To celebrate the end of summer (farewell, tattoos aplenty!) and welcome the beginning of fall (come out, come out, wherever you are!), I am posting this appropriate tattoo celebrating the new season.
I was fortunate enough to meet Brian on Friday, right in front of Borders on Penn Plaza.
As the last weekend of summer was upon us, it seemed bittersweet to find his tattoo above. Brian told me that it is a depiction of Sahmin, who is the god of Autumn in Irish mythology. When I went to research this further, I could not find a reference to such a deity, but I do believe that Brian was referring to Samhain, a traditional Celtic celebration after the end of summer.
As for the actual deity in question, let's just say it is perfect for the season, the arboreal face bestrewn with leaves. Perhaps my friend over at NeoPagan Ink can shed some light on this.
This piece was inked by Joe Ferzola (click for nice bio at About.com) at Inklinations in Copiague, New York. The link to Inklinations takes you to the Devil's Den in Copiague, run by a long-time associate of Joe's, Tony Lafemina.
Thanks to Brian for sharing his autumnal tattoo with us here at Tattoosday!
1 comment:
Hmm, this is either another closeted pagan or a confused individual who didn't research their image. There is no god by the name of Samhain (pronounced sow-inn) or of similar spelling. Samhain is a holiday that marks the thinning of the veil between the land of the living and the land of dead/ancestors. It has become the modern Halloween but is still considered a high holiday among neopagans. This tattoo looks like a textbook Green Man to me, sometimes also called a Green George. He is a nature god of Britain and Europe, the lord of the woods, animals, plants and wildness in general. His popularity has spread in recent years, especially among environmentalists and he's become something of a secular symbol for them.
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