Seeking Serenity: Reporter’s first ink tells ancient tale with enduring relevance

I love tattoos. Call me a stereotypical millennial with a liberal arts degree — you wouldn’t be wrong! — but there’s something I just find so fascinating about them.

I think the thing that I find most interesting about tattoos is their permanence. Unlike virtually any form of self-expression, tattoos really are forever. Unless you, like, lose a limb or something, you’re stuck with that baby for the rest of your natural life.

Truly, what other decisions can you make on an average day that will leave a literally indelible mark on your life? Not many. You can always move out of your current house, leave your current job — you can even leave your spouse more easily than you can leave behind a tattoo.

Tattoos are real, inescapable permanence, and I guess I just find things that really truly do last “forever” really interesting. What’s more, I find the things that people get tattooed on themselves really interesting. Faced with the prospect of permanently marking their bodies with an image that will follow them to their grave, people pick some fascinating things to put on themselves.

Anyone you know with tattoos probably has an interesting story about what they mean to them — however, they’re probably sick of telling that story, so maybe think twice before asking them to tell it for the millionth time. But still, some people load themselves up with tattoos, each one meaning something or perhaps only there because it looks cool, while others might get designs slowly after agonizing over the eternal nature of it all for a while.

It should really come as no surprise that I was in the latter category. While I’ve known that I wanted a tattoo for several years now, I’ve only gotten one, relatively recently at that.

On my left forearm, a hand plunges up out of the water, triumphantly thrusting a sword toward the heavens. Wrapped around the sword are climbing roses, with a crown sitting atop the sword. Looming over it all in the background is some sort of circle which has sprouted bat wings.

Done by the wonderfully talented Tom Kraky, who used to work for Electric City Tattoo in Scranton before moving on to be an in-house artist at a New York City shop owned by Inked Magazine, my piece is an abstract take on a key part of the legends of King Arthur.

Arthur, it is said, received his sword Excalibur from the Lady in the Lake, who gave him the sword which may or may not have been imbued with magical powers to fight off whoever the bad guy was in this version of the tale — while Americans probably associate Arthur mostly with England, it was actually the Welsh who started the legends about him and those legends were greatly expounded upon by French writers, so Arthur’s villains depended a lot on who was telling the story.

Something about this scene has always felt very powerful to me.

While Arthur’s adventures have always been closely associated with Catholicism in Europe — you’ve seen “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” right? — this is one of those moments where Europe’s older ways creep in. While Arthur had God on his side, it was a water spirit who gave him the most important symbol of his power, as if the Earth itself approved of him.

That sort of symbolism and closeness to the earth were driving forces behind the design for the tattoo. I will admit, though, that the wings were added just because we thought they looked “metal,” which they seriously do, but I’ve since taken them as a symbol of whatever adversities du jour Arthur found himself fighting against. In this way, the whole thing is a reminder to keep going, in the face of any adversity, even if it has big, scary bat wings. Just keep going.

It’s a message I’d like to continue in my next tattoo, whenever that happens. While I only got my first one on the second to last day of 2019, I was planning to get the second one by now. Obviously, that’s not happening, but I already know what it’ll be.

The Hanged Man is the 12th “major arcana” card in the standard tarot deck, which means it is one of (typically) 22 cards that actually have their own names, differentiating themselves from the nearly 60 other cards in a tarot deck which more closely resemble a standard playing card deck, just with different suits.

The Hanged Man hangs from his foot, upside down, in a tree, with an almost serene expression on his face and a halo around his head. While I’m not sure how much stock I personally have in the tarot as a divining tool, I do admire the symbolism behind this card.

The card is usually interpreted as symbolizing self-sacrifice in either the pursuit of self-improvement or for the greater good. The halo around the Hanged Man’s head symbolizes the divine epiphany he’s had as a result of great sacrifice. The card is often associated with the Norse god Odin, who hanged himself from the world tree Yggdrasil in order to gain knowledge of language and poetry which he then gave to people — Norse mythology is weird, man. But the card is also closely associated with the sacrifice of Jesus, whose story I’m sure our general readership is more familiar with.

Regardless of whether or not the tarot can actually provide any good advice, this card at least does: be willing to give of yourself for the benefit of others. It’s a message I think more people could use a reminder of, and one day, I hope to have that constant reminder permanently marked on myself.

For now though, I have one important message, more important now than ever before:

Just keep going.