Editor’s Note: There has been some controversy and disagreement among scholars and practitioners of The Pearl Path (Tama No Michi) about the actual name of the practice. Tama No Michi, which is the more commonly used spelling, translates to the commonly used English translation of The Pearl Path. It can also be read as The Jewel Path or even, using the ancient shinto meaning The Way of the Soul. These meanings all line up with the belief system and commonly understood practices of those who practice this system of magick.
There are, however, those who claim that the actual name of the practice is Tahma No Michi, which only varies by one letter in English transliteration and sounds exactly the same. That one letter makes a big difference, however, in the translation into Kanji. Tahma no Michi has a more sinister overtone. In kanji it translates to The Devil’s Way. Among those who follow Tama no Michi, this is usually explained as a mistake in transaltion or as an intentional slur put upon the school by those who see it as a threat to Buddhism, Shinto, or other more mainstream belief systems.
Of course, there have always been rumors, that beneath the surface of Tama no Michi there is a schism where a great battle between the forces of light and darkness plays out. Those who believe such things, seem to imply that the fate of the world depends on which side should emerge victorious.
In looking at the historical evidence, we have found no evidence for these claims. Therefore, we have opted to use Tama no Michi/The Pearl Path to describe this belief system in this series of articles that hopefully will help shed some of the misconceptions and misunderstandings about this interesting nature-focused folk belief system.
Leroy Montaigne and Kit Yamada –The Editors
The Ancient Origin of Tama no Michi: The Pearl Path
The oldest mention of Tama no Michi come from the writings of the Buddhist monk Yoshida Kenko. Kenko writes that in the 6th year of the Karyaku era (1328 by the Western calendar), a ship appeared like a drifting shadow between the islands of Honshu and Hokkaido. The ship was brought to shore on Honshu and the lone survivor, a man who called himself Babu Oobu, was a dark skinned man who said that he had come from a far off land to bring a powerful teaching. He claimed that his country was filled with sand and mountains and they had discovered the secret to immortality. He was driven to cross countless oceans and untold perils to reach this land he claimed to have seen in a dream that showed a rising sun over a vast blue ocean..
Upon hearing these claims, the locals decided to burn him as a witch. Kenko writes that he and a group of scholars helped Babu Oobu escape in the night. Babu Oobu promised to return and show them Tama no Michi, the Path of Pearls, but Kenko surmises that it is likely that Babu Oobu perished in the sea after they put him on a boat and launched him towards Hokkaido. Kenko’s poetic “A Light from the Prison,” is widely considered to be the first piece of literature inspired by Tama no Michi.
Most scholars believe Babu Oobu to have either been an Ainu shaman or a product of Kenko’s imagination, but a small but growing number of researchers believe that Babu Oobu might have been the first missionary from the Sultanate of Baboob, the mysterious North African mountain nation that has recently been getting a lot of attention for having remained hidden within the confines of Libya and Algeria for centuries. The Sultanate emerged revealing wide influence and having incredible resources for a country that almost no one knew about fifty years ago. While it is way outside of the scope off this essay to write about the Sultanate of Baboob or its impact on world politics, the idea that Babu Oobu was an ancient missionary to Japan from Baboob is an interesting theory and one that we hope future scholars might take seriously.
One can only imagine a holy man receiving a vision and calling that beckoned him toward the land of the rising sun, where ancient forces lay sleeping, ready to be awakened. However, even if this were the case, he seems to have been marooned on Japan’s northern shores, and he arrived half-dead, a stranger in a land that would soon make him flee for his life to avoid dying in flames.
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In the three articles about Tama no Michi that will follow this one, we will delve into the history of this interesting and powerful spiritual philosophy. While there has been very little written about Tama no Michi in the past, through a combination of field work, interviews, and recording of oral histories, we have managed to create what we think is the first history of this fascinating worldview to ever be published on the internet. While it has been exceedingly difficult to fact check much of this, we have done what we could to verify our sources and to make sure that what we are presenting fits with the established historical record. The biggest challenge is that so little is known of Tama no Michi outside of those who practice it and the practice itself is, in part, dependent on not spreading knowledge of it outside of the master/apprentice relationship. One exceedingly interesting aspect of the practice is the connection it has to other historic and existing mystery schools. One wouldn't really expect that there would be a connection between an indigenous shamanistic spiritual practice of the Ainu, fourteenth century Islamic philosophy, and early European schools such as the Rosicrucians and the Knights Templar, but our research has brought to light too many similarities to simply be coincidence. While it is beyond the scope of this series of articles to detail the specific practices or composition of the seisha (spells) that are able to be observed within the TnM community, we highly encourage those who are curious to observe or participate in TnM ritual gatherings if such can be found in one's area.
