After becoming a Reiki master, students began showing William Lee Rand symbols he had not seen before and asking him if he knew about them. When that happened, he would keep copies of the drawings and symbols and any additional information the students had about the symbols. After a while, different students would show him the symbols, some of which he had seen before, and tell him that another teacher was teaching the symbols. The students wanted to know if William was going to teach the symbols to them. Initially, William suggested that they go back to the other teacher and take her class. Eventually, the students would come back to him and tell him that they had spoken with the other teacher but decided against taking a class from her. They then continued to ask William if he would research the symbols and create a class because they wanted to learn about the symbols specifically from him. Although he did not originally intend to create a new system of Reiki, in this way William was being guided rather directly to create the class and further develop the Reiki energy.

William contacted some of his best students, especially those who were clairvoyant and sensitive to healing energy and asked them to meet with him over a weekend to experiment with some new Reiki symbols. When they met, William prayed for guidance and asked that they be shown how to create a class to teach the new symbols that would provide beneficial healing energies for the students.

This process worked and between the winter of 1993 and 1995, a new style of Reiki was created called Karuna Reiki®. Karuna Reiki® had 8 symbols and at first had 4 master symbols. After Holy Fire® Reiki came into being, William was guided to upgrade it to Holy Fire® Karuna Reiki® and to make the Holy Fire symbol the master symbol so a 9th master symbol was added. The word Karuna means “compassionate action” which is a feeling people often get who experience the energy of this system of Reiki.