Our Pillars
The six pillars provide the structural integrity to sustain and uphold the Tattoo Pathway.
By operating within the construct of the six primary pillars, you are part of generating the life force required to produce the Tattoo Pathway.
The Pathway does not exist without people turning up, acknowledging its value, journeying it, and embracing the responsibility of becoming its custodian. This active participation sustains a living instrument that, through time, will provide purification, growth, transformation and connection.
1. Self Responsibility
Self responsibility is to take ownership of who you are and where you are going. These actions, decisions and their outcomes are recorded and reflected in the markings that you give or receive. We see this pillar as a process of honest reflection and intentional action, where the learnings from past decisions can be used to guide one towards more positively-oriented and regenerative choices in the future. This self-responsibility is grounded in accountability and integrity and is part of the maturing, refinement and healing that can occur within tattooing.
2. Technical knowledge
Technical Knowledge represents the physical components of tattooing – the tattoo itself and the physical change one undergoes through receiving a tattoo. This pillar speaks to the regenerative and healing process that occurs in the body when breaking the skin and introducing ink. We see technical knowledge, coupled with spiritual wisdom, as complementary bodies of information that guide one on a journey of profound transformation.
3. Spiritual Wisdom
For millennia, tattooing has been respected as a sacred practice due to its deep connection with the supernatural and spiritual aspects of our existence. This is echoed in the spiritual wisdom of the Tattoo Pathway, which encompasses the metaphysical and experiential facets of tattooing. We recognise intention-setting and connecting to a Greater Power as core to navigating and cultivating a tattoo journey rich with significance and meaning.
Technical Knowledge and Spiritual Wisdom take you on a journey of transformation towards your desired destination when approached with self-responsibility.
These first three pillars are primordial in nature, in that they are the foundation for the emergence of the following pillars.
4. Record Keeping
Tattooing involves recording and imprinting layers of information far deeper than just the intention for a tattoo, or the aesthetics of the design. This pillar is therefore about being attuned with all that is happening when marking the skin. Record-keeping is contractual and instils accountability, empowering people with awareness and knowledge of their inherent ownership for their journey through time.
5. Navigational Aid
Navigation serves as a powerful metaphor for moving through the inevitable changes, challenges and lessons one will encounter along their journey of transformation through life and when getting tattooed. This pillar emphasises that it is the journey of tattooing, guided by cycles of induction into the unknown, reorientation, and trust in a Greater Power, that teaches what is required of us to arrive at our desired destination of transformation.
6. Dignified Beauty
The sixth pillar is the coherence of technical knowledge and spiritual wisdom – the physical and the metaphysical. It is applied practice and spiritual maturation manifesting through the stories marked in the skin as a result of trust in the mystery. Throughout the tattoo journey, a healing process takes place. Due to constant exposure to the divine, this eventually purifies one into a dignified and beautiful state of being that is in alignment with a Greater Power.
When these three pillars are placed on top of the previous three, active and utilised consciously, we have a geometric structure, the tetrahedron.
This is a supernatural repository for the field to create – a vessel for a Greater Power to fill, and, as a result, for us to experience a sacred process when in the vessel. This structure provides the structural integrity to sustain and uphold the Tattoo Pathway.
Tattoo Pathway
The resulting form of the above pillars is a focal point which is the Tattoo Pathway as a credible tool or instrument. It is complete and grounded in the harmonisation of the rational and spiritual, and the physical and metaphysical. By operating within the construct of the 6 primary pillars, you are part of generating the life force required to produce the Tattoo Pathway. The pathway does not exist without people turning up, acknowledging its value, journeying it, and embracing the responsibility of becoming its custodian. This active participation sustains a living instrument that, through time, will provide purification, growth, transformation and connection.