Faded Tatoos but Deeper Meanings

Just before Christmas 1979 at the illegal age of sixteen I got my first tattoo and it has been with me ever since. These days, when asked I give three pieces of advice to people who are getting their first tattoo: think hard and long about what you want to adorn your skin forever; check the cleanliness of your tattooist and his/her shop, and find someone who has been wearing the tattooists work for a number of years.

Did I follower any of my own advice? Not on the first or the two other times I was tattooed. But I was very very lucky. But now I have three very old and somewhat faded friends, who are as much a part of me as the arms they decorate. I have loved them, fallen out with them and rediscovered a deeper spiritual love for them all.

Each one has a spiritual meaning for me, that I found years after having them done, it feels like they chose me. I am not going to talk about them all; their meanings are too personal.
But I will say a little about the first one. I walked into that tattoo parlour (does anyone still say tattoo parlour?) with the intention of getting myself an early Christmas present. I had never been inside one before and had no idea what I wanted. From the hundreds of designs on the walls a dagger and scroll attracted me. The scroll was blank, I could choose any thing to be written on it, I chose "John", my name.  At that time my full name was John Robert Riley, 20 years ago I legally changed it to John Rowan. At the time of getting the tattoo, I was still a year or so away from my first encounter with the tarot and a few years away from learning the tarot. The tarot itself would lead me to Wicca. But at that time this was all in the future. In the process of tattooing me, without asking me, the tattooist added three stars. It was only many years later, after using the tarot for a few years, that to my great pleasure I realised I had an ace of swords and a three of pentacles on my left forearm.

I still stand by the advice that I wrote  at the beginning of this post, but I would add one more thing, go with your intuition.