In the 1940's the Japanese government decided to launch a grammar reform, to simplify many of the very complicated Chinese Kanji. The Kanji are so hard to remember, even for Japanese people, that they have to constantly write and read them in order not to forget their own language. Of cource in the process some of the deeper meaning of the original, ancient Kanji was lost. Some of the ancient Kanji, the one for "river" and "mountain" for instance, resemble the thing they describe.
Dr. Usui did of course use the ancient version to write the word "Reiki"(and everything else), but the contemporary version is correct as well. Due to their eighty year old Reiki tradition, Japanese Reiki practitioners use both versions.
Kanji were originally written with ink and brush, or else printed, and only in recent times- for convenience sake- have they been written with pen and computer keyboards. When a Kanji is written by brush, it sometimes looks very different from the way the same Kanji is written with a pen or on a computer. Most of the people involved with Reiki in the West are non-Japanese. And so many Kanji that are said to mean "Reiki" in books on Reiki, in manuals of Reiki teachers and in their advertisements, are in fact misspelled or badly written.
Unfortunately, this goes for the Reiki Master Symbol as well.
The top characters stand for "Rei" and the bottom characters for "Ki". The word "Rei" means spirit, ghost or soul. The word "Ki" means energy, feeling or mood. Put together, these two words are usually translated as "universal life energy" or "cosmic energy".
Article by Frank Arjava Peter
