June 22nd, 2007
Fist of the Mist
Kasumi Kem No Jitsu: The fist of mist technique
One of the recent additions to the Komuso ryu like many of the ryu’s initiates is a fan of the Anime and Manga known as Naruto which is focused on a fictive ninja society. One of the concepts in this mythos that stands out is the idea of “sealing†the energy of an individual so that said individual can not do what ever he or she is sealed from doing as well as sealing or rather binding an entity inside an individual. The student in question asked if sealing Jitsu or methods were real. I explained that spiritually speaking binding of spirits was real and a part of the esoteric tradition of the Komuso Ryu but that the idea of cutting off of a target’s energy as put forth in the world of Naruto was not real. I have cause now to amend that statement because I did not realize an important fact, while “sealing†Jitsu are not real the Dim Mak is and a sub-form of the Dim Mak is the creation of disruptions in the energy flow of a target to curtail what the target can do or has access to.
If we take seals to be a title for the block/ disruptions created by Dim Mak we can see a germ of reality in the fictive mythos of Naruto. In the path of Nin Do as in many paths one can not disregard the lore and legends of the art. The mythic is the antechamber of the esoteric just as one can not overstate the realm of the esoteric as it is but a portion of reality. The student in question in that instance acted as a teacher reminding me of the fact that to the Ninja our way of life is illusion and a part of that illusion is myth as behind the mythic is reality its self.
The sub-form of Dim Mak that causes specific energy blockages/disruption to manipulate a target is called Kasumi Kem No Jitsu meaning the fist of the mist technique. It is called such because the aspect of the attack that does the actual damage has no more brute force than a fist composed of mist. To perform this technique one must first have developed the Kagejin Me or shadow self eye and be able to perceive the cycle of the ebb and flow of Chi (external energy) and Ki (self generated internal energy) in one ’s self and an opponent. Once one can discern the subtle body or body of light and understand the ebb and flow of energy along certain patterns by applying Ki energy to the subtle structures of the body to manipulate the body of the target through the target’s own energy. Kasumi Kem is a refinement of the methods of Wu Shing, because whereas in Wu Shing one must force lines of force to touch in Kasumi Kem one creates what could be termed phantom Chakra.
These phantom chakras correspond to the anime idea of “seals†and of course in ritual there is the ofuda or amulets the ninja uses in the casting of spells which do act to seal energies as the Kasumi Kem does but in a different way. While the entire technique can not be gone into here it can be said that a major factor to recall is that the user must use his Ki to attack the body of the target and his Ki must be charged with whichever of the five visible elements is contrary to that of the target. There are 64 base combinations of energy that the Kasumi Kemp is able to create and with that in mind it should be clear that these can be related to the hexagrams of the I-Ching which stem from the eight trigrams which are symbolic of the eight types of Chi found both in and outside of the body.  Â