Steadfast & Beautiful Elephant Tattoo Guide

As omnipresent as they are in many cultures, elephants are actually native only to Africa and Asia.

This animal is an important figure in cultural mythologies of African and Asian religions.

The impact of the elephant animal symbology surpasses these boarders, as the elephant spirit animal appears in the devotional beliefs of people around the world.

The world’s most gentle giant has a fairly positive symbology, and its meanings include among many others:

• intelligence,
• wisdom,
• strength and protection,
• unity and family,
• majesty,
• good luck,
• loyalty,
• strength,
• and other noble qualities.

To further solidify its long standing positive meanings, on an ancient Grecian tablet were carved the words:

“Plato told me that everything I needed to know about life can be seen in elephants.”

One of the main meanings that the elephant is used for is to show unwavering dedication to one’s family (herd).

Elephants are highly social animals, they live in large herds and never leave them for the rest of their lives.

In fact, elephant herds are matriarchal societies. The leader of an elephant herd is the oldest female, who is the holder of the herd’s experience and knowledge to survive.

Because of that, the female elephant remains with her mother and grandmother, to learn everything she can in order to ensure her herd’s survival.

This makes them a great choice for a tattoo for women, especially women relating a lot to their role as mother and family person.

Besides their great loyalty to each other, an important trait why elephant tattoos are done to symbolize one’s devotion to their family is because of elephant’s trait of strong protection.

Elephants are known for their protectiveness – an elephant will personally endanger themselves to protect their calves and their herd.

Like the bear, wolf, or lion, the elephant doesn’t back down when it’s needed to be fiercely protective.

Furthermore, elephant’s have been an animal used as different deities.

So, getting a sacred elephant-headed God in the design for your Ganesha tattoo, for example, can remind you of your ability to break through obstacles and clear the way when you need to navigate through difficulties.

Then there’s Baku, the mythic creature with the head of an elephant and body of a tiger, can help remind you that you are walking through both the intellectual, esoteric and intuitive realm of dreams and the mundane world of the physical realm.