Black and white drawing of a flowing unalome line above a star-shaped dotwork mandala, a design that could be used as a tattoo.

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Unalome above a dotwork mandala design

Dotwork · Black and grey · Flash

A white line drawing of an unalome, a spiral topped with looping curves, extends upwards from a star-shaped mandala drawn in black ink on a dark background. The mandala has a centre of stippled dots, layered petals and scalloped borders, while the unalome is drawn with smooth, continuous linework. The composition is centred and symmetrical, with the mandala forming the visual weight at the bottom of the frame.

Dotwork Geometric Unalome Mandala Lotus Spiral Star Petal

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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

Mind the third loop, it's iced over, and don't hurry it. Every hand who's climbed the Tallow Path has tried to take the bends at a run, and every one of them has come down with nothing to show for it but sore shins. The path goes round on itself for a reason. Old Mabel Trewin laid the first ring of grey stones at the base of the hill, a flower of them, and she swore the climb was meant to empty your head before you reached the lamp.

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We hauled the paraffin up in the sledge that January, Tom and I, with the snow coming sideways off the moor. The spiral at the top, where the path curls in on itself, is the hardest part. You walk it with the lantern held low so it doesn't dazzle your eyes, and you keep your breath slow. Tom asked me what was the point of a beacon no ship could see from up there. I told him the lamp was never for the ships. It was for whoever was standing in the dark at the bottom.

We reached the top with our fingers white. The wick caught on the second strike of the flint. Below us the valley was nothing but black, and the snow on the stone flower caught our light and held it like pale petals. Tom went quiet. I think he was working out, the way I did at his age, that the road to anywhere worth going is drawn in loops like that, and that the light stays lit only because people have walked it.

When we came down, Mabel was waiting at the cairn with a kettle on a tripod of iron. She didn't ask whether we had seen anything. She asked only whether the wick had held, and when we nodded she poured us both a cup and said nothing more, which is how she always ended a lesson.