Mari's Prayer, with a Twist of Math

I met Mari in front of Madison Square Garden on a sunny day in October. How could I not stop and ask her about this tattoo?

Mari explained that this is an Ananda prayer, that her friends were meditating on it for a week.

The text, which is attributed to Sri Paramhansa Yogananda, reads:

Make me thy butterfly of eternity.

I burnt my past. I ignored the foreboding seeds of sprouting destiny. I waded through the strewn ashes of past & future fears.

I am the eternal present. I tore to shreds the cocoon of ignorance with the sharpness of my will.

I am thy...butterfly of eternity, sweeping through immeasurable time. The beauty of my nature-wings I spread everywhere, to entertain everything. Suns & stardust are spread on my wings. Behold my beauty! Cut all the silken threads of thy shrouding folly: follow me in my flight to myself.

The butterfly symbolizes transformation, a phase everyone goes through at one point or another in time.

Also among her twenty-two tattoos is this formula at the top of her arm:

Mari explained she loves math and generalized that, with this equation, "you can generate anything in the universe". In theory, at least. Here, it gets a little hazy for me. Part of this tattoo contains "f(z) = z^2 + c" which is described as a complex function. Then there is the part that equates the square root of -1 to the value i. This is a formula for an imaginary number. I'm bowing out here, knowing there's no way I'll be able to explain this part of the tattoo adequately. Readers are welcome to try in the comments section, below.


Mari's work was inked by Kevin at The Tattoo Shop in Lansing, Michigan.

Thanks to Mari for sharing her tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

Rebecca's Memorial Butterfly

I met Rebecca a couple months ago in Penn Station and asked her about her tattoos.

Of the eleven, she shared this one from her leg:

This beautiful, yet battered, butterfly is a memorial to her unborn child. She lost the baby when she was just nineteen. The cherry blossoms are often symbolic of the fleeting nature of life.

The tattoo was completed on October 13, 2007 by Nate Hudson when he was at Virginia Beach Ink. He now tattoos at Folk City Tattoo in Suffolk, Virginia. As today is October 13, I've been hanging on to this post, not only to correspond with the day the tattoo was finished, but also the due date of the baby that was lost.

We here at Tattoosday truly thank Rebecca for sharing, not only this poignant tattoo, but also for allowing us to relate the emotional story behind this butterfly.