Steadfast & Beautiful Elephant Tattoo Guide

Elephant tattoo is an excellent choice for many people that want to use this magnificent animal to convey a message of community, memories, family, mercy, healing, and love.

Many who have been through a long and hard journey, and came out as strong fighters can identify with the elephant symbol.

Especially if your journey meant you taking care of your family or people in need (something elephant packs are known for), the elephant is an excellent animal symbol for you.

Furthermore, elephants are often associated with grief because they ritualistically mourn their dead. Having an Elephant tattoo can be one way to memorialize a profound loss.

Elephant teaches how to nourish the mind, body, and spirit, so you are strong during trying times.

If you want to learn more about these gentle giants, read below and find amazing elephant tattoo designs to inspire your next tattoo!

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.

Elephant is native to Africa, which lead many different cultures around this vast continent to adopt this majestic animal in their folklore.

African cultures are not monolithic, however we can find some common symbolism related to elephants.

It’s considered an animal of great influence, often in the role of King or even mediator helping other animals sort out their conflicts.

Another important symbolism for the elephant is victory in war. Even though elephants themselves are not violent animals, their association with war comes more as symbol of victory, rather than helping the aggressors.

The Ashanti People revere the elephants which are considered leaders reincarnated.

Likewise, the Yoruba people of West Africa often attributed domestic and wild animal traits to persons.

Referring to someone as having a connection to elephant (or even to part of elephant such as the tusk) is to draw a connection between that individual and the prosperity, strength or wisdom associated with Elephant.

In some cultures it was also believed that shapeshifting between human and elephant form is possible. This is symbolic of humans adopting the strength, wisdom, memory and compassion of Elephant and Elephant interacting with humanity as a guide and leader.

Since the head of the elephant has easy recognition, many go for an elephant head tattoo.

So, the popularity of the elephant hand tattoo has risen, because it fits easily within the space given.

For a bigger, and vertical placement, consider a forearm tattoo.

However, elephant tattoos are barely restricted to only this one placement.

Given that the animal has great physical greatness, many opt out for bigger tattoo designs, like a leg tattoo.

So, you can be going for an elephant thigh tattoo or elephant arm tattoo like a sleeve tattoo.

There are also the biggest projects when the elephant body is used for a full back tattoo.

Nevertheless, elephants have a very distinct form that allows even the tiniest tattoos of just a well recognizable elephant outline tattoo – the big ears, plump body and the tusk will always give it away!