My New Tattoo – Part 2

Warning: as with much of the stuff I post, there is a bit of “new age hippy shit” thrown into this blog.  But hey, it’s about my new tattoo which is - to be fair – symbolic anyway in a “new age hippy shit” kinda way; so consider yourself warned (but hopefully you’ll persevere anyway, if only to check out the cool tattoo!)

So, following on from my last post about the new tattoo: http://frog101.wordpress.com/2010/05/12/my-new-tattoo-part-1/  the time finally arrived for the ink to be added.  Personally, I’m glad there was a few weeks between then and now as I’d had a couple of further thoughts… I hoped it wouldn’t be a problem. 

“Umm, Jen, before we start, I wonder if we could change one of the colours on the tattoo?” I asked hopefully. Luckily Jen was pleasant enough and we agreed to go ahead.  So, just over an hour later the inking was completed – and taken just over 24 hours later:

 and the ink is on the shoulder.  As with all good symbolic designs, there is some meaning in here - and pleasingly there are also a number of fortunate coincidences which I hadn’t anticipated too.

I’d discussed the whole symbolism of the piece in the earlier piece, when it was all just line work. It’s the “Later Heaven” Ba Gau, used in such things as Fung Shui as the individual trigrams are placed in a more established position, rather than opposites on the circle (which is the “early heaven” version).  The 8 trigrams represent all the formats that are possible, using the straight and broken lines (which also reference back to the Yin/Yang).  Ultimately then, the eight areas represent all things possible from all yin to all Yang – light to dark, strong to weak.

The recognised yin/yang symbol in the circle also follows the same symbolism; I also found out that the orientation I have here (with the black at the top, white at the bottom) links to the two solstices – longest day and longest night – although (and this is the co-incidence) this is oriented for the northern hemisphere.  I can explain this if you like, but I’ll say that is was a contended suggestion on another forum I belong to.  For me anyway, I like this particular orientation.

To the colours (nope, I didn’t pick them at random!) The orientation of the Ba Gua is of the original source – that is North is at the bottom and South is at the top.  And this is the second personalisation to the artwork.  Eastern symbolism uses 5 elements – wood, fire, earth, metal, water -  but the path that I follow uses only four – Earth, Air, Fire, Water  – so I wanted to include that instead.  It also helps that there are 8 areas in the Ba Gua!  For those who have studied with OBOD (can’t say if it is true of other Druidic teaching) but there is symbolism in the other four areas, but they also all link to the 8 festivals in the year, the passing of the day and a whole heap of other things, which I won’t go into here.  But to be sympathetic to all this, I chose colours to represent the elements in that orientation – so the Green represents Earth, Red represents the element of Fire, the darker Blue representing water and the lighter blue representing Air (I had originally chosen Yellow as being a pleasing colour – but the more I thought about it the more the final colour choice made sense.  Perhaps there was something looking out for me!)

So the inking was done.  It took about an hour and a little bit, and 24 hours later still has a couple of sore bits as it slowly heals.  Once the inking was done, I got home and had a hot shower (this shocks the body into closing up the wound), added a little Bepanthen and started the healing process.  Unlike the lines, this still leaked a little throughout the evening, but it has started to heal up.

Whilst we were in the shop, I was interested in some of the requests that people asked for – and how Jen managed their requests.  Nothing was a “nope” – although possible customers were asked to provide reference material for some elements (and there were a couple that had me scratching my head at how that was going to work out).  It struck me at how open minded you would have to be in a tattoo shop; I guess not that surprising as there are still some people out there with very fixed ideas about tattoos and what they mean.

I would really like to thank Jen at Tattoo Central – http://www.tattoo-central.co.uk/ - for putting me at my ease and working on this fantastic piece. As I said in my first blog about this, I’m sure that this won’t be the last bit of new ink I’ll see added – but for now, I’m just going to sit back and look at it…

My New Tattoo – Part 1

So, after what seems like eons (but is about a year) I decided that I wanted a new tattoo.  Warning folks, these things can be addictive!  With my completion of my certified training with the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (http://druidry.org) I started on creating the “new” me – or at least a possibly improved version.  I’d also found a Taoist instructor, the Barefoot Doctor (http://www.barefootdoctorglobal.com) (whose podcasts successfully meld meditation with an Ibiza chilled beat.. nice!) and had started to learn Tai Chi (Yang Short Form), and all this further added to the new mix.

At the completion of the Order’s training, I had a tattoo on my left wrist.  I decided that this would be a sort of private tattoo and that I wouldn’t photograph it and put it on any of the websites or forums – not because I was ashamed, but because it was a very deeply personal tattoo for me, signifying that I had completed the Order training and a daily reminder to my connectedness to everything around me and the inspiration that exists also.

So we move forward a year – and I find that I have also moved on spiritually.  I’ve published a book and the Magpieschest blog is now a weekly deal where I endeavour to share some spiritual thought or viewpoint – you may not agree necessarily with what I’ve written (and I accept and acknowledge that) but I hope it will cause you to stop and think about your own viewpoint on life.

So with my Tai Chi Short Form now in refinement (and there will be many, many years of that!) and with my understanding of Taoism and Buddhism hopefully walking me towards Nirvana, I decided upon my new tattoo:

The image is a Ba Gua (8 sides, 8 areas).  There are two versions of this – the Early Heaven and the Later Heaven (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ba_gua).  I decided that as my own practices had evolved from what they were in a raw state as I learned more, that the Later heaven was the more appropriate symbolism to use.

Jen at www.tattoo-central.co.uk had what can only be noted as the “nightmare” of inking this in.  Tattooists hate circles and straight lines -  they are drawing this freehand and the image is on what is a moveable feast – the skin – so this will provide them with a challenge. Additionally, the body is 3D, so what is perfect on a flat surface looks a little “odd” when photographed (so it isn’t as squashed as it looks on the image).

Because of the work involved, Jen and I agreed that we would do this in two parts.  I’ll upload the second picture when the art is complete – but for now, I’m well chuffed with the first part!