Black ink sak yant tattoo covering the upper back, with vertical script panels, a central circular yantra and a bird motif at the base.

Sak yant tattoo across upper back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large black sacred tattoo covers the upper back, made up of columns of Thai-style script, a central circular yantra with radiating symbols, and a small bird figure at the base. The linework is fine and even, built from solid black lines with no shading or tonal variation. The photograph is taken from behind with the design centred, and the subject's head and face are cropped out of frame.

Back Bird Circle Geometric Symbol

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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

Sit down, sit down, the wasps have had the windfalls and we have the shade. You want to hear about Ajarn Boon's bird? Then mind the ladder and keep your hands off the green ones, they are not ready. Every boy in the valley went to him in the hot months, when the mango leaves hung still and the dogs lay flat in the dust. He sharpened a bamboo stick, dipped it in soot and lime paste, and drew the old letters down a back in straight, patient columns. Then came the circle of leaves, then the small bird at the foot, perched as if it had only just landed.

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The bird was the part people argued about. Ajarn Boon said it had sat on the temple wall since before the wall was built, and that it would leave only when the ink on the boy's back had dried for good. My cousin Somchai swore it ate the lizards in the courtyard. My grandfather said nothing, because he had watched it come down the wall one August morning and walk into the orchard on foot, pecking at fallen plums like a visitor who had paid for its supper.

It went straight to the old tamarind by the fence, where the monk had once carved a little yantra into the bark. The bird stood on the root and waited, feathers puffed against the heat, until my grandfather came close enough to see the lines on the wood had gone soft and green with moss. Then it lifted, cut across the trees, and was gone over the paddies.

So when you see that kind of ink on anyone's back, the columns straight as fence posts and the bird at the bottom, don't ask what the letters say. Ask whether the bird has come down to eat yet, because in my family it always means the summer is nearly over and the fruit is ready to pick.