Reconstructing the Tattoo Rite: Embodiment, Sympathetic Magick, and Grimoire Logic in the Western Mystery Tradition
Abstract
This essay offers an interpretive analysis of ritual tattooing as an embodied operation within the Western Mystery Tradition. It argues that ritual tattooing functions as a rite of sympathetic magick whose structure parallels the ceremonial logic of the medieval grimoires that have served as our primary sources for the development of Western magickal thought and practice from the Renaissance onward to modern era. Drawing upon the Western esoteric lineage, from ancient Egypt to the Greco-Egyptian papyri, the Hermetica, and onward into the Solomonic corpus, the essay situates ritual tattooing as a culturally coherent extension of Western magick and esotericism making culturally appropriated practices unnecessary.
Keywords: ritual tattooing; sympathetic magick; Western esotericism; Solomonic tradition; talismanic permanence; operator and will; embodied ritual practice; Hermetic lineage; Greco-Egyptian magick; consecration; magical preparation; materia magica; intentionality; esoteric embodiment.
Methodical Roadmap and Scope of Interpretation
The interpretive parallels between the development of modern ritual tattooing and the structures of Western esotericism are possible even though no direct historical lineage survives. This absence is easily explained through a review of the historical record: tattooing fell out of practice in the West not because it was incompatible with Western religious or magickal thought, but because it became socially and religiously prohibited. What we are examining, then, is not a broken lineage but a logical reestablishment—a careful and intentional reconnection of a tradition that was lost. I prefer to describe this as thoughtful reconstructionism. There is enough historical, anthropological, and philosophical material available that we are not engaging the subject blindly; however, because a continuous textual record or practice of ritual tattooing does not exist, it is important to name this work as reconstructionist.
This process can also be understood as a rediscovery, much like the Renaissance rediscovery of classical texts. Western magick has historically grown through acts of recovery, reinterpretation, and synthesis; the present project follows this same pattern. We begin with the historical, anthropological, and philosophical foundations of tattooing within the broader Western lineage, and then proceed into its ritual structure and sympathetic nature. This not only preserves the practice within the Western esoteric tradition but also expands it, since sympathetic magick underlies the majority of Western ritual technologies—even spirit communication.
Finally, the study incorporates modern psychological and phenomenological insights to illuminate the embodied dimensions of the rite. These interpretive tools help clarify how pain functions in ritual, how altered states of consciousness develop, and how magickal technologies operate through the body. These perspectives are not meant to replace esoteric explanations but to enrich it.
The argument unfolds in four movements:
Historical and philosophical grounding, showing how tattooing appears in Egypt and the Greco-Egyptian world, and how its later disappearance is rooted in cultural suppression rather than conceptual incompatibility.
A demonstration that the historical interruption of tattooing in the West explains the absence of direct lineage, while still revealing its full compatibility with Western esotericism.
An analysis of ritual tattooing as sympathetic magick, showing how its preparatory structure mirrors the procedural logic of the grimoires—particularly the Solomonic method.
A concluding section situating ritual tattooing within the Western lineage—from Egypt to the Greco-Egyptian papyri to the Solomonic tradition—demonstrating why this reconstruction is culturally appropriate and does not require borrowing from indigenous traditions outside the Western world.
With this methodological foundation established, the essay now turns to the historical and philosophical grounding.
Historical and Philosophical Foundations of Ritual Tattooing in the Western Tradition
Any attempt to situate ritual tattooing within the Western Mystery Tradition must begin by establishing the historical and philosophical conditions that make such an interpretive reconnection possible. Although modern Western culture often treats tattooing as subcultural, decorative, or marginal, the earliest cultures that contributed to the formation of Western esotericism tell a different story entirely.
The most logical place to begin is ancient Egypt. Archaeological evidence overwhelmingly confirms that tattooing in Egypt served ritual, magickal, and religious functions rather than aesthetic ones.1 Infrared imaging studies performed at Deir el-Medina reveal tattoos arranged along symbolic lines of power, marking the body as a site of consecration.2 John A. Rush notes that Egypt contains the earliest documented ritual tattoos in a literate civilization. This unique situation helps to interpret the archaeological record, giving us a clearer understanding of the ritual and magickal purposes behind its tattooing practices.3
Egypt’s reputation for magick was so profound in antiquity that the Babylonian Talmud preserves the saying: “Ten measures of sorcery descended into the world; Egypt received nine.”4 Even the Hebrew Bible reflects this perception, describing the priests and magicians of Pharaoh contending directly with Moses in acts of ritual power.5
From Egypt, the path leads naturally into the Greco-Egyptian world that emerged after Alexander’s conquest in 332 BCE and the establishment of the Ptolemaic dynasty, during which the region underwent profound Hellenization. The result of the cultural fusion that occurred during Hellenization gave us The Greek Magical Papyri (PGM)—the foundational ritual corpus bridging Pharaonic Egyptian religion and Hellenistic Greek esotericism. The PGM collection demonstrates a syncretic ritual system that was built on sympathetic correspondences, consecrated materia, timing, abstinence, purification, and embodied practice—all of which would be found in later thaumaturgic and theurgical approaches of the Hermetica as well as the later Solomonic tradition.6 As Hans Dieter Betz notes, the papyri constitute “a syncretic ritual technology” combining Egyptian priestly religion, Hellenistic incantation, Jewish angelology, and early gnostic elements into a coherent operative system. It is not unusual to find the magician of the PGM calling upon Hecate, Yahweh, IAO, Abraxas, or Michael within the same operation.7 This striking syncretism is precisely what makes the PGM so profound for magickal practice. It reveals that ritual efficacy in the ancient world was not tied to exclusive devotion to a single deity, but to a discernible technology—an operative method—that could be repeated, adapted, and internalized. The PGM demonstrates that magick’s power rests in technique, preparation, and the manipulation of sympathetic correspondences, rather than in theological allegiance. This insight has shaped modern practice by showing that the underlying technology of magick is stable even when the divine names vary. This is an important contribution to our methodology of reconstructing modern ritual tattoo practice within the Western esoteric tradition in that we are reproducing methods and structures—a theoretical practice—not necessarily theology.
It is also important to note that syncretism, as seen throughout the PGM, is not cultural appropriation. Syncretism emerges within cultures that share geographic, political, and ritual space, producing hybrid forms through ongoing exchange. It was a unified operative system within a single Hellenistic milieu. The Western esoteric tradition develops from this internal syncretism—not from the appropriation of practices outside its cultural and historical sphere. Ideas and practice are always in flux, syncretism is expected and natural, whereas cultural appropriation is an intentional misuse.
From this Greco-Egyptian matrix emerges the tradition that most clearly anchors the Western esoteric worldview: Hermeticism. Composed in Roman Egypt between the first and third centuries CE, the Hermetica synthesized Egyptian ritual logic with Greek philosophical language, producing the earliest fully developed Western theory of cosmic sympathy, ritual purification, divine hierarchy, and the ascent of consciousness.8 Hermeticism is not a break from Egyptian magick but its philosophical maturation. It was an attempt to articulate how ritual action, cosmic order, and spiritual transformation operate through chains of correspondence. As Festugière and later Hanegraaff have shown, Hermeticism represents a conscious systematization of both Egyptian temple theology and Greek metaphysics into a unified magical philosophy.9 This Hermetic worldview, with its emphasis on sympathy, subtle forces, and the alignment of the operator with cosmic structure, becomes the conceptual backbone of Renaissance ceremonial magick, including much of the modern Solomonic tradition.10 Recognizing this continuity reveals that the movement from Egypt, to the PGM, to the Hermetic, to the grimoires is not a fragmented inheritance but a coherent lineage.
Although tattooing does not survive as an unbroken ritual practice in the Western esoteric lineage, this absence is not evidence of conceptual incompatibility. Rather, it reflects a long and complex history of cultural, religious, and legal suppression. Unlike ritual magic— which, despite periodic persecution, survived in esoteric manuscripts, clerical adaptations, folk practice, and later Renaissance occult philosophy—tattooing lost cultural legitimacy almost entirely within Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. As a result, while the Western tradition preserved the technical, philosophical, and ritual structures of magickal practice through texts such as the PGM, Hermetica, and the Solomonic grimoires, tattooing itself disappeared from the ritual sphere for centuries. Recognizing this historical interruption clarifies why a reconstructionist approach is required and why re-situating tattooing within the Western Mystery Tradition is both feasible and culturally appropriate.11
The Suppression of Tattooing in the West and the Loss of a Continuous Lineage
To understand why ritual tattooing lacks a continuous lineage in the West, it is necessary to recognize that its disappearance was cultural rather than conceptual. By this I mean that tattooing did not disappear because it conflicted with Western esoteric or philosophical principles, but because the surrounding religious and social systems rendered it unacceptable; its loss reflects cultural prohibition, not conceptual incompatibility with Western magick. As noted above tattooing was widely practiced in ancient Egypt. This serves as our earliest well-documented source where written evidence helps interpret the archaeological record which demonstrates strong evidence that tattoos served ritual and magickal functions.12 Yet while Egyptian ritual technologies flowed into the Western esoteric tradition, tattooing itself did not survive the transition into the Judeo-Christian and Islamic worlds.
The reason is straightforward: tattooing became socially and religiously prohibited. Jewish law forbade tattooing in Leviticus 19:28, and early Christianity inherited this prohibition, associating tattooing with pagan cults, slavery, and criminality.13 Patristic writers reinforced this view, condemning bodily marking because of its associations with idolatry, criminal stigma, and moral disorder within the Roman world.14 Roman law itself classified tattooing (stigma) as a sign of enslavement, criminal punishment, and infamia (a legally defined state of public disgrace that stripped a person of social honor, legal standing, and civic rights), further shaping Christian attitudes toward the practice.15
Islam similarly rejected tattooing as a bodily alteration that violated divine order.16 Because these three traditions shaped the religious and legal climate of late antiquity and the medieval West, tattooing lost its legitimacy long before the rise of Hermetic, Neoplatonic, or Solomonic ceremonial systems—which would later transmit and define the Western tradition of Magick.
Recognizing this historical interruption makes room for thoughtful reconstructionism. The absence of a direct lineage does not undermine ritual tattooing’s legitimacy within the Western Mystery Tradition; rather, it shows why reconstruction is necessary. Western esotericism has always advanced through acts of recovery, synthesis, and reinterpretation—from the Renaissance rediscovery of Hermetic texts to the modern revival of grimoire magick. Ritual tattooing, reconstructed through this same methodology, is not an act of cultural borrowing but a re-alignment with a practice originally native to the Western lineage.
With these historical conditions established, we can now turn to the theoretical structure that makes ritual tattooing legible within the Western esoteric tradition: the logic of sympathetic magick. Once this conceptual foundation is articulated, the parallels between ritual tattooing and the procedural logic of the grimoires become more clear.
The Conceptual Coherence of Ritual Tattooing Within Western Esotericism
Understanding the historical interruption of tattooing in the West allows us to shift the central question from whether ritual tattooing belongs within the Western Mystery Tradition to how it coherently aligns with its metaphysics and operative logic. The absence of a continuous lineage does not undermine the conceptual fit. When examined through the frameworks that define Western esotericism—Hermetic cosmology, cosmic sympathy, and the ritual technologies embedded in the grimoire tradition—ritual tattooing fits naturally and intelligibly within the Western current.
Western magick has always operated through correspondence, sympathetic resonance, and the manipulation of likeness. These principles structure the Hermetic worldview in which the visible and invisible mirror one another through chains of connection, the ancient doctrine of cosmic sympathy that links mind, body, stars, spirits, and material objects through patterned affinities.17 Within this worldview, the body is not merely a vessel but a participant in the flow of influence—materia magica capable of receiving, mediating, and transmitting intention.18
Ritual tattooing aligns seamlessly with this worldview. It takes the abstract logic of correspondence and gives it physical form in the same way that an amulet, pentacle, or talisman would be created.
To understand this alignment more clearly, it is helpful to note that sympathetic magick—though often described through Frazer’s later anthropological vocabulary 19—was originally formulated within Western esotericism through the Neoplatonic and Hermetic doctrine of cosmic sympathy.20 Frazer’s terms “similarity” and “contagion” are descriptive, but the older Western system understood sympathy as ontological: the cosmos is bound together through hidden chains (sympatheiai), governed by divine Mind and mediated through celestial intelligences.21 Similarity, not mechanical causation, binds phenomena across distance. When the operator inscribes a tattoo with intention, they are employing this same ancient principle—creating a permanent bond of likeness and correspondence.22
This framework is reinforced by the operative models of magick found in the PGM, in Hermetic writings, in Ficino’s astral magick, and later in the Solomonic tradition.23 Though these bodies of literature vary in tone, structure, and theological framing, they share a core assumption: magick functions when the operator establishes a correspondence between mental intention, ritual action, and material substrate. The tattoo simply becomes the most personal and enduring substrate available—the operator’s own body.
The long-standing distinction between learned magick (philosophical, conjurational, celestial) and folk magick (practical, embodied, charm-based) does not hinder this alignment. While learned magick relied upon complex ritual sequences, timing, spiritual adjurations, and crafted implements, folk magick operated through embodied gestures, touch, spoken charm, and material signs. Yet both systems operated through the same metaphysical assumptions: the existence of virtues—potencies originating from God and refracted through stars, planets, relics, and spirits—which could be harnessed through knowledge, sympathy, and correct technique.24
Ritual tattooing becomes a hybrid expression positioned comfortably between these poles. It is as embodied and accessible as folk magick, yet capable of being structured with the ritual precision associated with learned grimoire practice. Even without an unbroken historical lineage, ritual tattooing aligns coherently with the operative, symbolic, and metaphysical assumptions that have defined Western magick for two millennia.
Thus, ritual tattooing is not an innovation imposed from outside the Western current, nor a borrowing from indigenous traditions unrelated to the West. Rather, it is a reactivation of principles already present within Western esotericism. It is a restoration of a practice that conceptually belongs to the tradition, even if historically interrupted.
Ritual Tattooing as Sympathetic Magick: Structural Parallels with the Grimoire Tradition
With the historical and conceptual framework established, we may now address the central operation of this essay: how ritual tattooing functions as a rite of sympathetic magick whose structure mirrors the ceremonial logic of the medieval grimoires. The point here is not to claim that historical grimoire traditions explicitly describe tattooing—they do not—but rather that the operative logic governing their ritual actions provides a clear and coherent template through which ritual tattooing can be understood.
In the Solomonic tradition, the ritual does not begin at the moment of conjuration.
The rite begins at the moment of decision—when the operator chooses to undertake the work. When I say work I am referring to working a particular grimoire. From that moment onward, everything is part of the operation:
study
gathering tools
fasting or abstinence
ritual washing
planetary timing
construction and consecration of implements
preparation of the physical and psychic environment
As Skinner and Rankine emphasize, the procedural sequence of the Solomonic method is itself a magical act. The power of the operation accumulates through the disciplined accomplishment of all the above noted tasks. The ritual does not lead to the moment of conjuration; it creates it. Working a grimoire can take years of preparation and some practitioners even discuss how grimoires, or the spirits contained therein, choose their operator. The assumption is that the WHOLE process is one magnificent act of sympathetic magick that begins in the very first stages of practice. It’s as if the acts
themselves act in a centripetal manner drawing everything toward the individual.25 This is what Skinner and Rankine often refer to as ritual momentum or magickal tension.26 It should be reinforced; however, that this process is real and operative. It is the force that accumulates beneath the surface of the rite and makes the final act effective. The grimoires assume this implicitly. They do not describe “energy-raising” in modern terms because they did not conceptualize magick through those categories, yet they consistently prescribe a sequence of actions that produce an identical effect: heightened concentration, intensified intention, and a sense of ritual gravity that draws the operator into alignment with the working.27 The purpose of these requirements was not moral improvement but operative readiness—a sharpening of will and a harmonizing of the operator with the anticipated conjuration.
This same logic can be applied to the process of a ritual tattoo. From the selection of the design, to the period of contemplation, to abstaining from intoxicants, to preparing the body, to the conscious narrowing of focus. By the time the operator enters the tattoo space, the intention has ripened. The body has been oriented toward the event; distractions have been stripped away; the mind has begun to narrow and collect itself around the coming ordeal. What the grimoires call virtue accumulating in the implements is mirrored here in the operator themselves—the body becomes the implement, gathering purpose before the actual tattoo.28
Ritual tattooing therefore mirrors the Solomonic pattern with striking clarity: magickal tension rises in stages, reaches its peak when the needle touches the skin, and releases through the act of inscription itself. The tattoo session becomes the analog of the conjuration.29 It is the moment when everything prepared inwardly becomes outwardly real. A grand operation of sympathetic magick finally comes to fruition.
With these structural parallels established, we may now recognize the moment of inscription for what it is: the culmination of a long arc of sympathetic preparation, the point at which intention is fixed into the body as enduring materia magica. Because earlier sections have already articulated how sympathetic correspondence and magickal tension function, we can now look inward to the operator and the psychological and phenomenological dimensions of the rite to explore how the body, brain, and mind participate in a ritual tattoo.30
Embodiment, Pain, and Altered States: The Psychological and Phenomenological Dimensions of the Rite
While the primary argument of this essay is historical and esoteric, it is useful to incorporate modern psychological and phenomenological insights to illuminate why ritual tattooing functions so effectively as an embodied operation. These perspectives do not replace esoteric explanations; they illuminate them further to give us a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the process.
The first thing we need to do is define what we mean by embodiment and from there we can move into a more productive discussion regarding pain and altered states. When I speak of embodiment, I am drawing from therapeutic and esoteric understandings alike. I use the term to describe the integration of body, brain, and mind functioning together as a unified field of awareness through which intention is directed. In trauma therapy, embodiment refers to reclaiming bodily presence and reconnecting sensation with meaning; in Jungian and somatic depth work, it describes the descent of consciousness into lived experience so that psyche and soma act in concert. I extend this same logic to ritual practice. To be embodied is to allow one’s biological, emotional, and imaginal processes to align in the service of a chosen intention. In this sense, embodiment becomes the ground through which will can operate resulting in an integrated psychophysiological state that supports the actualization of magickal aims.31
Having defined embodiment, we can now turn to the role of pain in ritual tattooing, since pain is one of the primary catalysts that shifts the operator into a focused, altered mode of awareness. Tattooing is an experience that disrupts the normal rhythm of daily life. It is a chosen break from comfort and a voluntary departure from mundane life. It is a deliberate act that carries psychological and ritual weight. Pain, in this context, is not incidental; it is part of the technology that enables the shift from ordinary consciousness into a heightened state of focus where the operator is fully present. This is much like magickal ritual which alone, apart from the addition of a tattoo, moves the individual from the mundane to something more sacred. This shift from a mundane mode of being to something more sacred assists in the shift of consciousness. As a magician, when I put on my robe, enter my ritual space, focus on my breathing, and light my incense my consciousness is already experiencing a shift before the ritual officially unfolds.
The tattoo process itself often aids individuals in shifting their consciousness. The steady, rhythmic sensation of tattooing narrows attention. The daily constant mental chatter experienced by most modern individuals decreases. The operator becomes acutely aware of breath, muscle tension, and the movement of the artist’s hand. This kind of sustained sensory engagement naturally pulls awareness into the body and concentrates attention in a way that parallels meditative absorption and ritual focus.32 The operator is not “escaping” the body; they are being pulled deeper into it. This inward turn parallels what is seen in certain forms of trauma-integrative work, mindfulness practice, and even Jungian active imagination when it is extended into somatic awareness: the mind quiets as awareness anchors itself in immediate, bodily experience.33
It is important to distinguish this from dissociation. In dissociation, awareness fragments: the person feels detached, numb, or pulled away from bodily experience in response to being overwhelmed by a recognized threat.34 In a ritual tattoo, by contrast, the practitioner remains present. The pain may be intense, but it is voluntarily entered, anticipated, and framed within a context of meaning, intention, and control. These factors dramatically reduce the likelihood of traumatic dissociation.35 The practitioner is not losing themselves— they are directing themselves. I think this point is vital to make since I think there are times individuals experience re-traumatization and mistake it for mystical experiences or successful magick. The pain of a ritual tattoo, as noted above, is voluntarily chosen and planned well in advance.
This altered state parallels what we find described in the Hermetica and in classical theurgic texts, Hermetic writings speak of “collecting oneself,” of drawing consciousness inward so that perception becomes unified, elevated, and capable of receiving higher influence.36 Iamblichus describes theurgic states in which the practitioner becomes “wholly present,” gathered and receptive to divine forces—not through dissociation, but through heightened, embodied focus.37 The phenomenology is familiar: attention becomes single-pointed; external distraction fades; the practitioner experiences a steadiness or inward clarity that allows ritual intention to take form. It should be noted that much of neuroscience supports this analysis; however, that is out of the purview of this particular essay.38
Because Western esotericism has always required some form of this inward attentional shift—whether in contemplation, conjuration, prayer, or astral work—the altered state produced during tattooing fits naturally within the historical expectations of ritual practice. To summarize, ritual tattoo produces a comparative, if not more potentially efficacious, state.
With the psychological and phenomenological dimensions now in view, the coherence of the reconstructed ritual tattoo becomes even clearer. The historical, philosophical, and esoteric analysis has focused on establishing operative and conceptual parallels while also demonstrating that cultural appropriation is not necessary for a modern reconstruction of ritual tattooing. We have built a case for a thoughtful reconstruction of the ritual tattoo as a legitimate magickal rite within the Western Mystery Tradition. With this groundwork complete, we can now move on to concluding reflections.
Concluding Reflections: Reconstruction, Lineage, and the Western Current
Taken as a whole, the evidence presented throughout this study demonstrates that ritual tattooing, when understood through historical, philosophical, esoteric, and psychological frames, fits coherently and organically within the Western Mystery Tradition. Its absence from the medieval and early-modern record reflects not conceptual incompatibility, but cultural extinguishing shaped by Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religious prohibitions. The metaphysical logic that would have supported ritual tattooing remained fully intact even as the practice itself disappeared.
The historical arc traced here shows that the Western lineage already contains all of the operative and philosophical categories needed to understand ritual tattooing as a legitimate rite. Egypt offers the earliest evidence of ritually meaningful tattooing in the ancient world. The Greco-Egyptian papyri establish the foundation of Western ritual technology through sympathetic magick, timing, purification, and embodied action. The Hermetica articulate the cosmological framework of cosmic sympathy and the conditions under which ritual action becomes effective. The Solomonic grimoires codify the procedural method—purification, abstinence, timing, consecration, focused preparation—that ritual tattooing mirrors with striking clarity.
The psychological and phenomenological perspectives deepen, rather than replace, this esoteric logic. By examining how pain narrows attention and assists in producing inward shifts of consciousness where embodiment integrates intention across soma, brain, and mind, we gain insight into why ritual tattooing operates so effectively. The altered state produced during the tattoo process parallels the attentional shifts expected in classical theurgy and Hermetic contemplative practice. Rather than opposing esoteric explanations, contemporary psychophysiology illuminates the mechanisms through which sympathetic magick is enacted in and through the body.
Bringing these dimensions together allows for a more complete account. The ritual tattoo is not merely aesthetic or psychological. It is an embodied talismanic operation. The preparatory period gathers intention, refines will, and generates magickal tension. The moment of inscription fixes intention into materia magica—the living body—creating a sympathetic link that is permanent, personal, and operative. The ongoing presence of the mark participates in the ancient doctrine of contagion: once intention is joined to the body through a rite conducted under conditions of preparation, abstinence, and focused awareness, the body remains the locus of its operation.
Reconstructing ritual tattooing is therefore not an act of cultural borrowing from indigenous or non-Western traditions. It is an act of thoughtful recovery—a restoration of a practice that conceptually belongs to the Western current but was historically extinguished by external pressures. In this sense, ritual tattooing aligns with the long-standing pattern through which Western esotericism renews itself: the Renaissance recovery of the Hermetica, the twentieth-century revival of grimoire practice, and the contemporary reclamation of embodied ritual technologies.
It is my hope that this study demonstrates both the legitimacy and the promise of integrating ritual tattooing into Western esotericism in a way where it is perceived not as novelty, but as continuity; not as appropriation of unrelated cultures, but as the reactivation of a lineage that has always belonged to the West.
Footnotes
1 Anne Austin, “The Ancient Egyptian Practice of Tattooing at Deir el-Medina,” Bulletin de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale 114 (2014): 1–27.
2 Anne Austin, “Infrared Imaging Reveals Dynamic Egyptian Tattoos,” Antiquity 92, no. 363 (2018): 117–132.
3 John A. Rush, Spiritual Tattoo: A Cultural History of Tattooing, Piercing, Scarification, Branding, and Implants (Berkeley, CA: Frog, Ltd., 2005), 19.
4 Babylonian Talmud, Kiddushin 49b; translation adapted from Isidore Epstein, ed., The Babylonian Talmud: Seder Nashim, Volume III—Kiddushin (London: Soncino Press, 1936), 242.
5 Hebrew Bible, Exodus 7:11–12 (NRSV).
6 Theurgy (from the Greek theourgia, “god-work”) refers to ritual practices intended to unite the practitioner with divine powers or to elevate the soul into a higher ontological state. In Neoplatonic thought—especially in the writings of Iamblichus—theurgy is distinguished from magic because its aim is not to coerce spirits but to achieve divine participation through ritual purity, symbols, and sacred rites. See Iamblichus, On the Mysteries, trans. Emma C. Clarke, John M. Dillon, and Jackson P. Hershbell (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003), 17–23. The Western tradition historically distinguishes between theurgy—ritual “god-work” whose aim is spiritual ascent or union with the divine—and thaumaturgy, operative “wonder-working” intended to effect change in the material world. Iamblichus framed theurgy as a sacred practice dependent on divine participation, while Renaissance authors such as Ficino and later commentators described thaumaturgy as practical magic operating through cosmic sympathy. See Iamblichus, On the Mysteries, trans. Clarke, Dillon, and Hershbell (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003), 17–23; and Ioan P. Couliano, Eros and Magic in the Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 102–108.
7 Hans Dieter Betz, “General Introduction,” in The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, Including the Demotic Spells, vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), xlii–xliv.
8 Brian P. Copenhaver, Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), xlv–lii.
9 J. Festugière, La Révélation d’Hermès Trismégiste, vol. 1 (Paris: Lecoffre, 1944), 41–78; Wouter J. Hanegraaff, Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination: Altered States of Knowledge in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 12–25.
10 It should be noted, however, that many practitioners involved in the modern grimoire revival are stripping away hermetic, renaissance, and lodge magick applications in favor of more of a medieval approach prior to the boom of knowledge during the renaissance that is seen as unnecessarily contributing to or distorting their original use and method.
11 Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 8–13; Valerie I. J. Flint, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 14–22; Michael D. Bailey, Magic and Superstition in Europe: A Concise History from Antiquity to the Present (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 58–65; Catherine Rider, Magic and Impotence in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 3–12. The repression of ritual magic in the West was uneven and historically variable. Antiquity and late antiquity distinguished between licit religious rites and illicit sorcery; early Christianity condemned some forms of divination and curse magic while preserving ritual practices such as exorcism and blessing; and the medieval church alternated between tolerance, regulation, and persecution. As Richard Kieckhefer demonstrates, medieval Europe maintained “a spectrum of magical practice”—from natural magic and image magic to necromancy—much of which persisted inside and outside clerical circles.¹ Valerie Flint further argues that early Christianity “absorbed and reshaped” many forms of magic rather than suppressing them entirely.² Later medieval prosecutions typically targeted maleficium (harmful magic) rather than ritual practice as a whole.³ Tattooing, by contrast, became broadly condemned across Judaism, Christianity, and Islam due to scriptural injunctions, associations with pagan cultic identity, and later connections with slavery and criminal marking. This led to a near-total interruption of tattooing within Western ritual culture.
12 John A. Rush, Spiritual Tattoo: A Cultural History of Tattooing, Piercing, Scarification, Branding, and Implants (Berkeley, CA: Frog, Ltd., 2005), 19. For Egyptian examples, see Anne Austin, “The Ancient Egyptian Practice of Tattooing at Deir el-Medina,” Bulletin de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale 114 (2014): 1–27.
13 Leviticus 19:28 states: “You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor tattoo any marks upon you; I am the LORD” (KJV). The Hebrew terms ketovet qa‘aqa‘ are difficult to translate with precision. Many scholars argue that the prohibition refers specifically to mourning practices tied to ancestor cults or Canaanite ritual identity rather than to tattooing in a general sense. See John J. Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), 173–74. Others note that qa‘aqa‘ likely referred to ritual incision, scarification, or branding used to mark cultic allegiance. See Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, Anchor Bible 3A (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 1690–92. Regardless of the exact practice prohibited, the interpretive tradition within Judaism treated the verse as a blanket ban on tattooing, and early Christianity inherited this stance—associating bodily marking with idolatry, pagan cults, slavery, or criminal stigma (cf. Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus 3.11). What matters for the present argument is not the original intent of the verse, but the historical effect and hermeneutic history: tattooing became socially and religiously disallowed in cultures that eventually shaped Western Europe.
14 Clement of Alexandria condemned tattooing as a mark of idolatry and criminality: Clement, Paedagogus, 3.11, in The Instructor, trans. Simon P. Wood (New York: Fathers of the Church, 1954), 195–96. Tertullian likewise rejected bodily marking tied to pagan or military allegiance: Tertullian, De Corona Militis, 10, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994), 94–95.
15 Roman society associated tattooing (stigma) with slavery, criminal punishment, and infamia (a legally defined state of public disgrace that stripped a person of social honor, legal standing, and civic rights). See Kyle Harper, From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 109–12; Digest 48.19.28; and Plutarch, Life of Pericles, 26. These associations shaped early Christian suspicion of tattooing, contributing to its eventual disappearance from acceptable ritual practices.
16 The Islamic prohibition on tattooing (washm) derives primarily from hadith literature rather than the Qur’an. The most commonly cited tradition appears in Sahih Bukhari 7:72:815, where the Prophet Muhammad is reported to have cursed “those who tattoo and those who seek to be tattooed.” Classical jurists generally understood washm as a form of permanent bodily alteration, involving insertion of pigment under the skin. See A. Kevin Reinhart, Before Revelation: The Boundaries of Muslim Moral Thought (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 112–13. Scholars note, however, that the legal reasoning is tied to concerns about changing the creation of God (taghyīr khalq Allāh) and certain pre-Islamic practices rather than to an abstract rejection of marking the body. See Jamal J. Elias, Aisha’s Cushion: Religious Art, Practice, and Perception in Islam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 89–94. As with Leviticus, the interpretive tradition, rather than the original socio-ritual context, shaped later cultural attitudes. Across the medieval Islamic world, tattooing became associated with tribal identification, slavery, or morally questionable behavior, and thus largely disappeared from elite religious and ritual practice. The significance for this study is historical rather than theological: Islamic prohibitions contributed to the cultural suppression of tattooing in regions that would later influence Western Europe, even though such suppression says nothing about tattooing’s compatibility with Western esoteric or magickal principles.
17 Brian P. Copenhaver, Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), xlv–lii.
18 The philosophical articulation of cosmic sympathy was largely lost to Western Europe during the early Medieval period and was only rediscovered during the Renaissance through the recovery of Hermetic, Neoplatonic, and Greek philosophical texts.
19 James George Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, abridged ed. (London: Macmillan, 1922), 10–18. Frazer categorized sympathetic magic according to the “Law of Similarity” and the “Law of Contagion.” While influential, these are anthropological abstractions that do not represent how ancient or medieval magicians understood sympathy. They are useful descriptively but not true to insider metaphysics.
20 Brian P. Copenhaver, Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius in a New English Translation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), xlvii–liii. Copenhaver explains that in Hermeticism—and the Neoplatonic systems influenced by it—cosmic sympathy (sympatheia) is the underlying mechanism of magical efficacy. This doctrine predates Frazer by nearly two millennia and is the original Western formulation of sympathetic magick.
21 Jean-Pierre Mahé, “Hermes in Late Antiquity,” in The Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity, ed. Lloyd Gerson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 812–815. Mahé demonstrates that Hermetic metaphysics assumes a cosmos arranged into “chains” of influence connecting celestial, psychic, and material levels. This is the classical meaning of sympatheia—not metaphorical but ontological.
22 Patrick Dunn, Magic, Power, Language, Symbol: A Magician’s Exploration of Linguistics (Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn, 2012), 41–49. Dunn argues that magical acts externalize intention through symbolic inscription. This provides a modern conceptual match for understanding a tattoo as a permanent sympathetic link created through deliberate ritual action.
23 Marsilio Ficino, Three Books on Life, trans. Carol V. Kaske and John R. Clark (Tempe: Medieval and Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1989), 108–113. Ficino explains that celestial forces impress “virtues” and “influences” onto material objects through lawful correspondences, writing that the stars “instill their powers into suitable receivers” and that the magus works by preparing matter to receive these “celestial gifts.” Ficino’s De vita coelitus comparanda offers one of the clearest Renaissance articulations of cosmic sympathy. He argues that astral powers “flow into bodies suitably prepared” and that the magus operates by harmonizing intention, material substrate, and celestial timing—not by personal power but by aligning with the “divine order.” This is the same operative logic that underlies talismanic creation in the Solomonic tradition and provides a direct conceptual parallel to ritual tattooing as the inscription of intention upon a prepared medium (the body).
24 Jim Baker, The Cunning Man’s Handbook: The Practice of English Folk Magic, 1550–1900 (London: Avalonia, 2013), 27–51; Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Book I, trans. James Freake, ed. Donald Tyson (Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn, 1993), 1.14–1.60; Stephen Skinner, Techniques of Solomonic Magic (Singapore: Golden Hoard Press, 2015), 347–356. Baker’s analysis demonstrates that both learned and folk magicians operated under the same metaphysical framework of virtues—spiritual potencies originating from God and refracted through the astral hierarchy. Agrippa explicitly defines virtus as the operative power infused by divine and celestial intelligences into material substances. Skinner and Rankine confirm that Solomonic magic assumes the same theory: spirits, planets, relics, and consecrated materials all contain virtues that can be activated or directed through ritual technique, timing, and symbolic correspondence.
25 Stephen Skinner and David Rankine, Techniques of Solomonic Magic (London: Golden Hoard Press, 2015), 337–343. See also Ben Fernee, “Review of Techniques of Solomonic Magic,” The Caduceus Journal (2016), which affirms that every preparatory act—including purification, confession, timing, and consecration—forms part of the operation itself, building virtue and operative momentum long before the conjuration proper.
26 Stephen Skinner and David Rankine, Techniques of Solomonic Magic (Singapore: Golden Hoard Press, 2015), 337–343. Skinner and Rankine describe the entire Solomonic procedural sequence—purification, confession, fasting, consecration of tools, construction of circles, and ritual abstinence—as the cumulative engine of the operation, producing what they call “magical tension.” They emphasize that this tension is not symbolic but operative: it is the force that allows the conjuration to succeed. Ibid., 338. Skinner and Rankine note that the Solomonic operator “creates the ritual environment” and that conjuration emerges from the cumulative effects of consecration and preparation, not as an isolated action.
27 See Stephen Skinner, Techniques of Graeco-Egyptian Magic (Singapore: Golden Hoard Press, 2014), 24–29. Skinner notes that the ancient and medieval magicians did not use modern “energy” terminology but relied on ritual purity, repeated actions, and sympathetic correspondence to produce what contemporary practitioners might describe as altered states or heightened potency.
28 Jim Baker, The Cunning Man’s Handbook: The Practice of English Folk Magic, 1550–1900 (Oxford: O Books, 2013), 27–51. Baker explains that “virtues” were understood as real potencies—divine, astral, or preternatural—that accumulated in materials through consecration, timing, or contact. Implements were believed to “hold” virtue in a manner analogous to relics or talismans.
29 Compare the structure of the conjuration in The Key of Solomon the King, ed. and trans. S. L. MacGregor Mathers (York Beach: Weiser Books, 2000), 84–97. The conjuration represents the moment when accumulated preparation becomes operative action. The tattoo rite mirrors this pattern: the inscription is the moment at which intention becomes materially embodied.
30 In referring to “body, brain, and mind,” I am drawing on both contemporary psychological terminology and the tripartite anthropology of classical Kabbalistic psychology. In the Kabbalistic model, the human being is structured through three primary soul-levels: nefesh, the vital and instinctual soul associated with the body and sensory life; ruach, the psychological and egoic soul associated with emotion, thought, and moral agency; and neshamah, the higher intellectual–spiritual soul linked with contemplation, intuition, and the apprehension of divine reality. These distinctions are presented explicitly in R. Chaim Vital, Sha‘arei Kedushah I:2–3 (Jerusalem: Ahavat Shalom, 1988), 9–14, and appear throughout the Zohar (see, e.g., Zohar II:94b). For modern analyses, see Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 141–150; and Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1974), 232–238. I draw these comparisons intentionally to demonstrate that modern psychological categories (body, brain, mind) are not in opposition to esoteric ones (nefesh, ruach, neshamah). Rather, both systems represent attempts to describe different layers of human experience—biological, psychological, and spiritual—which can be integrated without collapsing their distinctions. Using the Kabbalistic model simply clarifies the fact that ancient esoteric systems already recognized a differentiated interiority. Thus, employing contemporary terms alongside esoteric categories is not a contradiction but a continuation of a longstanding tradition of describing the multi-layered human person.
31 On this definition of embodiment, I am drawing together concepts from clinical and esoteric frameworks. In trauma therapy, embodiment refers to the reintegration of sensation, affect, and cognition following fragmentation; see Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (New York: Viking, 2014), 66–68. In Jungian and somatic depth work, embodiment describes the descent of consciousness into lived experience so that bodily awareness and symbolic meaning operate together; see Tina Stromsted, “Embodied Imagination and the Dance of the Soul,” in Soul’s Body: Active Imagination, Authentic Movement, and Embodiment in Psychotherapy, ed. Tina Stromsted (San Francisco: C. G. Jung Institute, 2014), 21–23. I connect these therapeutic insights with my own definition of magick as the disciplined alignment of will, intention, and embodied awareness, articulated in Joseph Mounts (Frater Henosis), “Science, Art, Will, and Virtue: Reframing the Definition of Magick,” Practica Obscura, September 14, 2025, and “Between Spirits and Subtle Forces: The Shifting Models of Western Occultism,” Practica Obscura, August 12, 2025.
32 Research on pain and attentional narrowing consistently shows that voluntary, predictable pain reduces mental distraction and stabilizes focus. See Irene Tracey and Patrick W. Mantyh, “The Cerebral Signature for Pain Perception and Its Modulation,” Neuron 55, no. 3 (2007): 377–391; and Fabrizio Benedetti, The Patient’s Brain: The Neuroscience Behind the Doctor–Patient Relationship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 145–149. These findings parallel meditative attention studies in which sensory anchors reduce default-mode activity.
33 Peter Levine emphasizes that focused awareness of bodily sensation can stabilize consciousness and prevent overwhelm. Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 1997), 54–56. Tina Stromsted describes a similar somatic inwardness in Jungian active imagination extended into the body. “Embodied Imagination and the Dance of the Soul,” in Soul’s Body, ed. Tina Stromsted (San Francisco: C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, 2014), 21–25.
34 Bessel van der Kolk defines dissociation as “a subjective sense of detachment, numbing, or disconnection from one’s body or experience” resulting from overwhelming threat. The Body Keeps the Score (New York: Viking, 2014), 66–68.
35 Voluntary exposure to controlled pain, particularly when paired with predictability, agency, and meaning, does not typically trigger dissociation. See Ruth A. Lanius, “Dissociation and Altered States of Consciousness: A Neurobiological Model,” Psychiatry Clinics of North America 37, no. 2 (2014): 171–183. These protective factors are all present in a ritual tattoo.
36 See Corpus Hermeticum XIII, in Brian P. Copenhaver, Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 46–49. The text describes “collecting oneself into the body” as a prerequisite for the descent of higher nous.
37 Iamblichus writes that true theurgical states involve “the concentration of the whole soul in the body” and “the unity of perception that arises when the practitioner is wholly present.” On the Mysteries, trans. Emma C. Clarke, John M. Dillon, and Jackson P. Hershbell (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003), 112–115.
38 Modern neuroscience strongly supports the psychological and phenomenological features described here. Research on pain, attention, and altered states shows that voluntary, meaning-laden pain activates neural pathways differently from threat-based pain. Bessel van der Kolk argues that the body “keeps the score,” encoding both traumatic and regulatory patterns in subcortical systems, and that intentional, controlled physical experience can reorganize these patterns by restoring interoceptive awareness (The Body Keeps the Score, 66–73). Peter Levine’s somatic work similarly demonstrates that safe, voluntary exposure to controlled discomfort can complete defensive responses and deepen embodied presence (Waking the Tiger, 45–52). Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory adds that cues of safety—predictability, relational attunement, voluntary engagement—activate the ventral vagal system, enabling the nervous system to tolerate intensity without entering dissociation (Porges, The Polyvagal Theory, 145–57). Daniel Siegel’s work in interpersonal neurobiology further shows that focused, sensory-anchored attention decreases activity in the brain’s default mode network and integrates embodied and cognitive processes into a coherent state of awareness (The Mindful Brain, 112–18). Finally, Fabrizio Benedetti’s research on ritual, expectation, and pain modulation demonstrates that context and meaning can trigger endogenous opioid responses during painful procedures, reducing perceived distress and increasing emotional regulation (The Patient’s Brain, 145–49). Taken together, these findings help explain why the pain of a ritual tattoo—voluntary, structured, relationally supported, and meaning-directed—can reliably induce focused, embodied states that mirror those long described in esoteric ritual practice.
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