Looking for that new ink and struggling to come up with something new? Phrases in any language are too overdone, and getting a tribal tattoo is just not your thing.

If you are looking for that perfect geometric tattoo with a deep meaning, then a maze is the way to go.

You might think that a maze is just something from a kid’s activity book, but there you would be wrong. Mazes come from ancient Greek mythology. Perhaps you have seen Inception and found Ariadne’s name a bit too familiar. You have definitely heard of the Minotaur. The maze comes from the labyrinth that was built to imprison the Minotaur—an unholy creation born of Pasiphae and a beautiful white bull sent by Zeus.

Already the myth is crazy, but it gets better. The creature was so dangerous and strong that the only way to keep it away from the people was to have a labyrinth prison constructed by Daedalus to hold it. After making it, Daedalus had to make wings for he and his son Icarus to escape. Unfortunately, Icarus flew a bit too close to the sun.

Icarus might have been the first youth to die because of the Minotaur and his maze of a prison, but he was not the last. Every year seven youths were sent into the maze as offerings to appease the Minotaur. This is where Ariadne comes in, she provided the string that led Theseus back out of the labyrinth after he slaughtered the beast.

Getting a maze tattoo carries all of this mythology with it. To wear a system of walls and halls on your skin is rife with meaning. That desire to hide the fears we each have, the realization that the difficulty still needs to be faced. It’s that space where we both lose and find our youth. A symbol of just needing love and some red string to get out of the darkest pit.

Any way you look at it, a maze combines the striking aesthetic of geometric shaping with deep personal and mythic meaning.