Thats why I started a researching a Long while ago.
Its true that maybe Alchemy is not my field , but I needed to understand my back´s tatoo, so I started to find and read everything that could help, including alchemy books , and Im finally done with it, Im happy and glad now because I understand a lot more of my tatoo... so here I have you my results:
Revealed for the first time in the last page of Full Metal Alchemist Chapter 57: Scars of Ishbal, the tattoo of First Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye is a mystery accompanied with a question: What does a transmutation circle with a salamander on her back mean!? The relation with the transmutation circle drawn in the gloves of Colonel Roy Mustang is evident, and in the following volume it is clarified that it is a code tattooed on the back of a girl in order to possibly avoid access from other people.
Although the image can be interpreted in different ways, as an observant and at first sight it could not be more than an aesthetic whim of Hiromu Arakawa. Hence it is pleasing to discover that the structure and composition of this image follows the codes and patterns of alchemy images based on history.
Alchemy images have various signs, symbols and alphabets with different meanings. A particular combination of these signs could explain a complete chemical reaction.
*The four basic elements to many pagans are earth, water, air (wind or spirit) and fire. Many consider that earth and water are passive and feminine - and the last two, air and fire are active and masculine. In Wiccan or Native American rituals, the "quartered circle" (similar to the the Medicine Wheel) represents a "sacred space" or the sacred earth. The four lines may represent the spirits of the four primary directions or the spirits of the earth, water, wind and fire.
The sphere with all its variations is one of the oldest signs. For alchemists, it represented Alum (double aluminum sulphate and another metal). For many cultures it has a connotation of infinity, of being able and of prohibition which is why it is placed in the center. It is also one of the used signs referring to air.* It is also an ancient and universal symbol of unity, wholeness, infinity, the goddess, and female power. To earth-centered religions throughout history as well as to many contemporary pagans, it represents the feminine spirit or force, the cosmos or a spiritualized Mother Earth, and a sacred space. Gnostic traditions linked the unbroken circle to the "world serpent" forming a circle as it eats its own tail.
The sphere with a point in its center,is another old sign referring to the Sun or concepts similar like Gold in Alchemy or Hydrogen in Chemistry during the 19th Century. *Also in the complex symbolic system of Hinduism and Buddhism, the bindu (dot) represents the male force. Together, the circle and the bindu symbolize the merging of male and female forces. 
The Salamander on the other hand, is the mythical figure of fire. There is a belief that these animals made their nests on the fire and delighted in it. Wikipedia indicates that this myth is once believed because certain species of salamanders hibernate within hollow trunks and thus when they were subjected to fire, the salamanders made their sudden appearance among the flames. An ardent fire underneath a salamander as seen in the tattoo could also associate to the purification of gold. 
The Caduceus, the two serpents entwined around a central axis, is another classic figure of Alchemy. It represents Mercury – both the metal and the Roman God. It is not necessary to forget that one of the names of Alchemy was the Art of Hermes (Hermes the Greek name for Mercury) and that this winged messenger of the Gods is his mythical founder. The four spaces that are forming the bodies of the serpents are also relative in number. For example in the theory of the four elements or that of the followers of the Emerald Tablet (an ancient artifact that reveals a profound spiritual technology), there are four possible processes of transmutation in the physical world. These are: Calcination, Dissolution, Separation and Conjunction.In the tattoo, the axis is the column of Riza and if the head like referring is taken, Caduceus would be inverted.
For alchemists, fire is one of the most important elements. Basil Valentine (15th Century alchemist) for example, declared that it is the purest of all elements. If one thinks about the nature of the numerous experiments of alchemists, like the mentioned processes of transmutation, one can understand the importance of the presence of fire so that these changes and knowledge can take place. Nothing happens to a glass of water unless there’s a fire for a reaction to take place. The same could be said about the Philosopher’s stone; one says that it is not necessary for it to have the appearance of a stone, but the inability of the stone to change before the fire. It’s an element that is as hard as a stone, that not even fire can manage to destroy.immutability of a stone in the fire
However, alchemists not only burn things but also study them and create a great number of tools that allow them to preserve, to separate substances submissive to fire and control its action on substances in different ways. A great number of images gives account of these tools.
Another component of the tattoo resembles one of this spherical, streamlined neck and base containers being placed on a fire.
Notice that the image of the container appears in both directions. Up to here the facts remain but it is possible to remember that Alchemy is not a mere investigative discipline but what aspired (as many scientists believe today) to a global understanding of the universe and therefore of the human nature. Thus this enclosed structure with an affluent heat postioned beneath it could be a well allegory of how the human body operates: “the body as the enclosure of the soul” with ours made oval and a mysterious belly in which the food is transformed to energy and where life is generated during nine months of maintained growth and development or incubation.
From now on the interpretation begins, because the mind resists to accept emptiness and always wants to fill it with every information. A detailed version of the tattoo accomplished by someone:
A file of greater resolution and quality of the same image can be obtained in HERE
The central axis, the concept of the heat distributed in eight different zones are shown. These eight zones will be merely enumerated with descriptive aims.
First zone: The area around the great center circle. In this zone the twelve signs of the zodiac were selected, as much by its temporary meaning of the calendar around the route of the sun, like the specific meaning which the symbols have within Alchemy. It is important to remember that it can have different meanings through the time within a same society.
Second Zone: The area between the tails of the serpents. In some esoteric circles, one affirms that the same inscription INRI, placed on the Christian cross, does not represent “Iesu Nazarinus Rex Iudorem” but has other interpretations like “Igne Natura Renovatur Integra” (nature is completely renewed by fire), “Ignis Natura Renovat Integram (fire completely renews nature), “Ignem Natura Regenerating Integrat” (by regeneration, nature maintains the integrity of fire) or “Igne Nitrum Roris Invenitor” (by fire salt is extracted from dew).The rest of the text is an extract of a contemporary Latn poem by Flumen Viride that can be read here “Rites of the four elements”. Basically it is a greeting to the fire. The original fragment says:
ii. secundum tempus - aestas - ignis - lux
salve spiritus ignis:
in flamma cerei te video
doce mihi intellegere vis ignis
vindica me et alteros ab morte in flammis
noli adiuvare hos incendarios - incendium dolosum delictum grave est
cohabitemus placide, fove me in frigore, da mihi lucem in obscuritate
spiritus ignis, te saluto et tibi gratias ago
salve spiritus ignis:
in flamma cerei te video
doce mihi intellegere vis ignis
vindica me et alteros ab morte in flammis
noli adiuvare hos incendarios - incendium dolosum delictum grave est
cohabitemus placide, fove me in frigore, da mihi lucem in obscuritate
spiritus ignis, te saluto et tibi gratias ago
Third Zone: The left superior quadrant around the center circle
One is a Latin pseudo in which some of the properties of the energy are enunciated. In forward edge it would have to be understood, “indestructible, quantitatively, qualitatively convertible”. In the second line is the famous formula of Einstein in an annotation simply difficult to read followed by another equation that could mean (?) total energy = energy in rest + kinetic energy. The last three lines show the possible reactions of a pump of hydrogen fusion.
This zone is one of the most destroyed in the tattoo. the interpretation is that it had to contain the most dangerous information, that unquestionably it could be used like a weapon or an idea for making such a weapon. The physics texts affirm that these fusion reactions of hydrogen are those that maintain ignition. Weapon, massive destruction, sun, heat, fire, energy, hydrogen and helium. It continues to advance in concentric circles.
Fourth Zone: The superior quadrant straight around the center circle
In the history of the study of heat and its relation to other forms of energy, false assumptions have arisen sometimes. The old Greeks have texts in which they affirmed that heat was produced by the movement of small particles inside the matter, which is certain. Nevertheless in the 8th and 19th Century this theory disappeared to please others who compared fire to an invisible liquid that flowed and bathed a body or another one. Thus the concepts arise from “phlogiston” and the “caloric”. In some texts alchemists refered to these concepts.
In this quadrant, in a Latin pseudo, properties are enunciated again this time to heat. The subtle fire accelerates because of movement. Heat is an active force. The formula that defines to heat is like the amount of energy that must be added or subtracted to a mass of a substance to obtain a change in its temperature. And the conclusion that heat is moving and that is not due to phlogiston (?).
Fifth Zone: The left inferior quadrant around the center circle
In the Latin pseudo it shows the second law of thermodynamics: “Heat flows from a region of greater temperature to one of smaller temperature.”
Sixth Zone: The inferior quadrant straight around the center circle
Now the first law of thermodynamics can be remembered: “Energy cannot be created nor destroyed, but can only be transformed into another form.”
Seventh Zone: The area within the semicircle underneath the center circle
It is the fragment taken from a Latin poem of unknown origin that describes Venus like the carrier of spring. An analysis more detailed than this one and its complete translation to English can be seen HERE
I considered this an opportunity to include some reference towards another vital force that can burn and consume, as affirmed by many - Love.
This also seemed like an excuse to include an apology from Hawkeye father.
But This makes me think that Roy and Riza´s love is like another "ingredient" that facilitates the ignition
The selected fragments of the poem speak and give a little reference to this last element "Love" includes:
“he is totally armed just as he is nude”
“Love tomorrow, loveless ones! And you who have loved, love tomorrow!”
“I lost my Muse by being silent, and Apollo does not care for me.
(I guess here refers to his dead wife ( Riza´s Mother )
Like his will to fight, and live , so is starting to get sense that he left the military and the alchemy when she died)
Thus the silence destroyed Amylcae, when they did not speak."
“pardon”
Eighth zone: The area between the heads of the serpents
A few phrases in Latin on the light, another one of the forms of the energy.
“The light is law”; “the light is truth”; “There’s light after the darkness”; “In light we see light”; “In your light we will see light”.
A very illuminating selection indeed.
Quote:
So the last poem, made me think a lot, Berthold Hawkeye ( my father ) was so destroyed and alone for my mother´s death that he couldnt keep fighting,....so he didnt used his alchemy again until Roy´s asked him to teach him....make sense.....that to be able to perfom the alchemy.....the will to do it plays an important rol in there.
A reason to be.
( All this make me think that my father already knew that something was going to grow between Roy and I stare ...)
A reason to be.
( All this make me think that my father already knew that something was going to grow between Roy and I stare ...)
