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Tattoos have long been more than mere adornments. They have for ages been concentrated stories, rites, and the symbols of their peoples’ identities. To-day, however, tattooing has become a most wonderful agent of self-transformation—outward reflection of inward change.
The body is a canvas upon which come together healing, strength and self-expression. What was once perhaps sneered upon as a sign of rebellion speaks now a language of regeneration.
The Evolution of Tattoo Culture
From Taboos to Art
Now, I must confess that I have never had a spot of ink made on myself, not because of any particular objection, you understand, but because of a mixture of cowardice and the terrible fear of commitment. Suppose that I should choose a phrase in Sanskrit which means “I love a mild cheese,” when the great spiritual significance I was to convey from it was something else? But I digress.
It is clearly noticeable, however, that section of history that has befallen the tattoo, where they go from one world to another. Some time ago—within the living memory of people now alive, in fact—tattooed flesh was confined entirely to the arms of sailors just back from strange ports, presumably with wonderful probabilities, as a consequence of enmiration from worldly and serious battles witches out have been tattooing the brow of ill-fated enthusiasts with zephyrs and roosters. My grandmother would have seized her pearls at the sight of visible tattooed flesh, because they were the badges of crime, immoral tendencies, and the much despised people, at least, of doubtful parentage.
It comes now to the twenty-first century and we find the tattoo having such a splendid bounce that even the barristers wear them, and in the arms of the outside world everywhere, do we now see the needle in use, the tattooed flesh covered with different parts of the arms of lawyers, some of the ankles of men of science, or all decorated with various parts of the anatomy of leading lights in the art of television. What was once marginalised became mainstream, and tattoo studios have changed from sordid parlours to creative ateliers where artistry and personal meaning can amalgamate in the most extraordinary of ways.
The global tattoo industry has now grown into a multibillion-dollar business, which indicates not a mere fad, but growing acceptance that radical individuality is becoming acceptable. We have come, culturally at least, from regarding tattoos as signs of otherness to recognising them as universal statements for a universal experience. And is this not rather wonderful?
Cultural Perceptions in Modern Society
This process of normalisation was not an overnight thing, of course. It had to do with visibility—artists, influencers, sports personalities and professionals, all showing off their ink and initiating conversations about tattoos as art in their own right, as therapy, as mere philosophy! The act of tattooing now serves to converge worlds in the most fascinating way: from primitive ritual to modern-day psychology, tribal tradition to modern aesthetics, and personal to the public. We are in fact evolving through what anthropologists would call a “cultural moment” in which body modification can throw off its transgressive garment simply to become another way of human expression.
Tattoos as Emotional and Psychological Markers Tattoos After Trauma or Recovery
It is here that one finds the thing really moving, if you will permit a moment of earnestness! For many, many, individuals, a tattoo means so much more than a mere aesthetic choice. It signifies the re-claiming of autonomy over one’s sacred life-story after the experience of loss, trauma or illness.
I have spoken to cancer survivors who have had magnificent artwork tattooed over their mastectomy scars, making memories which would otherwise be indelibly associated with fear into strong testimonies of survival. I’ve encountered individuals who have memorialized deceased loved ones not in traditional ways such as monuments or gravestones but with tattoos that they carry around for the rest of their lives. I have met others who have marked tremendous progress on the journey of recovery with tattoos that express their ability to say, “I made it and here is the evidence.”
This is a psychological phenomenon. The tattoo needle that is so dreaded becomes a great tool of empowerment. The conscious choice to welcome the pain of a tattoo needle, which is actually a pleasant pain, has the curious effect of changing the pain of past experiences. Each line that is put in the flesh serves to make the scar or scar tissue into a work of art. What was a symbol of pain and suffering now becomes one of survival, of keeping one’s head above the waves of adversity, of emerging from the fight and turmoil of the storm, not unscathed, it is true, but at least unbent or uncrushed.
There is something about it that is almost alchemical, is there not? Base metal is being changed to gold, wounds to miracles.
Self-expression and Self-Ownership
But beyond the aura of self in the wake of trauma, self-ownership is perhaps one of the prime symbols which tattoos represent and affirm. We can’t write of tattoos without mentioning the right to have agency over our own bodies, for that is our most fundamental right as human beings. While our society is always eager to place us at a disadvantage by defining us from the outside through our occupations, demographic characteristics, or through social media types, tattooing allows us spheres of self-definition. The insignia, the size, the placement, all of these things are conscious acts of self-authorship, which makes tattooing remain intensely personal, and resists its growth into commercialism and commodity status, even as it has entered the mainstream. Self-expressions that do not demand to be approved or validated by others in the outer world but simply exist as symbols that define self: this was who I was, this is who I am, this is who I am becoming. It is as though one is writing one’s memoirs on the skin, but the chapters are universally read at once, and instead of dull blocks of text, they are illustrated by conscientious painters.
The Symbolism of Transformation in Tattoos
Common Symbolism: Flowers, Phoenix, and Resurrection
Witty, stylistically rigorous, scientific development of the general vagueness.
Good. But I have got to work out some more by laying the emphasis better and by writing a few more details and cunning mottos. Let me go on working on the symbolical page.
If a small time is spent in studying tattoo-life, which is highly recommended, with a lot of interest, quite easily, there will be found some symbols which occur very frequently. The phoenix, customary, is of perennial popularity; and naturally, for it is a creature which sets itself on fire, and rises from its ash. As a symbol for the metamorphosis it is not overly subtle, but we need a symbol sometimes, but it is needed to shout.
The flowers abound, the lotus among others, which is a type of coming immaculate out of muddy water. It is the superlative teaching of coming. The Japanese rise to a great point in this, because they have a wild habit of hanakotoba (flower language), by which every flower is endowed with a special meaning. The cherry-blossom means transience of life, the chrysanthem means longevity, and so on.
Then snakes occur. Now snakes are, I must say, very-very obnoxious to me in real life, but in symbolism are excellent–creatures of renewal, which give their whole skin, and become dumb, luscious and void of poison. There can hardly be any better emblem about transformation of personality than that, if one can get over the snaky, poisonous idea. The infliction of pain was a purpose, a metamorphose, a passage from boyhood to manhood.
Japanese irezumi had a similar origin but was brought to a wonderful degree of artistic development, full-bodied suits, representing some elaborate mythological story. They were not put in in an hour, but required years of study and application and denoted entire devotion to the art and through that devotion to individuality.
The native tribes of America had tattooing of distinction in tribal position and protection from spirits. The Maori tam moko of New Zealand is probably the best known instance of tattooing as a passport to individuality, each moko is wholly individual, a signature of the face more personal than that given by the fingerprint.
Through all these peoples the tattooing signified a change of condition always. From youth to manhood, from condition of disorder to order, from individuality of spirit to that of society. The needle meant ceremony, the ink denotes initiation and the pain whereby sense of the soul is purged.
The Modern Adaptation of the Primal Ideals
Modern tattooing has undergone what I can only call a wonderful revival of the primitive echoes. The artists are expressing their compositions in tribal designs, mandala geometry, or Celtic weavings as spiritual lessons although various developments of soul (this is a topic for a separate essay, but then we must not so widely deviate from our text).
Although the meaning may not be the same. The banker’s arm in London tattooed with Polynesian sleeves, although a symbol, carries a different interpretation from the tatau, it nevertheless has the same meaning-transformation by art, personal individuality by means of ink.
This transformation of age-old ideals with modern individuality gives the present tattoo its special depth and undertone. We’re taking age-old intent and expressing that through wholly personal narratives, thereby creating something both timeless and yet completely of-the-moment.
The Psychology of Tattooing
The Pain-Endorphin Effect: Healing Through Pain
Now, let’s talk about neurochemistry, shall we? Because the physical process of tattooing involves some fairly wildly extraordinary happenings in the brain. When needle after needle Coca-Cola bottles openings of the skin—thousands of times a minute, in fact—the body responds by releasing endorphins, those wonderful natural opiates which serve as our biological pain-depressors.
This has the reaction of what so many refer to as “a tattoo high”—a constructive state of calming focus, almost of meditative quality. The rhythmic hum of the machine, the need for steadying breath, the channeling of discomfort into constructive action—it’s downright therapeutic. Pain becomes strangely constructive, converted into art through a process which is part ordeal, part meditation.
The American Journal of Human Biology has published studies in which investigations have been carried out to show how tolerance for pain is actually increased in the succeeding tattoos, advocating a physiological theory, of course. But even more interesting, studies indicate that the reaction of the immune system to successive tattooing might have beneficial results, but that is an ongoing field of research.
Permanent Marks as Emotional Closure
Some very noteworthy things have been noted about permanence by psychologists, and here they are: it apparently gives notable closure. When your tale is visible on your skin, it becomes defined in limits. The turmoil of experience, itself, becomes delineated in a form which you have chosen, defined and authorized. It’s not about forgetting the past—that’s impossible and futile. It’s about giving a home to those experiences that are confounded, a place to exist that doesn’t run the entire being into the ground. The tattoo says, “This happened, it was significant, and now I can transform it into something I can abide by.”
Dr. Kirby Farrell’s work regarding the narratives of trauma is very relevant to this point. He says that healing comes to humans in narrative forms, by giving story forms to experience, in general chaotic. Tattoos are a visible narrative, a permanent story that we tell to ourselves and to others.
Choosing Tattoos of Transformative Significance
A Collaboration With Artists Regarding Personal Symbolism
If you are thinking of having a little ink put into your skin—and I don’t necessarily recommend it, but if you do—then the relationship with the tattooist becomes a thing of utmost importance. The most significant tattoos are a product of the union between the client and the artist when there is an attempt to express the story involved in visual terms, emotion in pictorial language.
Tattooists are a sort of visual therapist and express (pun intended) by their work the desires of their clientele, as to what their story should be. Telling of your thoughts, whether it be loss, love, expansion, rage etc., gives rise to symbolic illustrations, causes to have morals expressed rather than pictures, and makes of the tattoo a declaration and not mere decoration, of a personal political nature.
About the Placement on the Body and Duration of Meaning
Here is an uncomfortable fact, the meaning is progressive. We are progressive. A tattoo that is selected in the raptures of first love or grief as to the loss of a beloved one becomes an entirely different significance as we wake up—or entirely does not mean anything. And all this is part of the art’s true honesty. We put marks on bodies that will either change, on the minds that will develop and the hearts break and mend a number of times.
The right selection means selection of the emotional feeling existing at the time with an eye toward the future. For instance, one should ask yourself: Will this mean something to me after I have gotten more than this moment? The most beautiful tattoos mean successfully as time passes, getting additional meanings but respecting those that were depicted in the past.
Final thoughts: Ink as Journey, Not Destination
Tattoos, at the root, are a representation of embodied metamorphosis—a ritual of becoming, a telling of identity and experience in images. Each design tells a story; not of perfection (god forbid) but of persistence, of survival, of man’s eternal urge to make order out of chaos.
The process is one which unites the artist with her subject, pain and purpose, body and mind, in a way which remains inexcusably miraculous in spite of our best scientific efforts to unravel it. And when the line is finally drawn, when the needle ceases its vibration and you are left tender-skinned and slightly dazed, the thing that remains is not simply ink.
It is evidence of evolution. It is proof that you were here, that you felt highly enough to make a permanent mark on yourself. It is a slight rebellion against mortality, an example of your insistence that your story matters, that you matter.
And, is not that the general drift of being a man after all?
