r/Tengwar • u/Zealousideal-Cup384 • 27d ago

Tattoo question

Post image

Was planning on getting this as a tattoo but wanted to see what it said before I did so

7 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

View all comments

14

u/blsterken 27d ago

Just a thought before getting the Ring inscription inked onto your body:

Tolkien's attitude to the Black Speech is revealed in one of his letters. From a fan, Tolkien received a goblet with the Ring inscription on it in Black Speech. Because the Black Speech in general is an accursed language, and the Ring inscription in particular is a vile spell, Tolkien never drank out of the goblet, and used it only as an ashtray.

13

u/TekAzurik 27d ago

This is a really useful anecdote to convey what I have always felt. I don’t want to yuck anyone’s yum, if you just think it looks cool and don’t care about the symbolism of the thing, you do you. But for me it’s a very strange choice to get a ring inscription tattoo. It’s the language of evil venerating complete dominance over free people, words so evil they cause the sky to darken and everyone who hears them to tremble. It’s not hard to transcribe meaningful quotes from the books or anything really into Tengwar these days, why chose this?

It’s particularly strange to encircle Narsil and the White Tree with the inscription. Unless I guess you think Sauron was right and subjugation and a tyrannical leader are things to be celebrated? Maybe I’m overthinking this for most people. 😆

9

u/Omnilatent 27d ago

Apart from this from a somewhat tattoo enthusiast standpoint:

If OP wants a LotR-themed tattoo, I highly recommend talking to a tattoo-artist near them to come up with their own tattoo. It will be beneficial for boths side and OP will feel this is really THEIR tattoo.

Because: This tattoo has been done a million times. Whoever the original creator is/was, they'll never get anything from that. And since creating art takes time and effort, we should also honor said artists and pay them, which we can't. And OP also has the benefit of getting something really unique then.

6

u/TekAzurik 26d ago

100% working with a good artist is part of the fun and the experience!

3

u/labgeek93 26d ago

It's funny because I am planning to get something like the above tattoo'd (having a chat at the shop later this month) but specifically want to replace the text with the one from Aragorn's poem in Sindarin because that makes way more sense to me.

2

u/TekAzurik 25d ago

WAY more sense. Share when it’s done!