# Roy's Tattoos > **One-line reading.** Roy English wears the whole cosmology on his skin — not as a scattering of tattoos but as a single **mirror diagram**: everything inked on the right side and repeated on the left, resolved by one `+` at the center. The body is the doctrine, enacted in ink. > [!info] The structural key > **Every tattoo is inked on the right side of the body, then mirrored onto the left. One `+` sits at center-chest, below the throat, and spans both sides.** *(Roy's own description.)* So the body isn't a *list* of tattoos — it's a **symmetrical map with a central axis**, and that shape is itself the teaching. ![[tattoos1.jpeg|360]] *The body as text: hand and chest tattoos, the cross-and-hammer chain, the gold teeth.* ## Why it matters Many of the concepts show up somewhere on Roy's body before they show up in a song. *Inversion*, the *Empty Mirror*, the *Tree of Life*, ego-death, *"wake up,"* the apophatic *via negativa* — they're all there, in his own words, glossed by him. The tattoos are the closest thing the catalogue has to a signed statement of intent: a wearable index of the cosmology, composed as a mirror because the mirror *is* the cosmology. This page collects the full inventory (his glosses, kept separate from interpretation) and is honest about where each piece is sourced. ## The structural fact (the most important datum) Read the composition before the individual words. Right pillar, left pillar, a single central mark — the body is built as a **bilateral diagram resolved at the center**, and it reads three ways at once: - a **[[Kabbalah - The Tree of Life|Tree of Life]]** — two outer pillars reconciled by the `+` as the **middle pillar** (Tiferet, the heart-/Sun-/Christ-center he marks elsewhere); - an **[[Concepts/The Sacred Truths/Hermeticism - As Above So Below|"as above, so below"]]** object — the Kybalion's Correspondence principle, which he transcribes by hand on his public *"[[Concepts/The I'm 33 Board|I'm 33]]"* board, here enacted on flesh; - a **[[The Mirror|mirror]]** — tying the body to the *[[Concepts/The Empty Mirror|Empty Mirror]]*, *"we are all mirrors,"* and Paul's *"through a glass, darkly."* The self built as a reflection around a center. The `[[Inversion]]` principle is literally structural here: the right side is the "original," the left its reversal, and the whole person is composed as an original-and-its-mirror. ## The inventory (his own words) The record, grouped by where it sits. Glosses in quotes are **Roy's own** (from his tattoo-tour videos and posts). **Center axis** *(spans both sides)* - **`+`** — center chest, below the throat. *"Helps me remember I am right here, and I am at the center. It also represents Christ. And it represents the 4 worlds."* - **`ROSE ESOR`** — directly under the `+`. *rose* mirrored into *esor* — a palindrome wrapped around the cross (the **Rosy Cross**; see [[The Rose]]). **Forearms & arms** - *I am Human* (outer forearm) · *In Process* (inner forearm) · a simple dotted **Tree of Life** (near the wrist) - ~~*ME*~~ crossed out — *"because it's not about me."* - *The Empty Mirror* (wrist) — *"about looking at yourself in the mirror and seeing nothing"* (named after Janwillem van de Wetering's Zen memoir *The Empty Mirror*). → [[Concepts/The Empty Mirror]] - *All reality Is* (inside upper arm) · *Remember you're alive* (inner upper arm) - *Y* (elbow) — *"because you've gotta ask the question"* (Y / *why*). - *I'M NOT HERE* (side of forearm) — *"but I'm also here."* - ~~*We know only a portion of the truth and what we say about god is always incomplete*~~ — crossed out. *"I messed up here so I crossed it out."* - an **Ouroboros** (a circle with arrows, *"like the snake eating itself but simpler"*) — got with Little Luna. → [[Concepts/The Loop and the Circle]] **Torso** - *I CAN'T FEEL* (back of shoulder) · *If you forget who you are, you used to b* (chest) — **the line is complete; it ends at "b," read exactly as it ends** (not a photo cutoff). Within the work it reads as self-enacting: a sentence about forgetting who you are that never reaches its own last word, *be*. - *In service to all, in service to the one* (up the side of the abdomen) · *Lessons learned* (near a scar) · *Trust your guts* (lower abdomen) · *Spaceship Eden* (shoulder) - *Be* (front of shoulder) — *"to remind me to be."* **Throat, neck & clavicle** - *Fear* (clavicle) — *"Fear can drive us away from our destiny. I remember to act out of love instead of Fear."* - *…Functions like Prayer in Reverse* — inked beneath *FEAR*. - `///` (neck) — *"the three tally marks remind me of the Power of Three."* - *LISTEN* (below the ear, arrow pointing to it) — *"remind me to listen and not speak unless I have something to say. Listening is an art form."* **Hands & back of arm** - *WAKE UP* (back of hand) — Gurdjieff's *"Man is asleep. He must wake up."* ([[Roy]]'s most-named influence by 2025.) - **KILL YOUR (Possessive) SELF** (stacked: KILL / YOUR / SELF, back of the arm) — **the one he pointedly did not explain.** *(See the reading below; do not read it literally.)* > [!note]- Advanced reading — what the clusters mean (interpretation, not stated intent) > - **The cross-and-rose center → Rosicrucianism, the 4 Worlds, Tiferet.** He states the `+` = Christ + the 4 worlds + the center. Read against the tradition: the 4 worlds are the Kabbalistic Atziluth / Beriah / Yetzirah / Assiah; the center is **Tiferet**, the heart-Sun-Christ integration point of the Tree. *ROSE ESOR* = the **Rosy Cross**, rendered as a mirror-word wrapped around the `+` — Rosicrucianism from his own hand, built as a palindrome (see [[Concepts/Inversion]]). > - **"Fear Functions like Prayer in Reverse" → the inversion engine (the prize).** This is the single cleanest grounding of the whole [[Concepts/Inversion]] principle, and it's on his body. Fear = inverted prayer = inverted faith — the exact mechanism the work assigns to [[Sir Lucius]] (who runs *by* inversion, the inverted cross on his cheek). Fear is the reversed prayer; the shadow runs on it. > - **The mirror / emptiness cluster → no-self.** *"The Empty Mirror"* + *"seeing nothing,"* ~~*ME*~~ crossed out, *"we are all mirrors."* The self seen in the mirror is *nothing* — anatta / the Zen empty mirror / Paul's *"glass darkly,"* held as doctrine, not a mood. → [[Concepts/Witnessing vs Surveillance]] > - **The ego-erasure cluster → "it's not about me."** ~~*ME*~~, *"In service to all, in service to the one,"* *"I'm not here / but I'm also here"* — ego-dissolution, the self in service to the One; matches *"the instruments play me"* and the vessel doctrine. > - **The apophatic crossed-out God line → the *via negativa*.** *"What we say about god is always incomplete,"* then struck through — even the statement about God's incompleteness gets crossed out. The crossing-out *performs* the apophasis. > - **"KILL YOUR SELF" — handle with care.** He did not explain it, and the refusal is itself notable. Within his stated system the coherent reading is **ego-death** — kill the *constructed / false* self (consistent with ~~*ME*~~, *"it's not about me,"* the empty mirror that shows *nothing*, *"die before you die"*). Read it that way and no other; do not read it literally, do not sensationalize, and build nothing heavier on it. > - **"WAKE UP" → Gurdjieff on the body.** *"Man is asleep. He must wake up."* The [[Concepts/The Loop and the Circle|Loop]] is the sleep; breaking it is waking. > - **The ouroboros → the Loop, inked.** The snake eating itself = the Circle / eternal return, on the skin. ## Person vs. character — a note on *El Roi* One marking that gets attributed to Roy's body actually belongs to the Lucius **character**. **[[Sir Lucius]]** wears Hebrew on his neck — ***El Roi***, "the God who sees me" (Genesis 16:13) — along with white face paint, black X's under the eyes, and an inverted cross on the cheek. **The character's marking / face paint, not a tattoo on Roy's real body**. This could be read as manufactured identity. Distinct from that is **"El Roy,"** the authorial signature Roy signs his lore with — his own name folded into *El Roi* (Roy / Roi / *the one who sees*). That one is real, and it's the seed of the whole seeing-motif on the [[Roy]] page. ## Source notes - **Grounded (the tattoos exist; the words).** Roy is extensively and publicly tattooed (he performed shirtless as recently as June 2024). A 2018 [Artist Waves profile](https://artistwaves.com/checking-in-with-jagwar-twin/) independently records the words *"Fear. Be. Feel. I am human. Remember you're alive"* — the only third-party print list of specific tattoos. A 2019 [One Stop Watch tour diary](https://www.onestowatch.com/en/blog/jagwar-twin-takes-us-to-the-mall-of-america-and) confirms *Trust your guts* on the stomach, done in **Pittsburgh** (with a tattooer named Bryce) on the ~2019 tour, captioned *"the biggest lesson."* - **The glosses are Roy's own — and self-sourced.** Every *meaning* on this page comes from Roy narrating his own body, primarily a **TikTok "tattoo tour"** on [@jagwartwin](https://www.tiktok.com/@jagwartwin) (a "part 2" is public; it implies a part 1) plus his Instagram/YouTube posts. The open web does **not** independently corroborate the meanings — only that the ink exists. So these are cited as *what Roy says his tattoos mean,* not as externally verified fact. *(The tattoo-tour video is the primary record; it's worth watching for the exact wording.)* - **Readings (interpretation).** The Tree-of-Life / Tiferet / Rosicrucian architecture, the anatta reading of the empty mirror, the ego-death reading of *KILL YOUR SELF*, and the *El Roi = character marking* call are all interpretation built on his stated glosses — well-supported, but not claims Roy has made in those words. - **Open / unconfirmed.** A possible **sixth word, *"Feel,"*** appears in the 2018 journalist's list but isn't confirmed as a discrete tattoo (could be a paraphrase). Exact wording and placement of the esoteric pieces (`+`, *ROSE ESOR*, the ouroboros, etc.) are from Roy's statements, not photo-verified here. No specific *new* ink from the 2023–26 "darkside" era has surfaced in public text — absence of coverage, not evidence of absence. ## Read next - [[Roy]] — whose body this is; the seeing-motif and the *El Roy* signature. - [[Concepts/Inversion]] — the principle the *Prayer in Reverse* clavicle tattoo grounds. - [[Concepts/The Empty Mirror]] — the wrist tattoo this whole concept is named from. - [[The Rose]] — *ROSE ESOR*, the Rosy Cross at the center. - [[Sir Lucius]] — who wears *El Roi* on his neck in the videos. - [[Concepts/The I'm 33 Board]] — the same cosmology, drawn on a board instead of skin.