Spiral Symbol

I got my first tattoo a little over a year and a half ago. It includes a picture of the goddess spiral.

A Spiral is one of the ancient Goddess symbols, as a sign of Life. As such, it is also one of the primary Wicca symbols.

A Spiral is a created by a Circle moving forward, so to speak. As the Wheel turns, you come around again, but not to the same point as before. You arrive at same place, but on a new level. A spiral line uncoiling is "the movement of creation," according to Arthur Avalon in Shakti and Shakta.

The Spiral represents the path of life - from your Essence, outward to the world. Or, depending on your perspective, from worldly existence to spiritual Essence. As Walker so eloquently phrases it, a Spiral represents "death and rebirth as movement into the disappearing-point of formlessness, and out of it again, to a new world of form."

The Spiral is one of the most common natural shapes, seen in nature from galaxies to sea shells to the pattern of a falcon's dive.  Spirals have been primary Goddess symbols since the late Paleolithic. It is the symbol of the womb, of fertility, the feminine serpent force. It represents continual change and evolution and the interconnectedness of all things.

It has always attracted me and I've come back again and again to the meaning behind the symbol, that I am continuing to evolve, from inner life and soul to outer soul and higher spirit, to become the goddess within. The goddess is the divine that resides in the heart of all wherever there is love, compassion and mercy.