A symbolic tattoo works best when the image means something to you and still reads clearly on skin. The references below range from love, family and friendship symbols to strength, spirituality, travel, food and mythology. Use them as starting points rather than designs to copy exactly.
How to choose a symbolic tattoo that will still make sense later
Start with the meaning before the motif. Write the idea in one short phrase, then look for a symbol that communicates that idea without needing a long explanation. If you are drawn to historical or religious imagery, verify its meaning and context before committing to it.
- Meaning: Can you explain why this symbol belongs to you in one sentence?
- Readability: Will the main shape still be recognizable from a few feet away?
- Scale: Tiny designs need fewer lines and larger gaps than a screen image suggests.
- Placement: Test the design at actual size on the body area, not only as a large image on your phone.
- Longevity: Ask the artist which fine details are likely to soften or merge as the tattoo ages.
We will discard the many listed historical data and anthropological information about traces of unknown times and customs. The old age of the tradition explains its meaning, neither for those people whose worldview is unknown to us nor for our contemporaries – with a completely different description of the world.
Let’s refrain from hypotheses about the ecstatic nature of pain when getting a tattoo, although this topic is not without interest. Here we offer our version of the meaning of a tattoo, relying on the personal experience and impressions of its wearers and tattoo artists, as well as on our concept of the existence of a mythological layer of conscious reality for a person of any time and people.
Tattooing is usually perceived as an archaic custom, unworthy of a civilized person, or as a return to an ancient ritual that promotes the acquisition of some personal resource of power.
It is worth highlighting the symbolic signs of large and small communities as a conscious marker of belonging to a group (such as criminal tattoos, tattoos of bikers, and other subcultures), and we will consider the general meaning of this practice for the individual. Besides, of course, the modern fashion for tattoos has given birth to a meaningless stream of symbolically unconscious permanent drawings on the body. However, this layer of kitsch crafts can be subjected to psychological analysis as a common theme of the generation.
