The Spiral Dragon on my Face
I still get asked: what is that blue spiral tattoo on your face? What does it signify? Well now… now is the time to explain my actions en masse, for it makes an interesting story. OK, I’m biased!
When I was still an impressionable youth in my early twenties, I read a book called ‘Merlin’. There are many different books about Merlin, all with very different viewpoints. In the book I read, he visited the north of Scotland and learned his magical skills from the Picts. They were a pygmy-like race of magical human beings who had the delightful practice of tattooing their entire bodies with woad, a yellow-flowered European plant of the cabbage family. In ancient times it was grown as a source of blue dye, which was extracted from the leaves after they had been dried, powdered, and fermented. Woad finally stopped being used commercially as a cloth dye in 1932.
When Merlin had graduated, and was ready to take up his ‘ministry’ in the world, the book related how he was given a blue spiral tattoo on his right cheek as a symbol of his empowerment and mastery. He then left Scotland, eventually to take up his position as magical advisor to King Arthur. He thus became the power behind the throne of a kingdom dedicated to the sacred, which still remains an influential myth of our modern times, over 1500 years later.
Merlin became my hero and role model, and I promised myself that, when I felt I had completed my magical training and was ready to take my place as a magician, and servant of the Spirit, I would likewise get a blue spiral tattoo on my right cheek. In my cockiness, I expected this to take merely a couple of years…
On my 60th birthday I was recognized as an ‘elder’ in a very moving ceremony officiated by my friend Tom Beck, a Mick-Mack Indian medicine man living in Vermont. I suddenly realized I was ready for the blue spiral tattoo! I love serpents, and dragons even more, so Meredith Muse, tattoo mistress extraordinaire, gave me the symbol of attainment I had been waiting for since my early twenties. It was actually a serpent with a dragon’s head, as dragons are my special friends…
So now I walk with my head held high, with a dragon on my right cheek for all to see. And magic flows all around, and inside me…
