What is a soul tattoo | Ashley River | CEREMONIAL TATTOOIST + AUTHOR + ORACLE

WHAT IS A SOUL TATTOO®?

Soul Tattoos are a multidimensional form of healing using the alchemy of ceremonial tattooing.

These sacred marking ceremonies are initiations into your unique soul song, medicine, and creative magic. These one-of-a-kind markings hand woven into skin and soul by Ashley are channeled to activate, liberate, and anchor more of your soul’s true essence into your body and life.

Soul Tattoo® ceremonies are transformational thresholds from a former life into the new, using a collection of ancient modalities, including ceremonial hand-poked tattooing, to activate your own creative alchemy, feminine power, and magic.

Soul Tattoos bring tattooing back to its magical, ancient, universal origins—thousands and thousands of years before the tattoo machine and the modern tattoo industry—when tattoos were light activations, spiritual amulets, spells, protection, feminine temple rituals, priestess initiations, death work, and stories of the soul’s evolutionary journey.

Soul Tattoos are a catalyst for deep transformation

Soul Tattoos

are sacred talismans that carry potent vibrational medicine that can create transformational shifts for the receiver.

It is through the ceremonial, deeply shamanic process of intention casting, connection to Spirit, and feminine magic that we can harness the true nature of this ancient, sacred healing art, and use it to heal and leap into deeper alignment with our soul’s true expression. These markings woven by hand act as portals of activation, symbols of empowerment, initiatory experiences, threshold guides, and medicine that goes much, much deeper than the art you see on the surface. In fact, the healing activation of a soul tattoo imprints your soul with a specific evolutionary healing that will be carried with you after you leave your present body form. Though a Soul Tattoo is a highly therapeutic, intentional healing experience of receiving a tattoo that is unique to each person, it is also deep evolutionary work that asks you to rise to alignment with who you truly are.

This form of tattooing is

mysterious.

You don’t know what you are receiving and where when you walk into a tattoo ceremony with Ashley. Soul Tattoos ask you to trust the unknown, the infinite mystery, the feminine, in order to let go of control and access more of your own magical feminine nature. This is one of the deepest parts of the process for when you completely surrender to creation, and step into the unknown, creation moves through you and changes your life.

As no soul is the same, no Soul Tattoo® design or ceremonial experience is the same. But somehow, when you look at your skin adorned with art you had never seen before, you find yourself at home in the familiarity of its energetic signature, because it carries the light of your soul.

How Does it Work?

Each ceremony is intentionally curated for the unique healing and spoken or unspoken soul desires of the client.

Each Soul Tattoo ceremony typically includes a combination of plant medicine, intention/spell casting and story telling to ease into the experience, followed by an energy restoring, protecting, and grounding meditation, shamanic journey, and/or ritual experience while Ashley reads the aura and energy body to gather medicine and messages from both her own and the client’s soul, guides, cosmic and earth allies. The Soul Tattoo’s design is sometimes created from the images and messages that were received during the meditation, though often the tattoo comes through for Ashley in dreams, ceremony, or meditation before the session and the reading clarifies and expands on the medicine that is already coming through.

Soul Tattoo designs

carry the energetic signatures of spoken and unspoken languages, plant medicine, sacred symbolism, animal allies, cosmic symbols of light, ancient coding, or any other symbolic medicine that is channeled to support and guide the client for their highest evolution.

Each dot, line, mark, and symbol contain intentional alchemy to draw out the client’s truest soul expression and weave their intentions into form, activating deep healing and transformation. Though the tattoo placement is often channeled with the tattoo to align with where energy s needed to be moved, activated, or released in the body, Ashley and her client will discuss the energy body, physical body, organs, shamanic expressions of physical ailments, and meridians to align the design to the placement on the body that can best support the client’s personal healing and intentions.

Light language and energy work is woven into the tattooing to deeply relax and open the client, while also activating energetic shifts, clearings, and creating space within for the medicine of the Soul Tattoo to integrate. During this process, many clients fall into a deep meditative state while they receive, while others have big releases, awareness shifts, and even the healing from trauma, past lives, and ancestral patterns. However the medicine expresses, Ashley is a deep anchor and guide through the journey. Each ceremony is sealed with sound clearing, hands on energy work and light weaving, smoke blessing or other elemental blessing, and/or prayer, depending on the client. At the end of the ceremony, Ashley will prescribe healing rituals, integration tools, and/or homework to support the client further on their journey as they walk with their new soul marking.

Soul Tattoo Gallery

Soul Tattoos serve as catalysts for one’s transformation, an initiation into an expanded expression of Self, guiding each person to move further in alignment with their truth, creative power, voice, magic, purpose, and heart’s ancient wisdom.

By bringing a high vibrational, soul-led, divinely channeled art piece with powerful intentions for transformation and liberation onto skin, we are opening a portal for healing through the piercing of the skin, and thus the piercing of the veil. Anything of lower resonance held within the body and energy body will begin to release to align with the frequency of the Soul Tattoo. These may be outdated beliefs, familiar patterns, energetic blocks, trauma, stagnant emotions, past life stories, ancestral stories, or any other creative limitations. For this reason, this work is death work. Death/Grief are a part of any evolutionary process and nothing to be feared, for the deeper we let go, the more life available to us on the other side.

Soul Tattoos can help strengthen one’s intuitive gifts, activate one into their gifts and medicine, dissolve creative blocks, inspire creativity and authentic expression, call out one’s truth and vision, reclaim one’s feminine power, voice, and soul’s wishes, and overall balance the energy body.

Testimonials

“This tattoo emulates everything that has been and will be, based on the learning and growing I’ve done in this life, and past lives, as that knowledge guides my wispy spirit to the future. This connects me to the cosmos, my divine truth; reminding me that everyone is a guide, a mirror. This is also a reminder of strength and inner wisdom. Ashley gave me brilliant ideas and messages of how I can tap into growth as my wild feminine incarnate and to cultivate the balance of taking care of oneself too. Endlessly gratuitous Ashley!”

Danya
“I received a Soul Tattoo and it was instantly added to the internal list of moments that changed my life. I’ve felt empowered and inspired by its medicine […].

Amber
“I want you to know how much I loved my experience with you, how much I love my soul tattoos and how perfect the placement was in the end. You don’t need me to tell you this, but you really do have this gift that sees right into the heart of things and lives in its truth. So THANK YOU for helping me to start finding certain truths in my life and giving me the armor and balance and and protection and support that I was searching for.”

Sarah
“My soul tattoo is facilitating and supporting my growth into my higher self. I even feel its energetic imprint rising sometimes. I can’t identify why, but it’s like a caress, hand hold.”

Ashley
Ashley’s energy is simultaneously calm and powerful. She’s spritely but easy-going. Being with her felt like floating on water. I left a new woman. My experience with Ashley pushed my boundaries. I choose to believe that maybe there is such a thing as magic. Most importantly I made a choice to trust in something beyond myself and let go of the rest. What I love most about tattoos is that they never let you forget who you once were.

Deenie
Your gifts are a treasure I so enjoyed our sessions and I love that I have some new tools for the coming months. Growth and healing aren’t easy, but with the right community they can feel beautiful. I think that is one of your biggest gifts, finding beauty through the hard stuff. Thank you again.

Erica
“I absolutely Love my Soul Tattoo. It is a constant reminder to use my voice, let go of what is no longer, embrace change and to look at myself through my own eyes. The most magical and empowering experience I have had in a long time. Ash you are the essence of Nature-Spirit connection.”

Gretchen
“What you gave me Sunday was life-changing in more than one way. Thank you. I am so grateful and honored to have had that experience with you. You are a truly special person. Thank you for helping to open portals for me, and for opening my heart. Thank you for the trust and for helping me surrender in such a peaceful way. Everything you said to me resonates so deep. I’m going forward now letting my heart guide my hands.”

Andy
“I can’t thank you enough for the magical experience you provided for me. I am so grateful for the portal tattoo and your healing energy and intuition. I already feel the pull to create change and be seen more than ever. Your gentle medicine is a gift to the world.”

Lydia
“Thank you for the work that we did together. I feel so much gratitude and awe because it has shifted a lot for me. It had empowered me to take a lot of steps towards supporting and nourishing my feminine and it’s still unfolding in my life. It doesn’t all feel easy and there has been a lot of tears of grief and still some resistance but I feel more committed than ever to keep supporting her.”

Fatima
“Thank you for such an enlightening and enriching experience. Your session was transformative for me. I strive daily to incorporate the medicinal healing aspects of my tattoo and your wisdom.”

Marie
“Getting a Soul Tattoo was a turning point in my life.”

Graciela
“I would just like to extend my gratitude for all the words and wisdom you shared during our session and beyond. You truly have a gift, Ash, and your guidance is something I will be forever grateful for”

Paige
“You are truly a gift to this world and I am so blessed and honored to have been able to receive your healing work. I know I have to do the actual work after receiving your medicine, but you truly make it a pleasure. I have always felt so safe and protected on my journey and I know the love notes on my body from you are very much a part of that. Thank you for being an angel and light in this world. No words can ever amount to the love I have for you!”

Lauren
“I’m so grateful for the healing energy that’s come into my life since our session. I’m profoundly grateful for the metamorphosis that I’ve experienced. I feel empowered and proud of my human and feminine existence. Thank you for helping me on my path. I truly feel like the time and place that I was able to accept your healing will be forever engraved in my life spiritually beyond the beautiful marking on my arm.”

Yuni
“Your session and the year that has followed has been the best medicine I have received. Your medicine and messages could not have been more spot on. I have major life shifts happening and I have you to thank.”

Britney
“I wanted to let you know how greatly my life has improved in the past year since our tattoo session. You helped me realize so many things I was trying to ignore—and now I have eliminated them from my life, and I can say I have never been happier. I wake up everyday and am living my dream life. My business has improved, my relationships are stringer, and I have become more of “myself” every day. I am so grateful for our time together, and I love having my Soul Tattoo as a reminder forever.”

Soul Tattoo Client
“My Soul Tattoo and our time activated such immense unexpected feminine magic for me. A legit total awakening.”

Caitlin
“I’m loving my tattoo. I’ve been seeing orchids and rivers and butterflies everywhere. I feel energy shifting, especially around my voice, and it’s kind of scary and exciting all at once.”

Jennifer
“I see with such clarity now the significance of my Soul Tattoo. The opening of my soul to be what I was always supposed to be. How it’s helped emancipate and support me over the last eight months. The calming stillness of my inner waves is being prepared for what’s to come with the resources taught and handed down to me from my Ashley through my Soul Tattoo, plant medicine and healings of the earth. The purging of past habits. The freeing liberation of letting go. The abolition of self-worth based on any standards but my own. The acknowledgment and embracing my power, my true self worth, as a propeller to my most authentic being. The strength and courage to sit within grace and let go of the shadows darkening my existence. The awakening to my truth and the power my voice possesses. I was guided to such awareness by my Soul Tattoo.”

Kassie
Ashley holds immaculate, solid space for a true unraveling self-return to take place. Ashley is a true light as well as a shadow walker. Her grace and strength, her searing clarity and her absolute dedication to walking the path of the soul will enable you to find those qualities in yourself, under her gentle yet uncompromising guidance. She is the embodiment of the healing ways and the feminine remembering that we so need right now.

Loveday
“Ashley River and her work will have my gratitude forever. This has been an incredible and life-changing experience I wish for everyone to experience.”

Nadia
“Ashley is a brilliant and gifted artist and healer. Each flower she saw and each detail she was guided to create for my first ever Soul Tattoo was Divinely perfect medicine. They continue to speak to me all these months later and I imagine will continue to do so. Ash’s work has changed my life and activated expressions of self that I have long been fearful to share. I am beyond grateful to her.”

Olivia
“Love my soul tattoo – it was my first tattoo & beyond special. I love that Ash can represent journeys in tattoos that are meaningful to each individual. Mine, reminds me to seek creativity & live in full joy. Something I have been practicing since my tattoo. “

SInead
Writing to say thank you again for your loving and hard work on my Soul Tattoo. It’s healing well, and more than anything, it feels like it’s been a part of me forever, like it belongs. I know it takes a very special person to create something so true—that is your gift.

Steph
A beautiful reading, followed by a conversation that felts like it had happened in the past but also the future. What a beautiful energy to be around: Ash is gentle and also sure, she is genuine but also open. Her reading honed in on all the elements that have been bouncing in the walls of my mind for the last six months. It is so inspiration to sit with someone who has invented a way of working, the Soul Tattoo, that allows multiple dimensions of her gifts to be active in her work. What an honor and a privilege for me!

Xenia

Ashley’s Story

As a young woman who began receiving tattoos at just 16, I struggled to find a sense of trust, intentionality, and sacredness in the overtly masculine tattoo space. With my psychic and energetic sensitivities and highly attuned and sensitive nervous system, I did not resonate with the modern act of receiving a tattoo from a young age, but deep down my soul was deeply drawn to use art on skin as a form of remembrance, magic, and transformation. A desire to create sacredness in the tattoo experience arose, to carve out a safe space for sensitive, mystical beings like me to return home to this intentional and intuitive art form that has always belonged to the feminine (the mystics, priestesses, seers, and midwives of death/life). At 23, I began combining my design and illustration background, connection to the elemental and spirit worlds, and psychic/energetic gifts and fed them into tattoo art, becoming a licensed tattoo artist in NYC. One evening under a Taurus full moon a couple of years after I first picked up a tattoo needle, the name “Soul Tattoo” was whispered in my ear by spirit, and deep remembrance and integration of its teachings, medicine, and coded magic followed.

I spent the following years traveling around the world, from New York City to New Zealand activating this work and offering Soul Tattoos to provide deep soul initiation and essence activation to mystical, intuitive, creative, sensitive beings seeking transformation and reclamation of their truth and magic. My practice quickly gained worldwide recognition and a multi-year waitlist before I took a step back to teach and author my books. After a necessary break, my practice and medicine only deepened and now I serve 1:1 clients in Soul Tattoo ceremony, group tattoo ceremonies working with the power of collective prayer, and teach this Sacred Tattooing work both online and in person.

As of Spring, 2023, I offer my Soul Tattoo work primarily in Southern California (L.A), but I travel when the lands call me to share this work elsewhere. If you have a healing space and would like to host me for a Soul Tattoo residency, please reach out to scheduling@ashleyriver.co. To stay up to date with residency announcements, sign up for my newsletter.

Soul Tattoo Gallery

Disclaimer:

Within Ashley’s tattooing practice she honors the traditional lineages and custodians of tattooing and its sacred and cosmic origins. She pays her respects to all ancient tattooing practices, past, present, and future, for anchoring down this modality as a tool for collective healing and empowerment. Ashley is in no way using this work to culturally appropriate any of their traditional practices.

Tattooing is an ancient, powerful healing art form woven through all cultures of humanity since we came to this planet. The way Ashley practices this art form is connected to her own blood lineages (primarily of Celtic ancestry) as well her soul lineages, in dedication to the Earth, the stars, and the weavers of creation. If you are curious to learn more about the origins of tattooing as an ancient healing modality, please check out the School of the Sacred Arts, a school Ashley co-founded, which goes deeper into the history of tattooing as a feminine art form and the many lineages that have birthed this work into form across space and many timelines.