Snake & Holly Tattoo

The bruising tattoo that appears on Lost Patients and other victims of the Tattooed Curse. It is also the tattoo engraved upon the body of the Sleeping Priestesses of the Kuze Shrine. The tattoo is composed of two separate images: a snake and a holly tree. The Japanese word for tattoo, irezumi, can mean "ink put inside" or "engraved blue"; it can also be read shisei, as in "Shisei no Koe", which is a pun on 死生, meaning "life and death".

The Holly Tree

The holly pattern represents pain of love over those who have died and pains of the heart. The holly plant is symbolically associated with pain owing to its prickly leaves. One of the Japanese names for the holly, hiiragi (疼木), means "Aching Tree". Its leaves were also used as a ward against evil, and because it is an evergreen tree it is associated with divinity.

The holly pattern appears to be the final pattern that is tattooed over a victim's/priestess' eyes before they are 'consumed by the snake'.

The Snake

The snake is the more active element of the tattoo, as it symbolises the yearning and sympathy for the dead that will eventually consume and destroy the individual(s) overwhelmed by feelings of loss.

In the stories mentioned in Tattoo Folklore, the snake becomes an entity that deals the final blow, such as in the Tattooed Maiden Story where the snake tattoo fuses with her soul and eats her heart. In the first version of the Tattoo Master story, again the snake tattoo becomes a separate entity but, in this case, consumes the girl completely.

In the second version of the story, it seems to be implied that the Tattoo Master herself becomes the snake (her eyes turning into mirrors - like a snake's eyes) and proceeds to eat all of those people whose pain she consumed.

In Japanese folklore, the snake represents divine power and dragons, and is often associated with female shamans, notably the legendary ancient shaman queen Himiko. The snake is also associated with water, and one form of the tattoo master legend has the tattoo being rinsed away with spring water.

Application

The snake and holly tattoo was tattooed little by little upon the skin of the Tattooed Priestess during the Piercing of the Soul ritual, which lasted all winter. The blue ink used for the tattoo process was called the Ink of the soul, which was a combination of red and indigo ink. The tattoos were treated with great reverence and care. If the priestess proved unworthy, the tattoos would be stripped from her in a ritual called The Tearing, and enshrined in the Tattoo Altar.

Victims of the Tattooed Curse would at first only see slight bruising on their bodies before the Tattoo begin to grow and spread. Only victims of the curse can see the tattoos; unaffected people cannot. The victims feel the tattoo grow upon waking from dreams of the Manor of Sleep. Characters' tattoos also appear to grow when they are in proximity to a ghost, or when they are thinking about painful things.

Misc. Info

• For her music video Koe, Tsukiko Amano also created her own unique version of the tattoo that she and her band members also wore at concerts. However, the design does not include the snake.
• The Tattooed Priestess was expected to engrave her own pain and attachments onto a mirror, which bore a slightly different design of holly and butterflies on the face, and the snake alone on the reverse side. In the Japanese text of the Commandment Tome, this mirror is referred to as the 'Snake Eye' (蛇目).