Individual → Collective

An interview with Mark Nara, by Alexander Illiad

This post is part of an ongoing Q&A series. Thirty questions in total exploring themes of initiation, identity, meaning, and transformation.

Each one stands alone, but together they map a deeper conversation I’ve been guiding for years through Tattoo Pathway.

Rather than polished essays or formal teachings, these responses reflect the way things actually unfold in dialogue.

The first question started with a dream. You can go back to it here if you want to see where this began.

Question 10 (AI):

You’ve spoken about tattooing as a rite of passage. But what does that really mean in today’s world, where culture no longer offers initiatory frameworks? How can someone make the process of getting tattooed a true rite of passage? even if they’re doing it alone?

Answer (MN):

Well, the truth is. . .it’s actually really hard. Because the initiatory frameworks have been missing for a long time. Not just the framework itself, but the initiated elders who would normally lead the process.

What I’ve experienced personally and what I aim to support in others, is a kind of self-initiatory path. One that asks for the mystery to guide you. That asks something beyond you, a greater power. . . what I often refer to as the Original Guiding Presence or Original Greater Power, the OGP, to lead you through the unknown.

Call it God, Source, Spirit, the Divine. . . there’s no human language that really suffices. But this orientation toward the mystery is essential if we’re truly going to walk an initiatory path and it requires an incredible amount of trust and truth.

One of the main challenges of the self-initiatory path is self-deception. Without a guide or an elder, it’s easy to get caught in illusion or distortion. To tell yourself you’re evolving when you’re actually avoiding. Also there’s a challenger archetype, something that disrupts all initiatory processes. It does its job well. It’s meant to test you.

So in this current cycle of time, life itself becomes initiatory. We can’t rest on comfort or consensus. We can’t rely on broken inherited systems. We have to take full responsibility for the path we walk and that requires radical honesty. . . Awareness. . . deep accountability.

But there is feedback. The sacred still speaks. When we develop a real relationship with it, it communicates with us. That’s how all rites of passage originally came to be. . . through humans responding to the sacred with humility and attention. In a way, we’re having to start again.

And yes, it can feel lonely. Because we’re rebuilding something while living in the ruins of what came before. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.

To make something sacred, you must elevate it. You must raise it out of the everyday. That requires patience. Discipline. Reverence. A student’s heart. It requires asking. It requires action. You make a request to the sacred, and then you follow that with intentional steps. You move toward it with commitment. And the mystery responds. Always in the right way. Not always the easy way, but the perfect way.

That’s the essence of a rite of passage, it’s not comfortable. It’s meant to be disorienting. Because it’s transforming you.

The challenger will always offer an easier path. A shortcut. But initiation asks more of you. It asks you to see clearly. To stay sharp. To stay awake.

And though this is self-directed, you’re not really doing it alone. Because as you walk, you start to notice others walking too. Some are ahead. Some are behind. But we’re all moving on the same vertical path. And that shared movement brings its own kind of clarity, camaraderie, and confirmation.

In fact, one of the beautiful things I’m witnessing now is a kind of leveling. People in their 40-50s are moving through their first real psychological initiation. . .right alongside 15-20-year-olds going through the same thing. Initiation doesn’t discriminate by age. It aligns people by depth. By willingness. By timing.

So even though it’s self-initiated, it’s also collective. There are others around you. Others you’re doing it with, for, and because of.

I believe we’re in a time of mass initiation. And what that looks like is a kind of psychological sacrificing of the false self, the self shaped by self-idealisation and the cultural programming of the modern age. So that who we really are can emerge.

I speak about this often with people I tattoo. I point them to cicada medicine.

The cicada spends years underground, nourished by the roots of the great tree. Then something stirs. It begins its ascent. Crawling up through the darkness, splitting its old shell. emerging up and out through the opening down the centre of the back. then climbing, Reaching the highest branch. There, it sings out, its drums, not for itself, but for the continuation of life.

Each cicada calls out as an individual but together, they create a deafening chorus. Their harmonics are powerful enough to damage our human ear. That’s what initiation is. A solo ascent. But also a song sung together. A sound that shakes the world. A call that says deep down we know who we are. And we’re willing to be transformed.

MN