Ancient Traditions

Though our modern world may hold body modification in low esteem, the truth is that tattoos and piercings are part of a sacred legacy connecting us to the ancient traditions of our ancestors. Cultural taboos against modifying the body in artistic and expressive ways is only a very recent historical development; in the totality of human existence, we have been adorning ourselves and each other through the medium of body art vastly longer than we have held disdainful views of such practices. And not by accident, the erasure of the importance traditional body art practices coincides with the rise of globalization and the push to homogenize everyone and everything, as a means to streamline authority and control for the efficiency of governance. But before the beige and bland got their slimy tentacles into the shape of cultural expression, human beings permanently marked their bodies for a plethora of reasons. Whether as a means of claiming tribal identity, to mark significant life milestones, treat the body’s physical and mental ailments, or commune with the divine, body modification is deeply interwoven into the lives of our ancestors.

In today’s world we approach body modification much more casually than pre-modern humans; not every tattoo or piercing carries deep significance or cultural meaning for the wearer anymore. Yet beneath the surface of even our most trivial tattoo iconography, and banality of blinged out ears, the ancient, the sacred still lingers in our modern adornments. Tattoos and piercings don’t require any broader significance, the act of being modified, and the process of its application has itself become the embodiment of the sacred. The experience of giving and receiving permanent adornments contains the real magic. Its in the intersections between client and artist, needle and skin, past and present, we commune something both deeply human and sublimely divine. For the individual getting a tattoo or piercing, the experience forces a level of self-awareness that requires us to be present in our bodies, to confront the physical and emotional discomfort of existing; all the noise and madness of the world falls away in the moment, and consciousness shifts, as we focus in on surviving the journey, to struggle through the moment and come out the other side a different version of ourselves. Every new adornment literally marks a transformation of the self.

Most contemporary artists aren’t consciously thinking of body art in these terms; they’re not invoking the memory of Ötzi the Iceman, or the Siberian Princess of Ukok every time they create a new tattoo or piercing, but they are still maintaining the link between our craft and its ancient origins. Like whispered echoes in the distance, these archaeological remains are proof that humans have always been driven toward the mystery and magic of body modification. Though the marks and adornments of these ancient figures are rudimentary than their modern counterparts, their significance the history and tradition of our tradecraft cannot be overstated. Today, we’ve done away with the insincerity of reverence and transcended the artifice of ritual, as is the natural evolution of all such things across time, yet the magic of tattooing and piercing persists.

It isn’t so much that we’ve lost the sacred connection to the body art traditions of the past, but rather accidentally forgotten, as a natural consequence of the way all culture evolves over time. The commercialization of body art as an “industry” with celebrity practitioners, competitive reality shows, and gatekeeping corporate entities driven by endless greed, now overshadows the sacred origins of the trade. In recent years, the “industry” has been overrun by people with dollar signs for eyes, salivating over the prospect of brand sponsorships, pushing useless aftercare products because of their profit margins, and winging about ‘cancel culture’ borne out of the fact that clients will no longer tolerate the racism, homophobia, and misogyny that once had a stranglehold on the industry. It’s absolutely true that shop culture is experiencing a great upheaval, one that has profoundly transformed the values and virtues of tattooing and piercing for the better, both for clients and practitioner. We can ride the wave of positive change, or drown clinging to our toxic past. At Rising Tide Tattoo and Ollie the Impaler Body Piercing, we welcome the change in culture, and the opportunity to create an environment that fosters the connection between artist and client, bringing us closer to that divine magic that our ancient counterparts created through body art adornment.