Madonna has revealed that she and her 16-year-old son David Banda have matching Kabbalah-inspired “tree of life” tattoos on their wrists.
In a series of posts to her Instagram story on Monday 4 April, the “Material Girl” singer gave her followers a behind the scenes look as she visited a tattoo parlour with the teenager.
One picture showed her arm next to David’s, with the matching ink on each of their arms. “#FamilyAffair,” she captioned the post.
Madonna debuted the ink on her forearm in an an earlier post to Instagram in March, but David’s tattoo is new.
In one photograph posted to her story, he sits with his arm outstretched, looking up at the camera.
Madonna began studying Kabbalah shortly after her daughter Lourdes was born in 1996.
Under Kabbalah tradition, the tree illustrates how God expresses his energy throughout the universe through angels. Each of the branches symbolises a particular type of creative force overseen by an archangel.
The mother of six also got a brand new tattoo in tribute to her late mother – the word “maman” written in red gothic script.
Her mother, also named Madonna, died of breast cancer when the singer was five years old.
Madonna documented the process in a video posted to Instagram on Monday. “My turn to bleed for my mother,” she captioned the post.
In the short clip, an artist can be seen working on her arm as she gasps in pain.
“I’m doing this for my mother,” she tells the camera. “Because when you give birth, what do you do? You bleed. It’s all connected.”
At one point, David appears and gives his mother a kiss on the cheek. As he reads out “maman”, Madonna explains: “I can’t put my mum’s name because it’s the same as mine, it would look like I’ve put my own damn name on my arm.
“My mother bled for me so I’m bleeding for her, it’s a family affair,” she added.
Madonna famously got her first tattoo in 2020 in tribute to her six children. She got the letters L R D M S E for each of their initials; Lourdes, Rocco, David, Mercy, and twins Stella and Estere.
