The Sword and Cross - A resume of my journey

This blog post is about my journey. A journey that moves between the sword and the cross, between the martial combat path I walked and the inner path of transformation that unfolded alongside it. It begins with my first steps inside a traditional martial arts school, continues through combat sports and weapons training, and leads to the moment when I began teaching a system I founded through years of practice and experience.

It is a path shaped by real-world combat environments, through law enforcement, military contexts, and private security, where training meets responsibility and consequence. At the same time, it is a journey inward, through Zen and zazen, Tibetan Buddhism, travels to Nepal and India, a yoga instructor course, and the rediscovery of the religion into which I was baptized. This search led me to study the Knights Templar, the symbolism of the cross, and the meaning of the cross as a pillar.

This blog is where these paths meet. It is where I write about the evolution that led to the creation of Tribe 13 and the activities connected to it. What you will find here is the trace of a life lived between discipline and faith, action and contemplation, tradition and personal transformation.

Many of you are knowing me personally, students, brothers in arms, friends but some are only knowing me true this Platform, YouTube, Social Media or my training materials. For this reason I want to write this blog post so maybe can inspire others in continuing their own journey on the warrior path.

My first steps on the martial path began when I was around sixteen years old. Everything started with a book: The Art of Peace by Morihei Ueshiba. During that period, I was living with my parents and my grandfather in a house in the countryside. It was a large house with land around it, located about forty minutes outside the city. Because of this, every day I had to travel by bus to high school. At that time, there were no martial arts schools in the area where I lived.

So this is how my martial path began. I loved reading books, and one day, in the city, I saw a street stand selling books. One of them caught my attention immediately: The Art of Peace by Morihei Ueshiba. That book, together with another one, The Secrets of Budo, became the doorway that opened the martial path I continue to walk to this day.

Because it was impossible for me at that time to enroll in a martial arts school due to distance and other factors, I took my first steps alone at home. One room in the house, which was almost empty, became my dojo. Since childhood I had some drawing and artistic skills, and my parents allowed me to draw on the walls. I painted a landscape mural inspired by Japanese scenery, with large pine trees and temples. My drawing skills were limited at that age, but for me it was perfect.

I printed an A4 photo of Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of Aikido, in town and made a small altar. On it I placed his photo and also a cut-out book cover from Kamanita the Pilgrim, depicting Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama. I had a wooden sword, a bokken, and a bayonet knife from my father, who served as a military officer for thirty years. I also had incense sticks. These were my first steps on the martial path.

Every evening I trained in that room, practicing cuts with the bokken and thrusts and cuts with the knife. Whenever possible, during IT class at school, I searched on YouTube for aikibudo, aikido, sword techniques, and knife katas. I watched them, drew sketches, and then practiced them at home.

During that period, I had a very close friend who is now a well-known Christian pastor. We were best friends. I was deeply drawn to religion, but in a different way, with a desire to learn and absorb everything: Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, and more. He, on the other hand, was already following the Christian path and wanted to become a preacher and pastor. Even though we often debated religious topics, our friendship was strong.

He was also attracted to aikido and aikijutsu. Almost every day after classes, sometimes for one or two hours, we trained together in a park near the high school. We practiced aikido movements and aikijutsu in a very rough and physical way, often ending up with bruises, and we also integrated atemi, striking techniques. We were also having the first encounter with real violence together. One day when we were going together to school, in that park two gypsies, more old than us and one of them armed with a folding knife were trying to rob us. I don't remember what we were doing but I know that was nothing to do with aikido :))) We were punching the guy with the knife and kick him in the head and than run. But for us it was like an initiation a rite passage.

During this time, not only did the door to martial combat open for me, but also the door to inner transformation. I began to read more, study more, and I discovered zazen meditation from Zen Buddhism, which is deeply connected to many Japanese martial arts. I integrated it into my daily routine. There were even night sessions when, at midnight or one in the morning, I would be outside in the garden, meditating and practicing with my bayonet tanto and bokken.

My interest in the inner path grew so strong that I also visited the nearby mosque with one of our neighbors. There, I spoke with people about the Quran and the Muslim religion, continuing my search for understanding across different spiritual traditions.

I went deeper and deeper into the Buddhist path, discovering Tibetan Buddhism, the Six Yogas of Naropa, and other advanced teachings. I often went to the public library, where I gained access to rarer books, taking notes and then practicing what I studied. During this period, my family and I moved to the city. This allowed me, for the first time, to attend a real aikijutsu and Katori Shintō-ryū dojo.

All of this continued until 2005, when I took the entrance exam for the Police School. The Police School functioned as a military institution and was located approximately four hundred kilometers from my hometown. I returned home only once a month, spending the rest of the time there. While at the Police School, I continued my martial arts training by practicing judo within the school, along with police self-defense classes. My spiritual practice remained strong, and I performed meditation daily. To give a sense of my dedication, my classmates even gave me the nickname “Morihei Ueshiba.” :)))))

After graduating from the Police School, I immediately received my first job as a police officer in a rural countryside area about eight kilometers from my city. The region had a high level of criminal activity. Most cases involved professional animal theft carried out with large trucks, sometimes stealing ten to fifty sheep or pigs at a time. There were also dangerous robberies, with criminals breaking into elderly people’s homes, beating or killing them, and stealing valuables. Due to heavy alcohol consumption, violent fights were common and often ended in death. The area also had many individuals with serious mental health issues.

I worked in this environment for approximately two years. This was my first real contact with violence. I witnessed car accidents where people were killed on impact and their brains where on the road, suicides by hanging, and other traumatic scenes. My colleagues and I were responsible for securing these scenes, identifying and documenting them, taking photographs, and preserving evidence until the forensic department arrived. I was also involved in real violent confrontations, including fights between intoxicated individuals using chains, metal bars, and axes. During this time, I fired my handgun for the first time, took part in foot and vehicle chases of dangerous suspects, and entered burning houses to save elderly people, including one case where a mentally ill thirty-year-old son had set his parents’ home on fire. In this period I was continuing to attend aiki-jutsu and katori shinto ryu classes.

I chose a career as a police officer because, in my family, this path was a tradition. My father served in the military and border police, one uncle was a police officer, and another was a firefighter. When I was between seven and nine years old, my father often took me with him to work. When he was busy with his duties, he would ask a soldier to stay with me. That soldier would give me an empty AK-47, the Romanian variant, along with a military helmet, and I would spend the entire day around him, shooting imaginary enemies. This was possible because we were living in Romania after the communist revolution.

Returning to my police career, from the very beginning my dream was to become part of the special tactical police unit DIAS, which at that time stood for the Department of Special Action and Intervention, similar to SWAT in the United States. After two years of working as a police officer in the rural area, I applied for the special tactical unit selection.

The entrance exam included endurance running, shooting, fighting sparring, a high-intensity physical circuit, a complex psychological test, and an interview with the commander and the team operators. Passing this initial exam was not the hardest part. The real challenge started afterward, with the second phase of selection: two months of continuous training that also functioned as an ongoing selection process. It included intense running, physical conditioning, shooting, fighting, close-quarters battle, and many other demanding activities.

When I officially became a tactical operator and a full member of the team, my mindset began to shift profoundly. Coming from traditional martial arts, I started to clearly understand what worked in real combat and what did not. I finally had the right environment, the right tools, and brothers around me to test, practice, fail, and learn. This period marked the beginning of my strong focus on combat sports and combatives. I started training boxing, kickboxing, and MMA privately at local gyms, while continuing weapons training at work with handguns, rifles, knives, and metal batons. Training involved sparring, stress-based scenarios, and pressure testing.

Naturally, the level of danger and my direct contact with violence increased significantly. I dealt with drug dealers, organized crime, firearms, hostage situations, and other high-risk operations. From a combat perspective, I continued to train intensively in combat sports and also fought in professional boxing matches and several MMA fights. Alongside this, I studied other systems, including Krav Maga in a military and law-enforcement context, as well as various seminars organized specifically for police officers.

Within the unit, together with my brothers in arms, we trained extensively beyond tactical shooting and CQB. This included tactical rappelling, knife combat, metal baton fighting, and multiple deployment scenarios under extreme stress and pressure. Until 2014, my focus was entirely on training, testing, and learning. Starting in 2014, I began compressing all the knowledge and experience I had accumulated into a structured system called Tactical Combat System. This marked the beginning of what I started to teach, initially in a raw and very different form from what it would later become.

In 2014, I started my first group to teach Tactical Combat System. The project was called the School of Survival. I taught hand-to-hand combat based on boxing and striking techniques, weapons training with a strong focus on knife work, and I organized different training events for military and police personnel, including CQB and tactical rappelling.

TCS Tattoo

First TCS course

Throughout this entire period, my inner transformation path continued. Daily meditation remained a constant part of my life, including zazen and Vajrayana Buddhist practices.

In 2015, due to governmental economic cuts, police funding was drastically reduced. Police officers’ salaries were lowered to around five hundred euros per month, while my rent alone was two hundred and fifty euros. This situation forced me to make a difficult decision and leave the police force. Many of my colleagues and team members were facing the same reality. Passion cannot survive on an empty stomach. Even though this job was, and still is, my dream, I chose to move into the private military sector.

After completing a maritime security and anti-piracy course, I began working for an Israeli company, Seagull Maritime Security. The contracts involved four months of deployment followed by two months at home, often only one. This new stage of my life opened an entirely different world. From a training perspective, my development accelerated. Whether on mission or between deployments, I trained constantly, from firearms tactics to knife combat and hand-to-hand combat, always together with my team members.

I worked in this role from 2015 until 2019, completing my last contract that year. In summary, our mission was to operate as armed military contractors aboard commercial vessels, escorting them through high-risk areas such as the coasts of Somalia, Yemen, and Nigeria, protecting them against piracy. During my first two deployments, I served as a team member. After that, due to my performance in several complex situations, I was promoted to Team Leader.

This period was extremely important for me, because as a Team Leader I was also responsible for team training, and my team trained constantly. During this time, I also introduced Tactical Combat Casualty Care training to the team. I had received my first TCCC training while serving in the police tactical unit and had continuously enrolled in additional courses to upgrade my knowledge. In this phase, I was able not only to apply that knowledge but also to share it with others.

One of my attributions in the team was also team medic. Than I fully understood how essential trauma medicine is as an integral part of combat.

Team Leader Course - Teaching Module

During this period, I placed a strong emphasis on developing knife combat skills, training various team members intensively.

One of my team members after knife sparring training. Training done on the ship.

Sri Lanka Knife Training

Brothers in Arms

Tactical Combat System continued to evolve, and by 2016 I began receiving international invitations to teach my system. The first was a two-day seminar in Italy, organized by KMA (Krav Maga Academy), focused on knife combat and attended by more than seventy participants. This marked the beginning of my international teaching journey.

In the years that followed, I conducted seminars and courses in several countries, including Italy, the Czech Republic, Austria, Romania, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. Tactical Combat System was different in its early stages. My methodology and curriculum were not fixed, because I was continuously evolving, training, and learning. As I grew, the system grew with me, gradually taking the form it has today.

Throughout this entire period, I continued working on anti-piracy contracts with four-month deployments, and during my rotation breaks I traveled extensively to teach Tactical Combat System wherever I was invited. Alongside this intense professional activity, my inner transformation path remained active and deep. I continued my daily meditation practice, deeply rooted in Vajrayana esoteric Buddhism.

To balance the intensity of combat training and operational life, I deliberately undertook spiritual journeys. I spent extended periods traveling through India and Nepal, staying in monasteries, visiting my teachers, and receiving teachings, practices, and initiations. These experiences became an essential counterweight to the external demands of combat and teaching, allowing both paths to inform and stabilize each other.

Kathmandu Nepal

Kathmandu Nepal

Sri Lanka Buddhist Teacher

Vajrayana Nyingma Root Guru

Something that deeply marked my inner transformation happened in 2016, sometime around April. It may sound strange, but this is what occurred.

I was on one of the vessels in the Red Sea that functioned as temporary accommodation for military contractors when commercial ships did not reach ports where our company could provide housing. Imagine a small vessel carrying twenty to thirty contractors, along with a Filipino crew of cooks, sailors, and support staff. Conditions were basic. One of the most well-known vessels was called Sinbad. There was an improvised open gym with makeshift weights where we could train, and the food was minimal, almost like prison rations. Despite this, life went on.

One day, it was extremely hot, and the vessel was rolling heavily. I was sitting on a couch, trying to relax. I do not know if I fell asleep or entered a kind of waking dream, but what followed was very intense and deeply personal. For the purpose of this blog, I will simplify the experience.

I found myself in a medieval setting, standing in an angry crowd gathered in front of a stage. On the stage, men were tied and burned at the stake. After this scene, I moved closer and saw that in the place of one of the burned men there was a skull. Behind it was a red cross, and on the skull was the number thirteen.

The experience ended, and shortly after, we departed on a new mission that took us to Sri Lanka, where we had two days before the next transit. As soon as we arrived, I searched for a tattoo studio. I paid double the normal price to have the tattoo done immediately, because the next day I was scheduled to return to sea. The tattoo depicted the skull with the number thirteen and the red cross, a knight-themed symbol.

At that time, my knowledge of the Knights Templar was extremely limited. I associated them only with the Crusades, nothing more. After this experience, I began to read and study deeply. I discovered how they were arrested on Friday the 13th and burned at the stake, and from that point forward, I began an ongoing exploration of their history.

This moment marked a turning point in my inner transformation. From then on, my path became oriented toward the concept of the warrior monk and the archetype of the protector.

In 2019, I began laying the foundations of Tribe 13. At the beginning, it was only an idea, but I invested energy into that idea, and brick by brick I started turning this dream into reality. Tribe 13 continues to grow and will become even stronger, because its mission is true and sincere: to share the flame of the Protector, to create new protectors, to bring together individuals who carry the warrior–protector spirit, and to prepare new generations capable of defending their families and the people around them.

Beyond the online platform, where I share knowledge related to both combat and inner transformation, Tribe 13 has, in recent years, organized a wide range of activities. These include boot camps, seminars, and training courses, all designed to strengthen both the physical and inner aspects of the Protector.

Aside from the public events, in 2025 Tribe 13 was conducting a private trauma medical course for the Close Protection and Security team from the UAE Embassy in Vienna.

Tribe 13 will continue the mission of preparing and creating new Protectors. I am continuing to walk this path and balance the both pillars: sword and cross, combat and inner transformation so I can lead based on example.

Aside from the weapons training (fire weapons and knife), physical conditioning and other skills that I try to improve regarding the combat aspect, I am also for approximately two years practicing grappling and BJJ.

Regarding the inner transformation or the Cross, my practice was shifting to the Christian faith and to prayer, meditation and integrating God and Jesus Christ in my daily life. Last year after more than one year of walking a demanding path of study, training, discipline, and inner testing I was completing the requirements to become both a Licensed Minister and a Ministry Chaplain. My mission is now more clear.

I hope that this resume of mine can be of some type of help for some of you. The path is continuous, the warrior Protector way is a transformation process to become the best variant of ourself, a better human being "gentle as lambs with our love ones, with the weak, ill and poor and fierce as lions with the evil"

Stay safe all and may God protect you and your families.