reiki

Jul

2014

HGA: Clarification, Distinctions, and Defense

If you missed what is the lead up to this post, catch it here.
A friend complained that my last post didn’t live up to my warning of it being controversial or egotistical, I hope this post or the next one will live up to that a bit more. As is, what I thought was going to be a two part post, is going to be at least three parts. I’d put it all up at once, but I know almost no one would make it through such a post, without the hit of cocaine required for some exceptionally verbose bloggers.
So I already made a basic case for my issue around people saying they established contact with their HGA, but before I continue I’d like to clarify some points as they came up with discussion with Rachel Izabella.
She raises the very good point that she isn’t sure if it is possible to really distinguish between the Holy Guardian Angel, and potentially similar figures like the Supernatural Assistant. I agree; if it is possible, it’s very tricky, these figures/terms aren’t clearly defined, and honestly when you get “up there” in the magickal realms things start to vague up a bit, but just because they’re hard to tell apart doesn’t mean we should label them the same thing.

Zomp. Now you know.

It’s very hard to distinguish between seafoam green, aquamarine, sea green, and zomp (yes that’s a colour name) and their related colours, but that doesn’t mean we should consider them the same. If we can’t look at these colours and immediately tell them apart, the best way to know which is which is to mix it, and that way we can explain the differences. I can tell you how many drops of what colours to make any of these colours or on a computer I could give you the Hex code for it, and that is how we can tell the difference, when it might not be possible or easy with the naked eye. If it is made this way it’s seafoam, if it is made this way it’s zomp. So while I can’t say how these magickal tutelary assistant spirits are different, and I doubt anyone can that easily, it goes back to the idea that we can only tell them apart if we know how they’re made, the ritual process involved in establishing contact. This isn’t to say one is better than the other, I’m not implying that in the slightest, it’s not my Angel is Bigger/Has More Wings/More Eyes/Is More Fiery than your Angel, it’s just that I think they might not be worth conflating, especially when the experiences are so different…but maybe that’s more about contact than whom you reach?
Now contact is the basis of my secondary argument with people saying they’ve achieved Knowledge and Conversation with the Holy Guardian Angel, and while I somewhat had this idea boiling in the back of my head, I have to thank Polyphanes for his conversation on this which helped clarify the issue.
Even though it’s cutting to the end of the argument he brought up the good question of “What does it matter if people misuse the terms?” Why care if their Knowledge and Conversation experience isn’t like mine or that their “HGA” is a different class of spirit from mine? Well a couple of reasons. First, but not the most important, is it is insulting to go through something that takes up so much of my life, and have someone say “Oh, I did 15 minutes of ritual a night for a few weeks and got the same result.” I should note this isn’t just about magick stuff though, think about your careers and have someone saying they could do it just as well cause they read a book on it, or could figure it out themselves. And granted in both cases some amazing people might actually be able to just step up and do it, but they are far far far in the minority that to give them a percentage would be overestimating them. Think about any achievement or training you’ve taken, and the inevitable “I could do that” or “I did that” statements come up. “Wow, you spent 12 years getting your black belt? I just taught myself watching Bruce Lee movies, I’m just as good as you.” It’s an insult, but it also shows how absurd some of the claims are in comparison.
The second reason is that it weakens the traditions. Now, this is always been a problem, people could make the same claim to spiritual/magickal realization and there isn’t anything you can necessarily do about it. In the past though these people were more the town charlatan (this implies a level of conscious deceit that I don’t think is there for most people claiming K&C) so their claims didn’t spread. Sure, the inept witch made witchcraft look silly for the village, but that was it. But now on the internet when anyone can blog or post on forums people who used to be the sole misguided person can now spread their misinformation to dozens and hundreds of people, and if they come off as reasonable/intelligent (and many can and do), people can buy into the idea that they can achieve with little effort too, and it becomes a cycle. Eventually Knowledge and Conversation becomes something that can be achieved in a weekend, and yes, I’ve actually seen descriptions for doing just that. So I think it’s important to clarify the potential differences between the spirits we contact and the mode and result of the communication.

Pretty much like this

I parallel it to the way Reiki has “degraded” in the West. Traditional Japanese Reiki requires work, study, and practice, it took me six years to be ready to start my “third degree” (technically not called that, but whatever). Now on the other hand you can go from Zero to Reiki Master again in a weekend, because what Reiki was and meant in the West has shifted; people deemphasized the bulk of the system and practice. It became about energy healing, not about personal growth and attaining Satori.
Related to that, there is just respect for the tradition. We don’t conflate other spiritual ritual experiences as being the same thing. Initiations into a Greek Mystery Tradition are different than initiations into a Tantric Buddhist practice, and we keep them that way. If people want to argue and make a case for how their initiations are doing the same thing, and getting to the same result, I would support that discussion, but I wouldn’t be a fan of someone outright declaring they are the same. That is part of the problem, people don’t seem to discuss it in terms of “My experience might be similar or comparable to Knowledge and Conversation” they say that they have Achieved it. Granted I have seen a few people who take that sceptical link, and I appreciate that, but pretty much all of them seem to fall short of the ritual results of people who performed the Abramelin, which again leads back to the question of why consider them the same? Reiki lost that respect for the tradition. What was a beautiful and elegant system of meditation with some energy work involved, was diluted and repackage to be a newage rainbow chakra plug-and-play energy healing system. Why? Well, there is a lot of stuff about Takata and what she did to Reiki, but you could say that what Reiki is or was, wasn’t held to any standards, and eventually anything with a basic similarity (Mikao Usui, Japanese, Energy Work) was allowed to be labelled Reiki and no one questioned why dissimilar elements and ideologies were working their way in.
I see Knowledge and Conversation going the same way as Western Reiki, people are deemphasizing the bulk of the system and focusing on what is arguably a minor part of the working, contacting the Angel.

Apr

2013

Review: Reiki and the Healing Buddha – Maureen J. Kelly

Reiki and the Healing Buddha – Maureen J. Kelly
Full Circle, 2001, 206pp, 8176210323.
It’s rare to find a book that as soon as I see it I want it. It’s even rarer to find a book that as soon as I see it and realize how horrible it will be I want it, but I’m a masochist and this book didn’t disappoint in this respect. The basic premise of this ~~fairy tale~~ book is that Reiki is actually an ancient Buddhist form of healing, and if you connect all the pieces you can realize that. The author leads us through her exploration of different traits of the Healing Buddha and his practice, and Reiki, and how they link in her mind.
So where to start with this book? First let’s tackle the title. “Reiki and the Healing Buddha,” the healing Buddha refers to Sangay Menla, or Bhaishajya Guru, also known as the Medicine Buddha. The cover of the text has a picture of Chenrezig on it though, a completely different figure. Why? Frankly I think it suits how much the author knows about both Buddhism and Reiki, but let’s build that case.
The author thanks Mikao Usui (founder of Reiki) for “rediscovering Reiki, for bringing it out of the Buddhist monastery” (iii) which would imply Reiki wasn’t created by Usui-sensei, and that Buddhists were hiding it all this time. What a fun fantasy. Strange that there are no Buddhist texts or teachings that match the idea of Reiki as energy healing. Also it makes perfect sense for monks, being the horrible people that they are, to keep the secrets of health to themselves, let everyone else suffer is the motto of the Buddhist monks, right?
“Because Reiki comes from Buddhism…”(11) at this point in the book she’s made no case that Reiki has anything to do with Buddhism, you’re just supposed to trust her, but the way she creates evidence would be frightening if it weren’t hilarious. Some may just be translations and traditions, like her chart of the Buddhas and their colours and directions being wrong (14), but others is just made up. “The Reiki Master symbol can be found within the first two vows made by the Healing Buddha” (23) which she later explains that when the Medicine Buddha says “I have been born into the world” (26) it really means being initiated with the “Reiki Master symbol” (27), because that’s not a stretch, and being born is too obvious. She constantly tries to link ideas, but can never support, and rarely explains. For instance she takes four of the eight symbols in the ashtamangala, decides they are the real important ones, and that they secretly represent the four Reiki symbols (50). She very briefly explains it later, but it is literally less than one sentence for each connection (77). She explains the idea of paying for Reiki (which the insistence on it purely a Western thing) comes from the Healing Buddha sutra that says people won’t understand the Medicine Buddha’s teaching unless they pay for it (193). Admittedly it’s been a while since I read that, but I don’t remember that, and it seems not to be the right attitude. I guess it’s let everyone else suffer, unless they can afford my hourly rate?
Her knowledge of Buddhism is flawed, she makes reference to the Earth Goddess in Buddhism (who is the same as Sekhmet, Isis, Mary, Hera, and so on (31)), and that Chenrezig became Tara because there wasn’t a female Bodhisattva (32) which if you know the stories of Tara’s first vow is more insulting to women than anything. Since she believes Reiki is Buddhist she recommends the readers just go out and get Buddhist initiations (34/35) because it’s not like it’s a religion and you should take it seriously, and it’s not like these initiations have vows you have to obey for the rest of your life and should be thought out and prepared for. Her sources and translations are just as odd as everything else, according to her in the sutra of the Healing Buddha untimely death is caused by “illness treated by hoodoo.” (38) It’s a little known fact that the ancient Buddhists of India hated hoodoo, totally true.
Her Reiki understanding is just as bad, but it’s typical for what you’d see from a practitioner of a Takata-lineage of Reiki. What surprises me is she’s somewhat aware of the history and process, but ignores it. She mentions how there are twelve hand positions, but some teach twenty-seven or more, and they may not be part of the original system of Reiki. (They weren’t, they were added in by Hayashi because some students were too “dull” to sense where Reiki needed to be) Despite this, she still explains that these twelve are really and truly representations of the Twelve Yaksha generals (51) despite the fact that there weren’t in the original system or created by Usui-sensei (sorry, “rediscovered”). (Sidenote: “Rediscovered” irks me throughout the book, nowhere does she make a case for Reiki being a pre-existent tradition, so it cannot be rediscovered. It can be Buddhist inspired (and it was to a degree, but not how she thinks) but that doesn’t make it a “rediscovery” any more than my version of my mom’s vanilla cake is a “rediscovery” of what cake is.) She mentions there is no proof that Usui-sensai studied at Chicago University, or headed a Christian school in Japan (147) (he did neither) but then goes on to explain that he studied at Chicago University and headed a Christian school in Japan (149) because she likes that story, creatively ignoring of facts, even after she discredits them. She also claims that once you reach the “third degree” you have to pick a higher being “similar to or the same as Angels” (129) to work with, and idea so removed and alien from Reiki it boggles me, but hey it supports her idea to connect it to Buddhas and Bodhisattvas so why not?
She has gems of logic like “The Power symbol is the only Reiki symbol which does not come from a written language which may mean that it is older than most written languages” (84) which is another hilarious jump in logic. It’s not a word, so obviously it’s pre-text, that’s right, Reiki now goes back to before writing existed. Or that the “Mental/Emotional symbol” is actually Long A from the Gupta Alphabet (96), but if you know your symbols, go look at the alphabet, see if you agree. She also spends a surprising amount of time analyzing clockwise and counter-clockwise symbols and how horrible clockwise is to our bodies (86) unfortunately for her the original symbol she’s talking about was clockwise, somewhere in Takata’s lineage it got reversed. Or that because Manjushri’s text was translated into Chinese (from Pali/Sanskrit) in the third century, it makes sense that he was linked to the Japanese tradition at the time (114), if you understand that, please let me know.
It’s not just Buddhism and Reiki she gets wrong, but reality. “It is my belief that the Rei of Reiki is one of the rays of the light spectrum which has yet to be discovered by scientists.” (6) It’s energy sure, but she lists the entire Electromagnetic Spectrum, and apparently Reiki is hiding beyond the edges somewhere, making it weaker that AM radio, or more powerful Cosmic Rays. Scientizing the occult is one thing, but bad scientizing is horrid. It’s worse, for “scientists have found that memories of things learned by a parent can be passed on to a child through the memories contained in genes.” (104) Which is another fun fantasy. “In quantum physics it is said that quantum waves can go both forward and backward in time” (122) because her science wasn’t bad enough yet. She calls the Mesopotamian religion one of “Light/Life” (13) which means she’s never read anything about it.
All of this bad research and horrible synthesis is made worse by the self-description of “being a very practical, feet on the ground, type of person” (129) who just assumes everything is a sign of ancient Reiki. What gets me is I could have agreed with some parts of her synthesis if she talked about it in terms of personal experience, of unsubstantiated personal gnosis, or personal symbolism. By trying way way too hard to pretend to be well researched and historical, whatever value she put forth in this book was ruined. While I picked this book up not expecting anything good, it was horrible to a degree I didn’t expect, and even for that perverse pleasure I don’t recommend this text be bought by anyone.
If I were to sum up her logic and argument in a simple image it would be this:

Aug

2011

Wednesday Webshares: Mercury, Crowley, and Scrolls

Welcome to another Wednesday Webshare on the first full day of the current period of Mercury Retrograde. This is a video heavy posting, sorry about that.
Remember if you’re ever unsure about which direction Mercury is going and don’t want to bother with an ephemeris and numbers there is the site Is Mercury in Retrograde which provides a handy countdown for when you have to stop blaming Mercury and find another thing to blame for your bad communication skills and travel disruptions.
I haven’t discussed this much here (I’m managed to be surprisingly impersonal) but I’m a practitioner of Traditional Japanese Reiki. If you know what Reiki is…well it’s not really much like that. I’m the crotchety old geezer who complains that what gets called Reiki in the Western world isn’t that close to Reiki anymore. Regardless I was sent an interesting video recently. Judith Pennington studies EEG (Electroencephalographs or brainwaves) specifically in some relation to spiritual practices. She had studied many “Reiki Masters” but then studied someone who practiced Traditional Japanese Reiki (TJR) and found that the brainwaves were different between western Reiki users and TJR practitioners. This doesn’t surprise me considering the differences in how Reiki is accessed in those systems. I enjoyed watching the videos and it is food for thought, but I wish that Pennington stuck more with the actual observations (like what the brainwaves actually are) without her recoding it into her newage psycho-spiritual language. I’m not saying her interpretation is wrong in any way, but I think a stronger case would have been made without discussing “the field” and such and focusing on how interesting the brainwaves are.

And here is her write up based upon the experience.
Oddly enough I have an EEG machine (that isn’t odd…is it?) and I’ve recorded myself performing things like the LBRP, Middle Pillar, the Sphere of Self, as well as various meditations, but it never occurred to me to record my brainwaves while doing Reiki. I’m not sure if I’ll get the chance in the near future, but we’ll see. This wasn’t done in the most controlled manner, but still it is nice to see some slightly scientific research going into it and something to think on.
Out of the East and over to the Near East the Dead Sea Scrolls are up for adoption. For a mere £1,200, or $1888 (Canadian, Yankees can do your own conversion) you can adopt a fragment of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Sadly it’s not like adopting a kitten, it’s like adopting an animal at the zoo, your name will get put on a plaque beside your fragment at the museum so people know this is your baby. Personally I’d love to own parts of The Book of Noah, or the Book of Sirach: Angels and Lovecraftian horrors in the Jewish tradition, but $1888 is a lot for a book, especially one I don’t actually get to keep.
In slightly related news, the University of Oxford is stepping into the future of internet teamwork. There is a wealth of untranslated Greek papyri and they’re turning to the internet for help. Over at Ancient Lives you can look at papyri and help label/identify letters on various pages to help make the process of decoding these ancient texts go quicker. Largely they will be early Christian texts (they assume) but frankly those are the fun ones. I mean that’s where I got the actual quote about Archangel bukkake on Eve, I wasn’t making that up. I wish I could have. Angels were freaky. The less I say about that lipstick wearing leather daddy Azazel the better.
I’ve been watching Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, hoping it would be nearly as good as Xena. I’ve been wrong but there was an interesting Crowley reference I just saw. Basic context and spoilers. Outside of our world is Dahak, some big-bad evil that even the gods are afraid of -all of them Greek, Sumerian, Celtic, Norse- he crept into this world and possessed Iolaus and set up a religion of light, love, and debauchery…and well…apparently the evil from beyond our world is Aiwass.

Speaking Crowley, he makes an amusing cameo in the satirical public service video “The Bizarre World of the Bisexual.” Reading the comments I’d like to point out this is satire, if you watch the other videos they all play with a similar humour, if you take it serious it will be offensive (about sexuality, not about Crowley).

The US Army is apparently looking to create technological telepaths . Money for machine telepathy, thank goodness your country doesn’t have some sort of financial issue that this could be better spent on…wait what? Seriously though I think this is fascinating and I wonder how far this research will get, and what non-war applications it might have.
Lastly for a bit of Lovecraftian awesomeness I’ve recently come across the awesome and hilarious site Better Myths in which myths are retold…kinda. Aside from the awesome written versions the webmaster also does videos. This is a three part retelling of The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath
Again, sorry it’s so video heavy, that’s just the way the net worked for me this week.