Two black ink Om symbols on the side of the fingers of hands pressed together in a prayer pose.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two Om symbols on hands in prayer

Hand · Black and grey · Photo

Two black Om symbols sit on the side of the fingers of hands pressed palm to palm in a prayer pose. The symbols have bold, slightly brushed linework with solid black ink and no shading. The photo is taken close up against a dark top, with warm indoor lighting and the face cropped out of frame.

Hand Om symbol Hand

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

The horn on Skerrow had been wrong since the November gale, a flat groan where it should have been a clean note, and when the fog came down on the Thursday the boats were still out past the Gannet Bank. My father sent me up the tower with the spanner and a bad temper. Dev was already there, sitting on the iron steps with his palms pressed together the way his nan had taught him, humming into the gap between his thumbs.

Keep reading

I told him to get off the stairs. He didn't move. "It's the same as the horn," he said. "Everything's one note underneath. You just have to find where it sits." I said that was daft, and he said his nan had got a whole village through a cholera winter with nothing but that sound and a pot of rice. I didn't believe a word of it. But the fog was thick enough to lean on, and somewhere out there I could hear the boats' engines coughing, looking for us.

So I sat down beside him and pressed my hands to his, two sets of knuckles and wrists and cold fingers, and we hummed. It came out ragged at first, like two dogs arguing. Then it steadied. I felt it in my teeth before I heard it, a low hum passing from his palm to mine and back, until the iron railing buzzed under us. My father came up the steps with the spanner still in his fist and stopped, because the horn had woken on its own, a long clean note rolling out over the water like a hand smoothing a sheet.

We kept humming until the last of the boats came round the point, one engine at a time, and the fog lifted off the rocks like a lid. Dev wiped his nose on his sleeve and said, "Told you." I said nothing, which was the closest I came to agreeing with him. The horn is still a little wrong in the back of its throat, but it has never once gone silent since.