Wolf Tattoo the Reaper

The reaper is a medieval invention

Death has been personified for as long as anyone has recorded anything, but the figure everyone pictures now is specific and comparatively recent.

The hooded skeleton carrying a scythe emerges properly in Europe in the fourteenth century, in the aftermath of the Black Death, when roughly a third of the continent died within a few years.

The scythe is the part worth pausing on. It is a harvesting tool, and the metaphor is agricultural: people as a crop, cut when ready, without malice and without exception. Not a hunter, a farm worker.

Earlier and other traditions pictured death very differently, often as a guide or a psychopomp rather than a threat, which is closer to Anubis than to this.

Not one for a child

Worth stating, since temporary tattoos are frequently bought for children. This is not a design for a party bag.

The design

5.3 by 7.6 cm, small and upright, suiting a wrist, an inner forearm, an ankle or a shoulder.

Small designs outlast large ones, since there is less edge to fail and less skin movement across them.

See our article on Anubis for the older version of the idea, and the wolf temporary tattoo range.

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