This is one of those books I had waiting for me to read in retirement, which has been five years now! There were two things that intrigued me about tattoos and I wanted to learn more. One, I began hearing about women with mastectomies using tattoos as a way of healing and helping and saw some seriously stunning pictures (google image mastectomy tattoos if you haven't seen any). Secondly, I read about the disturbance in relationships between generations of Maoris in New Zealand when Christian missionaries taught them to stop tattooing. Particularly, the relationships between fathers and sons were harmed. At the time I was also looking at U.S. gang tattoos and hadn't even considered this perspective and wanted to understand more.

John Rush is an anthropologist who teaches at a community college in northern California and that is the perspective that attracted me to this particular volume. Anthropology is my favorite perspective from which to learn about many issues.

Rush writes about the history of tattooing, scarification, and piercing as well as branding and implants. The common thread between these behaviors that Rush covers is their use as a rite of passage of some type, whether it involves, aging, illness, group affiliation or something else. My favorite part was that he included his own culture, the U.S. with what I considered to be a fairly objective comparison. He examines the specific practices e.g. why paint the lips red, why get breast implants or as some men do now, calves implants, as well as the purpose the behavior serves and other methods used to achieve similar purposes. For example he compares the use of psychotherapy for healing (e.g. cancer survivor groups), athletic accomplishments such as a survivor running a marathon, to the use of tattooing. It is an interesting topic.

Most of this book satisfies my longing for "proof" meaning peer reviewed research as much as possible, but the author does drift into more personal beliefs and behavior occasionally. That of course can be easy to do especially with anthropology. Additionally, parts were a little dry and could have been livened up with more case studies. Therefore, three stars. ( )

Full review located at http://paganbookreviews.com/2008/09/28/spiritual-tattoo-john-a-rush/