Tattoos in Primitive Mythology -- By Joseph Campbell 

Primitive Mythology; The Masks of God
From PART ONE: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MYTH

Joseph Campbell - Published in 1959

Introduction: The Lesson of the Mask

Chapter 2. The Imprints of Experience

I. Suffering and Rapture
II. The Structuring Force of Life on Earth
III. The Imprints of Early Infancy
IV. The Spontaneous Animism of Childhood
V. The System of Sentiments of the Local Group
VI. The Impact of Old Age

An excerpt from The System of Sentiments of the Local Group;

"In sum, then, it may be said that in the education of the young it has been the general custom in traditionally based societies to reorganize the common human inheritance of infantile imprints in such a way as to conduct the energies of the psyche from the primary system of references of infantile dependency into the sphere of the chief concerns of the local groups, but that in this developed reorganization of the primary symbols certain motifs appear that cannot be convincingly described as infantile and yet are not exclusively local either. Throughout the world the rituals of transformation from infancy to manhood are attended with, and effected by, excruciating ordeals. (italics Vince Hemingson) Scourgings, fastings, the knocking out of teeth, scarifications, finger sacrifices, the removal of a testicle, cicatrization, circumcision, subincision, bitings, and burnings are the general rule. (not to mention tattooing) These, indeed, make brutally actual a general infantile fantasy of Oedipal aggression; but there is an additional aspect of the situation to be considered, inasmuch as the natural body is transformed by the ordeals into an ever-present sign of a new spiritual state. For even in the gentler, higher societies, where the body is no longer naked and mutilated, new clothes and ornaments are assumed, following initiations, to symbolize and support the new spiritual state. In India the caste marks, tonsure, clothes, etc., represent precisely the individual's social role. In the West we know the military uniform, clerical collar, medical goatee, and judge's wig. But where people are naked, it is the body itself that must be changed. A Marquesan physique fully tattooed was hardly a natural body any more; it was a mythological epiphany, and the consciousness inhabiting it could hardly have wished to behave otherwise than in a manner comporting with the physical form. (italics Vince Hemingson)

One is linked to one's adult role, that is to say, by being identified with a myth - participating actually, physically, oneself, in a manifestation of mythological forms, these being visibly supplied by the roles and patterns of the rite, and the rite, in extension, supporting the form of the society. So that, in sum, we may say that whereas the energies of the psyche in their primary context of infantile concerns are directed to the crude ends of individual pleasure and power, in the rituals of initiation they are reorganized and implicated in a system of social duty, with such effect that the individual thenceforth can be safely trusted as an organ of the group.

Pleasure, power, and duty; these are the systems of reference of all experiences on the natural level of the primitive societies. And when such societies are in form, the first two (pleasure and power) are subordinated to the last, which, in turn, is mythologically supported and ritually enforced. Ritual is mythology made alive, and it's effect is to convert men into angels. (italics Vince Hemingson) For archaic man was not man at all, in the modern, individualistic sense of the term, but the incarnation of a socially determined archetype. And it was precisely in the rites of initiation that his apotheosis (the act of raising a person to the status of a god; deification) was effected—with what cruel imprints of hermetic (magical; alchemical) art we have now seen.

Celebrity Tattoos | Vanishing Tattoo Home | Vince Hemingson Gallery

top of page

© 1999 - 2010 www.vanishingtattoo.com All rights reserved.