Within the history of the tattoo, sailors were huge patrons of the art, carrying these exotic designs as souvenirs of their travels. Anchors symbolised seamen who had sailed across the Atlantic while dragon tattoos marked men who had worked on a China station.

In prison, there is a vast dictionary of symbols loaded with meaning upon the skin of inmates. Spider webs along the top of a prisoner’s elbow marked a man trapped in a web of (drug) addiction.

I decided to explore and ask various people to share their stories and their tattoos with me to see what was inside the ink...

The tattoo on her calf is her second piece, “A cover up piece on a pretty crappy one I got when I was barely 18.” Agony explained it is an abstract loosely based on the shape of a music note, “because I’m a hack musician.” with some roses, thorns, and amethyst, her favourite stone in the middle. There’s also an ankh in the bottom in almost a blood like stone, representing her fear of death.

“I’m looking for what I want next but I’m being pretty picky.I’m thinking about the star card from the Crowley tarot deck. It’s really beautiful.”

Leslie is the owner of three tattoos and a cover up. “I had one covered after years of dealing with the fact that what I had on my body was no where near what I had asked for, and, that it was horrid and ugly.”

She has a purple orchid surrounded by ivy leaves on her back. “This, I got because of the Egyptian connections to Orchids. Apparently, the Orchid, was just as sacred as the lotus, and, was held in high regard. It symbolised birth as well as death, and was worn in the hair of brides.” The scent of orchids were considered “virginal” and was used to mark young women in search of a husband.

“I however, am no longer looking for a husband, thankfully... I recently became engaged.

“I have a winged scarab beetle on my outer right ankle. I chose the winged scarab because the scarab is perhaps the best known of all the ancient Egyptian amulets. Because of the characteristic behaviour of the dung beetle – which the scarab represents – it became the symbol of spontaneous generation, new life, and resurrection.

“On my inside right ankle, I have a small ankh and eye of Osiris – that will be going into major over-haul soon. The plan is to incorporate it into a lower leg piece that will include hieroglyphics, as well as the winged scarab on the other side of my ankle. When it’s done, I’m hoping to have a mini-master piece.”

Mizu received her tattoo “at the illegal age of seventeen, eighteen being the minimum to have one done in Ontario, Canada.” She begged her father for permission, and she says “He sighed and handed over the money saying, ‘I can’t stop you since I have one myself, but for God’s sake, just don’t get one done in some biker’s garage like I did!’”

Ecstatic and a little scared, she rushed to the tattoo artist who inked in a faerie above her left breast. “I have always been drawn to faerie lore of all kinds, almost to the point of obsession in my teen years, and so it seemed only natural to have it tattooed.

“A year later, not heeding the warnings that tattoos are highly addictive, I went in for my next bit of work after reading an old family copy of ‘Winnie the Pooh’. I always figured Eeyore suited my gloomy nature, and so I brought in the old book and had him tattooed on my ankle right from the original illustrations. (Unfortunately, Mizu didn’t have a picture to share with us!) He’s really part of the kid in me that will most likely go on reading Pooh ‘til I’ve lost my last marble.”

A few years after that, Mizu took her father’s wife to get her very first tattoo, figuring better late than never. “At this point I had wanted a certain tat for quite some time, so pulling a timeless stunt, I pouted and told my father all about it while in the tattoo parlour... That day I left with a brand new tat on my forearm – the brushstroked Chinese character for ‘snake’. Representing the year of my birth in the Asian horoscope as well as my love of Asian culture, the snake is probably my favourite of the bunch.”

Mizu’s addiction for tattoos grew and she couldn’t resist allowing an apprentice artist do one of my designs on my left hand. Later on, she realised this was a mistake. “At first it looked great, but over time I discovered he didn’t judge the depth properly and the colour was rather blotchy in places. So I tracked down an artist whose portfolio I’d seen and who is rather reputable to do a coverup. I trusted this man’s work so I allowed him the artistic freedom to do what he felt would work best on my flesh. Developing a design of black and red line work, I was very pleased with the end result and etched into my mind an important rule in getting tattoos: Always, always do your research on the artist!

“Tattooing is a different experience of every individual, and an extremely personal one. For some, the pain is unbearable, yet part and parcel of the experience; for others like myself, it can be pleasurable and addictive. For me, the pain is part of the excitement. I know what the end result will be and in the anticipation to reach it, I’ve learned to enjoy the the sensations, even if they are very painful. Being pierced is too quick. It does not have quite the same ritual as having the artist carefully draw his or her work upon your flesh.

“Each tattoo marks a time of my life that has passed. Whether those times were hard and uncomfortable to recall, or if those times were sweet to reminisce, they make up who I am and so does the art I have chosen to be with me for the rest of my life.”

“ When you choose to adorn yourself for the ‘right’ reasons, meaning, doing it for yourself because you respect the art, artist, meaning, and history, I believe the experience is profoundly unique.”

Darkfae explains, she is often asked “why did you do that?” and she is prone to thinking of answering with a ‘What business is it of yours?!’ “But I don’t. I normally respond with, ‘Because I wanted to’. What I’m really thinking is that I did it because from as long as I can remember, I have had a love and respect for the art. I cannot remember a particular person, place or event that ignited the love, but it has always been there. It almost feels inherent, like I was supposed to do it, it’s my fate, destiny, perhaps left over from my past life, who knows? Nonetheless, I love each and every one of my tattoos. Even the one I recently had covered up. Why do I love that one? Because it gave me the ability to allow an artist to create something even more beautiful than what was there before.”

Her tattoos mean the world to her, and are a part of her lifestyles and ventures in life. She is confident more will come.

“But specifically: ‘tranqulity’, the Kanji symbol on my foot, marked the end of 2 semesters in Japanese; ‘protected’, a wiccan symbol, symbolises the heritage of a family blessed with clairvoyance and protection; ‘fae one’ a rib pannel, shows a love for my imagination and the belief in Faeries, inspired by Amy Brown’s artwork; ‘Geisha Girl’ a back piece in progress, represents a love for Asian art, history, beliefs and mystique and I hope those Foo Dogs bring me good luck, too!”

To date, Darkfae has been tattooed by the artists at the Tradewinds Tattooville in Toms River, New Jersey. “And as you can see from the pictures, they deserve a great deal of credit.”

After wanting a tattoo for years, Victoria was inked in a studio in Nashville, Tennessee, with a web design she decided on.

“Because I wanted something classy that I could hide easily or show off with the kind of clothing I usually wore. The spider web (no spider) worked for me because it was a symbol of creativity, the complex nature of life, and of the complex nature of me. I didn’t want a spider for many reasons. My friends joked that it was because I am the spider, but honestly I wanted something ‘missing’. I can’t really explain why. The design was created by her good friend Jonathan Grey.

“I have a terrible fear of needles because of some bad childhood experiences, and I thought I might freak out, but the truth is I almost fell asleep. The only area that really hurt was right over my shoulder bone.”

“I spent an entire summer perfecting the drawing for these wings. They could be bat wings, gargoyle wings or dragon wings. Or I just say they’re my angel wings.” She had this design tattooed on her back in New Hope, Pennsylvania in the summer of 1995.

Mistress McCutchan has been disturbed by her reoccuring dreams about flying “and then looking down and falling, like the Coyote falling off the cliff as soon as he looks down in the cartoons.” She is terrified of flying in planes, yet sometimes imagines flying to be like swimming in the air. “Somehow, having wings makes everything all right, and they’re very special. Plus, I believe that tattoos should function like jewelry, not like clothing. These wings fit with my body nicely.”

Her second tattoo is a Capricorn symbol on the inside of her right arm, “a very feminine place for a tattoo, but incredibly painful. I wouldn’t recommend it to other people. But I was inspired by the movie Willow for the placement of my tattoo. In Willow, the ‘chosen princess’ was born with a special marking on the inside of her arm.”

The first tattoos Lindsay got were a matching set: a yin on one ankle and a yang on the other. “I was in a bad relationship, a bad state of mind. I had a dream one night that my then-boyfriend was going to kill me; I was stuck in a wheelchair, and he was going to take it away from me, and kick me until I died. When I asked him why, he replied, ‘Because you won’t run away.’ That dream was, no pun intended, a big wake up call.

“Also around that time, I was battling with my darker and lighter sides. When I tried to be all light and sunshine, my suppressed darkness would come out in some truly foul nightmares. On the other hand, when I tried to be all darkness and morbidity, my lighter sides would try to emerge, ruin my forced dark moods, and make me grumpy. Lol.

“Eventually I learned that in order to be a mentally and emotionally healthy person, I needed to acknowledge, understand and use both sides of myself. I also learned that i had become entirely too dependant upon this particular relationship. I had to learn to walk on my own two feet again. I had to walk away from it and let myself just naturally be Who I Am.

“For a while, I’d been interested in getting a tattoo of a yin-yang. However, I wanted something original, something different. I didn’t want something out of a book. So now I have a permanent and very personal reminder on each ankle of some very important lessons that quite literally saved my life. I got the tattoos done in Chicago, two weeks after I’d broken up with that boyfriend and gone to visit my family in Illinois.

Her third tattoo is a purple frog crawling up the front of her left shoulder. “His name is Fred; no particular reason for the name, he just kinda looks like a Fred. His story goes back a bit farther, but he didn’t appear until about a year after the yin & yang.

“In high school, it was an understatement to say that I was not the most popular girl. They couldn’t make up their minds as to whether I was gay or sleeping with my brother. Sometimes people would get in my face about whatever so-and-so had told them that I’d said behind their back, yadda yadda yadda. I had a surefire fix for this problem.

“If someone started to give me hell, I’d stand there and look bored. Next, I would jump slightly, and stare intensely at the space just above their head. I would put on a frightened face, and stutter something to the effect of ‘You’ve got a purple frog on your head!!!’ and then I’d back away slowly, then turn and break into a full fledged run. They all thought I was a crackhead, which was ironic because I was one of the few people who didn’t use drugs. I didn’t even smoke at that point. But regardless of what they thought, they left me alone at that point.

Lindsay claims that Fred represents the weird part of her, the idiosyncrasies and oddities that she uses to attract people of like minds and repel the people who gave her funny looks.

All her tattoos are fairly small. Fred is about two inches tall and three quarters of an inch wide. The yin and yang are each about an inch tall. “I have a seven pointed start that I designed about a year ago that I’ve been wanting to get done. I got an estimate on it, roughly $250. Unfortunately, that one is going to have to wait.”