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Raku-Kei and Raku Pottery

 

 

This information page is posted for the attention of anybody who has been on a Raku pottery workshop where a link between Raku pottery and the Raku-Kei energy system has been presented. It is also for the attention of Raku-Kei Masters who are asked to provide training in Raku-Kei on the basis that it has a connection with Raku pottery 

 

 

 

 

 

The Raku-Kei energy system has found its way into the West via the lineage of Iris Ishikuro and Arthur Robertson.

 

The Raku method of making pottery originated in Japan around the sixteenth century and was characterised by a very rapid firing and cooling process. Since it was introduced to the West in the early part of the last century, the Raku pottery process has developed further with potters dipping their pottery into special glazes before firing which produce bright colour and metallic effects on the final product.  

 

In April 2007, I received an enquiry from a teacher of the Raku method of producing pottery who wanted to learn Raku-Kei. The teacher works with the energies and brings them in to pottery making workshops. The teacher felt that there was a link between the ‘Raku’ in Raku-Kei and the ‘Raku’ in Raku pottery and wished to teach this link in pottery workshops. It seemed to me as if part of the concept of a link came from the teacher reading the inaccurate commentaries about Raku-Kei that can be found on the internet.

 

My initial reaction was that there might not be a link. As I did not wish to take money from somebody for a training course that might not meet the original purpose of training, I tried to find out more about any possible link.

 

Being able to speak a little Japanese, I knew that the components of spoken Japanese words might have different meanings even though they may be pronounced in the same way and that the key to understanding each of the meanings is to go back to the Chinese Kanji characters in which the words are written. Different meanings are usually written in different Kanji characters. I made enquiries in Japan with one of my teachers there who is a leading linguistics expert in both the various forms of Japanese scripts and in the Tibetan language. He is also a Raku-Kei Master, is very experienced with a wide range of energies, and is a practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism. He has a copy of the original Arthur Robertson training manual.  

 

The guidance that I received from Japan was that the Raku in Raku-Kei is not a Japanese or Chinese word and has no Kanji equivalent from which a true interpretation of the word can be derived.  The interpretation of the Kanji for the Raku in Raku pottery 楽   means "pleasure," "enjoyment," "entertainment," or even "music" in Chinese, Luo/Lo, and in Japanese. An immediate connection with the Raku in Raku-Kei, therefore, does not come to mind.

 

According to Arthur Robertson, Raku-Kei is a Tibetan term that was transformed into Reiki in Japanese (much like the English "coffee" becomes "ka-fei" in Chinese and "koohii" in Japanese). Further guidance from my teacher in Japan was that there is no such term in the Tibetan language.  Even if there were, the term "Reiki" could did not derive from it because the word Reiki has its own Kanji in Japanese. There are several sources attesting to the fact that Mikao Usui and several other healers who lived in Japan at the beginning of the 20th century all called their energy "divine energy" (= Reiki) without any influence at all from any Tibetan sources.

 

I advised the pottery teacher, therefore, that there was no connection between the Raku in Raku pottery and the Raku in Raku-Kei. The teacher accepted this but still felt drawn to Raku-Kei and wished to learn it. I agreed to teach it and a date was set. Each night for the three days after agreeing to teach, the Higher Beings kept buzzing me when I tried to go to sleep saying that there was something wrong with the situation with the pottery teacher. The guidance was that the teacher was going to advise pottery students of a supposed connection between Raku-Kei and Raku pottery. I asked somebody that I know to make enquiries about a forthcoming Raku pottery workshop being offered by the teacher shortly after learning Raku-Kei from me and the information that came back by e-mail was that although there are no known links between Raku-Kei and Raku pottery to date, there is a surprisingly interesting connection between the two that would be discovered at the forthcoming workshop. Although the phrasing used was a bit contradictory, it was clear that the messages coming through to me from up above were correct.

 

In the absence of scientific measurement of how the energies work, our understanding of them is largely experiential and prone to a degree of misinterpretation and misunderstanding at the best of times. In addition to this, some people involved in energy work are very undisciplined in the way that they project their own interpretations in to their teaching of what the energies do. If students down the teaching lines from such people do not question the teachings received and make up their own minds about what is going on with the energies, it becomes easy for incorrect teachings to pass down the teaching lines unchallenged and to spread. We have enough problems of these kinds with the energies already without the same thing happening in connection with Raku-Kei and Raku pottery. I advised the pottery teacher, therefore, that there would be no teaching of Raku-Kei from me.

 

I am posting this commentary to the website, however, as I would expect the pottery teacher to learn Raku-Kei from somebody else and I would expect an incorrect teaching about a link between Raku-Kei and Raku pottery to enter the public domain. Could anybody who becomes part of this situation please note that there is no direct connection between the Raku-Kei and Raku pottery. Whilst any creative work such as painting or pottery can be infused with the energies during the creation process, this is a completely different matter to saying that there is a connection between Raku-Kei and Raku pottery.       

 

Thank you.     

 

 

 

 

 

Date of posting : 26th April 2007

 

 

 

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