f-ckyeahfutbol:

This tattoo that we see on Ash’s forearm in Dark Side of the Moon has been driving me nuts for a long time, not the least of why because we only see it on this one scene of him showing Sam his practical application for string theory. In other shots of his arm? It’s not there.

It’s just not there.

Nor did we ever see it on his arm before, when he was alive. We can surmise from this that the symbol has some kind of meaning and that the meaning was particular to the scene.

I had searched for the symbol and its significance for a long time, but it wasn’t until my recent rewatch of My Own Private Idaho that it clicked for me:

Mikey has the symbol on his coat over his left shoulder, we see it several times, from different angles. And from some angles, it looks like the number 4.

And in fact when we look at the evolution of the number, the Sanskrit shape for number four, from which later the Arabic and then the European numbers developed (and keep in mind that the text of the episode explicitly references
Vātsyāyana, an ancient Hindu cryptographer) looks like the symbol in Ash’s tattoo:

४

With Mikey, it’s possible that the number references Shakespeare’s Henry(s) IV, on which the film is based, but there seems to be no connection between the plays and the Supernatural episode.

There are so many things symbolized by the number four that we can’t be certain why it should be significant in the scene. But there are two things mentioned in the scene that seem important: string theory and nirvana. Dean does not think that heaven is nirvana, Dean thinks it’s the Matrix. But what is nirvana, for him? Where does Dean Winchester find peace?

Featured: a narrative mirror.

In the context that the concept of nirvana is explicitly mentioned and that the number on Ash’s tattoo is Indic in origin, the thing that number four immediately recalls are The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism. And the fourth noble truth? This is the path leading to the cessation of pain.

Because he’s there to bring Dean peace, and not pain. Carry on, my wayward son. There will be peace when you are done.

Thoughts, alternative explanations?