Inked Religion

In which we (mostly Ilyse) go all in on religion & tattoos. Special interest: ACTIVATE.

As always, check out keepingit101.com for full show notes, homework, transcripts, & more.

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Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion is proud to be part of the Amplify Podcast Network.

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

This is

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 0:17

keeping it 101 a killjoy'ss introduction to religion podcast, which is part of the amplify podcast network, we are grateful to live, teach and record on the current ancestral and unseated lands of the Abenaki and Wabanaki peoples, as well as the lands of one federally recognized native nation, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, and seven North Carolina state recognized tribal entities. Increasingly, though, native folks are pushing us to forgo land acknowledgements altogether and focus on action items. Let's start with land back and as always, you can find material ways to support indigenous communities on our website.

Megan Goodwin: 0:49

What is up? Nerds? Hi, hello. I'm Megan Goodwin. I am a scholar of American religions, race, gender, sexuality and politics.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 0:58

Hi, hello. I'm Ilyse Morgenstein, Furst, historian of religion, Islam, recent racialization and South Asia.

Megan Goodwin: 1:05

And today, erm is a great day, because instead of talking about various and proliferating horrors, like sorry to you Canada and also Iceland, Greenland. Which one are you trying to steal? It's Greenland every literally, I'm so sorry to every single listener who gets it but, but we're gonna take it easy today and talk about one of our favorite topics, your favorite topic, particularly tattoos.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 1:28

Yeah, we are. Listen, we all need momentary breaks from fighting fascists, and I do mean momentary because the fight is relentless. So take a bit more. But what better way than to talk about bodily more modification, because fascists actually tend to hate that Neo Nazis, but that's like a separate issue. They love tattoos, but the point remains. Inc is often inherently seen as non conformist, and conformity is what white Christian nationalists want. And you know what? Megan gonna get it from our inky bods? They

Megan Goodwin: 2:04

are not Nazi punks. Fuck off. Tattoos are one of the only things I can think that fits into your life as like a special interest, as your brain is not spicy in special interest ways for most of the time. So I am unsurprised that five plus years later and over 100 episodes into this that you're finding time for us to talk about how tattoos square up with religion, but because they can, hey, tell the nerds why tattoos and religions for a full episode? Well, fine, I guess if

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 2:32

we're gonna go old school. Is, is this the lesson plan? Oh, my

Megan Goodwin: 2:36

God, I would do a throwback. We are 100 episodes into this podcast experiment. Maybe today is the day for some like Season One to two realness.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 2:43

I don't see why not. Where are the bosses? So a throwback, it is, yes, yeah,

Megan Goodwin: 2:48

no, I need this. Okay, it was a simpler time. Wow, we hmm,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 2:53

just, we were just existing in the early lockdown. Somehow, that was a simpler time.

Megan Goodwin: 3:00

Tell me I'm wrong. You're not,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 3:02

but let's not touch that for now. Cool. The thesis today, nerds is that body modification and tattooing is not the only kind of body modification, but it is the kind we're going to focus on? Is obviously tied up with religious systems and obviously inherently tied up with how we see value and make sense of our own bodies and the bodies of others. Whether a religio cultural system likes or loathes tattoos, is secondary to the idea that bodies are a subject of regulation, transformation and maintenance for communities.

Megan Goodwin: 3:46

Hey, here's the lesson plan where we do the professor work. On today.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 3:56

On today, we're going to do a quickie and totally incomplete overview of the history of tattooing, walk us through a few examples of religio cultural prohibitions and celebrations of tattooing and the problem of appropriation and tattoos kind of you know what? Megan,

Megan Goodwin: 4:12

What? What? Now, since

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 4:14

we're feeling a season one to two throwback vibe, I'm gonna throw us a story time segment and and a primary

Megan Goodwin: 4:22

sources segment, Yeah, fuck yeah. Primary sources, I love it. I love it. This is amazing. Okay, let's do it.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 4:29

You're welcome America.

Megan Goodwin: 4:32

I am America. Okay, let's get into

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 4:41

it. Okay, lots of individual religions have thoughts about tattoos. Many more honestly don't, but all religions always reflect cultural norms that move and change and shift with time, and that includes approaches to tattooing. So Goodwin, I don't know if you know this, but tattooing is both an. Ancient practice with, like, frankly, archeological evidence suggesting that tattoos happened as early as the Neolithic period, which is, like, you know, a real long time ago, nerds. But also

Megan Goodwin: 5:11

I did. I did actually know that, because I read a lot of Clan of the Cave fair, etc. So you're welcome,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 5:18

fair, okay. Well, Megan knew that, but I don't know that our dear listeners knew that, so that rhetorical device went right out the window. But tattooing is also a thoroughly modern practice, with tattooing in recent years, shedding some of its stigma, especially in affluent communities the world over. So what I find fascinating is that tattooing and its proliferation can be, as some argue, some experts argue traced to my absolute favorite set of ideas.

Megan Goodwin: 5:45

Okay, stop it right now. You did not. How did you are you? How are tattoos about imperialism? How? How did you do this again? How? Why? How? Fine. Well.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 5:58

Megan, some evidence that local practices of tattooing, especially as they both exist and existed in Asia and the Pacific Islands, fundamentally change how everyone else sees and participates in tattooing. So this is especially true in and after the 18th and 19th centuries, when D bags like Captain Cook are hanging out in places they shouldn't be seeing things that they wouldn't have seen in Europe, and managing rowdy pillaging sailors who sort of got into the whole tattoo vibe.

Megan Goodwin: 6:28

Now that you've said that, it totally makes sense that sailors and explorers and imperialists and colonizers would have experienced tattoo culture, especially in like broader Polynesia, where tattooing has been something like a two to 3000 year old practice for men, that is slash was Paya. Yes, I

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 6:45

think so that's, that's that. That is how the internet says to pronounce it, but I do not speak any of those languages, so we're guessing. Okay,

Megan Goodwin: 6:51

my guess is Paya an intricate tattoo that covered their body from mid torso to the knees. And for women, most often, the thighs legs are on their hands, sometimes called Lima.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 7:01

Yeah, and there's evidence that those exposures brought back new tattooing cultures and reinforced others. And like, you know, I always bring up cap and cook monster of the seven seas on purpose, because, like in this case, in his journals, which we have, he talks about the universality of tattooing, even if Christian missionaries and colonizing governments like that, such sailing expeditions brought in their wake tried and in many ways succeeded at wiping out tattoo practices in native communities in the Pacific and beyond. So like they're simultaneously looking at it, stealing it, doing it themselves, while also eradicating it, making it illegal and making it hard to do for native populations,

Megan Goodwin: 7:45

like an imperialism, like an imperialism, like the racialization that is implicit in the imperialisms, cool, cool, cool, cool. So basically, what I hear you saying is that widespread tattooing, the way that we know it today, like we get the word from Polynesian Tatau, thanks. Yeah. So the kind of tattooing that we're seeing today comes from these colonial expeditions. It influences sailors choices. It influences sailors choices and tattoos, but it was also the subject of white Christian colonial sanctioning and derision. Question mark,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 8:19

yeah. And again, like we have evidence of tattooing in what's now known as Europe in the Ice Age, basically. So I want to be clear that the practice of marking bodies with ink is in some ways, a global phenomena with ancient roots, like there just is examples of it the world over. But also the proliferation of tattoos as design, and especially of tattoos on like seafaring Folk is absolutely a product of European imperialism, even if sailors tattooing takes its own vibe and practices and like its own cultural norms after these exchanges. If we can call colonialism an exchange,

Megan Goodwin: 8:58

yeah, as you know, I have been hanging out with a dude who is in the Navy Reserve. So I have learned a lot of things about tattoos, but I did not mean to. So, yeah, they fully have their own culture. But right. Okay, so tattooing, as we know it now, is rooted in imperialism, because, of course it is, and also Christian supremacy because, of course it is, because tattoos become a thing for them to police when setting up settler colonial and Imperial states in Asia and Oceania. But okay, tell me about religion and tattoos, like we get clearly that Polynesian tattoos are important. We especially, I have seen the rock spot and also Moana several, many times. And I know Judaism has a prohibition on tattoos, but that also you have a lot of them. We know that Christians were policing tattoos in their colonies and at home, like tattooing was illegal in New York City from 1961 until 1977 because of concerns about infections and needles, you wouldn't

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 9:52

get no but 1997 not 1977

Megan Goodwin: 9:55

i Okay, well, 1961 to 1977 because of concerns about. Sections and needles. And like, Massachusetts, you couldn't you did

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 10:02

it again. You said 77 again. Okay, wow. Okay,

Megan Goodwin: 10:06

it's actually 1997 97 IE, my second year in college was, like, that was part of what made New Hampshire, like the D bag state, because you couldn't get tattoos in Massachusetts. While I was going to college there, you had to, like, cross the line to get booze on a Sunday and also your ink. So some some classism and racism stuff happening there. I'm anyway, all right, so since until 1997 in New York City, that home of depravity because of concerns about infections and needles. But we also know that religious tattooing, for Christians and maybe especially Catholics, is the thing we know Hindus have mixed practices on tattooing. So Earth, since this is your special interest, boy, is it? What gives

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 10:53

the thing about tattooing and other bodily modifications is that, as we said, like just a few moments ago, we are going to see religions and cultures be deeply invested in it, because bodies, bodies just matter in religion and whose body is, quote, unquote correct is equal parts about sociocultural norms as it is about socio religio cultural ideas about what a body even is, okay.

Megan Goodwin: 11:17

Girl, you know, I did not sleep. You know that I am no longer formally in the academy. You're gonna, you're gonna have to unpack that one, what, what the what, what,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 11:29

what. Okay, so, since this is a bit circular, because chickens and eggs, right? So like we can't, we can't really say that a religious text or practice says X, and so people do that. That's just not how it works. That's, in fact, a standing point of this year podcast. But we also can't say that because a religious text says or does something or encourages something that people ignore it, right? So two things are true. Let me explain. If your religion talks about bodies as sacred, and many of our global religions do, then marking that body up might be seen as sacrilegious, and in turn, that view could dictate formal rules or religious laws. Like, I don't know, don't get a tattoo, but as you know Megan, we only ever need rules when folks break them, so if folks weren't modifying their bodies, we would not need someone to say, hey, you stop it. Like I said way back on the pod, like all the way back in season two. I do not tell my kids to put their toys away. If they are already away, it's when they're out that I'm like, yo doofuses, put your fucking toys away for the 1,000th time, but if they have their toys away, I'm not yelling, but I'm I'm not yelling because the rule is working so well. They don't remain need reminding, I guess, like they've internalized the rule. So in short, how a tradition or culture sees bodies impacts how people treat their bodies, but we can't really say it's because of the rule, because, as you know, people break rules they ignore them purposely or not all the time for like, a billion reasons, and rules exist precisely to curtail practices seen frequently enough to merit such curtailing.

Megan Goodwin: 13:22

Okay? So nobody tells a quiet child to be quiet. We have roles, because people were definitely doing this, like walking through Bob Goodwin's overwhelming disdain for tattoos, which is 100% about classism and weird Irish shit, also probably that he was working down at the docks, but didn't want to be one of those Irish guys. Anyway, you tell me about the particular rules I need to know.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 13:55

All right, let's, let's start with my people. So famously, Jews are seen as anti tattoo, and we often see the citation here of the double dehumanization of Jews in Nazi Germany, precisely because of tattooing right as a way of marking people's bodies with serial numbers as a double dehumanization. But lots of Jews today actually have tattoos, and frankly, one of the hottest tattooing markets is in Israel. But what? Yeah, like, one of the biggest tattoo markets is in Israel. Like, it's a big for artists willing to collaborate in Israel. It is a big touring market. It's a big way to get invited to go to that part of the world. Tattoos in Israel are a big deal, and they are. Lots of people theorize it's about reclaiming the Jewish body in a post Holocaust universe, and also about just changing global stigma, right? Like Jews live in the world too. Not all of us want to live in an 18th century shtetl.

Megan Goodwin: 14:56

Yeah. No, I get it. I just like, I know. I. Never been to Israel, but it was my understanding. Yes, it was Oh bitch, I know, but it was my understanding that at least when I was like hanging out with Israeli families that, like in Jerusalem, everything shut down at 5pm on a Friday because you like so because the orthodoxy gets enforced on everybody, yeah

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 15:23

and and yes. And Tel Aviv and Haifa have some of the largest like tattooing cultures in that part of the world, certainly, but also like that exchange happens a lot, in fact, like the TV the TLC TV show Miami Inc is literally about an Israeli American tattooist. And so, like, that's a that's like a 1520, year old show already. And so I'm, I am smart, yeah, that we hear that like there is both this understanding of Jews as inherently anti tattoo and of Jews and Israelis, the only nation state in the world that is a Jewish state participating in it. So let's talk about the actual rules for Jews. There's a verse in Leviticus that talks about not marking the body, but so like that is what most people cite. Like in Leviticus, it says, Don't mark the body. Great, but obviously the book isn't what people do explicitly. And also there were already built in exceptions, like, don't mark the body, but circumcision is okay, right? So we already, from the jump, have people making exceptions to the allegedly inviolable rule, how folks read Leviticus really matters. And frankly, we see as early as the 12th century as one example, the famous Jewish philosopher of Maimonides, who was saying tattooing is bad, not because it modifies the bodies, but because pagans did it, and Jews shouldn't look like they're pagan neighbors. So from the from early on, we have a religious philosopher talking not about religious law, but about how Jews might distinguish themselves from their non Jewish neighbors. Other scholars point to tattooing as a practice of Enslavers, and Jews fleeing Ancient Egypt as enslaved people. Might have wanted to shed that practice of having been forcibly tattooed or branded, but there's lots of ways to interpret thing, and the thing that Jews tend to agree on is that modifying the body is ultimately an act of hubris, because you are changing the body that God made or gave you. Okay, it's worth mentioning that while a lot of Jews, my own experiences included, cite the prohibition from being buried in a Jewish cemetery if you have tattoos as a reason to avoid them, almost a majority of Jewish scholars and rabbis say that this is a myth we tell ourselves to underline a cultural practice that there's no actual evidence that says you can't be buried in a Jewish cemetery if you have a tattoo. But that myth has enough legs that some cemeteries say in their little like bylaws that they're not going to bury Jews if they have tattoos in them. So it's both a fake concern and a real concern, because the material practices of for pay cemetery plots in the United States, huh?

Megan Goodwin: 18:09

I honestly never thought about this before. But how? How I assume there are accommodations for Holocaust survivors? Questions, yes,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 18:21

and that is one of the reasons that tattooing, in some ways, opens up, that we say it's a forced we get, we start to get rabbis debating what happens with the desecration of bodies after World War One and and in earnest, after World War Two, right after World War One, it's about people surviving having had amputee amputations. Yeah, so that would have been a marked difference in body. That was not the way God originally made you and was a man made problem. And I am using the gender term on purpose here. And so we start to see shifts in what is acceptable for Jews to reimagine as like, the body you're in as medical technology changes first, and then post Holocaust, obviously there is a sense of like, we did not do this. This was not a choice. And so that's a completely acceptable way to be okay in the world. Yeah, okay.

Megan Goodwin: 19:20

And then there are there similar prohibitions in Islam,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 19:24

kind of Yes, like Muslims also hold that the body is sacred and should be treated as such. But unlike Jews who can cite verses of the Torah that basically say no tattoos, the Quran does not actually mention tattooing in any direct way, what Muslims can and do cite is a Hadith which is a saying of the Prophet Muhammad that Muslims look to to guide proper behavior. And one of these Hadith purport that both the tattooer and the tattoo we are doing wrong because there's bodily marking. And so this is a relationship. It's not just that the person getting the tattoo is violating the. Person doing the tattoo is doing a violation, impermanent bodily marking, however, like henna, is absolutely not seen in the same way. So quite a lot of Muslim majority cultures have impermanent bodily marking practices that some have argued fill that that scratch, that tattoo gives. That said. Lots of scholars have pointed out that Muslims in various times and places have had really Islamic tattooing practices, especially in North Africa, like Algeria, Morocco and Egypt, and in a different part of the world, in parts of Southwest Asia, like Iraq in that Southwest Asia region, but also in places like Southeast Asia and Oceania. So because Muslims live the world over and because tattooing is a social practice, we see a wide variety in how Muslims approach it, okay, oh, and before we move on, it is important to say that Shia Muslims tend to say that tattooing falls into the legal category of reprehensible, but not forbidden, so one step shy of being like, hello, okay, which is precisely because it's not mentioned in the Quran, which doesn't mean that tattooing is legal. Like, for example, in the in the largest Shia majority country in the world, Iran, tattooing is an underground, heavily regulated practice, but, like, we still see a variety in approaches in between and amongst Muslims, which, you know, is the spice of life and religion. Yeah, it's gonna

Megan Goodwin: 21:29

say. It's almost like religion is what people do, and people do a bunch of different things they sure do. Well, sure do. Someone ought to write a book. Hey, what about non Abrahamic religions like it seems pretty clear that in the big three, to quote, Hu grant naritic, still love that you have seen this movie, I have a more or less shared understanding that the body is sacred and should not be altered by choice, even if there are other alterations we allow, like circumcision or piercings or haircuts. Yeah,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 21:56

in Buddhism and Hinduism, there are few centralized texts, authorities and practices, which means we expect a wide variety of practices, because there is no central set of rules, necessarily so for many in those traditions, it's more about social prohibitions, and frankly, I gotta be honest, it's hard to separate those out from colonial imposition. Sure, sure. Like we know that facial tattoos existed in a big way in some Buddhist and Hindu communities across Asia, especially in the region that is marked now by the Himalayan Mountains, Nepal, Tibet, like those parts of Asia and but those are the same exact communities that have really struggled to survive after imperialism Christian missionary work and the global stigma and the requirement of seeking employment within Global Industrial Systems. Totally,

Megan Goodwin: 22:51

totally. I'm also thinking like I have seen Aboriginal activists in Australia and New Zealand, and particularly women. Aboriginal activists really reclaim facial tattooing. You see it a lot in season four of True Detective, actually, where the Inuit women are having facial tattoos. It's a whole crisis moment in the series. And I'm also thinking very specifically, like my first thought was like, Oh, well, obviously six right out. Like, you can't get a haircut. You're definitely not getting tattoos. But I just remembered when I used to teach global religions, one of the images that I used was a tattoo, or was an image of a baptized sick guy, so would not cut his hair, would not cut his beard, wore a turban, did all of the things, but he's also got the what would be the boundaries of Punjab tattooed on his neck. So speaking of relationships, yeah, it's really interesting. So speaking of relationships to colonialism and imperialism, yeah, oh, go ahead. No, I

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 23:48

was gonna, I was just gonna affirm what you were saying, that there is so much on indigenous tattooing in various places, but to be honest with you, for our listeners, I didn't include a lot of it because quite a lot of the popularly accessible work is by white people trying to do appropriation of native stuff. And so without, I didn't, I didn't want us to treat it superficially, without getting into that level of appropriation. Yeah, and there just wasn't space, but the very the variety of indigenous practices the world over. So I don't just mean Native Americans. I mean indigenous practices the world over, very wildly. And not every indigenous community has a tattooing culture, obviously, but quite a lot do, and often they're markings to demonstrate place and space. Where are you from? Who are your people? To demonstrate rank, coming of age role in a community. So there's like 1000 ways these are done, but I've been really disappointed when reading about non Polynesian indigenous tattooing cultures, because they get bumped in and it sounds like you're talking about, like all of the heathens in the. World doing the same thing, the same, like it has that vibe, all of the work, but like it has that vibe, yeah. So, yeah. So the scholarship feels like it's wanting, but we'll see when we get to homework, that I have gotten some stuff

Megan Goodwin: 25:12

all right, cool, cool, cool. So what I what I have learned today, and what I would have known already had I given a moment to think about it is that the practice of tattooing and its relationship to religion and race making are directly just all tied up in imperialism, colonialism, because, of course, they are. So this is about the role that bodies play in the way that humans organize each other, right? And value each other, which actually seems like a really great place to transition into thinking about how this practice might look in a specific community. And I think we should do that with friend of the pod. Dr Alyssa Maldonado. Estrada,

Unknown: 25:55

Hey, kids, it's story time.

Megan Goodwin: 25:58

Story time. Doctor, Estrada has written a lot about devotional media and practices in contemporary life, especially in Catholic settings. Her book life blood of the parish is absolutely assigned. It's so freaking good and smart. We're going to draw our story time from an online, accessible piece called tattoos of Sacramentals in the journal American religions, which, by the way, has a very cute website before we jump in, a sacramental is an object that channels grace or serves as a sacred sign that is sanctioned or blessed by the Catholic Church. So not going to get into comparisons with like Darshan, but like this is it is an object of focus. It is a place to encounter the divine and get your head right kind of thing. So here is a story time. This is fun. I like a flashback. Here goes one man's story. Reveals how tattoos are devotional media. Joe's body is covered in tattoos, most of them cultural or religious, according to him, from Cartoon cavemen to a funny Ode to a friend group, a Lithuanian and Italian flag, a cross with a sacred heart in the center, and the Knights of Columbus insignia God. My dad would have hated that, and he was a Knight of Columbus, as you well know, because you got to see them in action. Sorry. Bringing it back, Joe's tattoos reflect his many group identities. Joe's tattoos do relational work, locating him in networks of friends and ancestors. But his tattoos also do devotional work. On his forearm, he has a tattoo of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Her features are delicate, wispy lines hint at downcast eyes and pouty lips. The Christ child in her arms seems to smile. His eyes tiny half moons. The tattoo is an iconographic hybrid. The Crown atop her head indicates that she is Mary Queen of Heaven, as Our Lady of Mount Carmel, is typically represented, but the 12 stars encircling her head come from iconography of the Immaculate Conception. Her robes are voluminous, cascading around her body. There are hints of color, like whisper of golden yellow, now faded with age, she sits atop a mound of clouds and holds the scapular in her hands, her gaze and the gesture making it clear that she is offering it. Joe's skin, his freckles and his sunburn are all part and parcel of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. But this tattoo has potentiality we do not typically expect from ink. It has sacramental functions and meanings. God, she's such a good writer. Oh, love. Okay, so what do we do with this?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 28:25

I mean, honestly, we think with it, and I think that what Maldonado Estrada is telling us is that tattooing, at least contemporarily, is doing all manner of work like it's functioning like an art scape, of course, but, but also like a religious devotional project, and seeing it that way is maybe not novel, of course, like someone putting Mary on their arm, it'd be silly to be like they're not religious. That has no religious well, but what

Megan Goodwin: 28:55

about what do we do with like the love Island kids who have all of this religious iconography all over their body, but don't know what the answer why it's there exactly. So, like, none of them are Catholic, like it's

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 29:06

not novel, but it might be counter to what we might expect. And so to be clear, like, I think that seeing bodily adornment as sacred is how lots of traditional communities like Samoans or the Yadi tool ya deal tool, I think, which is an indigenous community known for chin tattoos, specifically in women, extending from the lip to below the chin, sometimes onto the neck. Those communities are famous for having done this for eons, for representational, devotional and relational practice. But you know, like as usual, Euro Americans got to catch up to theorize our stuff. Don't

Megan Goodwin: 29:43

say, Yeah, I God, this passage is so striking for so many reasons I have not thought enough. I think about the interaction of the art with the body, right? So that tattoos look different on different bodies. It's, I mean. I had a whole thing about getting ink, and, like, I don't like to get ink where I have freckles, for some reason. So the interaction of that is really fascinating, but it also immediately makes me think of the classes that I was teaching about, like, meanings of death, and the way that, like in Narco communities, the practices shifted from having the gorgeon is eloquent, the Virgin of Guadalupe on their back, because no one would stab the Virgin. So if they're incarcerated, she's protected. She's literally has their backs. But we've seen a shift away from that, toward Santa Marte as the main protecting force, and that's who you've got on your back now. So just Yeah, I don't think I have anything smart to say. I just think that this is a really rich area to think with and through. And I am also really struck by the thing that you said about how a lot of the scholarship happening is about or is being done by white folks. And it makes me think today, of all days that the academy is also a space of colonialism and imperialism. Any truth at all? It is.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 31:07

It doesn't mean all work is being done. I don't know, folks, but, but I was really, I was really alarmed that some of the most accessible, you know, like, not expensive, available, like the stuff that we put in our homework, right? So, like, we've tried really hard to make the sources that we cite accessible to folks so that they can check us, or they can go read on their own. And I was really alarmed by how many were, like, white people who wanted to do a tour of tattooing in a way that felt really like, frankly, like Joseph Cambly. Like all roads lead up the same mountain, this is all the same practice. Look at how all indigenous communities are doing this the same aren't they closest to nature? Isn't this closest to the like, it just had that Neo colonial vibe and really specific and like, this is probably dear listeners, I want to own where this is my limitation, right? Like, I do not know enough about indigenous tattooing practices to be able to chase the credible sources in the way that it would require for us to do it justice. But the big ones, the obvious ones, the big presses, with the exception of Polynesia, where there's a really robust set of publications from the University of Hawaii coming out. Boy, it's like a lot of superficial, assumptive kind of work where, like all native tattooing practices, are somehow related, which is just lazy fucking scholarship. So we are not going to replicate that here.

Megan Goodwin: 32:35

Shant, shant.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 32:38

But aside from critiquing ourselves and the communities that we live in. Goodman, I promised that we would do something else. I mean, every day, every day with me, I'm promising to talk about imperialism, but I have also promised a thing. Would you like to do that thing?

Megan Goodwin: 32:54

Yes, they were primary sources. It's

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 32:57

primary sources. I've always wanted to have, like, a baseline narrative back up to you where you're like, and I'm like, primary sources brought to you by the PepsiCo or something like that.

Megan Goodwin: 33:08

Menon, yeah, exactly.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 33:11

What's more with feeling,

Megan Goodwin: 33:14

primary sources,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 33:16

oh, I didn't do it all right? Do it again. Primary sources, primary sources,

Megan Goodwin: 33:25

you're right. That's better. All right, we both have

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 33:28

tattoos. Dear, dear lords, if you didn't know that about us, we both have tattoos, and I will speak just for me, okay, but several of mine and I have seven now, of varying sizes. Some are some are like half sleeves that I'm counting as one contiguous piece. I love that piece so much. Several of them are deeply religious, and I 100% see the ink that I've put on my body as, of course, a way to rethink my relationship to my body, but also how I imagine the sacredness of my body and the work that art might do to mediate or play with or amplify that sacredness. So I guess I'll go first with that preamble. All right, so I'll go with the obvious religious symbols, because I'm perfectly happy being public about those. I have both a hamsa and a stylized Nazar on one arm. So a hamsa often like, known as like either the hand of God, or in Muslim communities, the hand of Fatima is a protective symbol, and another is the big blue evil eye that but I do it in black and white because I don't like color on one arm, and I also have part of my Ketubah, the Jewish marriage contract, on the other arm. So I have symbols for one kid, and the other kid is planning what his ink will be. Because, as you know Megan, he's not fully formed, so we're not really sure what that ink should be. He's still baking. But. But like of all of my tattoos, my first was my first three were these religious tattoos. My first one was a hamsa, the symbol that shared across a bunch of cultures, including Jewish ones. I own lots of those. They're all over my house and my office. I've collected them while I travel around the world doing research. I have a great one from a shul in South India. I have another from this random outpost in Tajikistan, and several from Turkey. And when I approached a tattoo artist, I wanted it to reflect how Jews use hamzas as a sign of protection, as either being held by God, like physically in God's hands, or by Miriam, one of our founding foremothers, with its fingers pointing down and usually a large blue eye in the middle, often with fishes surrounding them, because fish scales are reflective, and so they're going to bounce the evil eye. It's like, like it like, you know, your rubber, I'm like, your blue I'm rubber. Bounce off me and whatever sticks on you, whatever that line is. I have always loved tattoos and good but I'm going to tell a second primary sources story, which is one thing in my whole life I have stolen one thing in my whole life, except for the time that I stole this one screw from the five cent department at a channel in New Jersey, and my dad made me walk it back in and return it with payment and like apologize to the store manager, which was absolutely my Parenting choice, but the only other time I nicked anything was in Tower Records, on Route 17 in Paramus, New Jersey, circa 1995 when these things were cool places to be,

Megan Goodwin: 36:33

and York still was making tattoos illegal,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 36:37

still illegal in New York, and everyone had just been Coming off of, like, you know, Empire records. So hanging out of the record store was, like, super cool, and I stole an inked magazine. Like, that was all I wanted, and it was I paid for my CDs. But I stole an Inked magazine, and I so I've had this long relationship with tattoos, like, from when I was a youth and really fascinated with them, to now as a person who, like, routinely builds that into, frankly, my bodily care practice. But I always felt for me, like, maybe this wasn't for me because I am a fairly religious Jewish person, but once I got right with how I'd make it make sense for me within my religiousness and against normal perceptions of stigmas and like, including serious academics shouldn't be considering full sleeves, right? It was an easy choice for me of what my first tattoo would be. It would, of course, be Jewish, and if Jewishness would be part of my own global experience of Judaism, it would be in conversation with some Jewish and non Jewish practices, but also it would reflect Yiddish or norms of warding off the evil eye. So I see my tattooing practices as deeply ethnic, deeply religious and also mediated through the worlds we live in now, yeah, yeah.

Megan Goodwin: 37:53

I just, I would also like our listeners to know that back when you were planning this first tattoo, there was a lot of discussion about how this was probably just going to be it for you, like you like, you were just going to do this one, because it was really significant, obviously, and it's an important moment of like, taking back your body. But like, you know this, I shouldn't go

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 38:08

overboard. I was nervous about going overboard. And we both know other sister

Megan Goodwin: 38:13

was Lyman knew that was like,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 38:16

you've been waiting to pop this court. You're gonna finish the

Megan Goodwin: 38:21

bottle. I'm just waiting for the back piece. Yeah, I already did one. It's true. It's true for now.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 38:30

Yeah, all right. Goodwin, that's enough about me and my bod. Tell us about your hot bod and its tattoos are do you have tattoos? Are they religious? How do they line up for

Megan Goodwin: 38:39

you? Yeah, they I do have tattoos in standard. Despite being chronologically older, I am definitely the kid sister in this relationship. So I fully just stole Ilyse style, and in one case, one of her tattoo artists, my very first tattoo, and the one that I thought about the longest is Octavia Butler. It's on my left inner form, and it says God has changed. Her work is incredibly important to me. Her life is incredibly important to me. The sitting with the idea that the only, the only way to get through is to know that change is inevitable, and you can shape it, and you can work with it, but you can't get outside it is, is an idea I really struggle with. I know shockingly, shockingly for an autistic person with control issues, I have a really hard time with change. So having that someplace, I have to see it all day, every day, and to have it be, because we've got all of these great samples of her handwriting, having it be in her handwriting does work on and to and with me, and that is exactly why I wanted it so. Like, stylistically, it's not actually my favorite tattoo. Like, I like, I have the progression of the acorn to the the oak leaf it needs. I have been, I have been scheming about next ink, because this is what happens once you start. But the piece that feels like is missing for me, as Octavia Butler always said that the destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars. So I feel like it needs a star somewhere farther along my arm. They've been thinking about that. But the the getting of the tattoo was also, like, of religious significance for me. I did that right after Samhain, which is the end of the pagan year. So it is a time of reflection. It is a time of like deep, dark work, and it was also a time of real tumult in my life. So sitting with that and doing it in Burlington, Vermont, where my sister lives, in a place that felt spiritually correct for me, if I'm being honest, like the place is called the crone collective, I

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 40:59

took me to the good spot, because I knew what was up, man, I'm a really good I'm really good. I'm a good sister.

Megan Goodwin: 41:07

So you took me to the correct place, and I did this like what we call shadow work, and it lives on my body, and it works on me every single day. So yeah, that is religious as hell for me. The next tattoo was this big ass Baba Yaga house that I loved so hard. It was one of those things of, like, the goddess change tattoo, I think I talked about for five years before I finally pulled the trigger. I struggle with change.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 41:37

I did the same, but like my Hamza took, like, easily 20 years. I'm not joking like it was easily 20 years. Well and like,

Megan Goodwin: 41:45

in addition to all of my own control stuff and permanence and all of these things that I struggle with, I am not kidding when I say that my whole family, in particular, when my dad fucking hates tattoos, because tattoos equal poor. And as we have discussed on the pod already, we were not poor, we were broke. It's different. So, yeah, the one of the last times I saw my dad was the only time I think that he had seen my tattoo, and he was disgusted. He was, Oh, I hate it. And frankly, that was such an important moment for me, because guess what? It's my body, actually, despite what Catholicism told me my whole life, it's my body, and I get to do what I want with it. So flash forward to last August, I guess or August before last? No, that was last August. God, no, August. It was, it was August. I had, my dad had died, I'd gotten divorced, I had relocated. I was in this whole new space, both geographically and mindset wise, I had done like post Winter Solstice ritual right right after I moved. And some of the reflection work that we were doing was asking us to imagine like a safe space. And the image that I kept getting in my head was like, so silly. The outside was Baba yaga's Hut, which, if you don't know that story, it's Russian folklore. She is, of course, a witch. She lives wherever she wants to, actually, because her house moves around on chicken legs. So if she don't want to be someplace, she just goes and her home is decorated with the skulls of her enemies. So the idea of a movable home with a fuck off skull fence was really appealing to me. And doing this like reflection, meditation, work and the ritual I got Baba Yaga house on the outside with like this is so silly. But if you watch killing Eve, Villanelle has this amazingly posh flat in Paris, and that's what it looks like.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 43:43

Sounds so right for you. How dare it not be fancy and cozy, but also murderous and mobile? Is there a chicken like and a skull, but also a Chanel cover of some kind? They're Nazis, but you know what I mean?

Megan Goodwin: 43:59

You know it's cashmere, so it's one of those things, if I got this, like, really clear flash of Baba Yaga. And then I thought, Okay, well, this is going to be my next tattoo. And I sat with it for a couple months, and it was like thinking about it, and I was doing some googling. Like, the triangle has some very good tattoo artists, but like any place that is small that has really good tattoo artist, they are booked the fuck up forever. And I didn't really find anybody who's like, style matched what I wanted, because Bobby Yaga, not that I knew this, because I am, it's not my special interest. But once I said at least, was like, Yeah, Bobby Yaga is totally having a moment like, Duh. Well,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 44:38

I also like, the minute you involved me. I was like, oh no, oh no, I'm doing that thing that Megan usually does, which is, me. Let me give you all of the information you need to do this tomorrow, because you said you were interested. And I am not even a minute clocking whether that's real, I am just running with it. Yeah. Yeah. Why wouldn't

Megan Goodwin: 45:00

you be excited about this? I'm excited about it, yeah. So hilariously. So Ilyse, a second tattoo was done in Portland Maine, where I used to live by a UVM grad and former

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 45:12

Major right and religion major right, Zach Lloyd. Shout out to Zach, our double tattoo artist, just

Megan Goodwin: 45:18

as the thing, because in doing searching for, like, somebody who had the right vibe for the kind of art that I wanted to do. Because a lot of the Baba Yaga stuff that I was seeing was, like, very delicate and dainty and like storybook, and it's beautiful, but it's not me. I am not dainty. I am not demure. So I was doing some searching around, and it turned out, Zach, UVM, groovy. UV Zach was doing a tattoo, like visiting appointment at the place literally down the street from my house. Yeah. So I asked if he would put something together for me, and he did. And whereas my first tattoo, I was like, I'm still settling in, there are things that I would change if I was going to do this. Now, maybe I'll have it detailed, whatever, whatever. Zach showed me the tattoo, the design, and I was like, get it on my body. Get it on my body right now. Like, how has this not been part of my body all along? And it's still, it's my other inner forearm. I see it all day, every day, and it just, it feels so correct, like it's a doing excellent piece. It's beautiful. It's, it's really fun because, like, I'm never going to be a tattoo person the way that you're a tattoo person. But when I am in tattoo parlors, the artists are like, Oh my God, who did that? Because it's a fucking killer piece. Like, I should really, we should upload a picture of it, because it's really gorgeous. Zach did an amazing job. But it's one of those places of like this. Just the whole experience really felt like it was meant to be. Like I went overnight from feeling like, Okay, this is something I want to think about, to like, mark this period in my life and put something that feels protective on my body, to it was like, mid July, and I was like, No, I need this tomorrow. I need it right now. And then we found out that Zach had moved to North Carolina. The appointment that I wound up scheduling was on August 1, which is Islamist, or Lunas. And the the primary deity that I work with is Lou. He's a Celtic deity, so, like, it was on his day. And Zach also treats the practice of tattooing. And I think he would just like, yeah, in, like, a

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 47:18

spiritually like he would, he would use the term, terminology, and probably spirituality, spirituality,

Megan Goodwin: 47:23

right? But his entire space is marked with spiritual iconography. He is really intentional about the way that he does this. So we were talking about, like, the fact that this had all come together in a way that felt really good, for sure. Yeah, it did truly. It truly felt meant to be. And it was this lovely moment of, like feeling connected to my family because Ilyse has art by the same tattoo artist, and there are like, tiny, subtle nazares In Zach's design, which is not something that I asked for, but I like fucking love, because, again, it feels a little Wonder Twins to me. So yeah, that that also felt deeply religious on a number of different levels to me. And then my most recent one was on my my birthday, which it's one of those spaces of like, pagans do a lot of work with fiction and the space between like, should we be thinking about this as a religious text, as a conversation for a longer time? But I really directly after I moved and got divorced and my dad had died, and I was in North Carolina, and I was just I was in a rough spot, I spent a lot of time with Station 11, the TV show I had read the book, but it didn't hit the same way. And then watching folks not just survive an apocalypse, but create art in the wake of the end of everything, has been really important to me. So the most recent ink that I've gotten is survival is insufficient, which is from Station 11, which they still from Star Trek. So it's like double, triple nerdy anyway, in short,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 48:52

and religious, somehow, in religion, well, religious in the this

Megan Goodwin: 48:56

is a conversation we've been having a lot because I now am editing at Religion Dispatches. And we're talking about, how do we make what we do legible? Because people don't understand, for the most part, this is a publication about religion. It's not a religious publication, right? Like we're not telling you how to do religion. And one of the places that we can keep coming back to you as something that resonates for people as religious, even if they are not that religious themselves, is apocalypse. Yeah, right. And or multiple ends I was trying to is it Rebecca Nagel? I'll have to look at No. It's Kim tallbear, who talks about the multiple apocalypses and the fact that particularly colonized people have survived so many apocalypses before white folks even know what is happening so different timelines. You know what? I'm just going to drop a link to the interview that I did with Hannah McGregor, because she explains this way more beautifully than I do, but the apocalypse piece felt not specifically witchy or pagan to me, but felt resonant in a way that religious work feels resonant to me. So we don't have one sacred text, we just kind of shiny Magpie it. All over the place. So anyway, that was primary so it says

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 50:03

primary sources,

Megan Goodwin: 50:11

you're so, right. You're always, I like, I just, I should always just trust you. You should have said,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 50:16

All right, well, Goodwin. We've been kind of like, all over the place, info, dumping, sharing. Why don't, why don't you say what we did today? What did we learn? This

Megan Goodwin: 50:29

is such a kitchen table. Voice, also, I really like this. Hey, family, what happened today? All right, fine. Moses, buds and thorns, tell me what you learned today. Hit it. Fine. Okay, I'll do the work. I'll do it. All right. So we talked about tattooing prohibitions, but also how those prohibitions are sort of relative. And we see tattoos across religious bodies, and we see religious communities rethinking and renegotiating how bodies might be modified. We also talked about traditional practices, especially in Polynesia, where we get the word tattoo from, and for communities that sell bodily modification with ink as a way to heighten its sacredness in the community, and before the divine God is totally gonna dig my tattoos, particularly the one that's acted it's so good, she's gonna be so stoked. So and we shared research from Dr Maldonado Estrada about how tattoos today, even in communities that had traditionally found them distasteful, if not outright sacrilegious, Inc, in these communities, can serve as a devotional object of sacrament. All right, how'd I do? Pretty,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 51:27

pretty good. You know what? Nerds, there's so much more that we can't get into in one teeny episode. So don't pack up yet. We've got homework. Homework. What homework? I'll just, I'll just go through this list, if you don't mind. Yeah. And so we've got, obviously, Alyssa Maldonado Estrada's lifeblood of the parish men in Catholic devotion in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, but also the piece we shared today, which is tattoos as Sacramentals. And that's an online piece. We've got a piece by a guy named Morello who which is called I've got you under my skin tattoos and religion in three Latin American cities, which is a pretty great internal kind of comparative piece.

Megan Goodwin: 52:07

I'm pretty sure that SJ, at the end of his name is Society of Jesus. So this is probably a Jesuit publication, definitely. Yeah.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 52:14

And then we've got Anna Cole, Bronwyn, Douglas, Nicholas Thomas, as the editors of this big book called tattoo bodies art and exchange in the Pacific and the West, and it's a pretty good back and forth about this colonization piece. Then there's Makiko Kuru Hara, who wrote tattoo and anthropology. Then there's Muhammad roqueb and Saim Sok, which is called Muslims with tattoos, the punk Muslim community in Indonesia, which is a super fun piece. And honestly, gang, it teaches really well if you're teaching, like, a mid level Islam class. And want to focus on, like, varieties of practice. I've got a bunch more pieces on Islamic tattooing and healing, but I want to focus on, I want to like just name. I'm going to dump a lot of these sources and not read them all. Alex, sorry. Alice blocks, piece is called the body as a canvas memory tattoos and the Holocaust, a really recent piece that is about how Jews are using Holocaust memory to re inscribe their own contemporary Jews to reinscribe their own bodies. A really fascinating piece that gets at some of what we were talking about earlier in the episode. Michael Reese has a pretty new book called tattooing in contemporary society. And then I want to get into, I want to name out loud that Lars kutak has one called tattoo traditions of Asia, ancient and contemporary expressions of identity. That's what the University of Hawaii press and Sean Mallon and Sebastian Gallo Galio have a book called tattoo, a history of Samoan tattooing, also by the University of Hawaii press, which honestly is putting out dope work and then the US government, at least until yesterday. Who knows what they're taking off their website now, but the Navy itself has its own web page dedicated to the history of Navy tattoos. If you're interested

Megan Goodwin: 54:12

in how that works, chickens and pigs are involved. It's really interesting. It's

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 54:16

really fascinating. And each boat has its own like, there's a lot of culture. And the Navy actually does a really like the website's actually pretty robust, and it has lots of tabs and lots of really interesting things to look at. So that is our very long list of sources. Nerds. You should hear in that list of sources that that means lots of people are doing the work on this. There's no reason not to know about how tattoos are religious.

Megan Goodwin: 54:36

Yes, all right. Oh, did we want to mention skin stories? Does that matter?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 54:41

It's a really old PBS documentary from over 20 years ago. I will put that on there. It's called Skin stories.

Megan Goodwin: 54:47

That sounds

Unknown: 54:49

I don't like the name of it,

Megan Goodwin: 54:52

silence at the lamb

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 54:54

says you put the lotion like it's gross. I don't like it.

Megan Goodwin: 54:59

This was just me. Remembering that there's a silence of the lambs musical anyway. You can find us across social media. We're on blue sky, Insta, Tiktok and Facebook, and if none of that permanently modifies your body, catch up with us on keeping it one, oh one.com, and please drop us a rating or review in your podcaster of choice

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 55:18

if you still want to invite us to campus after all of that insanity, and knowing that we're showing up with sleeves of tattoos, please reach out to us. Or Caitlin Meyer at Beacon, all of this is on our website, but we would love to visit. We would love to zoom in. Get in Touch early and often, and with that, peace out. Nerds, do your homework. It's on the syllabus. You Oh.

Unknown: 55:58

Lydia. Oh Lydia. Say, Have you met Lydia? Lydia the tattoo lady. She has eyes that folks a dorsal and a tour, though, even more so Lydia, oh Lydia, that encyclopedia, oh Lydia, the queen of tattoo on her back is the Battle of Waterloo. Beside it, the wreck of the Hesperus to and proudly above weaves the red, white and blue. You can learn a lot from the blood.