Brown Om symbol tattoo centred on the upper back, with a small crescent and dot detail above and to the right.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Om symbol on upper back

Back · Colour · Photo

A close photograph of a single Om symbol on the upper back of a person, with the face and most of the body out of frame. The symbol is drawn with bold, flowing strokes in a mottled brown tone, with a small dot and a crescent-shaped mark above the right side. The skin is evenly lit against a soft, blurred background, and the design sits near the centre of the frame.

Back Om symbol Symbol Dot Crescent

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You are grinding walnut husks in the stone bowl before the bell for lauds, because Brother Anselm insists the ink for the new copybook must be dark enough to hold in damp weather. The cloister is still blue with cold, and the dog from the lower farm has already found the crumbs by the kitchen door.

Keep reading

The novice who should be helping you sits across the table, sulking over a page of his own. He has drawn the same sign forty times: a looping three with a tail that curls back like a cat's, a small crescent above it, a dot below. Anselm calls it the sound before words. You think it looks more like a wave caught mid-turn. Your strokes are never the same twice, and that is the thing the old man likes about them.

When the dark ink runs low, you mix in soot and a spoon of sticky resin scraped from the apricot tree by the well. It dries to a brown that turns almost red in the sun, cracked a little at the edges like old parchment. Anselm holds your page up to the window and says nothing for a long moment, which you have learned is praise.

He sends you to the chapel with the page under your arm. On the way you pass the bell rope and touch its knot, as you always do, and notice that the dot at the bottom of the sign is exactly where your thumb rests when you write it. You leave the page on the sill to set. By the time the bell rings, the first line has already gone dry.