First test today with a bone needle I've made, and its result.
The shape creates a good amount of skin trauma without placing the ink exactly how I want it. I think I'll make some shaping adjustments next time, but overall I'm pleased that it worked.
It's been a long period of necessary isolation due to some really intense psychic experiences after the Solstice event, and yet it feels as though the intentions I worked towards at that & the previous ritual I held are slowly beginning to manifest.
A long time friend of mine was kind enough to furnish me with exercises to improve psychic hygiene, and I recently just met with someone who has been working with a spiritual healer on the same and who is willing to engage in ritual space together to share some of her techniques with me. It's incredibly profound to have begun to build or find this community, and I am so grateful to everyone who shares their time and space with me.
I have some really interesting tattoo work planned that I can hopefully pick back up in April or May, after this month's push to improve the land and the two weeks in April I'm dedicating to a survival medicine class.
Spring feels fruitful and hopeful, and there is grass growing everywhere, triggered out of dormancy by the rain we received in January and early February.
Trance images from a sensory meditation experiment I performed in my bathtub. Salted and very hot water was filled up high, and rather than slowly acclimating to the heat I enabled it to increase my heart rate, submerging my ears and most of my head under water and then relaxing my gaze on the box formed by the white shower curtain, white walls, and white curtain in our bathroom. I remained in this position, remaining as still as possible and regulating my breathing (in a semi-hyperventilating state, coinciding with my heart rate), for around ten minutes before I began to be able to get some dreamlike images in my minds eye. This increased in intensity for about the next five minutes, at which point I had to stop.
The sacred cannot, ultimately, be turned into a source of profit without innately becoming profane. The degradation of true spirituality is only furthered by the new age zeitgeist that proclaims that the sacred can be purchased in cute magick shops, without a thought given to its origin, its ethics, its source. Everyone is seeking their personal gnosis, everyone is learning the vocabulary of esotericism and magick, and yet very few remain above the temptation for easy answers if only you can pay for them.
A friend of mine sees exchanging tarot readings for money as an energy exchange: the client worked for that money, and you are putting energy into giving them a reading, and therefore it is a fair exchange to exchange the reading for money. I think that is a valid standpoint, and I don’t necessarily see the problem with exchanging readings for money. After all, I sell candles and other items that may be used for spiritual purposes, just like those magick shops I criticize. But aren’t those just party favors & parlor tricks, in a way? The root of spiritual attainment lies not in handmade candles or tarot readings, but in inner work and true connection. All else are just tools, to be used reverentially or not depending on the holder.
Innately the reading that you give to a friend whom you know, are connected to in multiple ways, and who does not pay you will be more true and more useful than the reading you give to a stranger for the purpose of garnering income. There is no way to turn spirituality into your job without necessarily sacrificing the genuinely connected aspect of it: you must market it, you rely on it for your life, and therefore you will compromise at some points, whether you do on a daily basis or not.
Whilst I am in a tricky position regarding the need for income, and I recognize that most people would rather do what they enjoy doing for income rather than something they don’t enjoy doing or that they feel is unethical (a preference which I can most definitely relate to), I think that there is definitely a point at which we cannot purchase our spiritual attainment or our healing, where these things must come from people who love and understand us. At a certain point our ceremonies and rituals must not be transactional if they are to be real tools for inner work and genuine connection.
And perhaps this background is unnecessary, as after all this is a treatise on tattooing and not meant to persuade anyone as to the ethics or rightness of selling spiritual goods and services. Here the background is meant to only describe the flow of ideas that have brought me to the following conclusions:
I: I will not accept money for tattooing rites, but you must bring me an offering of value.
Money purchases things of value, but is not, in and of itself, valuable. It once perhaps stood for something valuable and existed as a convenient way of standardizing the value of that thing for transactional purposes. In the US, that “thing” was gold. Although, despite the fact that gold is valuable for some uses, gold as a signifier of “value” idealistically is not in and of itself any more valuable than paper currency.
Things of value are things that can be used, eaten, grown, perceived. Things of value include fresh food, acts of service or assistance, building materials, seeds, plants, livestock, blankets, cookware, and so on. Art can also be valuable in certain circumstances, as an exchange. Healing work, live-in community, these things are tangible in their own way and produce a far greater rippling impact than simply handing over cash. These are things that could be paid for with money, but would then exist in a contextually different space. Exchanging a healing or transcendent tattooing ritual for side-by-side work on the land, for example, strengthens a bond. Exchanging a healing or transcendent tattoo for money that I then pay a stranger with to do work on the land does nothing but furthers the purely transactional and self-serving nature of our reality.
Offerings of value should be discussed ahead of the tattooing rite, and agreed on by both parties. The offering should be accessible to you, the tattooee, but should also indicate the extent of the work expected to be done by me, the tattooer.
II: I will not tattoo flash, mine nor anyone else’s, and I will not simply tattoo on you a picture that you ask for. Tattoos will be shamanically derived & proscriptive.
In the interest of providing something truly valuable, something truly connected and honest and that will be the right kind of work (and in the interest of shifting this practice from something transactional to something truly sacred) I will not be accepting requests for tattoos that are of a picture that you like, even if that picture means something to you.
I will not tattoo flash. I no longer make flash, and I will not (this goes without saying) tattoo flash that anyone else has made.
Tattoo designs will be derived from healing work and meditation that we will engage in together. These sessions can be self directed by you, the tattooee, if that kind of agency is important, but in general will be led by myself. The outcome of this can then be discussed: if any specific images stood out to you during your meditation these can be worked into the design. Specific areas of your body related to your intention that call out during the meditation should also be highlighted, and we’ll determine placement from there.
Partial designs may be pre-drawn prior to the tattooing act itself, but intuitive freehanding during the session is to be expected. We will discuss boundaries -- such as placement boundaries that may impact a job if they’re exceeded, as well as your level of comfort with intuitive design – before the rite, but please come prepared to accept a certain lack of control over the aesthetic result of the tattoo. Come prepared to accept the fulfillment of a sacred intention instead. If this is not something you’re willing to do, I am perhaps not the right tattooer for you.
In some circumstances, such as communal ceremonial events, I may proscribe & create designs in advance for attendees to choose from based on their intention. These will likely be sigil designs that will then be adapted and manipulated for the individual so that no two attendees leave with identical tattoos even if they choose the same intention.
III: The ultimate purpose of my tattooing practice is healing &/or spiritual connection or transcendent experience. This includes commemorating rites of passage when these are applicable to the ultimate goals. I will not perform tattooing services for any other purpose.
This is perhaps the most important of all of the conclusions that I have arrived at in the last few months. I will not perform tattooing simply because a specific image or tattoo feels meaningful to you. There are many, many artists who can perform such a service with respect. I know several throughout the United States if you need a recommendation.
While ritual tattooing is becoming a more and more common phrase, I truly intend to maintain the sanctity of my practice by only performing truly ritual, spiritually guided tattoos. There are many, many artists you can go to who perform “ritual tattooing” who will tattoo a neat sigil, a commemorative tattoo for a deceased loved one, or something that you feel identifies you as a part of a subcultural group. My tattooing practice is not for any of the above reasons, and least of all is it to obtain a purely aesthetically pleasing piece of art. I call myself a “tattooer” or a “tattooist” for a reason: I am not a tattoo artist.
Please contact me if you’re interested in truly ritualized tattooing in a sactified space, including meditation & guided healing work tailored to your specific intentions and needs, whether that be healing or spiritual action.
When you reach out for a booking inquiry, we can discuss further details with regards to ritual, space, lodging, meals, and other logistical bits and pieces. I’m happy to answer any questions that you have via email: artofsiin@proton.me.
My books are still open as of now, and I'm still quite selectively accepting booking requests for tattooing rites, but I'll be sharing some crucial changes to my practice very soon.
(Most of my clients come from word of mouth/in person, but I'm just sharing this information here for what it's worth, since there are a handful of you who may be interested in the future.)
Deluded visionary, high on psychosis
On breathing
Hallucinated drums beating
Flute notes drifting through walls and
Around cracks in windows
Once-inhabitants of now-dead bodies seeing, sharing, insisting
They say "honor thyself" in
The Language of the Birds
They say "honor us"
And it was the Word
I got WHITE beeswax last week and am really excited to create white tapered spell candles with hand-carved sigil designs this week. First and foremost, I'll be creating these for our "Sacred Resetting" solstice event on Thursday, but will also be adding these as a customizable item to my shop.
The yellow tapers I made are really beautiful and burn wonderfully, but I think the white will be just that much more refined and pure. I'm looking very forward to having some photos to share in the next few days.
Something spurred my partner to begin building a temple to Osiris, and this temple site was the location of the altar we erected for our Dia de Muertos celebration. It was fitting, the idea that offerings were being made both to our ancestors and the god who watched over the underworld.
The altar I hand painted with symbols related to Egyptian, Western occult, and Meso-American systems. This practice of ours is growing oddly eclectic, but somehow feels placed and connected with the landbase despite its tenuosity of place literally.
The temple site itself is an island 14 feet in diameter, hand carved from the land and built up by my partner. The 'moat' around it is encircled with rocks, and he likewise created a spiral path off of one of our walking paths to enter the temple. We've planted four marigold plants and a date palm at strategic points along this path. You enter the temple from the East, and face West as you worship.
There are plans to build a structure here, but for now it is freestanding, an altar in the middle of our land, in the middle of the desert, covered still in marigolds and offered seeds, petals and incense.
This morning my daughter & I walked out there, and sat with the altar for the first time since the event. I offered new flowers, seeds, and scattered petals. My daughter made herself busy arranging flowers on the ground in quite an intentional way, although she can't tell me about the designs in her head yet. I sat and meditated for a few moments below the altar, as the sun rose over the valley.
I think that this is to become a daily ritual. It's been a long time since I've properly engaged in prayer or ritual on a regular basis, and even my once-daily meditation practice has become "here and there, as I have time". There is something so powerful about structured practice, and I really don't know if I can explain why.
This might become a thread of other updates with regards to my spiritual practice, since I feel as though a lot has shifted in the last few months.
Dia Sacrificia was transformative, and incredible.
The postponement of the event led to a smaller turnout, which ended up being a blessing. The tight group forged quick bonds, and was more open to ceremony and participating in the rituals than I think they would have been otherwise.
A 40 foot heptagram was carved into the earth, a fire dug out into the middle, candles placed for each of the seven planets. In this space we ended ceremony, warmed bare feet by the fire, made offerings to the earth.
I hand painted our altar, which my partner built on Friday, a temple to Osiris and to our ancestors, who were most certainly with us throughout the evening.
The meditation I led brought us into connection with the true nature of time, of different states of Being, with our ancestors, with our guiding spirits,
and the ritual I performed, my first performance in years, a ritual self-tattoo, commemorated years of transformation and spiritual work, and was rejuvenating in ways I can't even begin to describe.
All were welcome, all joined the following day in meals and communion, in cleaning up and drying marigolds, in play and laughter.
Like shaping the earth, shaping a life takes years, but it feels as though we are on a wonderful path with wonderful people, and I am so grateful.
So, a few photos from the morning after, to share what I can of the experience.
The tattoo that I received/gave myself in ritual, a commemoration of spiritual attainment.
I have plans to extend the ceremony, to add to this and even it out with handwork when it heals: to turn it into a long lasting sigil, an earned adornment.
This tattoo was done using a cutting technique that I do not offer to clients for many (kind of obvious) reasons.
So, as much as I wish that income weren't a necessity, and as much as I hoped to remain out of the commercial world entirely, I'm actually quite excited to share that I just created a ko-fi for people to purchase jewelry, art, and other custom items to be announced soon!
You can, of course, also send donations if you'd like to fund larger, more ambitious projects. Anything that you send will be used to further projects on this land and will make me able to continue building this sanctuary and providing space for those who need healing & connection in this way.
The first tattoo I ever saw done was an initiation tattoo for a gang.
Tattooing in my life has only been commercial for short periods at a time. When I had to leave LA the first time, for instance, I went through a period where I walked to the local white hipster American traditional shop and got flash from an artist I thought was cute once every two weeks pretty much without fail. No matter how hard I tried, though, it never gave me the feeling that the tattoos I saw in my youth gave me. Commercial tattooing is necessarily void of communal initiation, void of rites of passage, void of the sense that you earned it.
And I don't intend to diminish the incredible artistry and skill in commercial tattooing. There are millions of artists in the world far, for more masterful at this medium than I, that's for sure. I'd be honored to learn from any one of these new masters I'm sure. Theirs are not clients who want the things I've mentioned, their clients are art collectors: ever more discerning and ambitious. And they themselves are artists. True artists, worthy of their title.
But the rest of my life was spent at barrio "tattoo shops" -- studios in someone's house, a homemade kit pulled out in a car. Or the real shops that made it through the ringer of county and city health codes and existed legitimately, masters of black and grey slinging ink for kings and captains of war. Masters who learned in alleyways and cars, their own garages, or from other masters who made it to legitimacy from their own set (of these there are many). These were artists, and holy men. Keepers of knowledge, of stories, keepers of titles. The marks they gave had power beyond the ability of most of you to comprehend.
But I'd left this world, this life. I lived suspended in a different one, suspended in a different culture. The last correspondence with a friend who'd gone to jail told me that she'd rather be where she was than where I was: invisible, a life erased. Attempting and failing mostly to integrate into a society I phenotypically passed into but for whom my attempts at assimilation were always discordant and wrong. She said that at least in prison she still had respect.
I've wanted to engage in the sacred practice of tattooing since I was 13 years old, but never knew how to start. Those willing to be my mentors were long gone, the path to survival ultimately took me from the path to my purpose. I sought new mentors in commercial shops, but never seriously. For those years I didn't have much to say, for those years I was mostly silent. I could never ask for what it was I needed.
A few years ago a mentor was sought: someone with a background kind of like mine, but she doesn't know it completely. But she wasn't ready, because she's too good. She's a master because she knows there is always so much more to learn.
But she told me to read, and I read the canon. The canon reads of sailors and circus freaks, punks and soldiers, and it's wonderful. But it's reductive, it's culturally incomplete. It largely ignores tens of thousands of years of Indigenous tattooing, tattooing that looked a lot more like what I grew up with.
I had this revelation, then, that I would not join the ranks of commercial tattooers. That my purpose was not, after all, to work a bed in a shop. I learned on a machine, because coil machines were friendly to me, but I quickly became obsessed with just a needle in my hand.
And this practice of mine grew from memory, from the advice of people I love, people who are much better artists than I and who practice professionally. And also from the advice of ghosts, people who once saw wide eyes and who invited me in to see how they worked. People who told stories of prison tattoo rites, who told stories of war, and who passed into these stories forever to be remembered by the survivors.
My client list stays small for these reasons, because ultimately I am not the person you come to when you just want something beautiful and grand on your skin. I am the person you come to when you want to commemorate a rite of passage with drumbeats and incense and bleeding, when you want to meditate or cry or pray while you go through this ritual. I am the person you come to when you understand what all this means, and when you are searching for spiritual initiation, and when you've earned it.
Finally got the studio-in-progress organized and it's workable, although I'm definitely still looking forward to getting tipis together and having a better ceremonial space for tattoos.
To-dos include hanging art, setting up a space for my illustration & flash portfolios, sanding and refinishing my workbench, and getting some fitting and dedicated linens for the futon.
I have a lot of Thoughts about the platform and their data practices, and if you want to point out that I'm being a little hypocritical by being there then you'd be right. There are Reasons, but that doesn't make it less hypocritical.
Image CW: blood, tissue, as part of an art piece. This one is actually likely to be disturbing to many, and is not as "gently" disconcerting as some previous work
WIP in my studio
I asked 10 people close to me "what is a window?"
I found this window in the building that used to be my studio, and it predates us living here by several years. I wanted to consider what a window actually is beyond the material:
What gets through a window beyond just light?
How does the viewing of something through a window change the perception of the scene being viewed?
If a window can two-dimensionalize a three-dimensional scene, how else could this portal alter the dimensionality of something?
Consider the intrigue of the ways our minds use these portals to stop time: how a view out one specific window in a home or other familiar building might always elicit certain memories, emotions, perceptions.
I got some fascinating answers from friends as well, too diverse to get into here (for now).
And then I made this deeply personal. I had a significant bleed earlier, I guess I've been pushing too hard (not too surprising, my activity level has been pretty elevated) and that brought with it heightened emotions.
I collected some of the blood and added it to the piece, because not only is it an incredible source of energy, but because I want to exhibit the silver linings, because I want this window to shape my perception of this event and turn it into a piece of art that will glow and glitter and refract the light.
Where I get to choose what's on the other side.
I look forward to finishing this tomorrow (after some rest).
Feeling so, so inspired after this weekend's festival & visit from one of our favorite friends, even though I wasn't able to participate in some of the festivities to the extent I had wanted to.
I'm feeling like I have much of my energy back, pain has mostly subsided and all signs point to recovery going better than we initially thought.
We're converting the Airstream into my studio, and kid-proofing it this time so my daughter can come hang out and do art with me. I haven't had a proper studio in a very long time, and the delay in getting tipis built made it look like I wouldn't have one until spring. But here we are, and I'm extremely optimistic that I'll be building, painting, and holding space for tattoos again very, very soon. Eventually I do think I'll build a tipi specifically for tattooing, but for now we'll be using them for guest spaces and building one very large ceremonial space. In the meantime, the Airstream works quite well as a studio. Quite frankly, in its current state, it will make a better art studio than guest space anyway.
I painted one of the objects that is a critical part of my performance for the Dia Muertos event yesterday, and have been figuring out many of the other details and making a list of the few things that I will be purchasing for the ceremony & celebration.
I have plans to finish processing the fox bones & sheep skull that I started forever ago this week, and I'm praying that they haven't degraded too much, but whatever their condition it will feel good to finally get those finished and usable for some projects I have planned.
My neighbor had a ceremony and slaughtered a goat with her family this weekend, so I inherited yet another skull I get to start on as well.
Lastly, a new friend of ours gifted me an entire hide worth of black Italian leather to create things with. I'll need to get the proper needles, awls, and some other supplies (which I've needed to anyway to work with the other leather I inherited last year) prior to doing anything with it, but I have many ideas and cannot wait to share them when the time comes.
This emergence from my recent low-energy and relatively depressed state feels profound, and I feel like I'm just radiating gratitude for this much hoped-for change.
Some more updates, since it's been pretty motivating for me to share:
While kiddo was napping today I was able to make a significant amount more progress on some projects that have been sitting around, and some new ones.
A friend of mine brought me a dead (found) fox a while ago, and we cleaned off most of the tissue together, however the bones, along with a sheep skull my neighbors gave me, then sat in water for somewhere between 8 and 10 weeks while I was fighting morning sickness and then healing from the recent loss. I had been putting off that project for so long since I had just developed this strange fear of becoming nauseous if I smelled the bones, but today I finally got everything de-greased and into a peroxide soak. Some of the more fragile bones had soaked for too long, and became compost, which is unfortunate but not the worst outcome for something that would otherwise have been thrown in a landfill.
With these, I can now make talismans for two friends: one new friend who's moving into a new place, and another friend who I just feel would appreciate or benefit from having one in his space.
Additionally, the skull will feature in a sculpture project that's been awaiting me finding someone to assist for at least a year now.
I was also able to paint a few eyes for a project I just started, and flesh out ideas for yet another project from found materials that has been just sitting in the back of the old studio building for a very long time.
Recently did some work on this alternate altar that lives in our bedroom.
Some bones foraged from our land, some foraged back in Michigan by an old friend. The human teeth belong to the same friend (one of their baby teeth & wisdom teeth, given as a gift).
The altar in our public space is a really wonderful artistic display, a story of us, blending a lot of cultural elements that we share and some that we only share because we're sharing a life together. It's full of offerings to this land, but also pulled tarot cards, sculptures, gifts from friends, palo santo & copal incense, stones and offering plates from my side of the family. Bundled pine, bundled sage, and blessed rosemary. It's public, interactive, and beautiful.
This altar, though, is very personal. Some elements have been in my possession for years, before I began this journey into spiritual practice, before I knew what their purpose was (or my own). Some elements have been added over time: the fossilized lizard tail and heart, for example, I found after opening the first studio I had on this land. The rat femurs I also found on the land, while cleaning trash when we first moved in, and all of these little things that have found me I've felt compelled to venerate and offer back to the space. The display in our living space is public: it invites guests to add to it, and sometimes they leave offerings for us there, too. But this space is in our private area, and it feels like it contains little secret pieces of us and the land. Things that people only really see if they spend enough time here to become privy to them.
To me this parallels the reality of working with such a space: many people come and enjoy the superficial aesthetic beauty of the land and the home, for a time. But they don't truly understand what it is we're doing here, or what it really means to be here. They have respect, but lack full awareness and veneration. But there are some who know what this land means just by virtue of having been here -- some needed to come often to feel it, some stepped foot on it and knew instantly that it was special. But that kind of awareness isn't common, and it's something that we hold very dear. We keep very close to us those who share our recognition of this space as liminal, as straddling time and place, of its constantly repeated history, playing out over and over each moment, and the responsibility we have to honor the spirits that exist here.
I cannot control the outcome.
I cannot control if the British Petroleum company cuts corners and allows yet another spill into sacred land.
I cannot control the acidification of the oceans.
I cannot save each and every reef.
I cannot regenerate every lost grassland, hold every captured wild mustang.
I cannot control the actions of the few who are responsible for the greatest tyrannies of the world, nor the actions of the many who unthinkingly go about life making choices that benefit those few.
I will live my life in service to the land,
I will live my life in service to my community,
I will plant each and every tree, and store each and every molecule of carbon in freshly regenerated soil that I can,
I will make the most responsible choices I can,
I will educate as many as will listen,
and perhaps that is all I do.
And perhaps it will still all burn around me.
And I will have to accept that: my lack of control, the lack of permanence of all things.
And so, may we have the strength to do what we can.