The words are one question. How you say them is a different one, and it is the one that decides whether the form holds.
My name is Ren Kagetsuki. This is the part that was drilled into me first, before I was allowed near anything that mattered.
Aloud, low, flat, slow, three times, one breath each.
Everything below is why.
Say it aloud
Not in your head. This is the instruction people skip and it is the one that matters most.
Two reasons, one old and one plain.
The old one is kotodama, the idea here that a word carries force when it is voiced and not before. You may take that or leave it.
The plain one survives either way. A sentence said in your head drifts and you cannot hear that it has drifted.
Spoken, you notice the moment a word changes. That noticing is the only quality control this working has.
I was made to say things aloud in front of my teacher for two years before I was allowed to do anything on my own.
Not because the words were difficult. Because a person who has only ever said them inside their own head has no idea what they actually sound like.
How it should sound
Low enough that somebody in the next room would not make out the words. Loud enough that you can hear each one clearly yourself.
Three faults, and I have heard all of them described back to me.
- Whispering. It tightens the throat and the body reads it as hiding. Speak at a low ordinary pitch instead.
- Getting loud. Volume recruits feeling, and feeling is the one thing that must not enter this.
- Speeding up. Almost everybody is faster by the third repetition than the first. Deliberately slow the third one.
The tone is flat. Not pleading and not angry.
You are reading out a fact rather than making a case. If it sounds like you are trying to convince something, start again tomorrow.
One line, one breath
Breathe in first. Say the whole line on one outward breath. Breathe in again before the next repetition.
Never split the line across two breaths. If you cannot get it out in one, the sentence is too long and you should shorten it rather than train your lungs: the grammar the sentence has to follow.
Out longer than in, as with everything else in this practice.
People ask whether the breathing is symbolic. It is not. A line said on a held breath comes out strained, and strain sounds like feeling.
The count is three
Not seven, not nine, not until it feels right.
Three is small enough to hold without counting. You feel three. You have to count seven, and counting is attention spent on arithmetic.
This is also where a chant differs from what people imagine chanting to be.
It is not repetition until something shifts. Repeating past the count takes you somewhere else entirely, and that somewhere is not a return.
Say it three times, stop, and let it be finished whether or not you felt anything.
Feeling nothing is normal and it is not information. Most of the cases I have closed felt like nothing at the time to the person involved.
When and where
After sunset, on a washed body, at roughly the same time on each of the three nights.
Avoid the hour between two and three in the morning. That window belongs to the sending side of this trade, not to the undoing of it.
Somewhere you will not be interrupted. If your home does not offer that, the bathroom does, and running water is neutral ground rather than a compromise.
Nobody else should hear it. Not a partner, not a friend, not a sympathetic one.
A working that has been performed in front of an audience has been performed for the audience, whether or not anybody intended that.
If it goes wrong halfway
Two situations, with different answers.
Your voice shakes, or you cry. Keep going. That is the body, not the working, and it does not put feeling into anything. Finish the three.
The wording changed. Stop. Do not correct it and carry on from there.
Sit for a minute, then begin the count again from one, with the sentence exactly as written down.
Only the second one requires starting over, and people usually assume it is the other way round.
If you cannot say it aloud at all
Shared housing, thin walls, a household that would ask questions. This is a common problem and there is no clever workaround.
Whispering is not a quiet version of speaking and silent repetition is not a version of it at all.
Do the washing and the salt at the door this week, which need no voice, and leave the spoken part until you have an hour alone in the house.
If that hour is not going to come, the spoken part can be carried out from here instead, and you say nothing at all: the quieter form, for people who cannot speak it.
Tell me what has been happening and I will tell you which parts you can do where you live.
