Wings on Fire

Utah 2015

Freak.

Sinner. Pagan. Slave. Criminal. Sick. Chief. King. Lord. Princess. Spiritual. Clean. Unclean.

Reborn.

There are many different labels that can accompany the personal branding of a tattoo. With my travels around the world, I have come across many different types of tattoos that people got for many different reasons and meant very different things. A monk in Tibet, a sailor in Spain, a Celtic soldier, an American marine, a German artist, and a Samoan prince… to name a few.

The ancient Hindus believed tattoos to be both beneficial and harmful to the soul of a person depending on what is being tattooed and the placement of it. It affects not only the energy of one’s body but also the energy (and attention) that is attracted from the outside. Tattoos have always been a permanent act of transformation. From slaves in the Middle East and criminals in China to the spiritual leaders of ancient Russia and the social rankings of the Samoa, tattoos transform the human form not just physically but on a spiritual and social level as well. Aside from the ‘purging’ side affects of tattooing, it has also been used as a literal form of healing. Ancient Egyptian mummies and Ötzi the Iceman (dating from the late 4th millennium BC) have been found with tattoos in most of the same crucial zones used in acupuncture and other ancient medicinal practices.

With the gradual Christianization of Europe came the prohibition of tattooing because it was considered the ‘evil’ remnants of paganism. Although the stigma still lingers in America today, it is becoming increasingly less taboo as religion gradually loses its grip on Western culture. Interestingly enough, most people outside of Utah assume that tattoos would be a rather taboo topic given the extreme religious nature of the region. However, one of the largest Samoan populations in the United States is in Utah. They brought with them the cultural acceptance of tattooing.

“Tattooing is designed to purge or purify as a primary step to a spiritual life. Not everyone has a spiritual experience from a tattoo or piercing, but it is not because they lack the capacity. It is because they did not understand these painful paths as corridors leading to a side of our mind that connects to that “other,” the energy source that informs all, often referred to as Yahweh, God, Jesus, Allah, Osiris, Aten, Innana, Cernunnos, Indra, and so on. Pain and suffering, whether voluntary or forced, are used in many traditions as a form of purging in order to prepare for a spiritual life whereby one lives with one foot in the tangible universe and the other resting firmly in that spiritual realm. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are but three traditions that subscribe to pain and suffering as the path, the Dao.”― John A. Rush

March 27th, this tattoo will be entered into the Salt Lake Tattoo Convention contest.

With all of those things taken into account on top of my own path of suffering and personal reformation, I decided to express my process in a permanent and physical way.

It was two years in the making and there was much I learned through the process. Interestingly, the more I allowed myself to be intentionally wounded for the sake of my purging, the more my mind adjusted and it hurt less and healed quicker. I know it seems cheesy, but it really has a very strange parallel to how we heal in life as well.

“’Which came first, the phoenix or the flame?'[…] ‘I think the answer is that a circle has no beginning.'”― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 

The phoenix was very intentional on my part. I know the phoenix as a tattoo can be very cliche so I worked with my friend and tattoo artist Danny Madsen (Good Times Tattoo in Salt Lake City) to create a way for it to be not only beautiful but also frightening. All of the fire birds in folklore and mythology are incredibly beautiful (albeit feminine) creatures. I wanted to focus on the ugly and frightening creature evolving from a painful and beautiful process. It is far more realistic that way anyway.

What began as an emotional catharses and a new beginning a few years back ended up a beautiful peace of art. Funny how life works, eh? This is a deeply personal tattoo. Cheers to the next new beginning…

“The human spirit, like the  Phoenix, is a creature capable of renewing and reproducing its own being. The only difference is that one is a myth.”― Bryan Almond, I Can’t Take Me Anywhere