Black and grey blackwork tattoo of a triple moon with a dotwork pentacle inside a circle and the script words Blessed Be, on the upper back.

Triple moon and pentacle on the upper back

Blackwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The design shows three crescent moons in a row, each filled with fine ornamental swirl patterns, with a five-pointed star inside a dotwork-shaded circle at the centre. Script lettering reading Blessed Be sits above the pentacle. The tattoo is rendered in solid black ink and grey stippling on lightly freckled skin, with the moons and star framing the composition.

Blackwork Dotwork Lettering Back Moon phase Pentagram Circle Script Swirl Filigree

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Snow had buried the lane to Hebden by the Tuesday, and by the Thursday the only thing moving in the Fleece was the clock over the bar, which Nan Ogden insisted on winding herself. I was sixteen and sent down to fetch coal, and that was how I first saw her drawing on the cellar door with a stub of chalk: a circle, a five-pointed star inside it, and beside that a crescent, then a full round moon, then another crescent, all three in a row like washing on a line.

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"Waxing, waning, and the one in between that nobody looks at," she said, without turning round. "Hold the lamp steady, girl."

Over the next three days the inn filled with people who had no business being there. A drover with frostbitten ears. Two surveyors arguing about a bridge that would never be built. A widow who sat by the fire with her gloves on and read the same letter over and over. Nan fed them all from one iron pot and asked nothing, though she watched every one of them the way a farmer watches sky.

On the fourth morning the wind dropped and the light came up silver off the drifts. The lane was open to the top of the hill. Nan stood at the window with her ledger, the one where she had written the moon's phase every night since her mother died, and she ran her finger down the columns as if tallying guests against nights.

"Everybody leaves," she said. "That's the blessing part. Nobody has to stay for it."