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New psychedelically inspired tattoo

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fractaloctopus

fractaloctopus

mittens
So yesterday I spent getting started on full sleeve tattoo. This is something I have known that I have wanted since I got my first tattoo over 20 years ago. But the proper image never came to me so I waited. Over the last year or more I have been taking psychedelics with a more serious intent and wanted to incorporate this change of life path into a tattoo somehow. I knew I didn't want to get a molecule or anything like that so I kept my eyes open for something a bit different. Then i was reading Terence McKenna's Food of the Gods. The following section instantly hit a chord:

Nature, in her evolutionary and morphogenetic richness, has offered a compelling model for us
to follow in the shamanic task of re-sacralization and self -transformation that lies ahead. The
to-temic animal image for the future human to model is the octopus. This is because the
cephalopods, the squids and octopi, lowly creatures though they may seem, have perfected a
form of communication that is both psychedelic and telepathic — an inspiring model for the
human communications of the future.
Click to expand...

Once I had the idea of the octopus tattoo in mind, the synchronicities just happened. I knew a specific style I wanted (linework only, more of an old-school, natural sciences, woodcut style) so I started to look for an appropriate artist. Then a friend at school that I had no idea did tattoos posted a piece of her work she did for another friend and it was in the exact style I was looking for. So I got in touch with her and with very minimal direction of what I wanted, she came up with a design that was pretty much 100% exactly what I wanted.

Yesterday was a monster session doing the first half of the sleeve. The first octopus was finished for the upper arm and in a couple weeks we'll do another octopus for the lower arm which will intertwine with the first. I think the thing that I love about it the most is that for me, it's a 100% psychedelic tattoo, but others will almost undoubtedly just see it as an octopus and nothing more.

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neat, octopus are cool. They together with the other cephalopods are probably my favorite marine creatures. The way they change colors and texture of their skin is absolutely astonishing. Seeing them mate is also pretty neat - the male sticks one of his tentacles in a pouch of the female, so they are kind of intertwined, like I guess they will be on your arm.

So even if people don't see the psychedelic reference, know that the animal itself is pretty darn cool, it's intelligent and strange and very beautiful.
 
beacon said:
Cthulhu fhtagn
Click to expand...

This was an odd synchronistic surprise as I have been fascinated with Lovecraft since I was about 6 or 7 years old. When discussing the tattoo in the beginning there was nothing said about Cthulhu at all, but oddly enough there does seem to be a tinge of it in there.
 
Really nice, I like the classic woodcut style.

I personally think that tattoos are inherently psychedelic: the mind made manifest on skin. The right tattoos can act as a sort of visual mantra, something that can help reinforce the direction or intentions that you are aiming at, and as such can be a great shamanic tool.
 
Thanks guys. I never really thought of tattoos as being psychedelic as such but of course they are. Thanks for pointing that out Guyomech. That adds such a different level of thought process to be considered when the time comes for a new tattoo. I've always let the image come to me, never just something I wanted on a whim so I guess I've already been coming at new tattoos from a deeper level of mind, but this is an interesting wrinkle to add to the equation. I have downloaded the OPTI and I pdf and now just have to find time to read it. That's the thing about university, especially about being in the final year of my degree, any time that used to be for purely personal reading is now obliterated. but I will find the time regardless.
 
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