Divine Weapon: The Trident

let's see. How about I think of the devil, right, the devil's got a trident? He does? He has that that pitchfork, which is essentially a trident, a a three pronged spear for you know, stabbing sinners in the backside. I imagine, why are you asking me about a particular three tipped spear weapon, Robert, because that is what we were talking about today here on Stuff to Blow Your Mind Now, Robert, when you said let's do an episode about tridents, Originally I admit I have a skeptical I

was like, what is there to say about tridents? But okay, I'm glad I trusted you because we found some weird stuff about tridents. This is a topic that I think it's been brewing for a while for me, because like I grew up seeing these images of you know, Neptune or Poseidon with a trident, certainly at the Devil and the Pitchfork, and I never really thought about it that much because on one level, it didn't look like a very good weapon, Like I just I couldn't imagine like

really cool fighting scenarios with it. I was kind of awkward. It looks awkward. Yeah, And then when you see it used in gladiatorial combat, which we'll we'll discuss in this episode, that too looks awkward in force, like that poor guy, uh forced to fight for his life and he's given such a stupid weapon to do it with. You know, it looks like it would be much better if you were trying to accurately spear of fish and if you're

trying to like fight a gladiator in the arena. Yes, and and indeed that is one of the practical uses of the trident, which will will also discuss here. But I think the thing is, I just I kept encountering the trident in various places. You know, different symbols of the trident. Um. You know, I went with my family to Barbados and the flag. Uh, there has this this really cool trident image if you start looking for it. The trident seems to be everywhere and just cultures around

the world. You know where the trident is not is in nature. That's right. You look around for trident shapes in nature. Now there are branching tree shapes everywhere in nature. Uh. And you know, you can maybe argue that I guess there's some sort of trident things. They're like plants with three leaf structures. There's like clover and stuff. But I try to think of like a three legged animals, say, that would be a good analogy in nature for the trident.

But there's no such thing. There is no three legged animal in nature, not a naturally occurring one. I mean, do you do find dogs with three legs? Of course there's one of the office. Oh yeah, yeah, Oh, I mean three legged dogs are great, But yeah, there are not animals that are supposed to have three legs. And that's kind of odd, isn't it. Like wouldn't you expect there'd be at least one animal out there that has three legs. But no, this does not occur. This is

just not something that d NA on Earth makes molecules do. Yeah. Yeah, and now you mentioned trees and streams and things of this nature, and I do think that is probably part of the appeal of of the trident symbol. It implies movement into vision. It's also a three in one image, three points obeying the thrust of a single combatant, a natural visual expression too, of power, both in the power of of tool use and in the power of of

one commanding others to follow their command. So it's no wonder that we see see various trident weapons in the clutch of gods and demons or other beingings that are that are that that we uh that that we embody with power. Okay, So it sounds like you're setting up the trident as a kind of a divine tool or divine weapon by virtue of its three prongs. Yeah, and that's where we see it all over the place. And we'll get to those wonderful examples of the trident as

the divine weapons. Is the some sort of of holy instrument that the gods use to u, you know, to inflict damage on the earth. Poor mortals and rival demons, and the stemming from that, we also get various holy weapons and sacred items that are used by by warriors and rulers in various cultures. But then we also have these just ancient tools that we also find around the world. Three pronged fishing spears. Now, why would three prongs be especially useful in a fishing spear as opposed to any

other kind of spear, like say, a hunting spear. I was thinking about this, and it seems to me correct me if you disagree. The advantage of a three pronged spear might have to do with the properties of how water interacts with light and the refraction of light as it passes through the surface of a body of water. Oh, yes,

we've talked about this, and you can, of course. The easiest way to experience this is to have like a glass, a clear glass for half filled with water, and then you stick a pencil in it and look at the glass from the side and and and there's an optical illusion that throws you off there. Yeah. So, if there if there is difficulty in seeing exactly where you need to stab to hit something in the water, especially if it's something like a fish, not like a whale or

something that's like a big easy target to him. But if it's like a fish, I can imagine it being sometimes difficult to aim correctly to hit the fish with a single pronged spear. But if you've got more sort of a range of attack points that you can aim roughly perpendicular to the fish, then you might have a better chance of getting it with somewhat approximate aim. Yeah. I like this hypothesis. This, Uh, this, this sounds reasonable. Now for whatever reason, uh, people have been using spears

to fish with since very ancient times. Their fifteenth century b c. Egyptian depictions of it. The Book of Job refers to spear fishing as well. And today you can still you can go online and you can shop for fishing spears. You'll find quite a quite quite a few different types. You can get your two pronged or bident style spears. You can get four or five pronged spheres. You can get your three pronged tridents, which I see referred to as frog spears. I don't know white white

three is particularly good for for frogs versus these other models. Um, but I was looking around about it, and I actually looked up a Gizmoto article titled so you want to go spear fishing for the very first time? And the author shares the following quote spear tips. We used both J. B. L's three pronged barbed paralyzer thirty four dollars and basic

single point spear tip with fold out barbed. The paralyzer reduced the need for pinpoint accuracy, but wasn't quite as good as the single point at retaining fish once they

were speared. The compromises of life, Yes, now, I have to admit, for the longest, like basically up until this week, I just always assumed that the tridents that you see held by various gods and beings and in these various myths and artistic depictions, I just assumed that they were all fishing spears that had been you know, transformed from a mundane tool to a divine object. Because we see this kind of movement a lot, right, We see God's

wielding things like hammers. Oh yeah, Thor's hammer. It's what's it called mule near? That sounds right, mule dear? Okay, so mule dear um. But you know it, it makes sense, right, you have these these these these objects, these tools, and then when we we we create these gods, we give them things signify various powers and acts. Um. There's a

there's one curious case two of the Chinese. He's a ruyee, which is a scepter, a royal scepter, so a symbol of divine power, right, you know, you just one with power would brandish it. It identifies that they have the power to command people around. And then you can, if you want, you can point it at various things and say, hey, you give me that. Right, That's basically the function of a scepter, except this particular scepter has also clearly been

used as a backscratcher. So there there's kind of you see, different theories about this, whether it began as a backscratcher or it is just a you know, just a symbol of power that was then used as a backscratcher later on. So divine emperor's itch too. Yeah. But but it's it's interesting because which which direction is the movement going. Is the object going from mundane, practical object to something that is merely symbolic, or is the movement going in the

other direction, something that has no practical purpose. But then a practical purpose emerges for it. Well, that's a really good question. I would tend to assume that it could go both ways, right, But which which did it go in this case? Because obviously, yeah, practical tools take on divine, divine aspects, especially when they become you know, embedded in our consciousness, like if we use them a lot, the

tool sort of becomes an extension of the body. So in the same way that the body has a counterpart in heaven. Of course, the tool is an extension of the body has a counterpart in heaven. I mean, there is no actual Thor's hammer, But if you have a king or an emperor with a divine scepter, you know they've got it around. They might as well use it for things that they need. A big stick for scratching backs might be one of those things. There might be

other things too. Now, coming back to tried dent's before we proceed with some mythological examples, we should probably touch on the the etymology of the word uh tri dent comes from the Latin tried dentists or three toothed as opposed to buy dent, which we also have have referred to. And we'll referred to, which would be a two toothed weapon which has enjoyed avoid arguably less symbolic success that

you do see it pop up in artistic depictions. Now, I just thought of a great superhero superhero who fights with the tuning fork, be like a musical superhero. It would be called like the tuner. The tuner, yeah, tuner is Yeah, that's essentially a bident. All right, So let's talk about some some mythic examples of trident use, or things that at least appear to be tridents and have

been treated as tridents by in various interpretations. Robert, please please tell me you're gonna take me to ancient Babylon. Of course, we always go to ancient Babylon. It's the best place to go all the best gods. Yeah, well, we're gonna actually check in with our old friend mar Duke here. Um. Mar Duke is often seen with an odd looking three toothed weapon, uh that is sometimes interpreted

as a form of trident. Now, mar Duke was a Babylonian thunder god who eventually rose up in the pantheon to the point that he became considered the prime god of Babylon and was apparently described with fifty different names, and he's also the slayer of the primordial Tiamat uh. And there's actually a wonderful uh image depicting this where you see this uh, this winged of like lion, dragon like monster and here comes mar Duke with these with one of these weapons in each hand. Why would he

have a trident? Why would he have a phishing spear? Because there are plenty of other Babylonian gods that are that are associated with the ocean, they would be the ones to have the trident, right. Uh. So I was reading about this, I found a book by Derek m Elsom titled Lightning, Nature and Culture, which has a lot of info in it about various thunder and lightning gods. So if that's if that's your jam, I highly recommend picking that up. But the author makes a connection between

the trident weapon of mar Duke and not fishing, but lightning. Lightning, of course, is a traditional weapon of mighty gods, right, I mean that's the weapon of Zeus, and Zeus is sometimes depicted holding three thunderbolts in his hand. Elsa writes the images of successive storm gods in Mesopotamia depicted on monuments and cylinder seals reveal developments in the depiction of lightning.

Lightning was originally shown by two or three wavy or zigzag lines representing the celestial flames of its flashes or bolts. They were later joined together at the bottom by a short stem handle or sometimes a longer staff that the storm god would hold and throw. The two pronged bident and and three pronged trident thunder weapon should not be confused with Poseidon's trident, which usually has barbs on the

prongs like a fishing spear. He continues. An alternative development and imagery along with the addition of a short stem or staff to the lightning flashes, was that two or three of the wavy lines were placed together to form a bundle of lightning flashes. The middle of this bundle was later modified and molded together to create a hand grip, and the single underbolt or karania was formed with two

active ends. So what we're seeing here isn't a double bladed trident sword as much as a clutch of three thunderbolts. With the style drifting over the years. You know, I think I misspoke a minute ago when I said Zeus is holding the three thunderbolts. Zeus is sometimes depicted holding something that looks like a bundle of thunderbolts or something

like that. But specifically, what I was thinking of was the god a DoD or hadd, another ancient Near Eastern storm god who clutched three thunderbolts exactly like you're talking about it. It also reminds me of another odd weapon slash symbol that one comes across in a Hindu iconography, and one that has also intrigued me in the past, the vadra. One finds the vadra either as an embellishment on the pommel of a sword or on both ends

of a hilt in the same manner as this. Uh, this this symbol that Marduke is holding, and also points out that this too is a highly hillis thunderbolt quote shaped like a double ended flower bulb or club. That is a wicked sword. I mean it looks like it looks like a good old sword hat made out of

gold fire. Yeah. Yeah. If you if you want to see this for yourself, just do an image search for vadra that's v A j r A and then sword and you'll see some wonderful examples of this, But there are also straight up tridents in the in the Hindu pantheon, right, that's right. Shiva has a weapon that is known as

the trishula, which we'll get to in a minute. But before we get to Ta Shiva, we should probably talk a little bit about Poseidon or Neptune or well, first we should take a break, and then when we come back, we will get into the Greek god of the sea. Thank you, thank alright, we're back. Sorry to keep Poseidon waiting like that, but but he's patient, right, he's not so patient, right the Sidon, because Sidon holds the grudges,

doesn't Hey, he does. He's the enemy of Odysseus, that's right. Uh, and reaks a lot of havoc u in Odysseus's direction with that try that symbolic divine weapon that he uses to just pretty much what make anybody's life miserable that gets in his way? Now what I can't remember. How

does Poseidon use his his trident against Odysseus. Well, in general, he uses it to basically just to stir things up, quite literally, to to to stir up storms, devatating, devastating waves, to create new sources of water, just general geologic chaos. I don't is that the best use of tool physics?

If you're using a trident to stir things up, wouldn't it be better if he had a powerful magic spoon or something with a large flat surface to really get the waters churning like an or Yeah, it seems like a tried. It might be better if you wanted to, I don't know what, like dissolve some sugar into the water. This is a great question though, because it gets down to the heart of why does Poseidon have this weapon?

Like I've having just grown up seeing images of Poseidon my whole life, I just I never really questioned it, like that's the weapon he has? And then when I thought about it, I'm like, Oh, it's a fishing spear, right, That's all there is to it. Well, yeah, he's got of the sea. There's some fish in the sea, I think, right, aren't there fish in the sea? That's what I'm told makes sense now. The mythic origins of the weapon very

is one might expect with with myth and mythic traditions. Uh. It was perhaps the work of of the master crafts people or giants who were known as the Telconese who also created Chronus's sickle, or it was the gift of the cyclothes that's plural for Cyclops. Now, didn't Poseidon have a son who was a cyclops? He did? He did it? Gets it gets complicated, um, But this is what Apollodorus had to say in the library, as translated by Fraser Okay.

And the cyclothes then gave Zeus thunder and lightning and a thunderbolt, and on Pluto they bestowed a helmet, and on Poseidon a trident. Armed with these weapons, the gods overcame the Titans shut them up in Tartarus and appointed the hundred handers their guards. But they themselves cast lots for the sovereignty. And to Zeus was a lot to the dominion of the sky, and to Poseidon the dominion of the sea, and to Pluto the dominion in Hades. So is it better to get the sea or to

get Hades. I always thought that, like Poseidon came in second I was kind of my read. But that's that's like kind of a land locked way of looking at it, right, I mean, I was that's me as a child in Tennessee thinking about about the ocean. But if you were a Greek, it might well be the opposite, or it might well be the case that that Zeus and Poseidon are on equal footing. Yeah, if you're a seafaring culture, say a lot of your economy is based on trade

across the oceans or on fishing. Uh, you've got to think that a god of the sea is much more consequential than we would normally consider a god of the sea living in you know, some kind of landlocked area. Like you say, I mean the whims of the sea decide your fortunes and then Hades. I mean certainly that had is. It's everybody right, there's no whims of Hades. Hades is just it's like death and taxes. So maybe they all maybe they're these they are truly equal, uh,

portions of the cosmos. But this actually ties into some of the research I was looking at. HB. Walters wrote a paper in that was published in the Journal of Hellenistic Studies. So we got we got an archaic but scholarship here. Yeah, this is this is this one's a bit old, but but it actually reads really really well.

It's a very nicely written paper. But he discusses the artistic evolution of the trident and discusses that that, you know, the writing of the trident predates any artistic depiction that was then known. But if you look at the Iliad, there's nothing to indicate the shape of the trident. There's there's merely the suggestion, based on the word choice, that it's composed of three parts in some key way. So it could be like three sticks bound in the middle

or something, I guess. I mean, if it's if you're just looking at the word and there's some room for interpretation, they're interesting. So Walters looked at various early artistic examples and he traced an interesting evolution for the depiction of tridents. Uh, not from like a fishing spear to more elaborate uh, you know, three pronged weapons or symbols, but from a lotus bud to this barbed, three pronged spear that we associate with with the side and the neptin. Now, what's

the significance of the lotus bud? Well, this is interesting. This gets back to what was something we're talking about earlier. The trident. The proper trident may not appear in nature, but something like a lotus bud does, and has this trifold design and instantly speaks to us with various you know, symbology related to uh to you know, units of three. I want to come back to the significance of that

symbology in a little bit. This lotus sceptor is apparently pretty common in Greek art and is typically held by a god or goddess, and Zeus himself is seen in in various depictions with a with a very similar scepter. So the idea is that this lotus bud scepter eventually

somehow morphed into the three pronged weapon. Yes, the idea here is that the lotus staff was the emblem of Zeus, and that there might have been just less distinction between Zeus and Poseidon among early Greeks, and the Poseidon might have been nothing short of Zeus's marine form. I've read the exact same thing, that Poseidon was in some sense the Zeus of the sea. Yeah, and uh, and so they simply had the same scepter. But then as time goes by, as we as we have different artistic depictions

a roll one after the other. You see this, uh, this evolution, you see this uh, this distinction made and this this thing. This scepter, the symbol that Poseidon is holding gradually comes to resemble a phishing spear rather than

the lotus scepter of Zeus. Oh. If this is a correct explanation, this is fantastic because it matches up some stuff we've talked about on the show before that I always really like where there there's a way of interpreting an artistic tradition as deriving from a misunderstanding of previous art.

One explanation for the origin of the unicorn tradition is that possibly there were ancient depictions on say, uh, cylinder seals or something like that, of natural animals naturally occurring two horned animals like the Arx or the ibex, but they're depicted in profile, so it looks like they've only got one horn shooting up out of their head because the horns are lined up with each other as the

animals in profile. And so people saw that misunderstood it, thought that there was this one horned animal out there, and started the unicorn tradition. We don't know that's what happened, but that's highly possible. Uh, And so maybe what's going on here is a similar like misinterpretation of previous generations of artists depicting a god holding something. Yeah, it reminds me of the line from member to echo about books speaking to other books. But of course art works of

art speak to other works of art. Yeah, so that's correct. That's really interesting, so Walter also. Walters also references the work of John O'Neill, who argued that the Hindu through shula which we're about to talk about, may have also begun as a lotus, and the same origin might might be placed on the floor de les as well, this of course being the the symbol of what the New Orleans saints. I think that's what it is. Let the good times are all but but he let the good

trident are all but but but. Walters doesn't completely agree with O'Neill on this. He said, quote with these theories, I am not altogether inclined to agree, as explanation by means of symbolism is always, though fascinating, a dangerous course

to pursue. Besides, my point is this that the lotus, scepter and trident are not parallel forms, but that the one grew out of the other, and that since the lotus sceptor as an attribute of Poseidon is only found in these examples of early date, whereas the trident form belongs to all periods, the lotus must be the earlier form from which the other has been evolved by a process of differentiation. And he stressed that he was far

from certain on the matter. So he is saying his opinion is they're not just parallels, but that the low des scepter came first and that turned into the trident. Correct, yes, now. Writer and classicist Robert Graves also had something to say about this in his work Greek Myths uh the Greek

Myths Pardon. He wrote, Poseidon's trident and zeus thunderbolt were originally the same weapon weapon the sacred lab rates or double acts, but distinguished from other when Poseidon became god of the Sea and Zeus claimed the right of the thunderbolt. So this is the kind of acts you'd imagine like an orc holding or I don't know, maybe a dwarf too, in your fantasy that it's the acts with the blade

on both sides. So Graves seem to be presenting like a different type of evolution from a from a different sort of primordial symbol. But still he's talking about the same sort of uh evolution of form Alright, so this brings us back to Shiva. In Hindu traditions, Shiva is is the destroyer of evil and also also the transformer, not the robot kind, but a transformer of things and

states of affairs. Correct, yes, so so Shiva is one of the Trimurty, the three gods of the cosmic lifespan Brahma is the creator, Vishnu is the sustainer, and Shiva is the destroyer of worlds now. Shiva is often seen to brandish this trishula, which means three toothed or three pronged uh and it. It is definitely a weapon as

well as a symbol of power and uh. It's again also attributed to possible lightning or lotus bud origins, and there's a lot of symbolism wrapped in it to empire and transcendental reality, the power of the tri murdy and the three shaktas of will, action and wisdom. And you also see other Hindu deities that seemed to brandish such a weapon, such as the goddess Durga who slays a demon with it, as well as Parvati, the goddess of love,

fertility and devotion. There's even this origin story for Ganesha, the elephant headed Remover of Obstacles, in which Parvati creates a child out of tumoric paste and brings it to life to guard her house while she's bathing. And but then this boy that she creates tries to start stop Shiva. Upon Shiva's arrival, and enraged, Shiva beheads the boy with the trishula, and angered by this, uh, Parvati demands that Shiva restore the boy, and he does so by placing

an elephant's head upon the body. WHOA, wait, how do you seems like beheading with a trishula would be difficult. Well, it's not like a bladed In some depictions, though, the outer the outer barbs take on a blade like appearance, kind of that Flora Lee's kind of appearance. So that's that's the weird thing about the trident is that you have your sort of basic pitchfork designs, but then sometimes they're barbs, sometimes they're not barbs. Sometimes all three barbs

are the same length. Sometimes the ones in the outside are longer, sometimes the central ones longer. Sometimes the ones on the outside have have kind of like outer blades to them. I can see that if the outside edges of the outer barbs are sharp, it's sort of like a cross between a spear and an ax. So I guess it's a polarm, you know, general pull on, Yeah, I mean this is this is a This is a

great point. Yeah. You see these trident like forms with pole arms because range and leverage make them good weapons to use against mounted soldiers, as well as the ease of their construction and adaptability from farm tools. So if you had this, um, this, this three pronged blade, and you have blades in the edge, you can you can you can really wave it back and forth as need be,

as well as stab with it. And the length of it gives it not only reach but also power because it's got a lot of weight, so you can essentially just sort of drop it on your enemy. Yeah. Now here's the question I had when I was looking into all this. It just suddenly dawned on me. I'm reading about Poseidon and Neptune and Shiva, but there is another pretty popular of their figure, and at least more modern

Western traditions. Uh, and that is Satan the devil who has a pitchfork, Yes, which is you know, a pitchfork being something you used to to move hay around. But you look at it, it's clearly a trident. It is. Sometimes there may be I guess more or fewer prongs, um, depending on who's illustrating the devil or devil's but very often you see a three pronged spear, you see a trident. Where did the devil get a trident? That is a good question. I wondered about that because I am quite

sure the Bible does not say the devil has a pitchfork. Yeah, I don't remember any mention of a pitchfork. So as always I I love to get into some history of the devil um. So one answer I came across was in an academic work on the development of the idea of the Christian devil concept, and it was a book called Devil, A Mask Without a Face by Luther Link, published by the Universe Dave Chicago Press in two thousand four.

I think I want to read this whole book because it was really interesting the part I read, and the part I read about the trident was just early on, so it seems like he gets into a lot of interesting ideas. But Link writes about the how the idea of the devil that we have today like the devil you see in cartoons, the w C in popular representations. It's got three major influences. One of them is early

readings of the New Testament. That's the most straightforward one, because though there is a Satan in the Hebrew Bible, it is not really the same character that you see represented, say in the Christian literature. For example, in the Book of Job, the Satan character that appears is does not seem to be like an evil adversary of God, but seems to be more sort of a prosecutor figure who is skeptical of the virtues of the created humankind and wants to sort of like test our metal and and

expose us as frauds before our creator. He's he was, He's just part of the court doing his job, which is to bring up the counter argument to the ruler. He's a nark. He's narking on humanity. Uh So, so that's sort of the Satan character and Joe. But then later on you see this development in the Christian tradition where where Satan takes on aspects of being an adversary of God himself. Satan is more this evil figure representing Uh, there's still some sort of prosecutor type elements that the

devil plays in the New Testament. For example in the Gospels when when Satan tempts Christ in the wilderness. Right. So there again you see sort of like this prosecutor mindset. It wants to show how weak you are, it wants to make you fail. But then also there there's just this devil as a personification of sin or evil, and this definitely comes through and works like revelation. But then again, there is a whole lot that people believe about the devil that has nothing to do with the Bible. It's

not in the Bible at all. It comes from things like Link points out the rebel angel character created by John Milton in Paradise Lost and continued in Romantic literature traditions and with poets like Blake and Badelaire, that this rebel angel character is not really a feature of the Bible. It's more a feature of Milton and these other poets. And then of course you've got the images created and

associated with the notion of Satanic cults and black Sabbats. Yeah, and this is where you see all this uh, this pagan b steel imagery of of Satan as this uh this, this shaggy uh you know, lord of Hell that engages in all of these uh these crude acts with various uh witches. Yeah, exactly, And we'll get more into where

those depictions come from in a minute. But with the exception link says of one ninth century old Saxon manuscript, all known literary descriptions of Satan were pretty closely based on the text of the New Testament until about fifteen eighty nine when Christopher Marlowe wrote Dr Faustus, And of course that was a play he you know, early modern play based on the faust legend, the idea of a an alchemist or a secret of knowledge, someone who is

egotistical and wants to wants more power than he really has coming to him, and does a deal with the devil to get that power, but then of course realizes only too late that the deal you make with the devil is always a bad deal. And this is such a staple of our of our Satanic literature. I guess you would say in storytelling that it we often we often forget that it wasn't always baked into the pie, right, But outside of literature. Now that that's when he was

talking about literature outside of literature. In the more popular folklore, the image of the devil was informed by fantasies about heretics, and which is first appearing around the twelfth century and developing more as time went on. And he says images of the devil are really scarce in early Christian history, that we have images of Satan as early as the ninth century, It really wasn't until about the thirteen hundreds that the images of Satan took on the visual characteristics

we now associate with Satan and link rights. Indeed, mirroring what we were talking about earlier, that the image of the devil's pronged weapon or pitchfork is almost definitely derived from the trident of Poseidon, so directly from this imagery of the gods of classical antiquity, which itself was probably derived from these three bolts of lightning shown in the grip of the ancient Babylonian storm god a DoD or Haddad,

which I mentioned earlier, and so Hadad. If you look up pictures of him, there there will be these carvings, and he'll be in profile, walking kind of like an Egyptian hieroglyphic character walking or something like that, and a DoD will have his hand out and he'll be holding what looks like lightning bolts, but he'll be clutching them like they're stalks of wheat, which is interesting, Yeah, like

a harvest of lightning. But so you might be wondering, now, wait a minute, why would the god Poseidon's weapons show up in the hands of the Christian devil. That doesn't make any sense. But this is actually part of a very common motif in Christian history, not just Christian history, but especially in Christian history, of adapting characteristics of another person's religion or another religions god to serve as characteristics

of your religions, devils and demons, and so. One example is that many of the names of the Christian and Jewish demons are taken from names of gods of other religions of the ancient Near East. For example, one of our favorites baelz Abub or bails Able, that's derived from the name of a Philistine god. See how Beelzebub contains Baal meaning lord, which was, you know, a god of the ancient Near East. Another one Dagon was a Mesopotamian god, later believed to be a Christian demon, and then became

part of the Lovecraftian mythost. Of course, the much reviled evil demon Malok is believed to be a god of some of the Canaanites, that the god of a child, sacrifice and destruction, not to be confused with Mammon, who represents just Greek right forever stooped over looking looking for gold embedded in the roads of heaven. But yeah, so,

so you've got those kind of things. And then I found another interesting entry in a more encyclopedic work called the Classical Tradition from Harvard University Press, in they're right that some medieval Christian artists relied on traditional representations of the Greek god Pan as a source for images of

the devil. So yet again taking gods from another religion making them your devil, and so Pan being a god of shepherd's hunters, the wilderness, the rural areas had these goat like qualities of horns and hoofs, and its part of the more general tradition of satyr's and sylvans and fawns. It's almost like this idea of human religion, having to work with like a prop closet of existing motifs, and they're like, we have this character, dress him up. Well, what do we got? What we got this goat costume

from Pan. Oh, yeah, we have this uh this tride end here that would along to the side. Uh roll those out. Let's let's let's let's get those on a character. Yeah, it's totally true. It's like fifties monster movies seeing if they can like rework a costume or a prop from last week's shoot into a new prop for this movie. Yeah, what do we have. We have a guerrilla costume in a robot head. Let's make it work. Robot monster. Here

you go. So anyway, the authors of this jury say that the devil's horns, hoofs ears, tail, hairy lower body, all of these aspects are derived from the pan and the fawn tradition of classical antiquity. And people notice this. The romantic poet Percy Shelley, who wrote Ozzymandias, look on my works, you mighty in despair, he thought it was pretty weird that people would give the attributes of fawns to the devil, as he found fawns quote quite poetical personages.

But the author's right that another major way the depiction of the devil was influenced by classical art is the devil's nakedness reflecting the naked heroes of classical art, like Hercules, and that most Christian medieval art tried to avoid nudity when possible, it would cover people up, but the devil was often depicted as less covered, as more naked, more

like one of these heroes of ancient Greece. Huh yeah, I mean it also reminds me of these various paintings of Poseidon or Poseidon, or just depictions of Poside where Poseidon is nude or nearly nude. Uh. Just this, you know, bearded man in the water with the trident. Yeah, exactly. So granting the trident of Poseidon to the devil seems to be part of a larger medieval Christian project of associating Satan with the gods and the style of classical

antiquity of ancient Mesopotamia and of Greece and Rome. And so I think that's pretty persuasive. But link makes it clear that there are no literary sources that will tell us where Satan got his trident. Like you can't go into the texts of the time where they will say, hey, I'm putting a trident in Satan's hands because I want to make this comparison to Poseidon. It's all just inference

we have to make through the artistic traditions. Suddenly he just has a trident in the same way that these these depictions of the actual trident of Poseidon like, suddenly it looks a little more like a fork and a little less like lightning bolts or a lotus, depending on which interpretation one relies on. Right, but Link says, you know, the devil and his demons are really first shown carrying trident,

says I mentioned earlier in some ninth century art. And one good example of this I've got a picture of for us here in the notes Robert. It's from the Utrecht Psalter, which is a widely recognized work of medieval art. It's a collection of the psalms from the Bible illustrated with pen and ink drawings, which are called illuminations. And so I've got a drawing here that a company's Psalm

thirty eight. Of course, Psalm thirty eight, like a lot of the Psalms has a lot of woe is Me stuff in it, so it says, Oh Lord, rebuke me, not in thy wrath, neither chasen me in thy hot displeasure, for thine arrows stick fast in me, and thy hand presseth me sore. Who you didn't even get to the stinking wounds. Oh no, do it, Robert right, I'm just gonna cut to that part. My wound stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness. So you know there's that there's a T shirt design. I mean, a lot of

the psalms take this form. You know, it's like my wound stink. Everything's bad, but I can rely on the Lord and they will feature a call for mercy. So the illumination of Psalm thirty eight here shows the Psalmist surrounded by three devils that are closing in on him. One is counting with his fingers, one of the devils has a measuring tape that's kind of creepy, and the third has a trident. He's just sort of holding this. It's got the prongs coming out of the side. It's

sort of right angles, and it looks very pointy and unpleasant. Yeah, the prongs are really spread out there. I think you'd have to you have to have a really wide set of buttocks to stab with that. I mean, it emphasizes what what you're saying, emphasizes that. A lot of times when you see the devil with the pitchfork, now it's cute, it's in cartoons because is for poking your button, you know,

poking you with a little like ow ow ow. Clearly, these ancient depictions are are supposed to be more graphic and horrifically violent in in their suggestion because after the ninth century, actually, Link writes that the trident almost completely disappears from representations of Satan until the Renaissance, when it shows up again in the devil's hands in the art of the time. And so what happened in between the like, how come in the ninth century eight you've got devils

with tridents? H you didn't have it before that? You've got it. Then then it pretty much goes away throughout most of the medieval period, and then it comes back again in the Renaissance. Link writes that during this medieval period where you don't see much trident, the devil is more often depicted when he's holding a tool or a weapon. It seems to be a grapnell, which is a forked hook. Not very nice. So why, yeah, why this shift? It's hard to be certain, but Links suggests there are a

couple of answers. One of them is the relative influence of classical art, which would have depicted Poseidon or Neptune with a trident. And so Link writes that classical art fell out of favor with p bowl uh, and people mostly lost access to it during the Medieval period. Then interest in classical art reignited in the Renaissance. Thus the Poseidon sea god Neptune tried and came back and was put into Satan's hands again when people started paying attention

to classical art again. Uh. And another thing is more practical. During the medieval period in Europe, the use of the grapnel was common for torturing criminals and heretics, and it

became more widespread. And so if the goal of the devil is to punish in torture sinners, and this was very often how the devil was represented in the Middle Ages, sort of as God's accomplice in your punishment, uh, it makes sense that he would he would have access to the weapons and torture devices that people were more familiar

with at the time. Yeah, that does. It makes sense that he would use an instrument of torture rather than something that resembles either an implement for fishing or moving hay around or a polearm weapon that would often be used as a way of rising up against authority. No, Satan is kind of a part of the cosmic authority that is that is bearing down on you. Right, Yeah, exactly.

But I do want to point out at the end here this discontinuity between the weapons or implements is actually a pretty minor discrepancy compared to the huge differences in the way the Devil overall is described and depicted, Like, the Devil is both a raging, hideous monster with animal qualities and at the same time I subtle, attractive, persuasive tempter.

And this is actually where links the title of his book comes from, the mask without a face, that there's sort of this infinitely elastic quality to the character of the devil. All right, on that note, we're gonna take one more break, but we'll be right back with more trident. Thank thank thank Alright, we're back. So just a few other mythical examples. I want to roll through here mythical

religious examples. Uh. You have Dallas trident bells, which are bells with a decorative trident like motif on top that represents the three divine teachers. And then you have this is they found this really interesting. You have offering forks in ancient Judaism and these are actually mentioned in First Samuel chapter two. Uh. So this is a little bit

just one more Bible reading here. This is from the King James version, and the priest's custom with the people was that when any man offered sacrifice, the priest's servant came while the flesh was in seething with a flesh hook of three teeth in his hand, and he struck it into the pan or kettle or cauldron or pot. All that the flesh hook brought up the priest took for himself. So they did in shiloh unto all the israel Lights that came thither. I did not remember that part,

Yeah I don't. Yeah, you never remember, like the the meat pot skewering scene from from Second Samuel. But there you have it. You have a three toothed uh flesh hook there, but not in the hands of the devil. No, just in the hands of people working officially or the priests. Now another trident that came up for us, Uh, is a bit more mysterious, might be fittingly mysterious, because in all of this there's this quest to figure you know, figure out like what is the trident and what does

it represent? What is it stem for? And you you kind of when you try and grasp it, it seeps through your your fingers. Uh, tell us Joe about the trident of Paracelsus. All right, we're about to venture into some sketchy territory. So there is a lot of weird looking work out there you can find about this supposedly

magical instrument known as the trident of Paracelsus. Paracelsus was, of course the by name of Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus bombast Us von Hohenheim, a sixteenth century Germans with Renaissance physician and alchemist, and Paracelsus is. He's an interesting kind of dual figure in history. On one hand, he was a physician and did make some real medical observations and real con ttributions to medical science, such as writing a clinical description of the symptoms of syphilis. But he was also

an alchemist. He wanted to turn lead into gold, and he was a prolific fount of ideas that would later be the basis or similar to the basis for a lot of quack medicine in the centuries to come. Just one example, he wrote that in small enough doses quote similia similibus curantur or what makes a man ill also cures him, which is, of course, if you know anything

about quack medicine um. He of course, he wasn't the only physician in history to suggest this, but if you know anything about quack medicine, this helped contribute to the strain of thinking that gives us the modern scourge of homeopathy, the idea that like cures like, and that by taking super deluded versions of a drug that would give you some kind of symptom, you can cure that symptom. Homeopathy

is not a part of modern medical science. It is not science based medicine and uh and it can actually be really dangerous if people, in thinking that they get tricked into some kind of homeopathy cure scheme and use that instead of more proven methods. But as far as the trident goes uh. The provenance of this concept was difficult for me to figure out, but I think it

is likely not actually from Paracelsis. So several sources point to the origin of this idea in the Archidoxies Magica or the Supreme Mysteries of Nature, which is an early modern grimoire about alchemy and the creation of magical talisman's. It's attributed to Paracelsis, probably falsely, possibly by another author

or later editor of the works of Paracelsus. And I've been scouring a seventeenth century English translation of this volume in a slow loading PDF from the Library of Congress, but I cannot find the reference to the trident in this piece. Maybe it's in there, but if it is, I I just went right over it and was never able to find this thing. But I'm frustrated because I spent forever trying to get these pages to load, and I can't find the darn trident in there. But so

maybe it's in there. Supposedly, according to later writers, it is a magic three pronged silver lemon used to cure impotence and diseases of all of the generative organs, of course, meaning generative organs are the genitals. I don't know if I want to trident near my genitals, to be honest, Well, it's complicated how you're supposed to use it. According to these later sources, I'm not sure if it needs to to be near your genitals. It might, it might not.

The instructions unclear. But the French magician and occult writer Eliphas Levy, who lived eighteen ten to eighteen seventy five, had plenty of thoughts about the profundity of the Trident of Paracelsus, assuming that it really existed. Levy writes, quote, herein is the power of the trident. It's halften foundation. It is the universal law of nature. It is the very essence of the word, realized and demonstrated by the triad of human life, the Archaeus or mind, the oh

or plastic mediator, and the salt or visible matter. We have given separately the explanation of this figure because it is of the highest importance and denotes the compass of the highest genius of occult sciences. I feel more and more like like the trident is one of these symbols that you can you can place it into any kind of system of belief or philosophy, or even into the various sciences, or or even just business, I guess. And the the symbol the the one becoming three or three

things embodied with one thrust. It kind of leaches ideas out of whatever you you you place it in. Yeah, and it I mean so, I I admit that when I read that um that Levy passage is just dribble to me, like it's just you could It's almost like

you could substitute any words for any other words. Right, But but but you can you can see where it's like if you if you take the trident and you stick it within alchemy or or or magic, it you can explain things that are alchemical or magical through the trident in the same way that you could use the trident as a metaphor in various other fields. Well, I've got a I've got a very loose general hypothesis about what I think might be going on here, And so

see what you think about this. And I would love to see if there's a way to test this against other evidence from psychology, neuroscience, anthropology and all that. But here here's my very rough hypothesis about why we have a magical obsession with the trident and magical beliefs about three bodied things, you know, like you've got a trinity and religions there there are many like there are so

many holy threes. Uh. My non magical speculation is we're obsessed with the magic power of threes because three, in a way is really a magic number for reality. In our minds, three is the number of a pattern. So a correlation happens once. Say you are in your car and you honk your car horn and a dog down the street howls. So, first time that happens, that's just

an event. Then say it happens again, you hank a second time, and the dog howls again, And now the pattern detection software and your brain sort of goes on high alert. You're like, oh, is something going on here? And say if you do it a third time, you hank again, dog howls again. You have established a pattern. Now you know, you kind of know your brain works this way. If something is correlated three times, you have

discovered a meaningful pattern. You've discovered a law. This is true, and this pattern of threes is exactly what the pattern of threes and jokes takes advantage of you know how there's always a pattern of three and jokes. You tell, like, if there's a you know, three men walk into a bar joke, all three of them are going to say something and have a you know something. A pattern will be established with what happens to the first two men, and then something weird will happen with what the third

one says or what happens to them. And what's happening there is because there's a similarity with the first two things, you're expecting the third one to match the pattern of the first two. And by subverting your expectations, when we see what happens to the third guy in the bar, it's almost like you're violating a taboo. You know, you're subverting somebody's expectation that they are going to discover a

pattern of correlations or a law. Huh yeah. And of course we see this in so many different tales as well. I mean, it's the it's you see what the three billy goats gruff exactly in Goldilocks, coming in and trying the three porridge bowls, the three beds, etcetera. Totally exactly. So three is the number of times something happens where

anecdote and then repeated anecdote become phenomena. And so I suspect since one of the highest functions of our brain is pattern recognition, and three occurrences of an event or correlation is what it usually takes for us to feel like we have confidently established a pattern. The number three is in some sense kind of hard coded into us. It's like a powerful indicator of significance and red gularity in nature and in our minds, three becomes the number

of law. So anyway, that that's my guess. I wonder if we're we're you know, we're suckers for three pronged instruments, which seems like such a mundane and kind of dumb thing to be obsessed with the magical powers of because threes are inherently holy and powerful in our minds because

of our pattern seeking nature. Yeah, and and I like this idea too, of of of power of being positioned in the three and three, Like, if you have three individuals voting on something, then there is an ability for for two of them to agree and want to disagree, and that there still is a decision. If you have three individuals in a yoga class, then everyone has plausible deniability. If someone farts safety and numbers, once you have three,

you have a group. Yes, but anyway, maybe maybe we should leave depart the realm of of religion and magic and psychology and go back to the gritty reality of tools and weapons. Because when I think of tridents in the real world and not as clutched by God's I definitely think of gladiatorial combat. Yes, you think of the rotarius or net fighter, one of the key types of gladiators who fought with the trident, a net, a weighted net,

and a dagger. Now, of course, there were various different types of gladiators that that that the Romans would use in these gladiatorial sports, right they were. Each one was a character armed with with some some array of weapons and armor, and then they would engage in in combat. I am continually astonished every time I really think about the idea of gladiatorial games, and uh astonished when I realized, okay,

so this was real fighting to the death. In many cases like that, they were actually fighting and trying to injure and kill each other. Why hadn't they yet discovered that you could achieve the same kind of dramatic entertainment value simply by simulating dramatic fighting without actually hurting anyone. Well, you might well ask the same question of of of today.

I mean, because look look around we have We certainly have um, we have such dramatic fair as say professional wrestling, But then we also have we still have professional boxing and uh in mixed martial arts in which individuals are are still engaging in actual intentional violence against each other. Though granted with with with rules in place, but even with with gladiate gladiator sport, there were rules there, There were there were there were quite a few rules to

to maintain a sense of order to everything. I mean, I guess that's kind of the appeal of making people, you know, engage in uh in violent acts against each other, as that they're obeying these these set of rules that you've established for them. Yeah, I mean, whether or not you have rules, I mean, I understand why it can

be excited fighting to to watch people fight. We do that in our fiction all the time, Like we've got you know, you've got violent movies and TV shows where there's mortal conflict between characters and you can get invested in it and it gets you wrapped up in the narrative. But it seems like that's so easy to do with just like a play. You know, you don't have to actually be hurting each other, and you can you can have with a fake fight, you can have a better fight.

It tells a better story that and and also one in which the right individual, the correct individual, wins. That's very often the problem with a legit fight for entertainment purposes is that it is either not a good contest or the wrong individual wins. Like there's a there's an individual that if they were to win, that would tell the best story, and instead they're the one staring up at the lights. Yeah, yeah, I guess I didn't mean to get all sanctimonious and moralize here, but I don't know.

I think I'm gonna stand by it. I don't know. Making people actually hurt each other for entertainment, it just doesn't seem great to me. I'm against it as well. Uh it is. It is. When you look at the Roman gladiatorial sport, it is both ridiculous and barbaric at the same time. For instance, the Ritarius here fighting with

this trident, which was sometimes barbed but typically smooth. Generally five semi centimeters between the spikes, and each cone spike is about twelve to fifteen millimeters, and they were, in

essence a sea themed gladiator. You know, they're fighting with a fishing net and a fishing spear, and sometimes they're even fighting in flooded conditions, and they were often they often seem to embody more feminine elements as well, compared to the more armored masculine gladiator types such as the Mermillio or the Secretur, which was essentially a fish had a fish like helm, So you had a fisherman battling a fish, someone dressed up as a fisherman battling someone

dressed up as a fish, and it might beat the death. This prefigures the Mortal Kombat and the third act of Jaws. Now, obviously this is a this is a violent Roman spectacle, and and there are very they were very strict combat rules set in place, so it's not it's not like a real world example of of a trident. It's a it's an artificial but potentially lethal combat scenario, right. But I was wondering, like, to what extent is it? Is it a practical weapon at all? Because it never seemed

practical to me. I would see these images of Zeus or the Devil with a trident and it just did not look like a good weapon choice. No. Yet again, it looks kind of cartoony. It's like in those early cartoons. It looks like it's for one cartoon character to poke another one in the butt. Yeah, and so you wonder we'll do do these gladiators with a tried and to

they trident? Are they? Are they to disadvantage? I mean certainly they have a reach advantage, but then they don't have much armor on uh, and all they can do is if the if their opponent gets into close, they would have to I guess, drop the trident and use their dagger as a last resort weapon. So I was looking into this just to see like did anyone did

they actually ever kill anyone with a trident? And I found a paper was published in Forensic Science International from two thousand five by Favian cons and Carl Groschmidt titled head Injuries of Roman Gladiators What Yeah, whoa And they point out that there's a lot of forensic evidence on

gladiator combat. Quote. The gladiator weaponry is well known through historical sources at least one injury per known type of offensive weapon could be identified, as well as evidence for the most popular the gladiator trident, which was found to be represented by one paramortem that means at the at or near the time of death and to anti mortem

or before death injuries. Overall, the reportedly very strict nature of combat rules for gladiator fights could be confirmed by the absence of multiple paramortal traumatized individuals showing a lack of the excessive violence commonly observed on medieval battleground victims. So they were looking at human skulls here from a gladiator cemetery in ancient Ephesus, which is a modern day Turkey. This was originally unearthed in so Here's what they had

to say about their findings. Quote. Eleven individuals exhibited a total of sixteen well healed uh anti mortal cranial traumata. Five of the eleven individuals showed multiple trauma. Ten individuals exhibited a total of ten paramortal cranial traumata. This is a surprisingly high frequency of deadly head injuries, taking into account that most of the gladiator types wore helmets. A possible explanation could be the frequently reported death blow technique

used by the hammer carrying death god Dispater. Yikes, what is going on there? Okay, so this was this was new to me. I I'm not that well versed in gladiator gladiatorial combat, but Dispater was a costumed arena servant in character as a death god that would finish a sufficiently wounded gladiator off with a hammer. That's horrible. Now, they wrote quote, it is not known exactly how this execution was performed, but um, I have to say I have a powerfully strong guess about how they might have

carried this out. But as for trident wounds to the skull, they all seem to have involved two, but not three wounds. And that makes sense, right, because even with a reasonably narrow trident, Uh, you know, how are you going to land all three um teeth of that thing on the

human skull. I'm just trying to think how there are these head wounds that are there in the evidence from people's bones, but they appear to have survived also, like some people died with apparently healed overhead wounds from from the combat. Yeah. I mean, this is a this is a brutal, brutal time and place as long as you're able to continue and they don't have to call disspader

over there to to deal with you. Now, as for other functional tridents and like military and combat history, where you talked about pol arms a little bit, but I'll I want to throw in that in that older book of the Night of the Gods by John O'Neill that have referenced earlier, um, he describes an imperial Chinese trident with the third blade turned back toward the wheelder, So it's going to you know, uh, slicked back if you will.

So the first blade is for slicing, it's kind of you know, very blade like the middle one is longer and it's for stabbing, and then this other one comes back for slicing as well. So it was just an interesting take on the trident design that I've never seen before.

So what kind of tried and does Aquaman have? This is I'm glad you brought this up, Joe, because if you if you look at some of these comic book images of Aquaman, he does have a trident, and very often it is depicted as just a trident, but other times there are extra barbs. So he ironically no longer has a trident, he has uh tented dent or something, And a lot of people pointed out with the new DC Cinematic Universe version of Aquaman, but you also see

this in the comics. You see, uh, you see these images of Aquaman with this ridiculous non trident in his hands. Why do they do that? Do they not even? Wait? Is is Aquaman related to Poseidon or Neptune? Or is I don't know my Aquaman or I'm not superversed in the comic either, but I understand there is a lot they have injected a lot of of of like Greek undersea mythology into the property. Yeah, yeah, is he played by cal Drogo, Yeah, Jason Momoa very striking as Aquaman. Well,

I say, give him three prongs. You know what they should really do with Aquaman is give him the impossible trident. Oh. Yes. This is the twentieth century optical illusion, which is, if you start at first glance, you see a trident, you see three prongs, like essentially a tuning fork with three prongs. But then when you start, when you really look at it, you realize there is no middle prong. It's it's it's just a bid dent as opposed to a trident. Yeah,

it's an optical illusion. Well, actually there, I don't know if there even are the two prongs on the side, because the three dimensional representation of them doesn't line up. So you're just given this repeatedly false perspective where one edge bleeds into another. The more you look at it, the more it hurts your brain because you really want to form a three D image out of it, and it's increasingly difficult to do. So this was not mc

escher was it seems like it should be. It wasn't, but but it's it's the very type of optical illusion that he often played with. But see, that's perfect for for a god to have his weapons. So if you've got Aquaman and he's somehow like he's like the Thor of d c uh, he's like a traditional Greek god character, he must have access to some kind of forbidden geometry. Here you would get the forbidden geometry combined with the

traditional trident of the sea god. I feel like this is the very kind of thing that surely Grant Morrison did this at some point, had a character with an impossible trident. Oh yeah, that seems perfect, all right, So there you have it, the Trident. If you want to check out more episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, past episodes even on Mythic Weapons, head on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That is where you will find them, as well as links out to

our various social media accounts. And if you want to support the show, just rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Big thanks as always to our wonderful audio producers Alex Williams and Tarry Harrison. If you would like to get in touch with us to let us know your feedback about this episode or any other, to request a topic for the future, to just say hi, let us know where you listen from how you found out about the show, You can email us at blow

the Mind at how stuff works dot com. And now, Robert, I am to understand you wanted to feature a bracing industrial easter egg for this show. Yeah, yeah, we've We've never featured any industrial music on the show before, but this is a perfect track to close out with. Yeah, this is a band you've interviewed before on our website, I think, right, Robert, Yeah, so the band is three Teeth.

They actually get their name from the trident tri dent three teeth, it seems appropriate that yeah, and this is this is the track Divine Weapon off the two thousand seventeen album shut Down Dot exc Yeah. I chatted with the frontman, Alexi Mencola about the band's name and the use of trident symbolism a couple of years back, and when I reached out to them about using the track

on this episode. Uh Lex also pointed out that the Shutdown Dot e x C vinyl actually has a gatefold trident when you open it that maps the trident of of Paracelsus that we talked about earlier. And you can find out more about that release and the band at three Teeth that's with a numeral three teeth dot org or look them up wherever you get your music. So if you have an appetite for some industrial metal, here

you go. S S S S y A. Try now wid how that called j our wa God where I jake b while by ain't I ain't will