutch youth leader Baron von Pallandt as having “the vague aura
of post-war theosophiscal seeking… thought-form wisps floating in a mystical
blue haze’. Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence was one of many later dismissed as
‘drenched in hesitancy, mistaken for reflective wisdom’. Rudolf Steiner was not
only weak but completely dead: ‘I heard Dr. Rudolf Steiner speak in London in
German’, Hargrave recalled. ‘I understood not a word but I knew the man.
Afterwards I shook hands with him. Then I knew I was right – a “dead” man. A
bright, white intellectual light shining through a corpse: the light
illuminating nothing except the busy complicated intellectual mechanism of this
living dead man. Just a little uncanny because he has killed himself long
before he died.’
What
then was the nature of the occult magic that Hargrave professed, in preference
to wishy-washy Theosophy? The presiding flavor was Rosicrucian Hermetic
knowledge, a kind of robust magic that depend on a select band od ‘adepts’, a
chosen few who were party to secret esoteric knowledge and who maintained bonds
of brotherhood through initiation ceremonies and ritual, passing their magical
powers down through time in secret runes and diagrams*. Embedded in this
world-view was the notion of two levels of knowledge: esoteric knowledge – only
available to those who had demonstrated their fitness to handle it; and
exoteric knowledge, which was translated into a form able to be absorbed by the
unilluminated masses. The exoteric/esoteric split was fundamental to much of
Hargrave’s later politics, and although as a general principle it might seem to
betray his own belief in self-education, it partly reflected his view that some
people just could not cope with the disturbance to their psyche that some
knowledge would cause. Esoteric knowledge was only to be circulated amongst
those who could ‘eat good and evil without indigestion’, or who could ‘stand
the abyss’, phrases he used when discussing a candidate for initiation into one
of the Kindred’s male lodges.
The
second thing Hargrave drew from the occult was a profound sense of mission,
above and beyond his immediate task of helping the English nation after the
catastrophe of the First World War. His work was now part of ‘the Great Game’,
the battle between good and evil that had been tumbling down through the
centuries and which had played out through many manifestations of art, science
and philosophy across many civilisations. (…) He saw himself as one of the
illuminated ones, a spirit chief whose reach stretched far beyond the tribe,
and whose facility with reading symbols went far beyond woodcraft. Occultism
inflated Hargrave’s tendency to take himself very seriously indeed.
The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift was to be the practical realization of all these
esoteric beliefs, but they came together initially in a small group of men that
Hargrave formed in 1919 and that he named the ‘Ndembo Lodge’. The name ‘Ndembo’
had appeared in The Great War Brings It
Home as an example of a tribal council from Western Congo. In 1919 was more
or less exactly that, a tribal council – albeit operating from Chesham Bois in
Buckinghamshire and overseeing a tribe made up from Baden Powell’s Boy Scouts. Hargrave
had drawn around him a group of like-minded Scoutmasters, all party to the
woodcraft plots being hatched by White Fox and Seeonee Wolf. (…)
By
1922 the group had assumed a more religious look and feel. ‘Camps’ had become ‘conclaves’,
attendees wore monk-like ‘vestments’ made from sackcloth (…).
[ROSS
& BENNETT, 2015: 30-31]
Kibbo Kift hike formation (c.1928)
NOTE
*Hargrave's
comments about the practical magic of images and objects are particularly
interesting in relation to the naming of the Kibbo Kift's symbolic visual
insignia, later in the 1920s, as 'sigils'. In particular the word was used for
the circular devices designed by Hargrave to be embroidered onto ceremonial
costumes. (...) The sigil is claimed by occultists to have a long history but
it was popularised – if not invented – as a practice of spell-making through
design in the writings of London artist Austin Osman Spare (1886-1956). Spare
had received his creative training at the Royal College of Art and his occult
knowledge from Crowley. Although there is no evidence in Kibbo Kift papers that
Spare and Hargrave ever met, they could certainly have crossed paths in the
tight social circles of London's interwar occult networks. Spare's theory
of sigil magic, first published in his Book of Pleasure in 1913, certainly corresponds with Hargrave’s use of the
visual as a form of magical persuasion. [POLLEN, 2015: 156]
Bibliographic references
POLLEN, Annebella. The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift: Intellectual Barbarians. London: Donlon Books, 2015, pp. 222. ISBN 978-0-9576095-1-8 ROSS,
Cathy & BENNETT, Olivier. Designing Utopia – John Hargrave and the
Kibbo Kift. London: Museum of London, 2015, pp. 182. ISBN
978-1-78130-040-4
Si
stava vivendo in un periodo strano, balordo e innaturale. Gli uomini nel tempo
libero non volevano più faticare, né camminare, né fare sport, né il mínimo sforzo
fisico. Per questo motivo erano sorti impianti di risalita dappertutto. Non per
servire gli ormai rarissimi sciatori ma, soprattutto, per far salire i non
camminatori. Che appunto, erano la maggioranza dell’umanità. E così gli se
faceva prender quota sui cavi, com seggiole e cabine, per recarsi tra le nuvole
a mangiare e bere.
O Centro de
Formação da Federação de Campismo e Montanhismo de Portugal (FCMP) vai realizar, no dia 6 de Dezembro, a segunda edição da palestra sobre Percursos
Pedestres de Longo Curso – estratégias de progressão rápida e (ultra)leve.Esta trata-se de uma
acção de formação contínua, reconhecida pelo Instituto Português do Desporto e
Juventude (IPDJ), para a revalidação do Titulo Profissional de Treinador de
Desporto – Pedestrianismo Graus I, II e III. Para mais informações, consulte o site da FCMP.
Forse
anche sarò vecchio continuerò a essere un viandante. Forse perche il ritmo
intimo del cammino risuona dentro di me dall’infanzia. Potrei rinunciare ad
arrampicare, ma non potrei mai rinunciare a camminare. Come se dentro di me
fosse nascosto lo spirito errante del nómade. Come un’abitudine imprescindible.
Non cerco più nuovi orizzonti, ma trovo sempre il tempo e un pretexto per
lasciare il mio nido. Taglio la corda! Quel che importa non è la lunghezza del
viaggio, ma la possibilità di trovarei l mio posto in un luogo. Quel che mie
forze mi consentono di fare mi serve di esperienza. (…)
Tuttavia
camminando, il mondo ci appare misterioso, più grande, mai banale. La crescente
fidúcia nelle proprie forze, nella propiá resistenza e abilità che ci stimola
da giovani quando intraprendiamo un viaggio, col tempo si reduce come la nostra
naturale velocità. Ma viaggiare e pensare rimangono una sola cosa. Il corpo e
la mente diventano un tutt’uno. Oggi devo camminare per poter pensare.
O blog Legio Victrix publicou um artigo de
Eduardo Martínez Pisón, intitulado A Montanha Simbólica, sobre uma
temática que nos é particularmente cara – o Sentimento da Montanha –
e cuja leitura recomendamos vivamente.
At the most mystical of all woodcraft groups,
Kibbo Kift’s practices – even at the most mudane level – were steeped in magic
and ritual. The ceremonial method of organization established new traditions
that lent coherence and formality to Kin activities, and provided a structure
rooted in common custom rather than military drill or committee method. The
Kindred drew on mythology and folklore sourced from geographically and historically
diverse cultural and spiritual traditions; as with their design inspirations,
these were characteristically adapted into new forms, blended with the latest
thinking in art, science and philosophy, and brought to earth in the English landscape.
Always original and sometimes secret, Kibbo Kift’s elaborate and poetic rituals
were devised to lend a sacred quality to all areas of group life from the
making and breaking of camp, to the cooking of meals and the lighting of fires;
hikes were reconfigured as pilgrimages and membership induction was recast as
initiation. Combined with the newness and strangeness of Kin costume and
language, the effect was otherworldly, even religious. Hargrave and many other
Kinsfolk sought and found spiritual nourishment in the Kindred. Like all Kibbo
Kift’s operation, however, their belief system stood firmly apart from existing
structures. A consequence of this rebellion against spiritual convention was
that Kibbo Kift earned a reputation as something of a cult; certainly its
embrace of no-Christian ritual practices was as controversial in the period as
its non-segregated camping practices, its skimpy exercise costumes and its
plainspoken ideas about sex education. Many ceremonial practices were concealed
behind the public face of the Kindred for this reason, and further rites were
only shared among selected, closed lodges within the larger membership. In more
open-minded times, and with access to previously inaccessible documents, Kibbo
Kift’s littleknow and little-understood myth, magic and mysticism can be
repositioned as fundamentally important aspect of the organization.
[POLLE, 2015: 143]
Bibliographic
reference
POLLEN,
Annebella. The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift: Intellectual Barbarians. London:
Donlon Books, 2015, pp. 222. ISBN 978-0-9576095-1-8
