Olive Branch Tattoo Meaning
Peace, reconciliation, and making peace with the past.
The olive branch is the world's great emblem of peace — extended to signal reconciliation, the laying-down of conflict, and the offer of harmony. From Athena's gift to Athens to the dove returning to Noah's ark, from Olympic victors' crowns to the modern flag of the world, the olive branch means: let there be peace. To carry the olive branch is to carry peace and reconciliation — the offered branch that ends conflict and chooses harmony, the ancient and universal gesture of making peace, the sign that the storm is over and the time of reconciliation has come.
In Greek myth the olive was the gift of the goddess Athena, and the source of her patronage over the greatest of cities. When Athena and Poseidon contended for patronage of the city of Athens, each offered the people a gift: Poseidon struck the rock and brought forth a spring of seawater (or, in some versions, the first horse), but Athena planted the first olive tree — and the people, judging her gift the greater, for the olive gave them food, oil, light, wood, and the foundations of a settled, civilized life, chose Athena, and the city took her name.
The olive thus became, for the Greeks, the tree of Athena, of wisdom, of civilization itself, and of peace and prosperity — the gift that built a city and a way of life. Olive trees were sacred, and to destroy them was a grave crime; victors in the Olympic Games were crowned not with gold but with wreaths of sacred olive. The olive branch carried the blessing of the goddess of wisdom and the abundance of peace: the tree of the civilized, peaceful, flourishing life. The Greek olive branch is Athena's gift to Athens — the sacred olive she planted to win the city over Poseidon, the tree of wisdom, civilization, prosperity, and peace, whose branches crowned the victors of the Olympic Games.
Olive trees can live for thousands of years — some in the Garden of Gethsemane may date to the time of Christ. The olive wreath crowned Olympic victors. The Great Seal of the United States depicts an eagle holding an olive branch. In tattoo symbolism, the olive branch represents peace made with the past — the choice to forgive, to reconcile, and to let growth replace conflict.
Olive Branch across cultures
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