The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #63577 Message #1036518
Posted By: Bearheart
15-Oct-03 - 10:34 PM
Thread Name: BS: 16% have at least one tattoo
Subject: RE: BS: 16% have at least one tattoo
I have quite a number, most of them fairly small and all for spiritual/healing purposes. My husband did most of them. I did a few myself. I got my first one in 1982.
As a shamanic healer I feel that the tattoos I have are all about expressing, in the most comitted way I can, what I believe in. Also tattoos have been used in many tribal cultures to mark initiations of the spiritual sort, but also to effect emotional spiritual or physical healing. I have done many tattoos for others for those purposes, and have seen people who experienced healing from arthritis and endometriosis, from emotional wounding, and so on. The power of the mind if you will, or the power of putting one's faith to work. My tattoos consist primarily of the animal spirits who help me do shamanic healing, but I also have a harp tattoo on my left wrist (the design is of a harp made of a blooming rose vine) and a thistle and rose design on my left shoulder. Most of the tattoos I have were ones seen in my visioning work. I have also had the experience of going into shamanic trance while having tattoos done, but probably that was because we usually do it with a support team of drummers playing African rhythms.
There is something very empowering for me in decorating my body with symbols and images of things that really matter to me: music and spirituality. And it's really not about beauty in the conventional sense, because how long does that really last? -- but about trying to express the beauty that drives my soul, that requires expression, that won't let me rest until I express it, in the same way that my fingers and my vocal chords want to make something beautiful...