There seems to be a lot of controversy and confusion about the Reiki symbols. For a long time, they were kept secret from everyone not initiated to the second level of Reiki. For decades, Reiki teachers (following in the footsteps of Hawayo Takata) did not allow even their students to keep written copies of the symbols! This led to many changes in the symbols over time, from people not remembering them precisely; the imprecision was passed from generation to generation of students, and compounded by each generation of teachers.
Compounding things even further, Usui Reiki began to mutate into other varieties. New flavors of Reiki were born, seemingly as fast as flavors of ice cream — and, building on what they thought was the original model, the inventors of these new varieties added even more symbols.
At some point, a certain Reiki teacher blew the lid off the secrecy issue, by publishing a book that exposed the Reiki symbols (many variations of them) for all to see! That, in itself, created plenty of controversy. The Reiki world polarized, into those who applauded the exposure, and those who thought it was sacrilege.
WHAT NO ONE (outside a small number of people in Japan) knew at that time was that the Reiki symbols were not essential, or even necessary, in the first place! And that they were not even introduced into the practice of Reiki, by Mikao Usui, until very near the end of his life.
Now, thanks mostly to a group of people in Japan, who learned Reiki in the early 1900s from Usui himself, we know how the symbols came to be used in a way that Mikao Usui had never used them, and how they came to be regarded with such mistaken importance.
The final 3 students that Usui taught were quite different than the others. They were military officers, not accustomed to using Buddhist meditations or Shinto kotodama (as were his other students) — and so he gave them symbols instead. The symbols were to help these 3 students connect with particular energetic aspects. The symbols were NOT used by Usui in his Reiju empowerment procedure.
As it happened, at least one of these final students, Dr. Chujiro Hayashi, did not learn the Reiju procedure from Usui (who passed away before Hayashi was ready for it). It seems he learned it later from another of Usui’s students — but then, in his own practice of Reiki, he replaced Reiju with an empowerment ritual of his own.
Dr. Hayashi became, for whatever reason (and contrary to Mikao Usui’s intentions), the self-proclaimed standard-bearer of Reiki, after Usui’s passing. And the other 2 final students — Jusaburo Ushida (a.k.a. Gyuda) and Kan’ichi Taketomi — became, respectively, the first and second Presidents of the Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai (”Usui Reiki Healing Method Society”). Thus, the Reiki symbols were given an importance and a function they had not had for Mikao Usui.
Years later yet, a Japanese-American named Hawayo Takata would become Hayashi’s most famous student. She would take the role of standard-bearer after Hayashi’s passing — and she would pass on his method of giving Reiki empowerment (which came to be called “attunement”), featuring the implanting of those famous Reiki symbols into the student’s energy field! Through Takata and her lineage, this “attunement” procedure of Reiki empowerment has been the standard, worldwide, since the 1970s. Many variations have been born, and yet the central element of almost all seems to remain the implantation of the Reiki symbols.
When I learned the Reiju procedure, I liked it so much better than the “attunements” I had learned, I’ve been using Reiju ever since. Taggart King (from whom I learned Reiju) has experimented with Reiju vis-a-vis “attunements” (involving symbols), and has reported that students receiving Reiju seem generally to have greater awareness of the energy than students receiving “attunements”.
RECENTLY, ALL THIS was brought to mind when I received a Kundalini initiation. The giver of the initiation asked if I would like to have the Reiki symbols removed from my energy field. Her feeling was that the symbols often become obstacles to spiritual growth. On giving it some thought, and knowing that the symbols were not necessary (they were put there during attunements I received), I couldn’t see any reason to keep them. I had them removed.
This brought up other questions. Was it true that the presence of Reiki symbols in the aura could impede one’s spiritual growth? Was it necessary for people to have them removed? My intuition, confirmed by muscle-testing, said No — that the symbols were only symbols, and what mattered was our attitude toward them. If we viewed them as “training wheels” on a bicycle (as the Usui Gakkai recommends), and if we let go of them once they had served their purpose, they would not cause a problem. They would be no more than artifacts of our journey (as they were intended to be in the first place); at the very worst, no more than “space junk” in the aura, like spent rocket casings orbiting the moon.
Of course, had the simple elegance of Usui Reiju merely been retained, instead of replaced by more complicated “attunement” procedures (based on the implanting of symbols), this “space junk” would not even be there for us to contemplate; and, had the Reiki symbols not been imbued with a mistaken sense of power and magic and secrecy, they would be much easier for people to let go. In fact, had Hawayo Takata found her way to another one of Usui’s students than Dr. Hayashi, the world at large would not even have learned of Reiki symbols!
THE MORAL of the story, then: Reiki symbols were intended only to be “fingers pointing at the moon” (and the sun, and the earth : ^ ). Let’s not mistake the finger for what it’s pointing at! Reiki symbols are not Reiki. It’s much better to get beyond the symbols, to the Source.
Don Beckett is a practitioner and teacher of Usui Reiki on the island of Hawai’i. His comprehensive e-book, An Exploration of Usui Reiki and Beyond, can be downloaded at
http://new-reiki-books.johreiki.net/.