Three for Thursday: Hamsas All Around

Late last year and, at the beginning of this year, three very dear and close people to me got hamsa tattoos. Hamsas are talismans that span cultures and religions and are thought, in some cases, to ward off the evil eye. The symbol has great significance in some aspects of Jewish culture and thus, when my wife, my younger daughter, and one of our closest friends all wanted a hamsa, it happened, one could say almost mystically, in threes.

What's cool about these three hamsas is that they are so different - they are not "matching" tattoos, yet each one is a companion to the others, as they were all crafted and tattooed by the talented Alex McWatt (@alexthreekings) and Three Kings Tattoo (@threekingstattoo) in the East Village.

First up is our dear friend Felicia's, above her inner ankle:

Most hamsas include an eye, and other design elements are included. In Felicia's case, she had Alex add a branch, representing the Tree of Life, the Hebrew word "Chai," and a red heart. Chai also has a lot of meaning in Judaism - it literally means life. Felicia's hamsa is symbolic and has the outline of the traditional protective hand.

My wife Melanie got her hamsa on her inner left forearm: 

Alex McWatt at work on Melanie's hamsa

One of the cool things about hamsas is that, as designs, they can be interpreted in so many different ways. Melanie's is oriented differently than Felicia's and consists solely of the traditional eye and a full Tree of Life, whose branches extend throughout the tattoo:

Last up is my daughter Shayna, whose hamsa is on the outer part of her leg, above the ankle:

Shayna's hamsa has no tree, but holds a "Chai" in its palm, in the middle of a six-sided star, the Jewish Star of David. It is purposely unshaded, except for the blue in the eye, and the three fish on the fingers. Alex used bold thick lines to create a really striking tattoo.

Three women, three hamsas, three different tattoos that hold deep personal meaning to their wearers.

Note I do not have any direct quotes from Felicia, Melanie, or Shayna. Meaning is interpreted differently, and it is hard to say "this means this" and "that means that," when the tattoos possess a higher spiritual significance.

You can see a half-dozen or so other hamsas featured on Tattoosday over the years here.

Thanks to Melanie, Shayna and Felicia for sharing, and to Alex McWatt, who continues to amaze us with his work!

This entry is ©2018 Tattoosday.

If you are seeing this on another website other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Lennée Reid

Our next tattooed poet is Lennée Reid, who sent us this photo of her tattoo:

Lennée tells us:

"This tattoo is like my poetry, rich with natural,  native, and pagan symbolism.  The tree of life is an L for my name and has my astrological symbol, Aries, in its pattern.  My favorite colors, purple blue and green, are used in the flower blossoming and butterfly in flight transformation .  The happy cloud is off to the side above water which gives the whole picture depth and perspective.  I designed its concept.  It's a beautiful cover up done by Electric Rose in when it was on Harrison in Olympia, WA.  A cover up of the same design, smaller and poorly executed, by some dude in Iowa."

Lennée shared this poem, as well:

Totem 

The flight of a butterfly
Off of a beaver dam
Into the song of blue whale
Heard by the seal
Diving near the shore
Seen by the turtle
At home on a log
Watched over by bear
On her journey
To the waters that flow
From the source
High atop mountains
Only accessible
By the ram
Crowned with horns
Seeking from above
Guidance of the eagle
Who's always at home
Above the storms

~ ~ ~

Lennée Reid is a geeky veganish universalist QPOC witch doctor mama bear poet activist survivor goddess on the spectrum who doesnt like labels that uses punctuation when she d@mn well pleases smile emoticon period Lennée has appeared in the UPS DIRT! project, Creative Colloquy, godgirl,  and is forthcoming in Lost Tower.  Her poems and photos are often in "Works In Progress". Lennée repped Olympia Peoples Mic in NYC for WOWPS 2016 and has performed across the USA. Find her on everywhere online @lenneereid and mamamystic.wordpress.com

Thanks to Lennée for sharing her tattoo and poem with us here on Tattoosday's Tattooed Poets Project!

This entry is ©2016 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another website other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Rachel and Her Tree of Life

I met Rachel after work one day on Wall Street and asked her about this tattoo gracing her right arm:

It's a pretty cool concept with our solar system swirling above a tree bordered by an embryo and a skull.

She credited the work to Rich from High Roller Tattoo in Hicksville, New York.

"It was like six or seven years ago," she told me, "it was just something I came up with artistically and he [Rich] cleaned it up ... it's basically the tree of life."

Rachel even went so far as to send me a side-by-side comparison of the tattoo, then and now, as an interesting illustration on how the tattoo has aged over six years:

Thanks to Rachel for sharing this cool tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2014 Tattoosday.

If you are seeing this on another website other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Claire's Tree of Life

I was at the Canal Street subway station waiting for the N train to Brooklyn when I spotted a young woman with this thigh tattoo:

She told me her name was Claire and that she got this Tree of Life tattoo because she has suffered from epilepsy since she was a little girl.

The tree is accompanied by an Irish blessing that serves as a reminder that angels are watching over her. It reads:

"May you always walk in sunshine. May you never want for more. May Irish angels rest their wings right beside your door."

She credited the work to an artist named Jackie at a shop in Staten Island, New York.

Thanks to Claire for sharing her tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2014 Tattoosday.

If you are seeing this on another website other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Sue Swartz

Today's tattooed poet, Sue Swartz, hails from Bloomington, Indiana, and offers up her forearm for all the world to see:

Photo by John Narmontas

Sue explains:

This is a 2-part tattoo story. On my 54^th birthday, I had the Hebrew word for truth (emet) imprinted on my right (i.e., writing) forearm in traditional black Torah script. I wanted a useful reminder for my art; also the word contains one letter that is a stand-in for life/God and two others that spell out the word “dead”. Okay, it was a little heavy. Two years later, this past November, when I couldn’t take looking at the damn truth anymore, Dina Verplank of Voluta Tattoo in Indianapolis beautified the baldness of the lone word with a branch from the Tree of Life and a spiral/root system.

Photo by John Narmontas

 And Sue offers up this poem:

MID-LIFE

Damn. Another 3 a.m. flying dream.

This time I’m on a cement slab hurtling toward over-grown lawns

covered with large plastic pigs and spiked coat hangers.

This is not what normal people dream.

Awake, I tilt (normal, not normal) on a giant seesaw of guilt

by association and realize:

I might not really know what normal is—

My dead – crazy bastards every one – left far too many clues,

though not one legible note of navigational instruction.

Minds overtaken by spirals and whirligigs, Greek letters

and the rising price of toilet paper, they wore the warp & weave

of their affliction stoically.

Seamlessly, one might say, and with understated finesse.

Running off to Florida on a Tuesday-morning whim:

In the realm of normal.

Snapped-on pills for breakfast:

Mildly normal.

Washing, washing again, again, again. Refusing to shake

the hand of strangers:

Undeniably normal (well, yeah – you never know

who’s got what).

With garments torn & heads made bare, they bob in and out

of traffic, sit close to me in restaurants, carefully chewing

with their electrode mouths.

My dead have secrets. That much is abundantly clear.

I listen for whispers of their generous madness, find

they’ve come while I’m asleep. Bad timing is all I’ve got.

That, and fingerprints left on the towels.

No, I don’t shush them away: then I’d lose the true nature

of everything. If I don’t know what normal is, why not

claim these people as kin?

How else to name my own impurities and small derangements?

~ ~ ~

Sue Swartz is a poet, hired-gun-political writer, amateur ballroom dancer, favored grandparent, social justice activist, occasional yogini, and creator of alternative Jewish ritual. Her work has been published in Cutthroat Magazine, Lilith, 5 a.m., SmartishPace, and elsewhere. She wishes she had a book you could buy. You can find her blog Awkward Offerings at http://swartzsue.wordpress.com/. She makes her home in Bloomington, Indiana and believes that Leviticus (You are not to make gashes in your flesh for the dead nor incise marks on yourself.) goes a bit overboard.

Thanks to Sue for sharing her truthful tattoo with us here on Tattoosday! 

This entry is ©2011 Tattoosday. The poem is reprinted here with the permission of the author.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

 

Ben Commemorates the Cat and the Tree

Ben recalls wandering off one day when he was four years old. He was up in Wells, Maine with his family and no one knew where he'd gone.

Fortunately for Ben, someone did know: the family cat. A la Lassie, the feline led his parents straight to Ben, who was sitting under a tree, munching on blueberries.

To this day, Ben regards this as a crucial moment in his life when he was saved by the cat.

He collaborated with Brendan Rowe at Pins and Needles Tattoo in Portland, Maine to come up with a commemorative tattoo to honor this animal:


Brendan is now working out of Unbreakable Tattoo is Studio City, California.

The tree nearby on his left forearm, was inked, in part, to complement the cat:


It is, however, also a nod to Gustav Klimt's "Tree of Life".
Not an imitation, but a variation.

Thanks to Ben for sharing these tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

Tiffany's Tree of Life

I was walking through Penn Station back on July 3 when I noticed the woman ahead of me had an interesting-looking tattoo on her inner left bicep.

But it was rush hour and I was off to a small birthday gathering so, when we went separate ways at the turnstiles, I sighed and thanked the tattoo deities for letting me meet two other people earlier in the day.

A few minutes later, however, while pacing the platform, I ran into her again. And, well, I couldn't resist talking to her about this fascinating tattoo:


Tiffany, who was visiting the East Coast from Los Angeles, was quick to point out that this was not the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden. Apparently the serpent confuses a lot of people.

In fact, Tiffany says the tree is based on the tree of life in Angkor Wat, Cambodia, where she visited two summers ago.

The presence of the serpent is due to her affection for snakes, and the image of the reptile climbing the tree in pursuit is a nod to the circle of life. The tree sustains the bird; the bird sustains the snake.

Of the three tattoos I saw on my birthday, this one just made my day. The detail is phenomenal, and I just loved the concept of the piece.

It was tattooed by Henry Lewis at Incognito Tattoo in Pasadena, although he has moved to Northrn California. Although not listed on their website, he has been associated with Everlasting Tattoo in San Francisco. Incognito's site says he still makes guest appearances at the shop in Pasadena.

Thanks much to Tiffany for capping off an awesome day by sharing her wonderful tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

James and His Tree of Life

I spotted this Tree of Life tattoo on Court Street in downtown Brooklyn and started talking to James about it.

It was inked by an ex-girlfriend of his about ten years ago.

The tattoo consists of the tree of life, under which sits Buddha (or The Acorn Man) who is holding a chalice. James pointed out that he is surrounded by a serpent, although it's hard to tell in the piece.

Below it is a rune of protection.

Thanks to James for sharing this tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!


Update: One of My regular readers, Livia Indica, who blogs at NeoPagan Ink, pointed me to this source, the Cernunnos on the Gundestrup cauldron:


James told me it was a Buddha, but the similarity between the tattoo and this Celtic god is worth noting. Thanks Livia!