Black line drawing of a Celtic knot symbol for love, with the words Spirit, Peace, Joy, Mind, Body and Love placed around its loops.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Celtic love symbol with spirit, mind and body

Black and grey · Flash

A black line drawing of a three-looped Celtic knot, with each loop labelled Spirit, Mind and Body and the spaces between them labelled Peace, Joy and Love. The lines are even and uniform in weight on a plain white background. A caption beneath reads The Celtic Symbol for Love.

Celtic knot Triquetra Love Spirit Peace

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mind the puddle by your boots, and come under the tarpaulin before the rain finds your collar. Aye, that's it. Now, you want the knot with three loops, and you've been eyeing it since the stalls opened at eight. I'll tell you what my grandmother told me, and then you can haggle.

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She sold cord on this same pitch for forty years, under canvas just like this. A fisherman came every Thursday in the wet months, salt in his beard, and every Thursday he asked her to draw the knot in chalk on her board. Three loops, each going over and under the next. Spirit on the top, he said, because a man's spirit ought to be the part that rises. Mind and body underneath, pulling against each other the way they do. And there in the middle, where all three lines crossed, he'd tap the board with his thumb and say, that's love, that's where they meet, and you can't get there without going through the other two.

He never bought a length of cord in his life. He only wanted the drawing. Then one Thursday he didn't come, and she waited, and the rain fell like it had been paid to. A week later his boy turned up with a coil of rope and a folded note in his fist. The note said peace and joy were the spaces between the loops, the places where the lines lifted off the board and let the light through. The boy asked for nothing. He just wanted her to have the rope.

So I'll take your coins and sell you the knot, but tie it properly. Start at the top loop and don't pull it tight until the last. There, see how the gaps breathe? That's the bit everybody forgets.