The Philosophy
Getting tattooed can be more than just collecting art. For those who like to read, I’ve gone deeper down the rabbit hole below, but the summary is a little like this:
Tattoos can be transformative, healing, empowering, energetically charged magickal markings. When you get tattooed you are quite literally opened up in order to have something put inside you on both a physical and energetic level. When the tattooer and the tattooed hold the same intent, I believe that’s the place where the inexplainable happens. Tattooing is one of the most magickal practices I have ever come across, and I feel like we should be tapping its higher potential together.
In order to achiever deeper levels of tattooing, the work is ritualized in a private space, and becomes a journey of its own.
Tattoos with intention:
Healing and reconciling trauma.
Personal evolution.
Sigil / talismanic work.
Empowerment.
Meditative / trance-state tattooing.
Intention anchoring.
Tarot Everything.
Magickal Tattooing for those who are scholars.
Magical Tattooing for those who are not.
Regular, everyday tattooing.
Any combination of the above.
FOR THE READERS:
Aesthetic Tattooing
This is the best blanket term I could find for the modern iteration of tattooing. There is absolutely nothing wrong with tattooing as an art form – a driven pursuit followed by passionate people who strive to be better artists, and constantly evolve their creations. At its base, it is a beautiful thing, and when performed with a devout love of the practice, magical things can and do still happen.
But as with all human endeavours, we fall prey to ego on the path. Tattooing is a complex beast, and we must learn to ride and master it with all of the demons it can embody – be they our own insecurities, or our very intentions themselves. We all know that the modern world pulls us into a game of surface level achievement, and we may find ourselves chasing money, fame, or digital affirmations, leading us away from the purity of our true path. We are equally susceptible to the same fallibilities as the rest of mankind, and god knows mankind’s a mess. We cannot possibly be perfect people.
Most of us will touch on the pitfalls, perhaps in subtler ways, but if you have been tattooing for some time and feel you have stayed free of the traps of ego, either it’s still coming for you, or you are in the midst of it and have yet for the scales to fall from your eyes – there are no Buddhas here. Many of us will also strive to push ourselves to a more conscientious point, but in a world where aesthetics have become king, it becomes increasingly difficult not to follow the herd up the hill.
One thing that often gets lost in the pursuit of aesthetics is the client (keeping in mind they too carry their own egos and dynamics). At worst, some tattooers will use clients simply as a piece of canvas, a means to an end, the end being the perfect photo of the perfect artwork to keep up with their agenda, or simply to top up the bank account. At baseline, the client gets a well made tattoo from a tattooer with a good attitude, and at best the client’s intent is fulfilled, whether that was simply collecting an aesthetically great tattoo, or some deeper meaningful process that they were undergoing, from a conscientious tattooer who feels privileged to have walked that path with them.
On the flip side, clients too get lost in the hunt for the ’best’ tattoo. The intent, or even the possibility of there being any intent other than picking up a great piece is overshadowed by how it’s going to look, and many people are hoodwinked by the digital game – fresh, edited photos and lighting tricks create unreal expectations, and for the lesser experienced it is not even foremost in their mind to select work based on how it heals, or if it’s built to last. Never mind the possibility of undergoing hours in a chair with somebody who is just not a particularly nice person. I won’t yet touch on the concept of energy transference in the tattoo process, we’ll look at that in the transformative section below. But in this, sometimes clients don’t even end up with what they thought they were looking for.
So what have we missed, in a world predisposed toward how things look, towards product over experience? To find our way, should we be dissatisfied with an untapped potential that lies within this ancient practice, we need stretch our view way beyond the rise of Americana, all the way back to the root of the thing. To identify our lineage only with its portside street shop past, or the underground studios of pre-legal NYC and Japan, becomes selectively reductionist. Rather we should see them as influences on the timeline of tattooing, providing growth and evolution to the artistry, but not necessarily to the soul of tattooing itself. Whether influenced by guitar string prison tattooing or the influx of European art students, all of these factors remain distinctly modern when compared to the age and origin of tattooing as a whole.
Transformational Tattooing
Historically, tattooing seems almost as old as homo-sapiens itself. This is not intended to be a detailed walk through the history books, nor an expansive look at any specific approach, but I will do my best to add links to the site to some valuable reading material when I get a chance, covering both tattooing and ancient spiritual practices.
It will suffice to simply mention a few examples here to provide a groundwork from where to start. Tribal (not the frequently covered up biker kind) tattooing has been practiced around the world in many forms, for many reasons. Coming of age tattoos, ones that are an ordeal to obtain, and even dangerous to acquire due to the likelihood of infection, were widespread through Polynesia, Indonesia and Africa. Similarly warriors were adorned with both fearsome and protective markings to aid them in battle and hunting. Getting tattooed was both a custom, and a big deal. Authentic Ta Moko, one of the more well known and upheld lineages, is still performed with deep reverence as a sacred practice. You don’t simply wake up one day and decide a face tattoo would look cool, you earn the right to wear it, and it transforms you forever, marking your path through this life.
It’s also fair to mention the Thai practice of Sak Yant as perhaps one of the most fascinating forms of magical tattooing (and not the beach town tourist variants thereof). I thoroughly recommend ‘The Thai Occult Book’ by Jenx to anyone interested in the concept of weaving a tattoo as a living spell, and a deep and thorough investigation into the different lineages of Sak Yant. In a similar way to other traditions, these tattoos lend themselves to protection, empowerment and healing.
Even with a cursory glance through time we can see how modern tattooing has become distinctly Western in flavour, perhaps thanks to the Church obliterating any conflicting spiritual thought it possibly could, perhaps partly due to the march of a modern society built on industry and commerce. Druidic and Pagan tattooing for example definitely haven’t survived as well as some of the other branches.
So why transformational tattooing? I believe, that at our core, this is why all of us who get tattooed, do so. Whatever our surface belief, from collecting a great piece of art, all the way through to marking cathartic life events (births, deaths, cancer survival, major life changes etc) – we all undergo the process wishing to be transformed. And transformed we are, in the literal sense.
- (As an aside, there are loads of tattooers in the world currently following a similar path, who are not just selling another tattoo as the latest commodity. Again I will start to compile a list of people who I find inspiring in that regard and leave some links to follow.)
But what if we are just scratching the surface of the potential of tattooing? In the process, not only are we literally opened to have ink layer under our skin, our personal space, our aura, is also entered by another while we undergo the trial of pain to obtain our transformation. We might even approach a trance-like state while doing this. How much care do we place into this process? With modern studios often being chaotic and frenetic, even in a calmer scenario we are still surrounded by a buzz of personalities with fellow clients and tattooers moving through our space, often accompanied by a fitting soundtrack.
If you’ve ever had a bad experience getting tattooed (over and above the pain) you might have found that when you look at the tattoo, the entire experience springs to mind. My belief is that that is because the entire experience is quite literally under your skin. I have some reasonably ok work on me that I can’t stand, not so much for the product as for the fact that I still remember the energy that the person who tattooed it had on the day. In contrast, I have some very rudimentary work that still makes me happy to wear it, for exactly the same reasons.
What if we could put ego and pure aestheticism aside for the duration of the tattoo process, and align our intent so that both the tattooer and the recipient were in sync? What if we could delve deeper into our subconscious, toward the motivation and needs of our True Self, and create a sigil, image or mark that has untold potential to transform our lives? To create anchors to bring us back to that centred place of awareness. To open permanent gateways within ourselves that facilitate our spiritual evolution. For both recipient and practitioner to be present and aware for the entire experience, and to suspend our disbelief long enough to weave something deeper than a simple aesthetic?
That doesn’t rob us of the ability to go out and collect art, nor does it mean we should get an awful tattoo because it has a volume of meaning. But it does speak to making our choices more deliberately, and with great care.
I believe that the way forward is a union of the two, a Sacred Aesthetic. A tattoo process that delves towards some of the more ancient practices of transformation, but still gives all due respect to the visual pinnacle of the art form we see before us today.