I have a Celtic zoomorphic triskel in the small of my back - three horses in a circle with a lot of knotwork. I've seen the design on jewelry, blankets, wall hangings, etc., and always loved it - I'd thought of it as my personal symbol for years, and my first magickal journal had a leather cover with the design embossed on it. I thought about it for three years before I had it done.
For me, it was the perfect choice. The horse is a symbol of strength, and the placement over my spine at the small of my back was intended to confer strength to me, which I sorely needed, and I think it has done its work (physically, emotionally and spiritually). I also associate horses with beauty, grace and freedom, as well as practical wisdom. The three horses, at the time, represented Epona, Macha, and Dierdre to me (and could just as easily depict any triune-aspect deity). Now I tend to associate horses with Odin - fortunately it's a flexible symbol! The animals are following one behind the other, in a continuous circle, so it's emblematic of the cyclic nature of the universe; combined with the endless knot motif, a symbol of eternity, but an eternity of change and motion rather than of stasis.
The tat took four hours to do - it's black ink only, but intricate and with lots of beautiful shading - and I was in and out of trance the whole time, with pain endorphins rushing and Rage on the stereo (to this day listening to that album sends me into trance almost instantly).
Incidentally, this piece was done by a tattoo artist who was himself a magician - he did beautiful work, and refused to do "frivolous" tattoos for people who just wanted ink and had no good reason for it. (And the better he thought your reasons were, the better deal he'd give you on the work.) Anyway, one thing I found interesting was that he said he had been doing a lot of lower back/base of spine pieces that year (1998), and that he believed that the body parts people chose for their tattoos were very significant. He said they seemed to go in waves, which he felt had something to do with spiritual movements rather than current fashion. One year everyone was getting things on their left ankle, then next year it was the right shoulderblade, and so on. I'm fascinated by the idea that there might be some sort of collective consciousness aspect involved in tattoo sites... |
