This post is written from a Blue Fire Reiki perspective. This is an excerpt from Blue Fire Reiki : The Reiki I Handbook

Reiki is one of the most ancient healing arts known to man kind. Its origins are ultimately unknown as most of the material has been channeled at one point or another from non-physical sources.

The form you are learning is from Tibet and was more recently re-discovered by Dr. Mikao Usui (You-soo-ee) in the early part of the nineteenth century.

In March 1922, as a result of undergoing arduous spiritual discipline (shugyo) on Kurama Yama (Mt Kurama) near Kyoto, Usui-Sensei experienced the phenomenon that is Reiki, and gained an intuitive understanding of how to work with Reiki as a medium for healing and self-development.

The story goes that in all of Usui’s studies, he began to see a pattern for healing but lacked the final pieces to put it all together into the miraculous healing method employed by the masters like Jesus. Finally, he retreated to the top of Mt. Kurama to fast for 21 days. On the 21st day, he had a vision which included all of the Reiki symbols. Although the symbols were characters from Tibet that he was already familiar with, the vision made them click for him.

Originally Usui-Sensei did not have a formal name for his system, simply referring to it as ‘the spiritual medicine of many illnesses’. In time it came to be known as Usui Do, or Usui Teate, and eventually Usui Reiki Ryoho.

From here, the important parts of the story differs from lineage to lineage. While it used to be commonly accepted that the next 3 masters were the forefathers of everyone’s common lineage, it is now understood that Usui taught many masters that simply remained in Japan and never interacted with the Western world. To them, the history of the next three masters is not part of their history of Reiki and for this reason, we will cover more of those details in the lineage section of this text.

Most of what we know of its physical history comes by way of Takata, a Reiki master who learned from Dr Usui and there is some discord in the Reiki communities about which portions are true or can be proven. What is safe to say, at a very base level, however is that Dr. Usui is responsible for the basic system and he passed it on to others.

Blue Fire Reiki History

Blue Fire Reiki originated with Carrie Hammond in 2006. During her level III attunement, one of the gods that she works closely with, Melek Taus appeared and added an element of his own energy. Melek Taus is an angel with origins with the Yazidi, a religious sect made up primarily of Kurds. His appearance was not out of the ordinary but the jolt of energy he added was. It was a wild, ecstatic blue fire.

Each person she attuned from that point forward witnessed the same imagery and perceived the same ecstatic energy, even when she followed the standard Usui Reiki attunement patterns. Melek Taus still appears sometimes during attunements and newly attuned Blue Fire Reiki students often report feeling like they have a peacock tail or wings during the attunement.

After her level III attunement, when she began to teach and to write her own manual, new practices channeled through her as a natural way of using Reiki, which she taught as part of Reiki. These include motions, chanting and blue fire breathing. The end result is what we know now as Blue Fire Reiki

Blue Fire Reiki Lineage

Dr. Mikao Usui
Chujiro Hayashi
Hawayo Takata
Phyllis Lei Furumoto
Claudia Hoffman
Mary Shaw
Christine Henderson
Bruce Way
Neal Lyster
John Pickering
Martin Leigh
Rev. Melanie Damman
Carrie Hammond

Tags: healing, reiki