Tattoo no. 1

I have all ready had many people who have asked me what it all means...

You could probably ask any one who has known me for a while and they could tell you I have a fascination with dragonflies. There is the fantasy element for the dragon, but more importantly there is an actual story that goes with it.

When I was six or seven and my parents at the time decided to join the catholic church my siblings and I where put into Sunday bible school. They told us wonderful stories about far away places that excited my imagination. There was one story though that disturbed me and really is probably the foundation of my issues with the Judaeo-Christian concept of god. We where told the story that went something like this "
And he went up from thence unto Beth-el: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them." II Kings 2:23-24. This seemed to me to not be the act of a loving god and through various misadventures found my self invited out of the room. I instead spent the rest of the morning annoying the inhabitants of a small pond out back of the church. There I found one of the ugliest bugs I had yet seen. the nymph stage of the dragonfly. Not the most attractive thing, but as it turned out it was working on becoming one of the most beautiful flying machines I have yet seen. Of course it was a dragonfly. It took me years of thought to realize that if there was any proof in my admittedly limited experience that there was something greater than myself at work in the universe this was a clear example of it. Call it god, geia, zhu, aum, universal conscious or the great spaghetti monster in the sky. To me it amounts to the same thing, something I can't prove is there but might be and I had one small example of what I would think a thing greater than my self my do give the bent to do so.

Now there is the story and the reason behind the dragonfly. The ouroboros is one of the more ancient symbols for eternity and in a way represents my belief in life after death or that I have an eternal soul but more specifically it is a symbolic representation of the first law of thermodynamics. Which is an expression of the universal law of conservation of energy. This law simply means that energy can not be lost it can be changed from one state to another but can never be lost. So to me this means that the electrical energy my body is currently running on and makes me me will continue in one state or another after my body dies. Thus the ouroboros's guise of infinity. The double helix represents what I believe to be our greatest achievement as man during my life time. I was tempted to do something related to the space race of the 60's but that was before my time. Even still I probably would have chosen the double helix for the same reason.

The zodiac signs incorporated into the dragonfly's body are representative of my two sons the first a Gemini and the second a Virgo. There is an obvious omission at the tail of the dragonfly which I have purposely had left that why for the incase that my wife and I have another child that will need to be added.

There are three other symbols more "hidden" though not purposefully. The crescent in the dragonfly's wings has a double meaning. It is a symbol of the female aspect of that "force" if you will in the universe that embodies the creation aspect of things. It also is the Egyptian symbol for the god Thoth. Who in ancient Egypt was described as follows: "He was considered the heart and tongue of Ra as well as the means by which Ra's will was translated into speech. He has also been likened to the Logos of Plato and the mind of God. (see The All) In the Egyptian mythology, he has played many vital and prominent roles, including being one of the two gods (the other being Ma'at) who stood on either side of Ra's boat. He has further been involved in arbitration, magic, writing, science, and the judging of the dead." Wiki. "He can be represented as the reckoner of times and seasons by a lunar disk sitting in a crescent moon being placed atop his head." Hence the crescent and his most important attribute is that of judge or giver of justice.

There is a second Egyptian symbol not meant but it was pointed out to me while I was on vacation in California. It is a stretch but not to big a one. But move the dragonfly south far enough so that the head intersects the ouroboros and you get the Anhk which is the symbol for eternal life from the older kingdoms and still used for various aspects of its self today.

The last bit of expressly intended symbolism is that the dragonfly lies beneath/under the ouroboros stating my belief that science and logic are more important to my self image than my faith in something greater than my self.