Todd Cuso pulled up in front of Pastis on a black Kawasaki. He said hi, got off the bike and pulled up his black T-shirt. There was a flash of tattoo and nipple ring before he turned around to show off his masterpiece: the lion’s head carved into his back.

"It’s a little extreme-I admit that," said Mr. Cuso, once an altar boy and now a lithe man with dark hair, dark eyes and the sort of olive skin that makes women swoon. The image covered almost his entire back. The head sat under his left shoulder blade, but the thick, squiggly pink scars that formed the mane flowed down to the waistband of his shorts. From a few inches away, the effect was indistinct, confusing. Was it a plate of pasta? The aftermath of an encounter with razor-sharp fingernails? But at ten feet, it was unmistakably a lion.

"When my mother saw half the mane peeking out from under my shirt, she was worried I’d gotten hurt," continued the 34-year-old real estate manager. "When she saw the whole thing, she said, ‘Oh, my God.’ Then she kind of appreciated it. It’s rather nice. You can’t make it out close, but when you see it from ten to fifteen feet away, you say, ‘Oh, look at that.’ "

Mr. Cuso is having the lion, his astrological sign, carved into his back by Keith Alexander, a body modification expert. But even for Mr. Alexander, who claims he has done thousands of piercings and at least 150 scarifications and brandings since starting his business in 1993, this is a big deal—his largest-scale cutting ever.

Call it the New Tribalism. No longer are punks, goths and gays the only ones going to extremes to decorate their bodies. The mainstream acceptance of tattooing and body piercing—navel, nipple, and even genital jewelry barely raise an eyebrow today—has led to a new wave of ornamentation that’s even more permanent: branding and scarification. New York professionals are harking back to ancient tribal practices to mark their own personal rites of passage and prove to themselves—just as African boys and girls once proved to their elders—that they’ve got the cojones to go through with it.

"It’s a small group doing extreme body modification, but we’re seeing more of it every year," said Jane Rinzler Buckingham, president of Youth Intelligence, a Manhattan trend-forecasting firm that studies people between the ages of 12 and 34. "People are looking for a unique form of self-expression. They perceive some risk, and part of the challenge is being brave enough to risk it."

The proliferation of bod-mod Web sites like Body Modification Ezine and rec.arts.bodyart in the last few years have given enthusiasts a resource for cutting-edge information and referrals and a way to bond with others who share their sensibilities. "Body Play & Modern Primitives Quarterly," a magazine launched by San Francisco body artist Fakir Musafar, and the Fakir Body Piercing & Branding Intensives school in Menlo Park have helped fuel the movement. And with New York’s legalization of tattooing three years ago, tattoo and piercing parlors have sprouted up all over the city, giving body-art aficionados physical gathering places to trade tips and bare scars.

"The Web has made for a much more educated consumer," said Erik Sprague, 28, a former philosophy doctoral student at the University of Albany who recently joined a circus after transforming himself into a lizard—with green and black scales tattooed all over his body, his teeth filed into fangs, his tongue surgically forked and ridges implanted in his forehead. "It’s made a connection for a lot of people and created a community. Before, people were thinking, ‘Me and my two friends do this, and we don’t know if we’re the only insane people in the world.’ "

Mainstream cultural institutions are also getting into the act. The Museum of Natural History’s well-received exhibit Body Art: Marks of Cultural Identity, which closed last May, gave the movement an official imprimatur. The exhibit traced body art from 3650 B.C. to the present and included talks by local experts.

Still, cutting, branding and the even-rarer practice of implanting jewelry or other objects under the skin are still just a blip beside the city’s tattoo and piercing industry, which suppliers estimate at $2.5 million. There are only a handful of practitioners of these arts, and only one establishment, Andromeda Tattoo on St. Mark’s Place, would admit to doing them on the premises, despite the fact that the practices aren’t regulated by the New York City Health Department and are legal.

"It’s a gray area," said city council member Kathryn E. Freed, who led the fight to get tattooing legalized. "If it becomes prevalent, what do you accomplish if you make it illegal? Nothing. If you regulate it, you put in certain health and safety standards." But branding, cutting and implanting are covered under the health code’s broad nuisance provision for any practice related to public health, which authorizes investigations on a complaint-by-complaint basis, according to Erich Giebelhaus, a health-department spokesman. Mr. Giebelhaus said there have been no complaints about the practices.

Not surprisingly, doctors don’t condone them because of the risk of infection and the permanent nature of scars. They advise people who choose to go ahead to make sure the work area is sterile and the wound is kept clean afterward.

Tattoo and piercing parlors say they don’t offer cutting and branding because they either mistakenly believe the practices are illegal, are worried about liability or just don’t find them aesthetically pleasing. "Especially on people who don’t keloid very easily, you’ll just end up with a big blob," said Michelle Myles, owner of Daredevil Tattoo Studio on Ludlow Street.

"Is it folk art?" Mr. Alexander asked. "Well, it’s art on folk. It’s new and exciting yet ancient. Tattoos don’t do anything for you in the dark. I’ve run my hands over someone’s back after it heals, and it’s an amazing sensation—it’s tactile and it’s sensual. It’s like body Braille.

"If you have a scar, you’ve been through an ordeal. People have a difficult time wrapping their brain around the reasons someone would want scarification. Well, I can’t understand why anyone would want to have their breast sliced open and a synthetic bag shoved in."

The reasons people seek out cutting or branding are, in fact, myriad, and the practices’ appeal crosses ethnic, socioeconomic and gender lines. For decades, African American fraternities have gotten the symbol of their organizations seared into their flesh as part of their initiation process. More recently, Asian frats have adopted this practice. But some individuals have more complicated motivations.

"For some people, these behaviors are a search for spiritual healing and the establishment of some order in their lives," said Armando R. Favazza, M.D., a professor of psychiatry at the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Medicine and author of "Bodies Under Siege: Self-Mutilation and Body Modification in Culture and Psychiatry" (Johns Hopkins Press, 1996). "These are people who are trying to find deeper meaning, something transcendent about the body." Though people who practice body modification have more psychological problems as a group than those who don’t, "you can’t make the sweeping generalization that with everyone who gets a penis piercing or a clit ring, there’s something pathological going on," Dr. Favazza said, adding that the same argument holds for people who get cut or branded.

Like Mr. Alexander, many followers of body modification view it as art. "It’s self-fulfillment," Mr. Sprague said. "As an artist, I work on my body as a canvas for the same reason a painter paints on canvas."

O’Brien 7, a 27-year-old tattoo artist at Studio Enigma in Astoria, also has an artistic vision for his body: He’s well on his way to tattooing his entire right half and branding his entire left half with small circles applied with the tip of a blowtorch. "I find myself trapped between modern society and very primitive society with what I think I should do with my body," O’Brien 7 said. "I see branding my skin like making a totem pole. It’s like a rite of passage. To me, it’s art."

Similarly, Mr. Cuso chose to be carved as a reminder of tough times he’d weathered. "I went through some shit last year, problems with family and everything," he said, declining to elaborate. "After I started doing it, it became a symbol of it all. I draw strength from it." Though he admitted he dabbles in S&M, the pain of the cutting is just a means to an end, he said, and he’s proud of his ability to withstand it. "No one else is prepared to go to this length. This is way simpler than tattooing or piercing, and it says a lot more."

Mr. Alexander has no cuttings or brands himself, but his arms and torso are heavily tattooed, including a wild boar splashed across his right pectoral. ("Nothing you can’t hide under an Armani suit," he said.) He once had more than 30 piercings but has cut back to one. A Brooklyn native, he never attended college but reads heavily and considers himself a scholar.

Before Mr. Alexander would cut Mr. Cuso, he had to go through the body artist’s vetting process. First, Mr. Alexander exchanges e-mail with his prospective clients. "They have to engage me. If you can’t write something compelling, I won’t work on you," he said, sounding eerily like a high school English teacher. After the client has passed the writing test, Mr. Alexander meets with him or her several times so they can get to know each other and build trust. But even after he agrees to do the work, the design has to be worthy. "I won’t do your girlfriend’s name," he said. "It’s got to be a powerful symbol." He favors runes and kanji ("each symbol has phonetic value as well as an ideographic meaning"). By this time, Mr. Alexander said, he usually has come to consider the client a friend and either charges just a nominal fee or nothing at all.

For each of his sessions, Mr. Cuso sits cross-legged, his back hunched over, on a cushion on the floor of Mr. Alexander’s apartment in Bay Ridge. A stickler for hygiene, Mr. Alexander swabs Mr. Cuso’s back with Betadine and, wearing gloves, sets to work with a disposable scalpel. "I like doing longer cuts in long motions," he said. When his client has had enough, "I can feel the body tense up—then I stop. I don’t have a sadistic bone in my body."

Mr. Cuso has had four sessions so far, each about an hour and a half long. He started in February and plans to return at least twice for more detail work, like "a snarl around the teeth," he said. "The mouth, the nose, it’s all very plain and bold right now. There are just two slits for eyes." The Brooklyn native had initially planned to get a much smaller cutting—four inches by four inches—and had agreed to pay the body artist about $400 for it. As Mr. Cuso’s ambitions for his cutting grew, the price did not. "This is an outrageous piece Keith is doing," Mr. Cuso said. "He doesn’t really care about that [money]. He wants to make it really nice."

While cuttings can be very intricate, the best brands are simple, since the technique isn’t as precise. Fleshy parts of the body, like thighs or upper arms, allow for a deeper strike, which yields a cleaner, longer-lasting image. Mr. Alexander cuts sheet metal into strips and bends them to fit the design. Gripping each strip with pliers, he uses a blowtorch to heat it to 1,800 degrees—hot enough to leave a third-degree burn. There’s instant nerve damage on application, and most say the messy healing process is more uncomfortable than the branding itself. Each line of the design equals one strike of the metal, so a Y shape would require three strikes. Once Mr. Alexander did a brand of 60 strikes, a series of dots covering the forearm of a New York man. One of the most popular brand styles is a zigzag armband, with a dot in the center of each open triangle.

The after-care for a cutting or brand is paradoxical: "You’re supposed to take care of it to avoid infection but abuse it to get a good scar," said Paul Fitzgibbons, 43, another of Mr. Alexander’s clients. Mr. Alexander recommends cleaning the wound with antibacterial liquid soap and using an exfoliating scrub to irritate it.

A 43-year-old retail manager for an upscale department store, Mr. Fitzgibbons has an armband brand—but that’s hardly all. "He looks incredibly conservative," Mr. Alexander said. "Then he takes off his shirt, and he’s got tattoos, brands and cuttings everywhere." The mousy Mr. Fitzgibbons knows he doesn’t "look like the type," and for him, that was a big part of the draw. He saw body modification as a way to break out of the straitjacket of a constricting existence and the legacy of a strict Catholic upbringing. "I’m a very normal, ordinary guy," he said. "I have a regular job, and I wear a suit and tie every day. I wanted to experience different things or live out different fantasies.

"I’m not a masochist in any sense of the word, but I did want to test myself to see how far I could go. It had to do with the type of lifestyle I was leading up until then, a very quiet, stoic, sedate—I hate to say it—uninteresting lifestyle. There were a lot of things I missed, when you’re in high school or college and you’re kind of wild. I was never a wild college student, so you might say this is kind of a catch-up."

His first cutting, a couple of triangles sliced over his right biceps two years ago, gave him a taste for more. "It was an extraordinary experience," said Mr. Fitzgibbons, who recently moved from Scarsdale to Fairfax, Va. "It didn’t hurt. When the scalpel separated the skin, it was more of a burning and warming sensation than a painful one. It was a more spiritual feeling for me. I felt empowered while I was going through it. It gave me some strength."

He followed that up with an infinity symbol branded below his left shoulder. "There’s no pain, because as soon as the iron touches skin, it kills off nerve endings," he said. The smell, after the little puff of smoke on contact, was unforgettable, though. "It smelled like burnt flesh, burnt meat. It’s a very pungent, sickly odor." With each strike of the sizzling metal, Mr. Fitzgibbons became less nervous. "I don’t want to say it gets routine, but you get used to watching it."

"I suspended for fifty minutes," Mr. Fitzgibbons said. "The process of actually being lifted into the air—your skin is stretched. There’s a tremendous amount of pain as your body tries to adjust to what’s happening, and then it reaches a new level, and you kind of just float. I kind of went into a trance, and I was moved around slightly and spun a little. It was an awesome experience. It seemed like I was flying—clouds, sky…."

Rose Stevens (not her real name) has also seen her fascination with body modification escalate. But recently, as Ms. Stevens sat on a stool at the Mercury Lounge on East Houston Street, where she does data entry and works the door, she looked more like a pretty librarian than a serious bod-modder. She has black-framed glasses, long, lustrous black hair and flawless olive skin. "If you met me, you’d never come anywhere near guessing any of this stuff is on my body," the 30-year-old Brandeis University graduate had told me, and she was right.

Before, that is, she showed me her tongue. After seeing a cover model on "Body Play" with a forked tongue, she said, "I became completely enthralled with the idea of being able to grab things with both sides of my tongue." She had the operation. She loves her tongue. "It’s like the sensation of kissing yourself 24-7," she said. When she gleefully split the two legs of her tongue apart quickly a few times, it looked like the dance of a chorus girl. Then she crossed the legs. Dance over.

The rest of "this stuff" on her body includes cuttings on both wrists, triangles inside bigger triangles, that she did herself while in college; panels of blue clouds and psychedelic lightning tattooed on her sides; a diamond cutting that stretches across her lower back, from hip to hip; a sun branded into the center of her diamond; a mosaic of straight and wavy lines on her belly, right above her pelvis.

"The lower abdomen is a very sexy part of a women," Ms. Stevens said. "There’s something very precious about it and to have that kind of marking there—someplace I relate to with a lot of love—and the scars, I relate to them with a lot of love, so it seemed like a good pairing. I like the texture of scars. They’re more sensitive to the touch, and geometric designs add texture."

The pain, she said, is inconsequential. "Exploring the body is not pain to me. It’s not that different from if you asked a runner or weightlifter or rock climber, ‘Does that hurt?’ Of course, there’s some pain involved, but it’s all in your mental perception and how you relate to the body." The four suspensions she has done were a "euphoric experience," she said.

Dressed in dark-blue jeans and a black cardigan, Ms. Stevens looked like everyone else. When she spoke, the split tongue might have been only a deep groove. And that’s just the way she likes it. "It’s not for everyone to see," she said. "It’s a very personal, artistic expression of me.

"A lot of people try to compartmentalize me: ‘Oh, she’s into S&M.’ ‘She’s a goth.’ ‘She’s a punk.’ I’m not any of that. I’m a real normal Joe."