Skull and Rose Tattoo

Skull and Rose Tattoo, highlighting the difference between life and death and between beauty and decay.  The skulls appears to be depictions of the sugar skulls created to celebrate the Dia de los Muertos or the “Day of the Dead,” a Mexican religious holiday. Celebrating Dia de los Muertos started 3,500 as a month-long Aztec celebration honoring the dead and welcoming their spirits back for a visit. The Aztecs would often display (real human) skulls that they had collected as symbols of life, death, and rebirth.

Today, Dia de los Muertos begins on the evening of October 31st when the gates of heaven open at midnight, and the souls of the deceased children, angelitos, visit their family. They roam the earth for just one day, and then the following midnight, when the gates are opened once again, the adult souls descend and also visit their loved ones.  The skulls have long since been replaced with sugar skulls, made with a mixture of sugar and meringue and decorated with multi-colored icing, still symbolizing life, death and rebirth.