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My tattoo.
After a lot of planning, translating, and general sorting out I go this one done just before the end of '07. It is a magical piece, for various reasons. One, there's the straight-up significance of the runes making up the phrase, and the phrase itself. It translates to "Loki's Own," and it's a concrete expression of my avowed intent: to be at one with my God, to function as a living expression of His consciousness and His mysteries, to let Him walk in this world through me. Things had always been kind of fraught, kind of fractious and uneasy, between myself and Loki, and this was an expression of my commitment to tackle that and try for a more harmonious interaction. (Well, as harmonious as you're ever likely to get with Himself...)
There's the magical function of having an "employee ID" on one's person. It functions as a sort of backstage pass in certain circumstances (let me in, please, I'm here to fix stuff and I'm not for dinner). It doesn't let me go everywhere or keep me safe from everything, but it lets me do things I wouldn't normally be able/permitted to do. Just getting the runes inked wouldn't have accomplished this, BTW--it's a specific modification with a specific intent woven into it and that's what gives it it's power. This is often expressed in terms of having an "energy mod" (although I'm uneasy with terms like that, they can make a useful shorthand), a change in the "astral" or "energy" body as well as the visible alteration.
And then there was the fact that I was even asked to get it, which was incredibly significant for me. The thing is, I love tattoos. I've loved them ever since I was a kid, and I've always been into the idea of getting lots and lots of ink. But I always held back.
First of all, getting inked is spending money on your appearance, an unforgivable act of vanity. Besides that I just knew that if I tried to get one I'd screw it up somehow--end up choosing something I'd regret, choosing something with an unpleasant significance that I wasn't aware of, asking the wrong questions, not asking the right questions, maybe inadvertantly offending the tattooist. Worst of all, tattoos... those are for other people. Wild, clever, creative, challenging, special people. Real people. If I got a tattoo everyone would think that I was trying to be special, trying to be real, and start working extra-hard to let me know that I wasn't.
Some of this was kind of borne out after I got my rose. Anti-ink people in my life expounded on the extravagance, tatt snobs made a point of sneering at the design. Although I love the piece, I never managed to psych myself up enough to get the next one. The whole process was tied up with much anxiety and suckitude and I couldn't get past that.
So being asked to get a tattoo for my Gods was an amazing thing. I was being told: I think you're real. Some people I've spoken to about it misunderstand the piece as something "demanded" under duress; it's not, it's more like an endorsement. |
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