Scarification

According to Victoria Pitts,professor of sociology at the City University, New York in New York City, scarification, in the US emerged in San Francisco in the mid 1980s as part of a new body-modification movement.

It was originally a practice which was adopted by gay and lesbian communities. By the early1990s, however, members of the 'modern primitive' movement began using it. They tried to recreate and revive rituals from around the world and obtain a kind of 'spiritual' experience:

http://www.lifeinthefastlane.ca/extreme-body-piercing-branding-scarification/offbeat-news .

I actually think that the pain of extreme forms of piercing is probably numbed by the release of pain-killing endorphins in the brain which is where the so called 'spiritual' experience comes from. Not for the faint-hearted, however.