Acid Dreams

While the culture of a Slavic tattoo is considered unknown or nearly lost, in some Croat-populated regions of Bosnia and Herzegovina one can still often meet some older women (less frequently – men) with traces of tattooed ornaments on their palms, dorsal sides of their hands, shoulders, elbows, as well as some other parts of their bodies. Apart from some rare exceptions, the custom of tattoo application belongs exclusively to the Catholic population of Bosnia-Herzegovina and is sometimes called one of the elements of folklore and beliefs of the Balkan peoples. Also associated with the pre-Christian beliefs of the Balkan Peninsula inhabitants, this custom is nevertheless said to have played its most important role in time of the Balkan conquests by the Ottoman Empire.

Under the growing pressure of Ottoman lslamisation across the region and the forced migrations caused by the events, Croatian women covered their bodies with various patterns of crosses in their attempts to avoid Ottoman captivity, save their children, and avoid forced conversion to Islam through marriage, while the tattoos became one of the symbols of Catholicism in multiethnic Bosnia as well as a way to illustrate one’s affiliation to the Croatian culture of this country. These drawings of which one could almost never get rid also stayed on the bodies of Catholic women who have converted to Islam for a marriage and those who have changed their religion for other reasons, becoming an everlasting evidence of his or hers Catholic past.

The ornaments were applied on one of the days of the Holy Week and this was done by one of the younger family members (or, if she refused – the oldest). The pattern was first drawn with the blunt side of a needle dipped in ink and only then the tattoo itself was applied and the hand was covered with wax or silk paper. Gunpowder was also used, often diluted with salvia, which sometimes led to syphilis and other diseases in those regions where tattooing was more common and the patterns’ beauty and size was larger. According to what some of the women have said, a solution that was used for their tattoo also consisted of charcoal, mud, honey, as well as milk of a breastfeeding woman who have previously given birth to a baby boy. The procedure continued until the pattern has been finished or until the hand did not start bleeding and the pain could no longer be tolerated.

The patterns were similar to each other and often contained the same elements. Until the wrist they depended on the rules, while those above the wrist were usually applied randomly. The usual cross was always present on the hand and it was then decorated with dots, semi-circular, or straight lines around. The crosses could also be found on other parts of the body and were drawn with no specific rules or a meaning, sometimes found on foreheads, shoulders, scattered around the hands and arms.  The motifs with not as much relation to Christianity began after the cross. Usually located on the upper part of the hand, these were circles, dots, lines and other pattern elements. Semicircle “fences” on the dorsal sides of the hands with their opening facing the rest of the hand were also surrounded by lines, dots on their ends, bench-like ornaments, crosses of other motifs inside and around. After that, the lines with various dashes and other decorative elements continued around. 

texts from ppl I luv