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Piercing and Spirituality.

21:31 / 07.08.02

I just recently got a surface piercing and I was thinking about the affect they tend to have on bodies and minds. I've found that people who get one piercing often want more afterward. What have your expierences been with Magick and piercing, be it play piercing, ear piercing or body piercing? Have they elevated you or been useful in rituals?

01:04 / 08.08.02

I first came across piercing at around 17, when the only person I knew pierced exposed their nipple rings to the summer sun. I was intrigued and went and found out about it, coming across the then body manipulation bible, Modern Primitives. I made teh decision to use it as a rites of passage, something taht I saw missing in the Western Urban enviroment. I waited many years designing tattoos for people, before finding a partner willing to let me go ahead and get pierced> I must have done a good job in explaining, because she became a piercer.
I gathered my initial crop from stuff like the Sundance ritual, and the Arabic 'haffada' (spelling?) Lip and eye adornment started to make me realise that I was expressing a focus upon areas of my body that I had issues with or symbolised them.
During later spiritual encounters I was challenged about my piercings and had questions channelled to me with regards my bodies energy flow. I pondered on this for a long time, until I made the decision to remove them. I found this process of taking back the physical as stimulating as taking control of it in the first place.
I still keep them as magick fetishes (in both sense), and use my knowledge to diagnose others.

08:04 / 08.08.02

I've done play piercing only once, at a women's sm club, and found it sexual, rather than spiritual, although I've taken part in sm scenes that seemed quite ritualistic. 'Good' pain (i.e. consensual) of any kind heightens all my senses. When I had my thumb tattooed, the pain was incredible and very arousing.

My tattoos are far more spiritual to me than my piercings - I have five ear piercings and three tattoos, and I find when I want to mark an important landmark in my life, I head to the tattooist. Thinking about it, though, I would like to be play pierced again, as it felt good on many levels (that might have had something to do with who was piercing me of course). My ex-partner cut me with a knife, as a way of marking me as 'hers' and it was done in quite a ritualistic way.

Will - I'm interested in what you were saying about piercings and energy flow. Could you explain a bit more? And DuskySally - what was the effect of your piercing?

08:29 / 08.08.02

With regards the energy flow, I thought about how the piercings fell into various chakras. I then studied chakras and what each one related to, and what the piercing represented. This was inspired by a Reiki master friend of mine who gave me a treatment, but noticed the piercings were acting as blockages, interupting the energy transference. He also mentioned that your left side of the body is the fathers side and the right the mothers. It was very strange that all my piercings either fell on the meridian or on the left side of my body, and my father was a very distant parent in my childhood, due to work commitments.
When I took the piercings out and occaisionally put the odd one back in, I really did notice a relationship to its position and events and actions in my life, a direct response. To the point of effecting my mooods, thoughts and how people reacted to me. (The body adornments were not visible to others)

14:07 / 08.08.02

sfd - I have a similar experience with my piercing/tattoos. For me, the relative spirituality is largely influenced by the longevity of the two body mods. Both have been a way of marking significant moments in my personal development. Tattoos are likely to be there for the rest of my life, however, while piercings can be (and have been, in my case) removed when their purpose was served. Piercings have been useful in ritual work for me, especially in relation to reclaiming the body and creating a physical/mental bond between group members (being pierced along with other people seems to create a strong sense of unity via the shared pain/rush).

I currently only have two active piercings (my ears are pierced but I rarely bother to wear jewelry) and Will's comments about energy flow are making me wonder about whether it's time to remove the last ones as well - particularly since they both represent membership in long-defunct magickal working groups. Something to play with, at any rate.

Professor Silly

14:49 / 08.08.02

what a wonderfully strange thread!

I too got a lot of piercings shortly after starting my tattoo apprenticeship. I've had a total of eight at some time or other...but at some point I heard about the whole "energy blockage thing" and removed all but one (the one below the belt) as an experiment. I eventually even removed that one, so I'm metal-free now. It has taken me quite awhile to recooperate and overcome these blockages, but now (9 months later) I'm starting to feel active and alert again.

I'll stick with tattoos--my days of getting pierced are over (for the foreseeable future).

...interesting that others have had similiar experiences/conclusions....

15:59 / 08.08.02

My ears were pierced when I was one year old, and it certainly wasn't spiritual then, as I can recall. I considered piercings an aesthetic thing for a long time. But as I've talked to people, and that includes this thread, I've found that it's best to have spiritual intent in mind with piercings, or it can get in the way spiritually. I've known a few people who have gotten their piercings with spiritual intent and it's worked out well for them.

A friend of mine got her belly button pierced because she had been sick for some time and found that she held alot of tension in her stomach, my father pierced his ear to symbolize his freedom from his old corporate job and my boyfriend had his ears pierced to invoke a kind of spirit within himself the piercing, even at a sterile piercing parlour, held spiritual weight. It was in the air.

I personally have found that my nape piercing (the surface piercing I was speaking of) has helped me pin my mind to my body, something I'd been having trouble with. Taking care of it is a ritual of self cleansing and care. In that way, it has been very spritual and important to me. I'm not sure what will happen once it's completely healed.I also have three holes in my ears to symbolize the power of the number three within my life and myself.

What I'm wondering now is why tattoos over piercings, as I've been hearing? Is it that tattoos are an adding while piercings are a subtracting? Also, has anyone tried testing their energy flow with organic jewelry? I have an organic earring made of bone that I've found has actually helped me in some respects. I definately understand the strangeness of metal.

18:09 / 08.08.02

Hmm... What about piercing with a crystal rod? They come pretty thin sometimes. Of course, it'd probably be too likely to break.

21:53 / 08.08.02

I've seen jewelry made of amber, of amethyst, of wood and of bone. All of which are considered to be very magically condusive materials, and as long as people don't go throwing themselves around to much, there's little danger of breaking. Would it's presence under the skin or through the skin do the same or better than wearing it around one's neck or carrying it close by? Perhaps long term spiritual healing,like a bandaid of sorts?

01:12 / 11.08.02

For many people, myself included, body art has been a method for becoming more in touch and comfortible with ones body, and with nudity.

17:09 / 11.08.02

nice thread to read as i'm just off to a 7:30pm tattoo appt on a sunday night. luckily my artist will come in and work these sorts of times to allow ppl more privacy and to make the tattoo more of a spiritual experience...will update more tomoro.

17:33 / 11.08.02

Indeed there are spiritual merits with body piercing, but I have found that in the Western world they are often signs of an issue to be dealt with and also a part of the process of dealing with it.
Tattooing I felt was best described by a Medicine Man, as a way of making the body attractive to your spirit, as to entice it not to leave.

02:19 / 12.08.02

This is a great thread, and also my very first post on barbelith.
I have been into piercing and tattooing for over a decade now and the older I get my reasons for doing so become more and more a rite of passage for me... as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, I find that more so than any of my therapy sessions I've had in the past, modifying my body has helped me to reclaim this body as my own. I makes me feel a lot less self concious of my body and until I got my nipples pierced I hated my breasts. I recently found a person who I feel a great connection with who also happens to be a piercer and I am planning on having him give me my next piercing. I also plan on having more tattoos dones, and I am playing around with ideas for a theme that will cover one of my buttochs and most of my lower back, I will incorporate it with some of my already existing tattoos: a butterfly on my back and flowers on my shoulder. (I will probably have a tree/woman as a central image, it reflects my growth and a human being). This is going to be a long process not to mention an expensive one... but that is much like the road to spiritual healing.

14:05 / 13.08.02

"...What I'm wondering now is why tattoos over piercings, as I've been hearing? Is it that tattoos are an adding while piercings are a subtracting?..."

For me, the physical and mystical experiences are very different. I had a few piercings -- nothing below the neck (last thing I want is to change sensitivity, which is perfect the way it is now!), but a few cartilage piercings. That experience is percussive and short-lasting, an adrenaline rush, but doesn't take me anywhere.

Tattooing, playpiercing (up to 100 needles at a time), and cuttings are different. They're an express ticket to trance induction for me, especially if done consciously. If done not-so-consciously, they still induce trance but not always at an appropriate time or in an appropriate setting. I've had a few bad experiences, then I learned and got very picky.

I have extensive tattoos and I'm currently (I could almost always say "currently") working on a huge piece -- a Mayan vision serpent that covers the entire right side of my body. Over the years, during tattoo sessions and cuttings and playpiercing sessions I've built an ornate cathedral. Started out as the church where I saw the Pieta early one morning when I was 13. The Pieta is still there, and the buidling is still shaped like that church, but now it has a lot of occupants the Catholics wouldn't be so fond of and they do lots of things not generally approved by the Pope. The entrance is through a maze. On shamanistic journeys, I meet critters there; the critters I have met and become most bonded with live there now. I fly in the bell tower.

A piercing can be sexual to me. So can tattoos and cuttings. But a piercing just won't catapult me away from mundane gravity and take me on a journey. Tattoos and cuttings, and playpiercings done in the right setting, always do.

Also, I value tattoos because they are permanent, whereas piercings are not. I consciously put images in my flesh that I want embedded in my soul. And that is indeed how it works.

I also discovered, after the first tat or two, that people who are capable of seeing me can see me more clearly by looking at what I've chosen to embed in my flesh; whereas the art hides me from people who cannot see me.