Aquarius Tattoo Ideas, Designs and Meaning

What a aquarius tattoo means

Aquarius is an air sign, and most people assume it is a water sign. The water bearer is not the element; he is the one handing it out, and the reading the sign carries is ideas and generosity poured out for others rather than feeling held in. Astrology pairs it with independence, friendship and the future, which is how the most classical-looking figure in the zodiac came to be the one people call eccentric.

The constellation is large and faint: the second biggest in the zodiac after Virgo, with no star brighter than about magnitude 2.9. Its two brightest, Sadalsuud and Sadalmelik, carry Arabic names meaning the luckiest of the lucky and the luck of the king. The part people can actually find is the Water Jar, a small Y of four stars near the top of the figure, from which a line of fainter stars runs down and south as the stream, toward Fomalhaut, the single bright star in that empty stretch of sky.

The glyph is two parallel zigzags, one above the other, each with three sharp peaks. It is water drawn as ripples, and the Egyptian hieroglyph for water is the same kind of zigzag line. Modern astrology also reads the two lines as waves of energy or current, a reading that arrived with Uranus, the planet it later gave the sign; the older reading needs no explanation to anyone who has watched wind cross a pond.

The Age of Aquarius is a separate idea. Precession moves the spring equinox slowly backward through the constellations, and when it passes from Pisces into Aquarius astrologers expect an age shaped by the sign's values; nobody agrees on the date. The musical Hair made the phrase famous in 1967 with the song that opens it, and people who wear the sign for that reason usually mean hope for a fairer world rather than a birthday.

Where the design comes from

The figure is Babylonian. Their star lists call it the Great One, a god holding a vessel from which water overflows, and it belongs to Ea, the same water god who owns the goat-fish next door; with Pisces, Cetus and the Southern Fish close by, this whole region of sky is sometimes called the Sea. The Greeks made the pourer Ganymede, the Trojan youth Zeus carried off to be cupbearer to the gods, which is why Aquila, the eagle, sits just beside him. His stream ends at Fomalhaut, whose name means the mouth of the fish, and the Southern Fish is drawn drinking what he pours. Traditional astrology gave the sign to Saturn; after William Herschel found Uranus in 1781, modern astrologers handed it to the new planet, and that planet's symbol now often sits above the glyph.

Choosing yours

• Decide which way the water falls. On a forearm or a calf the stream reads correctly when it runs downward toward the hand or the foot, because that is the way water falls with the limb hanging; turned the other way, it pours uphill every time you stand. Tipping the urn toward the wrist also puts the widest part of the drawing, the jar and the figure, on the widest part of the arm.
• Keep the two zigzags apart and their peaks matched. Three peaks each is the standard glyph, and more starts to look like a wave border; set the lines closer than their own thickness and the peaks join as the ink spreads. Rounded crests in place of sharp points turn the glyph into literal water, as in the version drawn as Japanese waves, which is a choice rather than a mistake.
• The urn is the most adaptable part of the sign. It can pour water, stars or a flock of birds, and it can stand alone without the figure, which suits anyone who likes the idea and not a classical youth on their arm. Whatever it pours, the stream should leave the jar in one clear direction so that the eye follows it and the figure stays legible.

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