Kip Mistral

Cultivating legacy and posterity for classical horsemanship and traditions

Recent Posts

  • Magnum Opus – Coming Q4/2024 & Q1-Q2/2025

     Magnum Opus – Coming Q4/2024 & Q1-Q2/2025

  • Glorious Horsemen: The Legendary School of Versailles and Its Legacy for Equitation …

     Glorious Horsemen: The Legendary School of Versailles and Its Legacy for Equitation Today

  • The Ecuyer Cavalcadour…Patient Teacher of Young Horses

     The Ecuyer Cavalcadour…Patient Teacher of Young Horses

  • Reasons for Riding (On the Freedom, Lightness and Enjoyment of the Horse)

     Reasons for Riding (On the Freedom, Lightness and Enjoyment of the Horse)

  • If He Does Not Have Your Love, He Has to Face the …

     If He Does Not Have Your Love, He Has to Face the World Alone

  • The Great Unities and Why We Must Keep Them Alive

     The Great Unities and Why We Must Keep Them Alive

Charles Owen Williamson on Collection: From Range-bred Broncs to High School Dressage

Charles Owen Williamson on Collection: From Range-bred Broncs to High School Dressage

[CONTEXTUAL NOTES FROM KM: Charles Owen Williamson’s name (1894-1977) was on everyone’s lips through the 1950’s, 1960’s and 1970’s as the “go-to” Western trainer and instructor for riding across the disciplines. “Dr. Williamson is that rarity of rarities-a Western horseman who has had a wealth of experience in handling ‘wild’ horses, range-bred broncs, and yet understands the benefits of elementary, secondary and superior dressage, and can put them effectively to work. No theorist, he has spent a lifetime practicing what he teaches,” explains some of the flap text on his famous book “Breaking and Training the Stock Horse (and teaching basic principles of dressage)”. (First published in 1950. My copy is sixth edition published 1976, Charles O. Williamson, Hamilton, Montana. Illustrations by Carl Hoobing and Sherman Hayes.)

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Dr. Henri Louis Mari van Schaik: To the Threshold of Your Own Mind

Dr. Henri Louis Mari van Schaik: To the Threshold of Your Own Mind

(© Kip Mistral. First published in Equine Journal, August 2009. This article won a Second Place for Personality Profile in the 2010 American Horse Publication Annual Awards Program. Photographs courtesy of Sheila McLevedge.)

No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of our knowledge…If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.    

      ~ Kahlil Gibran

An elegant silver-haired man and his silver horse proudly advance across still-green autumn grass, rusty-golden fall foliage rimming a field in the background. Rein gently slackened, the powerful horse in beautiful balance and collection, together they present the image of the quintessential ride… a moment of grace, of union between man and horse. The picture draws us in, symbolizing the quest so seductive to equestrians through time who have sought to share a moment of grace and union with their horses.

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Sherry Ackerman, PhD: Sacred Geometry and The Figures of the Manège

La Guérinière Square

(© Sherry Ackerman, excerpt from “Dressage in the Fourth Dimension”, New World Library, 2008. Used with permission of the author.)

Philosophy is written in this grand book—I mean the universe—which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and interpret the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth. 

~Galileo Galilei, Il Saggiatore (The Assayer), 1623

The earliest reference to dressage is found in the writings of the Greek historian and philosophical essayist Xenophon. Born in Athens around 430 BCE, Xenophon belonged to an equestrian family in the deme of Erchia. Early in his life, he had come under the influence of Socrates and had received schooling in classical geometry. Xenophon’s education led him to view geometry and numbers as components of the simplest and most essential philosophical language.

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Horsing Around: Functions and Colours of the Medieval Horse in the 12th and 13th Centuries

Horsing Around: Functions and Colours of the Medieval Horse in the 12th and 13th Centuries

(© Elizabeth Chadwick. Author Elizabeth Chadwick has graciously given me permission to re-post her fascinating article about the types of horses bred and used for specific functions, and how their colors were named. Elizabeth is a best-selling British author of historical fiction; please see her website at http://elizabethchadwick.com.)

I was one of those horse-mad little girls.  I spent a lot of my childhood either making up stories in my imagination about horses and ponies, or galloping about pretending to be both the horse and rider at the same time.

I was something of a nerd about their colours and collected books and posters and trawled the library for pictures and information.  I was a seven year old who knew my bay from my chestnut, my blue roan from a strawberry roan, and that white horses were always referred to by equine types as greys!  I spent many happy hours identifying breeds with my Observers Book of Horses and Ponies, on the way discovering that the ancestor of the warhorse more resembled a Welsh cob or a Villanos heavy Andalucian, than a modern Shire, whatever commentator Dorian Williams said about Shires and Clydesdales at the Wembley Horse of the Year Show.

Those childhood obsessions stood me in good stead when I began writing historical fiction set in the Middle Ages, for what was a knight without his destrier and his palfrey? The common soldier without his all purpose rouncy? The merchant without his pack horses? The baron without his chazur for the hunt, and the farmer without his trusty, plodding stott to draw his plough and pull his cart?

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John Richard Young on Collection

John Richard Young on Collection

[John Richard Young was an influential American horseman through much of the 20th century. He published numerous instructional books that were considered bibles in American equestrian literature and intentionally crossed all disciplines in their scope. Young had a classical approach to equitation and even developed western saddles with a correct classical position as opposed to the “chair seat” of the typical designs. The following excerpt comes from pages 324-325 in his out-of-print book “The Schooling of the Horse”, published by the University of Oklahoma Press, 1982. Image scanned from page 193.]

Head position is a result of collection; not the cause of it. A horse that is truly collected is relaxed and supple from jaw to croup; he must be, for the slightest stiffness anywhere destroys collection–and I don’t mean the full collection of a school horse; I mean any slightest degree of true collection, such as we should expect in a trail horse or a stock horse when the rider demands it.

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