Would you stand big hooks been pierce on your skin? The human suspension is the act of suspending a person from large-gauge hooks
that are carefully placed through temporary body piercings created immediately before the act of suspension. It’s a tradition that dates back
thousands of years and that was historically strictly performed for sacred, ritualistic purposes.
The Origin of Human Suspension
The oldest recorded acts of human suspension date back approximately 5,000 years and originated among devout Hindus in India.
According to Skin-Artists.com, the practice began as Hindu spiritual leaders explored the connections of body and spirit, during a time
when “…the idea of using the body to transcend the body played an important role in spirituality and life.” It was deemed by practitioners to
be an act of penance that would prove one’s ever-growing devotion to the Hindu gods if they engaged in progressively more intense
suspension sessions.
Native American tribes each had their own unique coming of age rituals for the men in the tribe. But few were as intense as that of the
Mandans. Before his rite-of-passage, a Mandan boy fasted for 3 days to cleanse his body of impurities. Then, on the day of the ritual,
elders of the tribe would pierce the boy’s chest, shoulder, and back muscles with large wooden splints.
Ropes, which extended from the roof of a hut, were then attached to the splints, and the young man was winched up into the air, his whole
body weight suspended from the ropes. Despite the pain, the boy was not to cry out in pain. While hanging in the air, more splints were
hammered through his arms and legs. Skulls of his dead grandfather and other ancestors were placed on the ends of the splints.
Eventually, the young man fainted from the loss of blood and the sheer pain of the torture. When the elders were sure he was unconscious,
he was lowered down and the ropes were removed. Yet the splints were left in place. When the young man recovered consciousness, he
offered his left pinky to the tribal elders to be sacrificed. He placed his finger on a block and had it swiftly chopped off. This was a gift to the
gods and would enable the young man to become a powerful hunter.
Finally, the young man ran inside a ring where his fellow villagers had gathered. As he ran, the villagers reached out and grabbed the still
embedded splints, ripping them free. The splints weren’t allowed to be pulled out the way they had been hammered in but had to be torn
out in the opposite direction, causing the young man even greater pain and worse wounds. This concluded the day’s ceremony, and the
boy was now a man.
