Editor's Note: We recommend that you start with Part 1 and Part 2 which we have previously released. The largest challenge we face in the sharing of the information we have so painstakingly gathered over the past three decades is the sheer volume of misinformation that exists. In truth, there are more articles that 'prove' Tama no Michi doesn't exist than there are that do. In fact, we ran head on into some of those authors on our journey of discovery.
We posit that there are multiple reasons for the great effort that has been put into disproving that Tama no Michi or the various schools of the philosophy exist. Like the Sultanate of Baboob before it, we believe that there has been a long and active disinformation campaign that has been operating from within the storied halls of Tama no Michi's enclaves themselves. In addition, we believe that the individual schools. have each gone to great effort to make sure that no other school should eclipse it in importance. These campaigns have varied from the positive - extolling the virtues of each school to the extreme negative - denying the existence of said institutions at all. Over time, as happens, the negative energy trumped the positive and all that was left was denial.
Finally, we have strong reason to believe that proving the existence of Tama no Michi is threatening to the existing global power structure because, by the mere fact of its existence, it rewrites not just the history of one small school of thought, but if proven real, it will require a complete rewrite of political, religious, and economic history. How one obscure philosophical school of thought could be so threatening, is one of the reasons why we have chosen to publicly detail our findings rather than publishing in academic journals that would easily be buried or disputed. There have been credible threats against us as individuals, against our families, and early on against publishers who agreed to publish and distribute our work. This feels like the only way to move forward.
Leroy Montaigne and Kit Yamada –The Editors
The Teachings Disperse - The Shadow Priests & Four (Possibly Five) Schools
Baba Oobu took apprentices, we know this for certain. What we don’t know without a doubt is how many there were or which claims made through history are genuine or spurious besides the three best known. They are, of course: Ku Taro, Osamu, and Ryuji. Collectively they and the many others who made claims of apprenticeship or descent from apprentices are called the Shadow Priests , Kage no Miko.
Each of them were given the complete teachings probably through a combination of scrolls and oral histories and sent to distant regions. Ku Taro was instructed to go far to the South towards Kyushu and eventually Okinawa. Osamu was sent to Honshu, Ryuji was sent across the sea to the West landing in the Koreas. They are the originators of three of the great schools of Tama No Michi. A fourth apprentice, Kaizawa, who many believe to have been the child of Baba Oobu, remained with him in Hokkaido. While it is difficult to detail the hierarchy of Tama no Michi, there is great importance placed on a line of descent from master to disciples, those who claim to belong to any of the four schools founded by these four disciples of Babu Oobu, can claim a definitive direct link to the founder himself. In the case of the Kaizawan school, this is amplified by the actual tracing of a bloodline. The Kaizawans in particular put great importance on claims of physical descent and the Master of Kaizawa is always a direct descendant of Kaizawa, though there are some who claim that the line was broken at several points by imposters.
Thus, the four most important schools or houses of Tama no Michi are the Kaizawan, Kugakko, Osamin, Ryujigai. There are others, but these four carry the most weight and seem to still be the main hubs of decision making and learning. The smaller houses generally fall in alignment with these four. Over time, though Tama no Michi is all about balance, each house has come to be associated with one of the individual four elements, wind, water, fire, and earth. Kaizawan School represents water, Kugakko claims the wind, Osamin is focused on Earth, and Ryujigai is deeply connected with fire. There are rumors of a completely secret fifth house that is dedicated to void, the place where no elements exist, the Sora school. The Sora school, though most likely myth, is said to be the most powerful because it manages to equally blend the forces of all the elements with no preference. Among practitioners, it is generally acknowledged that this is near impossible because the nature of the individual working the magic is going to lean in one direction or another, regardless of how much training or experience they may have.
Tama no Michi was not about dominance or purity but was born to honor both light and dark as equal forces. The apprentices grew wise in the ways of kami, interpreting signs in nature and perfecting the art of katas to balance energies but each of them were shaped by the region where they established themselves as well as their own inner nature. They left no great monuments, temples or statues, but each school of teaching itself stands as a history to be read but only by those who are inducted into the path of pearls - and the monuments are there, if you know how to look for them. There is only the whisper of footsteps in the moonlight and a rumor of sacred teachings that few could read, even if they were laid out before them.
The Sora School and the Legend of Barab Oobu’s Return
There are those who claim that the Sora School exists within the shadow itself, a place called Yamiyo. It is a place that can only be reached at dawn or dusk and where time moves at a different pace to how it unfolds in the real world. Legends say that on the day he knew he would exit the mortal plane, Baba Oobu climbed to the top of Meakan Yama, the sacred mountain of the Ainu. In the minutes after the sun set, he was surrounded by his followers as they sat in meditation attempting to connect with the exact moment when light and dark no longer exist.
In that exact moment, it is said that Baba Oobu vanished. He disappeared from this world as if he had never existed in it. In disbelief, his followers searched high and low exploring caves and creches that no human eyes had ever seen. Most of the houses of Tama no Michi say that this story is a parable, a final lesson, a symbolic story with no fact attached to it. The Kaizawan School, however, holds that the story is literal and that Baba Oobu, did not, in fact die but still exists in the shadow. As the only disciple of the major schools who was present, it makes sense that Kaizawa might have a different perspective. This also makes sense if Kaizawa was in fact the biological son of Baba Oobu because of the human tendency to want to hold on to our dearly departed and not admit that they have left this mortal coil forever.
The Kaizawans claim that Baba Oobu was disappointed with the corruption of his teachings as the houses fell towards a lack of balance in terms of being more oriented towards one element or the other. He stepped into the shadow to create the Sora School, a place where the perfection of balance could finally be achieved. Kaizawans claim that Baba Oobu pulls talented and powerful candidates from this world before they can be claimed by the other schools. They are taught the ways of Tama no Michi in the shadow, sometimes over the course of centuries, and then they are free to come back into this world, where they use their powers to bring balance back to the way it unfolds. While all the houses view ‘Sorans’ as real beings that come into this world with powers that defy belief, it is only the Kaizawans who believe that they are the direct heirs of the teachings of Baba Oobu and that Baba Oobu still lives in the shadow, undead, undying, the master of a school that seeks to save the world and humanity from itself.
The Kugakko, Osamin, and Ryujigai schools do not believe in the immortality of Baba Oobu. Each has their own system of belief which claims that he passed from this world leaving his powers and his teachings to those whom he deemed worthy, which generally means the school that is doing the speaking at any given time. Sorans are thought to be humans who have ingested kamui and kami to absorb their powers and thus who have a greater understanding of the light and dark.
The Kaizawans hold that when the balance has shifted too far to be righted by Sorans, that Baba Oobu himself will leave Yamiyo and reappear in our world at dawn and walk down from Meakinyama to guide the world in the saving of itself. These are the whispers that pass between masters and disciples as they learn of the path of pearls.
Tama no Michi has become much more than a philosophical way of seeing the world. In some sense, for those who truly believe or who have begun to walk the path of pearls, it is the world itself.
Over the centuries, Tamah no Michi became an untraceable thread woven into Japanese myth, a whisper among masters and disciples who live in the places between shadow and light. Only a few masters now carry the true teachings of Barab Oobu, and they say he will one day return, emerging from Yamiyo when the balance he cherished is threatened.
In the next installment, we will look at how the evidence of Tama no Michi crosses borders and boundaries. We've touched on this a bit up until now, but in the next article we will draw some powerful connections that simply cannot be ignored and which reshape the entire history of humankind in ways that are bound to be disruptive.
