Alchemy of the Dragon Heart

In real life, celebrated Dutch tattooer Greg Orie—writing as Ori Ana Lightning—has gone where few dare to travel.

He invites us along for the ride through a lyrical signature prose, where we're “chatting after a good day of slinging ink, philosophizing in Tattoo Tongue about needle groupings, spring tension, voltage, and the deeper meanings of life.”

In the first section of the book, he takes you deep—first incarcerated at age seventeen—into a life of bar fights, alcohol, rock 'n' roll, chaotic relationships. He teaches the art, study, and culture of tattoo, along with the inalienable rules and the language of men. These are the years he calls “unhealed.”

In the second section, he's met Jesus and he's got one foot in the old life and one in the new. He's experimenting with love—with a capital “L”—and what it means to be a human on the planet. He wonders about his role as a parent, and his role as a partner. These are the years he calls “healing.”

And then he looks directly into the fire, realizing that personal redemption is possible, but only with authentic change. He learns to speak honestly, find his vulnerability, put down his weapons. He talks about god. For Ori, turning the corner into “healed” is a road that never ends. Join him on this gritty adventure, bold memoir, and spiritual journey. It's presented as a biographical novel because a fella like this has more freedom of expression when he loses the constraints of fact—and keeps everybody guessing.

Born in Canada as Daniel Chane Lehtinen and adopted to a Dutch family, the author grew up in the Netherlands—with a new identity. In the 1970s and 80s, the choices for this blue-collar kid were rough-and-tumble, and the boy who would become Greg Orie the tattooer was ready to rumble. He both received and gave his first tattoo at fifteen, and sat in jail for the first time at age seventeen; his trajectory was set. With time, his tastes and his talent matured, and the artist developed a legendary landmark tattoo studio that supported seven other artists and was and widely known across Australasia, Europe, and the US.

And then…a chance encounter with Jesus flipped his script—manifesting yet another name, Ori Ana—and sending him off on a miraculous adventure of personal discovery and healing. Now a nomadic spiritual practitioner, he travels from place to place offering a variety of programming (although occasionally he can be sighted inking a Japanese horimono bodysuit). His work is now offered under the Anglicized version of his birth surname, Ori Ana Lightning.