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.)
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.