Do you think traditional tattoos are outdated? Do you think they can be modernized and remain loved?
I tattooed a friend of mine this week who is a professional psychic. We spoke about the similarities in our client interactions, and how much emotional energy, aspiration, anxiety, and access to selfhood are wrapped up in two industries that might at first glance seem totally disparate. Another aspect we agreed on was the need for elements of both our fields to be modernized. Modernity can be a dirty word of sorts; it implies a dissatisfaction with tradition or a perpetual chasing of innovation and newness. An uncritical praise of modernity and progress is often a tool of settler colonialism in which it’s taken for granted that newness and replacing older ways of being is always a positive, that growth is always linear and benevolent.
[Image: Cap Coleman, a tattooed man in a white undershirt and cap stands in front of a store window filled with tattoo flash, with a sign reading “Coleman Tattoo Artist: Best Work, Low Prices.” Source: Tattoodo]
My friend recently wrote an article about the hierophant card of tarot’s Major Arcana. The hierophant was originally known as the Pope, and in the tarot symbolizes themes of convention, rules and regulations, conformity, and spiritual enlightenment. In her writing, Sarah Potter speaks to discerning between a time to break with tradition and innovate, to go against the grain, and a time to follow a “tried and true” path. She describes the ways tradition can often be a part of social and community organizing, and how it serves a purpose in setting expectations and guidelines for how we conduct ourselves with one another.
The Hierophant is a leader in society—a keeper of traditions, sacred knowledge, and spiritual lessons. It was their job to receive spiritual wisdom from a divine source and disseminate it throughout a community in order to keep everyone in line. So how do we interpret this old time-y, super-traditional figure when it shows up in a tarot reading today? By examining when it is appropriate to follow guidelines with conformity, and when it’s necessary to question authority in order to create a new set of traditions. -Sarah Potter
When reversed, however, the Hierophant urges us to rebel, to question everything, and to honor your own needs and desires regardless of societal expectations. “It’s the way things have always been done” is a defense leveraged to justify all kinds of discrimination and violence, from Confederate monuments to apprenticeship hazing. Social progress has come about most often by challenging the existing order of things and by, if not abolishing it altogether, at least questioning how and why things came to be the way they are.
[Image: a tweet of a photo of Queen Elizabeth II with the caption “Wait a minute. I just found out that English lady with the hats is a nepotism baby???”]
This theme connects readily with the Twitter discourse roasting around Queen Elizabeth II’s death. Historians, political theorists, professors, and colonized peoples of all stripes formed like Voltron to debunk the monarchy’s revisionist hagiography detail by detail, down to demanding the return of the looted precious stones in the Queen’s crown and scepter. Refusing to be intimidated by the Daily Mail’s snarky outrage or Twitter threats, Zoe Samudzi steadfastly insisted “I said what I said, and I’d say it again any day of the year.” 2021 was declared a Hierophant year. Broadly, we as humans have been intensely grappling with the enormous themes of history, empire and authority— evidenced by Land Back movements, decolonial work, the push for reparations, and organizing for labor rights against behemoth corporations. Part of this reckoning is also confronting our personal and collective mythologies— something for which tattooing has long been overdue.
American Traditional is a style among many of tattooing, one characterized by a limited color palette, bold black outlines, simplified drawings, and imagery that draws from a canon established by people like Sailor Jerry, Cap Coleman, Amund Dietzel, and many more. It’s no secret that the lineage of American Traditional tattooing has historically excluded women, trans people, queer people and people of color (to the point that Black tattooers have begun to specify “white American Traditional tattooing” to describe the genre). In the spirit of the Hierophant, it’s worth noticing how the development of American Traditional was shaped by its relationship to the military (the Navy in particular), colonial expansion and wartime (a deeper dive on this another time). Many images that are “traditional” to the style are explicitly racist, and should absolutely be retired (caricatures of Black, Asian, and Indigenous people are one immediate example). Others are common but should be rethought in context; how might flash of a clipper ship recall the transatlantic slave trade (if you think this is a reach, I can’t recommend In the Wake by Christina Sharpe enough)?
A style can be employed strategically and conscientiously, or it can be applied thoughtlessly. When it comes to deciding which traditions to honor and which to let lie, I always ask myself what purpose a tradition served to begin with. Is that need still relevant? Some traditions provide us with structures we can build upon, repurpose, or even subvert. I believe many of the themes tattoo imagery references are timeless and universal, such as love, grief, and longing. The images created by original American Traditional artists were one way to describe those themes. Some still resonate, and some are dusty as hell. There’s a new generation of young queer and people of color working in American Traditional particularly because of the historical exclusion, and engaging in a defiant, exciting redefinition of the style by insisting on their right to reclaim it. When working in the style, ask yourself what it means for you to participate in a lineage. Whose work are you in conversation with as a result? What does it mean to make an image in that style in this day and age, as who you are, where you are? What kind of person, what kind of body, is wearing it?
One of the things I most appreciate about the new generation of tattooers is that they often don’t know anything about the people and hierarchies that seemed undefeatable from my perspective in the industry. I’ll mention a company, tattooer, or machine-builder that has terrorized the industry with their bullshit for decades and get blank stares in response: “I don’t know who that is.” Nothing gives me more of a thrill than hearing these traditions are becoming irrelevant. Sometimes that work is a slow forgetting rather than a seismic confrontation. Part of the work of bringing tattooing into the future is reckoning with the past and looking at its “heroes” with clear eyes and a critical lens. Another part is building new traditions and new institutions to replace those that refuse to evolve, ones where rules can be broken and experimentation can happen.
[Image: a gif of Mariah Carey, bathed in pink light, shaking her head and saying “I don’t know her.”]
I love that Larry Madowo used the word “fairytales” in his reporting on Queen Elizabeth II’s death. What fairytales does tattooing insist on believing? How do we honor our past and history while critiquing what needs to be critiqued, and breaking the cycles that need to be broken? During the initial wave of tattoo #metoo callouts a couple of years ago, I pulled some cards to gain insight into what was happening in the industry. The Hierophant and the Tower both came up. When it comes to themes of revelation and awakening, tattooing is just as due for transformation as any other part of our world.
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My book, Could This Be Magic? Tattooing as Liberation Work is available via Afterlife Press.
Thank you for this, insightful thoughts and a lot to digest and think about in this post. As a tattoo artist I have also been thinking a lot about the term “traditional” what it means and how accurate it is. Can some thing be a tradition when it’s only been around for 100 years? I guess traditions are born everyday and you only know they are traditions with time so 100 years might be enough. It certainly has been sold and pushed onto us as that in the past by a largely cis male dominated tattoo industry. I am also an artist that tattoos in an illustrative style heavily influenced by 20th century american tattooing so I am a part of it in a way as well but certainly a lot to think about.
Wonderfully, articulately said. Love this newsletter--so glad you started it. Thank you!