The Painted People

The Painted People

"They tattoo their bodies not only with likenesses of animals of all kinds, but with all sorts of drawings."
   ___  Herodian, "Commentaries"


   The use for body-painting of native plants such as woad, whose leaves yield a bright-blue dye, is attested by many writers. Isidore of Seville, writing in the sixth century, tells how the Picts - another name for the Caledonians of Scotland - 'have a name derived from the appearance of their bodies. These are played upon by a needle working with small pricks and by the squeezed out sap of a native plant, so that they bear the resultant marks according to the personal rank of the individual, their painted limbs being tattooed to show their high birth.'  One seventeenth-century Scots writer asserted that many a Pict took on 'the forms of beasts, birds and fishes on his his face; not on it only, but his whole body.'  These totemic shapes remain on the Pictish standing stones of eastern Scotland: the eagle, the salmon, bull, stag, seahorse, seal, and many others. Were these their tribal or personal totems?  We have no means of knowing, as they left no written documents. In fact, the Pictish language remains unknown, though historians know that they used ogham, the Celtic tree script employed only in inscriptions.

  In our own time, the tattoo, long seen as the fashion statement of green youths and hardened workmen, is fast becoming a mature statement of personal identity and belonging among a remarkable number of people - women as well as men. We seek the shapes that our soul has touched, as we quest for the circuits of birth and the meaning of our life's weaving, potent images and symbols arise. Although we may not wish to have them lastingly engraved upon our bodies, they are nevertheless etched upon our souls.

"Mediate upon the totemic symbols and images that typify your life's journey."
[From:  "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]