CROSS TATTOOS

Cross Tattoos

The cross as a Christian symbol was just emerging in the 4th century, and coincided with the time when the Gospel was being introduced to a sun and moon worshipping culture in what is now the Britain Isles.

The legend of St. Patrick suggests how the two came together in his attempt to bring the Druids to Christ. Shown a sacred standing stone marked with a circle, Patrick blessed it by making the mark of a Latin cross through the circle.

Was that the first Celtic Cross?
The Druids probably continued to recognize their phallic symbols, even after the Christians re-sculpted those large stones as crosses.

And more than a millennium later, 'born again pagans' are seeing the circle as the sun, appropriating the Christian symbol back to its supposed primal meaning.

The Celtic Cross is well represented in the Book of Kells and other manuscript illustrations - many of them religious texts - and carved stone crosses with the familiar intertwined lines and zoomorphic figures of Celtic art may still be found all over the British Isles, in Scotland in particular.