Divinity Atlas
This report item describes the Usui system of Reiki as the tradition describes itself: the hand positions, the three symbols introduced at its second degree, and the documented lineage from Mikao Usui through Chujiro Hayashi and Hawayo Takata. A chart is read against the energy centers the practice works with. This page is descriptive of the tradition, and is not medical advice.
History
Reiki was developed by Mikao Usui in Japan in the early 1920s. Chujiro Hayashi, who studied under Usui, further systematized the hand-position based practice into the form most subsequent teaching descends from, running his own clinic where the technique was refined and taught. Hawayo Takata, a Japanese-American woman who trained at Hayashi's clinic, carried the system from Japan to Hawaii and then the wider United States from the late 1930s onward, and the teachers she trained are the documented root of most Reiki lineages practiced in the West today.
The system organizes its teaching into named degrees; the second degree traditionally introduces three symbols used in the practice, part of the tradition's own internal structure of graduated training passed from teacher to student.
How A Reading Is Constructed
A reading maps a chart's placements onto the energy centers Reiki practice works with, commonly read against the same seven center system this atlas's own Chakras report item describes in full, and names where the tradition would read energy as needing attention. As the report item's own description states, this reading is descriptive of the tradition and its own self-account, not medical advice, and no claim here substitutes for medical care.