ATLAS HOODS: THE CROATIAN TATTOOED GRANDMA CULT – Viceland Today: “That little girl in the middle there is Tea Turalija. She grew up in Bosnia and Herzegovina surrounded by tattooed women. Every day she would plant kisses on her great grandmother’s hands, thinking nothing of the etchings on her arms. When she got older, Tea discovered that all the inked-up old folk around her were from the final generation of a secret Catholic cult that developed while Bosnia was occupied by the Ottoman Empire. The cult members identified each other by tattooing their hands and arms using a compound ink that was made up, in part, of human breast milk.
The cult died out when communist Yugoslavia decided religion shouldn’t exist shortly after World War II, but now that that’s all over and done with Tea is trying to revive the craze.”