By Paul Suski –
“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?” (1 Cor 6:19)
With the spring season in full swing, in so many countries under the Southern Cross, it is nearly impossible to go out in public these days without seeing someone with a tattoo or body piercing. The Land Down Under is experiencing explosive growth in the proportion of the nation picking out to get inked. Of the Australians having tattoos, almost half (48%) only have one tattoo, 30% have two to three tattoos, and a further 15% have between four and nine, with another 7% having 10 or more tattoos. All in all 19% of the Aussies, that is 1 in 5 has one or more tattoos. The absurdity of it all almost makes one weep, cry or laugh.
Read: Part II: Tattoos – A Catholic Concern
Among Christians there are some very different opinions on this subject, at both extremes, ranging from total disapproval to deep admiration. Many find this situation very confusing. The Church has not officially spoken regarding tattoos and it is highly implausible she will do that in the immediate future. Meanwhile, the devil – the iconoclast is playing possum.
Humans have marked their bodies with tattoos for thousands of years. However, it seems that the nearer people drew to God, the more often they abstained from this practice.
Pursuing a quest for the true nature of tattoos one can find out that they often bore the mark of demonism, Baal worship, shamanism, occultism, and many vile pagan beliefs and practices. The tribal men regarded the ashes of their ancestors as sacred and respected them. In some primitive societies a small amount of cremation ashes was added to regular tattoo ink, to create an ash-infused ink solution. On completion it was offered to local gods.
According to the BBC, the oldest tattoo was discovered on 5,000-year-old Egyptian mummies. The designs were found under the skin and the pigment was likely to be soot. The researchers maintain that “the tattoos would have denoted status, bravery and magical knowledge.”
One must be aware of the fact that indigenous people applied esoteric and intuitive knowledge as a potential source of power for the individual who gained access to it through a tattoo —a source of power that did not depend on existing economic and social level of society.
Tattoos involve the drawing of blood, which in the pagan world was seen as a rejuvenating and immortalizing factor. As stated by ethnologist and anthropologist, the author of “The History of Tattooing”, Wilfrid Dyson Hambly there are numerous reasons why puncturing the skin should be regarded with some degree of awe “There is in addition the opening of numerous inlets for evil to enter… .”
The faith in one only and true God brought about a significant change in approach to this practice. “Do not lacerate your bodies for the dead, and do not tattoo yourselves.” (Leviticus 19:28) Looking at this scripture in the Bible, God could not make His stand on tattoos any clearer.
Because body tattooing usually in the Roman or Greek world was associated with the barbarians and their mysterious cults, the followers of Christ recognized it as potentially hazardous to their faith. With the development of Christianity the custom of tattooing bodies of slaves and criminals began to abate.
St. Basil the Great, a Doctor and Father of the Catholic Church, condemned tattoos: “No man shall let his hair grow long or tattoo himself as do the heathen, those apostles of Satan who make themselves despicable by indulging in lewd and lascivious thoughts. Do not associate with those who mark themselves with thorns and needles so that their blood flows to the earth. Guard yourselves against all unchaste persons, so that it cannot be said of you that in your hearts you lie with harlots.”
In A.D. 787, Pope Hadrian, put a complete ban on tattooing which later on became virtually unknown in the Christian world until the 19th century. Indeed, there were two important exceptions, sailors and coal-miners, both professions that carried serious risks thus presumably explaining the almost amulet-like use of anchors or miner’s lamp tattoos on men’s forearms. By all means it has nothing to do with Christian faith as all the ideas of luck and superstition so much common in Anglo-Saxon culture.
It cannot be denied that Coptic Christians in Egypt, have received a small cross tattoo on their wrist to declare their Christian identity to the majority Muslim culture, the practice that dates back to the 7th century and the Islamic conquest of North Africa. But it is the exception that proves the rule.
As maintained by Steve Gilbert – ‘Tattoo History: “When Cortez and his conquistadors arrived on the coast of Mexico in 1519, they were horrified to discover that natives not only worshipped devils in the form of status and idols, but also had somehow managed to imprint indelible images of these idols on their skin. The Spaniards, who had never heard of tattooing, recognized it at once as the work of Satan.”
In that respect, it should also be recalled the 20th century, practice of forcibly tattooing concentration inmates as part of the German identification system. SS Bolt Tattoos were worn by members of the Waffen-SS to identify a soldier’s blood type in case a transfusion.
After the WW II tattoos were mainly associated with decadent freaks and fringe groups whose members usually intended to demonstrate their diversity in a negative sense – “I am a really bad person”. Many tattoos have evil and witchcraft themes that are portrayed as devil faces, skulls, ugly demonic signs, vulgar pictures, etc. The counterculture of the 1960s made tattoos common and “acceptable” along with decadence in many other forms, including satanic sects, hippy promiscuity, drug use, and rock music. Before then, Western society deemed tattoos to be “unsavory” or even “repugnant”. Inmate tattoos have always been a popular “prison trademark. Since the 1970s, on the Hollywood scene, men and women who placed all their hopes on fame and fortune, by injecting ink into flesh, have become models for millions of young people in the West.
No wonder, the more I delved deeper into that internal quest for the truest nature of this practice the less it looked spiritually indifferent, and that its prevalence today is a obvious sign of the culture’s explicit denial of the sanctity of the body.
Paul Suski is based in Poland. He has a BA in English language teaching, MA in Political Science, three adolescent children and wears a Carmelite scapular.
Tomorrow: Part II: Tattoos – A Catholic Concern
What evidence do you have that Pope Hadrian banned all tattoos in 787? I’ve checked the Second Council of Nicaea a few times now and others have claimed as well that it’s not there. Do you have any references that can substantiate your claim?