Reiki & Magic

[XEn8]

Hello,

For the context: I am a baby witch, and I’m very much into chaos magic. I’m wondering how Reiki can be lived through the magical lens.

I would love to have some feedback from people here who practice Reiki, to know how magic and Reiki met and influenced the way you practice either magic or Reiki.

On my side, I learned Reiki a long time ago and stopped giving Reiki a long time ago too. This last year I came back to it, but I have the feeling that my practice needs to evolve. Should I stick to Reiki and its principles, or should I simply get into the energetic/aetheric work of magic, or is a mix of the two possible?

Today, the few times I gave Reiki, although in magic I can be totally involved in what I’m doing, in Reiki, following the Reiki philosophy, I feel like I should totally surrender to the life energy that does all the work, and I should absolutely not interfere, just be totally present at what is happening. And all the energy techniques that we use in Reiki, including Reiki symbols, seem to me like interfering too much with the Chi that should exactly know what to do.

And this is where I feel a bit torn between:

a) what I learned and experimented with during my Reiki training (my Reiki teacher was also a physicist, and he gave a lot of importance to technicality and experimentation),

b) the Reiki principle of non-intervention,

c) the magic that I am welcoming into my life, which is taking me in another direction, where intention and personal involvement have a much more important place.

So I am wondering how to make these different approaches coexist, and if they can really nourish each other.

For those who practice both magic and Reiki, I would love to hear about your experience: how your practice of magic and Reiki nurtures each other, if your magic practice has made your understanding of Reiki evolve, if it has transformed the way you give Reiki, if you stayed faithful to the philosophy and principles of Reiki, or if you opened yourself to some freedom in your practice.

And also, the other way around, how has Reiki influenced your magic? Did magic make you see the practitioner as something other than a simple channel? And how do you manage magical intention, personal will, and the principle of non-intervention in Reiki?

Thank you for all your sharings.

 

[Lucien6493]

For me reiki and magick are a seamless blending. I cast runes in the same way that I send distance healings. I will write up manuals as hypersigils and attune, using them as invocations. I use reiki while meditating, while hedge-riding and pathworking. I use reiki pretty much all the time, and for that matter, so do you. I know this with certainty, not because I am a reiki master, which I am, but because you are alive! At least I think you are. Way I see it magick is just one way of using universal life force (ki). To separate magickal intent from the soft, flowing surrender (trance) of a self-healing or the healing of another is like saying that the inbreath and the outbreath do not go together. I beg to differ. But the thing to remember is this...there is reiki and then there is the reiki community of healers at large. Some of them should have stayed (at large). Back in the early nineties when I took the three degrees, reiki manuals were sprouting like mushrooms. It was a fiercely competitive little cottage industry. Lots of ego. Lots of nonsense. I was part of that, from the inside, and every master and their cat was more powerful than the next, and if you had ten attunements under your belt the master down the street had twenty, and suddenly you had Radiance Technique and Tera Mai and rules, rules, rules.

But really, what is an attunement anyway? I asked my reiki master, when I went in for Reiki I, "so, let me get this straight. You are going to charge me two hundred bucks for doing who knows what and then you are going to tell me that you did it, and I'm supposed to believe you?" And she was like..."Yeah. Exactly!" I call that magick. And the attunement process...nobody understands it. But anyway. Let's get to the non-intervention part. All that really means is that the energy is being pulled through you. Nothing more. Nothing less. It means, don't push the river. It is a very clear intent that opens the channel though, and yes, some of the symbols can be used to send thoughtforms. Some can be used to execrate and draw energy out of a person, and all of them can be used as sigils, for to focus the intent. At the end of the day though, you are not separate from Reiki. It is you. And that is why, when you try to live by the five principles, you are trying (just for today) to get out of your own way. You are doing the same when you practice magick.

 

[XEn8]

Thank you very much for your reply. I let it infuse in me, and it feels like big, old pieces of furniture are moving by themselves in my head.

I realized, ironically, that while I am usually quite resistant to dogmas and systems that try to impose their rules on our personal experiences, I let myself be restricted by Reiki dogmas, which are only the fruit of human communities that tried to claim ownership over it.

What you shared made me realize that yes, Reiki can be lived like we can live magic, finding our own personal way.

You explained that a clear intention opens the channel, while we should not “push the river.” This makes me question how these two things work together concretely when giving Reiki to someone.

In my practice, I observed for example that when I add visualisations and imagine the Ki flowing from head to toe of the person I am giving Reiki to, the person will tell me afterwards that they could feel the energy circulating very strongly. And it seems to me that maybe it was too strong and not really necessary.

Another time, I don’t know why I did this, but I visualised each of the person’s chakras filling with the colour corresponding to that chakra. Then, when the chakra was full of this colour, I imagined a lotus opening and blooming. I did this for all the chakras. After the session, the person told me that they had felt flowers blooming all along their torso !

So I am really questioning how to work with intention in Reiki, especially when giving Reiki to another person, because then it necessarily becomes more sensitive. I would be curious to know how this works in your own practice. When do you choose to give the Ki a precise direction or intention ? When do you use a symbol to send a thoughtform ? And when do you simply let the energy flow freely ? How do you make the distinction between these different ways of working ?

Your way of presenting Reiki symbols as sigils and as ways to work with thoughtforms also opens an entirely new field of exploration. My understanding of thoughtforms is still limited, but it shows me how Reiki can be as magical as magic can be ! And I must admit that after reading your post, I suddenly feel much more curious to explore this as a purely magical practice for myself for a while.

Thank you again for sharing. Your reply showed me the freedom I can take back into my Reiki practice ! Thank you !!!

 

[Morell]

I realized, ironically, that while I am usually quite resistant to dogmas and systems that try to impose their rules on our personal experiences, I let myself be restricted by Reiki dogmas, which are only the fruit of human communities that tried to claim ownership over it.

Now that is some proper introspection!

You know, when you channel Reiki energy, you are always intervening, even by guiding that energy to a person. If you were not intervening, that would be the same as you not being there at all. So claiming non-intervention is on itself a nonsense, even when you just guide the energy to a place, you are active participant in the proces.

Seems to me as your experiments are working well. Looks like you are getting good hand on your energy work and magic.