Horus Eye Tattoo

Right wrist tattoo- Eye of Horus
This was one of my first tattoos.
I got it in 2011 for many reasons- For everything Egyptian I love, for the love I have of eyes and art and for the mystical meanings of this symbol that has entranced me since I was a child.

More info on this symbol:
"The Eye of Horus is an ancient Egyptian symbol of protection, royal power and good health. The eye is personified in the goddess Wadjet (...) or "Udjat". (...)
Wadjet was one of the earliest of Egyptian deities who later became associated with other goddesses such as Bast, Sekhmet, Mut, and Hathor. She was the tutelary deity of Lower Egypt and the major Delta shrine the "per-nu" was under her protection. Hathor is also depicted with this eye. Funerary amulets were often made in the shape of the Eye of Horus. (...) The Wedjat "was intended to protect the king [here] in the afterlife" and to ward off evil.
(...)
Horus was the ancient Egyptian sky god who was usually depicted as a falcon, most likely a lanner or peregrine falcon.[12] His right eye was associated with the sun Ra. The eye symbol represents the marking around the eye of the falcon, including the "teardrop" marking sometimes found below the eye. The mirror image, or left eye, sometimes represented the moon and the god Djehuti (Thoth).[13]


wedjet – Eye of Horus
in hieroglyphs
In one myth, when Set and Horus were fighting for the throne after Osiris's death, Set gouged out Horus' left eye. The eye was restored by either Hathor or Thoth. When Horus' eye recovered, he offered it to his father, Osiris, in hopes of restoring his life. Hence, the eye of Horus was often used to symbolise sacrifice, healing, restoration, and protection."
-Wikipedia



I do not usually post any art that I have not created myself but I did take the photo and it is my skin so I thought it appropriate. The eye itself was a collab creation between myself and my good friend and tattoo artist Anita Rodrigues.
Anita is a young and very talented artist with her own tattoo parlor in Tavira, Portugal. I am eternally grateful to her for her work.

The reasons I initially planned this tattoo where I love the symbol, I love art and because I had self-harm scars to cover and wanted a symbol that would help me not erase the scars but remind me of the lessons I learned from it and grow stronger. It was a big challenge because I am extremely trypanophobic (extreme fear of medical procedures involving injections or hypodermic needles) but I did not look at the needles and I have a high threshold for pain so it was actually an amusing experiment (though I won't lie that there was indeed pain), and luckily my scars were not a big issue to work with since I used to cut in litteraly hundreds of paper thin but deep parallel and overlapped straight lines with a sterile scalpel or craft blade (apparently my cutting style was somewhat influenced by OCD), at the time it was dangerous but now that I am mending I am lucky that my web of spidery thin scars on my light skin is hard to see due to the sheer amount of them being tightly knit and due to how thin they were, time healed them well and I have learned a plenty since those dark days. Either way the scars are hard to see due to the quality of the photo and the swelling of the skin but I may update a more recent version soon.

This photo was taken shortly after the tattoo was done, now that it has healed there are some light colouring flaws that will be corrected this summer.

The other tattoo I used to cover scars is here: [link]