Back of a woman showing a black and grey geometric compass tattoo with moon phases on the shoulder, with red maze lines running down toward the shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Compass and maze tattoo across a shoulder blade

Geometric · Back · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a large compass rose with a star-like point, a row of moon phases arcing across the upper back, and geometric triangles. Black and grey linework and stippled dotwork shading form the compass and moons, while thin red lines create a maze pattern that fades down the shoulder blade. The subject is photographed from behind on a plain light background, with the hair pinned up and the face not visible.

Geometric Dotwork Back Shoulder Compass Moon phase Star Triangle Geometric shape

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Brother Anselm kept the old brass compass in the scriptorium drawer, wrapped in a strip of wool so the damp would not reach it. Each autumn the abbot asked him for a safe road through the high pass, and each autumn Anselm drew the line as far as the first snow and then stopped, because the mountain would not hold still long enough to be measured.

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The November the salt mules came back without their drivers, the fog had come down over the pass like a lid on a pot. The abbot's nephew and three lay brothers had gone up after the bad weather to fetch the last sacks from the far valley. Anselm did not wait for the bell to be rung. He took the compass, counted the moon's phases on his fingers so he would know how dark the nights would be, and went to the chapel floor where the novices walked the red labyrinth on their knees at Lent.

He walked it standing, one slow turn at a time, reading the needle at each bend and calling the bearing aloud to the empty nave. When he reached the centre he did not stop. He turned the way the needle pointed and went out through the great door into the white dark, with the bell rope tied around his waist and the other end nailed to the gate post.

They found him at dawn, sitting on a boulder with his feet in the snow and the compass open on his knee. Behind him the four men came down the ridge one by one, each with a hand on the rope, and the last sack of salt was lashed to the back of the lead mule, as dry as the day it was packed.