Spirit of the Tattoo

I like to share a video I made to draw attention to Sacred Skin, a book about Thailand's Sak Yant. Photographed by Aroon Thaewchatturat and written by Tom Vater, I published the book in July of this year. These spiritual tattoos have become something of a fad and these days you can see quite a lot of people sporting what looks like a sak yant. Unfortunately it is quite possible that the bearer of the tattoo has no idea about its true meaning and just got it because it looks cool.
As Tom puts it in the book:" When a tattoo master applies a sak yant, he also establishes a set of rules that his tattooed disciples are expected to follow for the rest of their lives...... Failure to observe the guru's instructions causes the sak yant to lose their power."
Sacred Skin is the first book in English that introduces sak yant to a wider audience and hopefully it will contribute to a better understanding of this aspect of Thai culture.

As for the question whether I have a sak yant? No, not (yet) because I still am

Not Here Anymore, Not Quite There Yet.

© Hans Kemp 2011