Cypress Tattoo Meaning
Mourning, sacred memory, transition, and the eternal.
The dark, upright cypress has stood in the cemeteries of the Mediterranean and the Near East for thousands of years, and its meaning grows from two facts: it is an evergreen, so it never loses its leaves even in winter, and its roots grow straight down rather than spreading, so it does not disturb the graves it guards. The tree that stays green through every winter and points like a flame straight at the sky became the great emblem of mourning that does not die — grief and the eternal in one tree, the soul rising upward, the green that endures beside the dead.
Cyparissus was a beautiful youth beloved by Apollo, and he in turn loved a magnificent tame stag — a sacred creature, garlanded and gentle, that grazed from his hand and slept in the shade beside him. One hot day the stag lay resting in the undergrowth, and Cyparissus, hunting, hurled his javelin without seeing what it was and struck the stag dead.
His grief was bottomless and would not be consoled. He wept without ceasing and begged the gods for one thing: to be allowed to mourn forever. Apollo, sorrowing, granted it, transforming the boy into the cypress tree — the tree that grieves, dark and tall, sap weeping from its bark, planted ever after at the places of the dead. The Greek cypress is grief made eternal — the youth who could not stop mourning, turned into the tree that mourns forever, the evergreen sorrow that the Greeks planted wherever the dead were laid.
Cypress across cultures
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