Shadowhunters and Downworlders: A Mortal Instruments Reader(35)

“Only sailors and—and girls with red shoes get tattoos!” she sputtered, when I mentioned it. (I was not absolutely sure where the red shoes fit into all this. After that, I began looking out for red shoes hoping to spot some kind of trend. Turns out she was under the mistaken impression that hookers wore red shoes. I don’t know. Don’t ask me.)

In any case, when you’re twelve and a girl and you live in the ’70s, it’s unlikely that you’re going to be able to follow your budding, possibly inaccurate, sense of cool and score that sweet tat (and leather vest) you think you really, really need to be yourself. So I found other ways to express my coolness. One of them was elaborate self-administered drawings in marker on my forearms, sometimes illustrating horses or spaceships. DON’T JUDGE ME, MAN. I was creative, okay? And I always washed them off before I went home, because I was really not all that rebellious. Outwardly.

I say all this so you can understand how deeply completed I felt when I discovered Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments series, because it sparked a renewed fascination for tattoos and what they meant—or could mean, beyond needing to be matched with a pair of sweet red stiletto pumps. (Technically, her tattoos are really scarification—the art of incising a design in the skin instead of just inking it on—but that’s a practice similar to tattooing. We’re not going to split hairs here.)

And the fact that the Shadowhunters’ Marks not only were cool but also stored power just blew my mind.

The idea that tattoos have very real magical force goes back not just to Ray Bradbury’s incredible, groundbreaking work The Illustrated Man (if you haven’t read it, please do, it’s riveting and fantastic) but to real life too. The history of tattooing—from marks to adorn, to those to heal, protect, advertise, or punish—goes back to the earliest days of humankind.

So let’s start with the therapeutic use of tattoos.

The first solid example of any kind of tattooing—at least to date—goes back about 5,200 years, to a frozen Copper Age corpse found decorated with some simple marks likely made with cuts and powdered charcoal. The tattoos, primitive as they were, were located just where this man would have felt pain from the advanced bone degeneration that was evident when his corpse was examined. So these were healing runes, placed to take away the pain of arthritis—and it wasn’t just done once. Our iceman had over fifty-seven separate tattoos, which meant that some doctor/ tattoo artist—or several of them—had applied these healing marks over time as the patient needed help.

You can just imagine the conversation during flu season. Doctor! I need a skull and snake tattoo over here, stat—he’s sneezing! Okay, so Copper Age medical care might not have been quite as efficacious as a trip to the local doc in a box today, but it definitely would have been more decorative. Plus: You get to carry your medical records around with you on your skin!

Take that, modern medical science! IN ON YOUR FACE!

Very definitely, of course, all this healing stuff correlates to the use of the runes by our favorite Shadowhunters…although theirs generally work. (Note: If anybody can work me up a tattoo for curing migraines, I will pay you good money. Clary? I’m talking to you, girlfriend, since your special gift is creating new ones. I’m sure this is on your list to develop, right after the “deliver me my own personal Jace” rune that so many other readers have already been requesting.)

Egyptians also practiced the art of the needle, but, curiously, their tattoos were reserved for women…and again, practice eventually turned out to revolve around health and safety. For years, archaeologists (mostly male, it should be noted) thought that Egyptian female mummies with tattoos were likely “dancing girls” or “concubines”—carrying over my mom’s prejudice about those red shoes, eh?

Instead, upon more careful scrutiny, it turns out that those dot-and-line tattoos and the later images of the goddess Bes on women’s thighs were likely there to ease pregnancy and ensure the safety of mother and child—a kind of permanent protective amulet in a society where amulets were extremely important (they were not only worn in life but also wrapped into the linen covering mummies for protection in the afterlife). If a tattoo could guarantee such security, it would be magical indeed, and well within the realm of the Mortal Instruments universe, where a rune for strength might be needed for a run-in with a demon, and one for healing could mean the difference between making it home and bleeding out in the street.

You can bet female Shadowhunters would use runes for the same purposes as the ancient Egyptians did those dotand-line tattoos. After all, they go through childbirth too.

Similar tattoo position on the childbearing regions of a woman’s body appears in early cultures in Peru and Chile, although Peruvians and Chileans went well beyond the practical applications, since their designs also extended up to the torso, the arms, and neck, and in some cases even onto the face. (Obviously, the ladies of Peru and Chile did not have to go into a corporate office every day. True fact: A tattoo artist friend of mine calls facial tattoos “job killers.”)

Lots of other folks embraced the tattooed aesthetic for nonmedical reasons too. Sometimes it was just for the status. My mom thought tattoos were a sign of low class—an association that came about only after the tattooing machine was invented around 1900 (an adaptation of an Edison machine!) and made tattooing fast and affordable for the poorer folks. But for the ancient Scythians and Thracians, having a well-illustrated body meant you were somebody—because, let’s face it, a lot of body art meant a lot of devotion and time from a talented artist. Keeping your art on your flesh also meant you didn’t have to take your guests all the way home to show off your latest art acquisition. Magnificently detailed tattoos were a very public display of your wealth and taste…and the practice wasn’t restricted to men; women have been found with the same kinds of tats (normally of mythical creatures and animals).