When I was in college I loved the idea and concept of a spirtual and emotional purging and cleansing from chaos and disorder. For the the most part that was my life in college. Sure, people do a lot of changing and maturing throughout their college career, but not all of them have dealt with what I had to deal with and some of them have dealt with considerably worst that I have. When I was about 18 or 19 (I really can't recall) I went to Albany, NY and got my first, which I lovingly called "Cathartic Chaos." The tattoo has 4 main symbols that I believe represents my life at any point.
The first, and most commonly seen, symbol is the Chaos symbol. The symbol comes from two major influences in my life astrology and science. In astrology the symbol (which has 8 arrows pointing out of a central point) represents chaos and in scientific notation it signifies birth.
To the right of the Chaos symbol is the Hebrew letter Nun, which looks like a reverse C. The symbol translates into "fish" which is a symbol of change and fertile. I choose to have a hebrew letter on me because of the year I spent studying Juddism.
Opposite of the Chaos symbol is the Gaelic Rune Ingwaz to represent my Welsh/Irish/Scottish hertiage. Ingwaz is the symbol of peace and harmony, which is why it is opposite of Chaos.
The last symbol was the hardest to find and required me to ask a few exchange students fluent in Manadrain and Kanja symbols before I tattooed it on myself. The symbol means Survival. I wanted to have a kanja symbol because I have adopted some of the Asian beliefs and ideals, but mainly the ideals of Buddism and Taoism.
Orginally that was going to be the whole tattoo, but the artist an I believed it wasn't complete because the diamond shape was missing something in the middle. So, I decided to put the kanja symbol for Self in the middle.
