The first time I met this magical being called Juliette, I walked into her tattoo studio in Boulder Colorado with a massive rough sketch drawing and a million questions running through my mind.
A few weeks earlier, I'd done a Five Rhythms dance retreat called Surfing the Creative at one of my favorite building/temple/sanctuaries in the world, the StarHouse. Check it out, if you can: in a vast property full of labyrinths and hidden sacred spaces, within a druidic circle of stones, the central space has twelve sides with twelve pillars dedicated to the astrological corner of the sky to which they align perfectly. Each pillar is made of a single tree from the property that was asked whether they'd like to be chosen, ceremoniously moved and carefully repositioned so that their east/west orientation is exactly the same as where they grew in the earth. At night, when you stand on an alter stone outside the front door and look up at the curving point of the entry way, it will show you the North Star. If I was to ever build a house...
While I was dancing and howling at the StarHouse for a week, I learned about conscious embodiment at a level I'd never met before. It moved something in me - another step down towards a unification of my mind and body that I'd been dedicated to for two years. On the last day, we did an exercise of dancing across the room and yelling our names out, to hear them joyfully chorused back by the 80 friends we'd made. Reaching the East gate of the space, with it's windows wide open to the descending foothills and spreading plains, I felt a tingling across my back and thought 'I need to get a hawk tattoo here.'
That night, I dreamed of it again. A design started heating up on the stove... something to do with a hawk spreading their wings, but with other things inside the wings that had meaning and story in them...
Then, I got a call that a friend had a hawk stumbling around their front yard. He had been blinded in one eye, and was clearly disoriented. I'm not sure what I would have done, if I met him now. Would he have preferred to be left for the Coyotes? Or to have found a hollow in a tree, to rest into all?
My friend was nervous about him being there, and there was a wildlife rehabilitation sanctuary nearby, so we carefully threw a blanket over him and lifted him into the car.
It was exhilarating and intense to be so close to such a powerful creature, who knew so much and saw so much, but never would have let a human touch them except in the most rare circumstances.
I could no longer ignore or quiet any questions I had about getting this tattoo. And, I now understood that it had significance beyond symbol or story. I needed to find an artist who would meet me there, and who hopefully knew more about creating that kind of art than I did...
Enter Juliette!
I walked straight into her studio without making an appointment. The hawk had really gotten in my head - I needed to get this started now. I'd had one tattoo before, but it had been the product of years of dreaming plus one very long and intense 36 hours, and I really didn't know where to begin to do something as big as this piece.
Her studio was in a back lot, above a designer mechanic. I climbed up a fire escape, wondering what I was doing, opened the door, and immediately felt calmer. The hallway was lined with gorgeous art; an incredible variety of styles, mediums, colors, and techniques, but all with something distinctly magical and pointed about them, as though they were looking at me and saying 'I see you. Do you see me?'
The door to the studio was open. A table filled with plants and artifacts was cascading with tarot card decks and a set of runes that immediately had my fingers itching. Wide windows faced the hillside, and I suddenly felt deep in the mountains. If Juliette was surprised to see a wide eyed, mildly manic person in her space, she didn't show it. Soon I was sitting in a comfy swivel chair, gazing at all the myriad beautiful sights, and asking questions while she cleaned up from her last client.
Among the first of those was 'What's your approach to tattooing?' And she said, enthused, "Well," and began to tell me about the Mayan god of tattooing, Acat, and the idea that tattoos could be designs placed on the body to heal energy pathways, and to fortify health in a person.
A massive sense of warmth and soul filled me. I had come to the right place.
We spent nearly a year finishing the design, and another 10 months tattooing it in short, easy-to-integrate sessions. And she was right: it was healing. I don't know all of the meaning of all of the symbols, and maybe I never will, but I know that each feels perfectly right where they are on my body. Even the practice of healing the skin after each session was medicinal for me. When initially my skin wasn't healing as quickly as normal, I called up a mentor of mine and she directed me to work more actively with the plants we'd woven in to the image. It was my first experience of engaging with a medicine being in that way - drawing them, finding them out in nature, drinking them in tea, and then feeling a flowering of relationship and connection. I love this art. I love that I get to have it with me always. It feels like a teaching - dharma, or scripture, that I'll be studying all my life, with every breath.
And, hand to heart, I met a collaborator that I will always be so delighted to get to play and explore and adventure with. Although, we've never yet done something quite like Podcast for Spirit...
It's gonna be wild and free.
Here's a post of the finished product on Juliette's Instagram :)
- Larkin
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