Gerrhel wears a SLEEPING WITH JACQUES coat. Mariton wears SLEEPING WITH JACQUES top, BOCU skirt, and MONET vintage earrings. Photographed by Joseph Pascual for the February 2025 Issue of Vogue Philippines
Author and hand tap tattooing practitioner Lane Wilcken on the cultural practice of tattooing in the Philippines.
Tim Senholtz carefully places his atang/alay, an offering of carefully selected food for his deceased loved ones on the altar. He quietly prays for a moment to his mother’s Tagalog ancestors, expressing his desire to be more deeply connected to them before he lays down on the futon mattress resting on top of layers of woven banig. The atang prayers passed down from my grandmother have already been chanted to invite our ancestors to attend and bless the designs drawn on his leg. Tim closes his eyes as my students and I place our gloved hands on his calf. In another moment of prayer, we invoke specific ancestor spirits associated with particular designs. I ask Tim if he is ready.
“Yes,” he replies and steels himself for the pain. Tim has many machine tattoos, but this would be his first time receiving batok, or hand-tapped tattoos.
“Intayon.” [Let’s go.] I affirm and begin rhythmically tapping the kisi in the air before lowering the comb of bone needles down to his skin. As soon as the needles reach the surface of his skin, the finely carved needles begin making tiny punctures in the skin, depositing the soot-based ink about one millimeter under the skin. “It’s not so bad, right?” I ask. “No, not bad.” Tim replies, pleasantly surprised by the sensation. I smile and confirm, “The pain isn’t the same as the machine.”
As we continue tapping the designs of his ancestors, I remind Tim in the words of my teacher Sulu’ape Keone Nunes of Hawai’i, “There are not many things you can do in this life where you can have the same experience as your ancestors hundreds or even thousands of years ago.”
Tim closes his eyes and simultaneously, I feel his skin relax and accept the work. Centuries of cultural loss evaporate as the timeless song of tapping brings the ancient designs to light once again on the skin of a proud descendant.
Before the Spaniards named our islands after Prince Felipe of Spain, they originally called our archipelago, “Las Islas de los Pintados” or “The Islands of the Painted People.” According to William Henry Scott (1994), they saw our ancestors adorned with tattoos, which prompted Jesuit Pedro Chirino in 1604 to remark that a man “…appears to be dressed in a kind of handsome armor engraved with very fine work, a dress so esteemed by them, they take it for their proudest attire.”
For thousands of years, the vast majority of the peoples of the Philippines were richly adorned with tattoos. The practice of tattooing was not restricted to the Bisayans, the Cordillerans of Luzon, or the indigenous populations of Mindanao. It was a common practice. Barbara Thiel (1990) notes that some of the oldest tattoo artifacts, tattooing combs of needles, were excavated from burial caves in the Arku Cave in the Cagayan Valley and have been carbon-dated to approximately 4,000 years old. Ancient pottery unearthed in Batangas from burial sites have designs imprinted on terracotta vessels that are recognized as tattoo designs in other parts of the Philippines, suggesting that ancient Tagalogs once tattooed themselves. This correlation between the decoration of the material culture and the adornment of the body is seen in the pottery traditions of the Kalinga, where the same motifs used to adorn their pottery are the same designs used to tattoo the skin. This correlation is further substantiated with the ancient pottery found in the Visayas and the drawings of Father Francisco Alcina of tattooed people from Leyte and Samar where he spent most of his ministry.
Some of the words used by our ancestors to describe tattoos are, “batok, whatok, batuk, patik, batek, batak and tatak.” The word “tatak” in Tagalog currently defined as, “to mark or engrave,” but is derived from the word “taktak,” meaning, “to hit repeatedly” denoting the practice of creating tattoos through the hand-tapped method. The modern word “tattoo” is derived from the related Polynesian word, “tatau” (ta-taw) which also similarly describes the action of tapping the design like “tatak.” This involves using a wooden handle with one or multiple needles mounted at a right angle, dipped in soot-based ink, then with a wooden hammer stick, repeatedly tap the mounted needles into the skin to create the beautiful marks. These markings were a type of visual language to which most modern Filipinos are unfortunately illiterate. In the past, a person could “read” the designs. These markings conveyed a host of meanings. In addition to denoting roles in the community and rank, depending on the design, our ancestors’ tattoos could also illustrate a relationship with the spirits of nature and ancestors, reflect values of courage and perseverance, enhance mental, emotional and physical health, and even function as mnemonic devices to recall oral history.
“There are not many things you can do in this life where you can have the same experience as your ancestors hundreds or even thousands of years ago.”
Many Fil-Ams displaced from the homeland have been drawn toward receiving ancestral markings as a way of recovering their cultural identity. One problem faced by Filipinos abroad and at home is the misunderstanding that any tattoo from the Philippines is appropriate to wear. In my opinion, this is not true.
What we see among the multitude of ethno-linguistic groups within the Philippines that kept their tattooing practice into modern times, is that although there are many similarities, there are cultural nuances that are unique to these individual groups. This is seen in the Cordillera of Luzon where Ifugao, Bontoc, and Kalinga people have similar layouts of tattoo designs on the body, but the compositions and often the motifs are distinctly different.
Would the modern Filipino recognize their tattooed ancestors? However, the inverse question is also true, would our ancestors recognize us as their descendants? In my personal practice of doing batok, I only adorn recipients with markings that come from the specific heritage/lineage to which they belong.
For example, if a person is Kapampangan, they only receive Kapampangan designs. This literacy of knowing which designs and arrangements belong to which group is my responsibility as a batok practitioner, otherwise I could assign the recipient to the wrong ancestry. The reason for this is the ultimate aspect of our tattooing traditions. It is the belief that the designs remained on your soul after death. The elders of Apo Whang-od’s community confirm that at death all other things are left behind except your tattoos. Particular to some places, ancestral tattoos were a prerequisite to be accepted into the afterlife. Among the Manobo people of Mindanao, they describe tattoos as, “sulu sa gimukod” or “the illumination of the soul.” In Manobo beliefs, upon death, all the black tattoo designs invert and shine with warm light to illuminate a person’s final journey to the ancestral realm. In that sacred paradise, the soul was recognized by their tattoos and lovingly accepted home by their ancestors. As we all will eventually take that journey, may we recover and recognize the light of our beautifully tattooed ancestors, and in turn, be recognized by them.
By LANE L. WILCKEN. Photographs by JOSEPH PASCUAL. Beauty Editor JOYCE OREÑA. Associate Fashion Editor & Stylist: Carlos Mangubat. Art Director: Jann Pascua. Producer: Bianca Zaragoza. Makeup: Janica Cleto. Hair: Gab Villegas. Beauty Writer: Bianca Custodio. Production Assistant: Divine Lorenzo. Multimedia Artist: Tinkerbell Poblete. Nails: Extraordinail. Photographer’s Assistants: Belg Belgica, Sarah El-Ali. Stylist’s Assistant: Ruzzian Escaros. Shot on location at Espacio Creativo Escolta.
