Scarification: harmful cultural practice or vehicle to higher being?
Scarification is the act of covering, disguising and transforming the body
by creating wounds in ones own flesh in order to cause indelible markings. It is perhaps one of the most misunderstood body modification procedures done today, largely perceived in Western society as a tabooed and harmful cultural practice.
Superficially it would seem to be a counter-intuitive self-defeating act, for why would anyone want to deliberately maim oneself or expose oneself to something so painful and risky? Yet despite this paradox, scarification is widely practiced in some manner in almost every society and has held a strong cultural significance in many civilizations. It has been viewed as developing the virtues of self-sacrifice and bravery, providing people with an outlet for self-expression and a stronger sense of identity as well as a sense of continuity in a rapidly changing world.
As a cultural practice, scarification draws its roots from a tribal primitivism that has existed for centuries in many civilizations. Perhaps the most obvious examples of this are the scarification traditions of the tribes of Africa and the western Pacific.10 Using rock art dating, scarification tradition in African tribes can be traced back to beyond 4000 B.C.11 In these societies, scarification played an integral role in helping to classify individuals by age, life experiences, sexual maturity, and family and tribal groupings. Such traditional demarcations have been carried down through to the tribal societies of today, exemplified by the initiation rite for young men of the tribes of Papua New Guineas Sepik region, where it is believed that crocodiles created humans. The initiates chest, back, and buttocks are sliced with a bamboo sliver to test his strength and self-discipline. The resulting scars represent the teeth marks that swallowed the young man during the ceremony.
Many societies originally used scarification to identify their fellow tribesmen from the enemy: The indelible markings prevented warriors, who wore little clothing, from killing members of their own tribe, and ensured corpses received the correct funeral rites.When the slave trade began in Africa, scarification served to protect natives as their scars helped to prevent the wearers being taken into slavery because traders viewed unscarred faces as a sign of good health.This positive connotation of tribal scarring has persisted to this day in the country of Benin, where people who dont have traditional scars are still considered to be the descendants of slaves, immigrants, or refugees.
The significance of scarification extends to many other aspects of the tribesmens lives, spiritually, politically and sexually. The pain and personal sacrifice associated with scarring has been perceived by many tribes as a mark of ones spiritual character and a vehicle for purging emotional and physical issues [in] preparation for a spiritual life.The pain and discipline needed to tolerate it was regarded by many as a sign of mental fortitude and spiritual maturation. It has also been seen in many tribes as a cathartic purging of bad spirits from the body and a medium for connecting to higher beings and transcending to a higher state of thought through the disciplined control of the pain: Pain and suffering, whether voluntary or forced, are used in many traditions as a form of purging in order to prepare for a spiritual life whereby one lives with one foot in the tangible universe and the other resting firmly in that spiritual realm.
Scientifically speaking, this heightened sense of self can be explained by the rush of endorphins (essentially opiates) from the brain that occurs when one is placed in a high-stress or high-pain situation like defacing the skin, and the ensuing period of calmness as the opiates are reabsorbed or metabolized.
Many tribes believe so much in this apparent spiritual connection through the act of scarification that they incorporate it into their religious rituals. In many societies, certain types of scars bear specific religious significance. For example, in the Jewish religion male foreskins are cut off eight days after birth to symbolize the covenant between that young man and God. In this and similar situations, scarification constitutes a visible record of incarnate religious forces and a sacred chronicle of a cultures life-crises ceremonies.Certain religious scars are thought to imbue qualities on the wearer throughout life and even after life; family members who receive the same scars are said to be instilled with many of the same qualities of personal strength, and in certain societies these marks are believed to be inscribed on the ghost or spirit after death, enabling the gods or spirits to recognize the membership and status of the deceased and to send him or her to an appropriate place of posthumous residence.20 In these tribes, scarification plays an essential part in the quest for spiritual completion.
By contrast, scarification in Western society is viewed as self-harming, mutilative, and self-objectifying,perceived as an outdated and cruel practice, considered an actual or grievous bodily harm,an involuntary marking and denial of personhoodexemplified by the branding of concentration camp inmates during the Holocaust. Yet in Western culture scarification is often deeply meaningful to those who practice it as a means of freedom and escape from societal and cultural pressures.
In her book, In the Flesh, historian Victoria Pitts suggests that the negative stigma of scarification in Western society is to some degree undeserved, being for some a means of departing from accepted societal norms and demonstrating ones individuality and refusal to conform. Pitts claims that through the revival of non-Western, primitive body rituals, body modifiers aim to demonstrate symbolic control over their bodies by experiencing and adorning them in ways prohibited by Western culture.Thus one woman who had cut the incisions into herself explained it was about the spirituality of claiming myself, accepting myself.She believed that by making the cuts she was transitioning to a higher state of being, transcending normal human feeling, remaining calm through the pain of it, similar state to that of Buddhists, when they spend hours and hours in the state of prayer. It is that place of acceptance and floating and honor.Pitts described that many persons who resort to scarification have been victimized or emotionally traumatized by preying individuals or by society at large, and need to change and escape from their past. For those that partake, ritualized marking symbolically revokes former claims on the bodythose of victimization, patriarchy, and controland so is deeply meaningful.
Pitts also claims that women do so out of a desire to counteract the (what they believe to be) unfair gender role expectations set by society as far as standards of beauty they must maintain: Women body modifiers have argued that modifying the body promotes symbolic rebellion, resistance, and self-transformation, that marking and transforming the body can symbolically reclaim the body from its victimization and objectification in patriarchal culture.In that same vein, many people who undergo scarification see it as a means of freeing themselves from the enormous economic, social, and political pressures surrounding ones appearance.Pitts defends the right of the body modifier to this form of self-expression, saying that body marking can ultimately be a symbolic way of transforming oneself into a stronger, more self-reliant person.
Yet scarification has its dangers: local wound infections, hepatitis B and C, HIV, and septicemia.Despite its many risks, however, it has been regarded by some having potential health benefits, aiding recovery from physical trauma and immunological stress, increasing resistance to stress, and a sign of viability. For many scarification is a means of connecting to society and its culture, an opportunity to mture through discipline and self-control, and an outlet for self-expression. It clearly is not just some primitive form of barbarism, but rather an unusual way for a person to interact with society. One could actually say that in scarification there is more than meets the eye!
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