Wednesday, October 15, 2008

The Trident

Poseidon's Trident, it is one of the many symbols of the God, and not an ambiguous one. Everywhere that trident is seen as his symbol. A fishing apparatus, a weapon, a symbol of power akin to a scepter, the three pronged trident represents far more than just these things, and as human beings, we must seek to understand what the trident represents on a religious level, those of us who include many Gods in our religion often have to come to terms with the symbols and metaphors with which the Gods communicate their will to mankind.

The pomegranate of Persephone, the dove of Aphrodite, the helm of Hades, Athena's owl, Helios' chariot. All of these represent different things, not just from each other, but different things in different contexts as well.

To the end of trying to explain what it means to me, I will assign three distinct representations to the Trident, one for each prong. Earth, for Poseidon is shaker of the Earth. Sea, because Poseidon is God of the sea, and in many ways, is the sea itself. And last but certainly not least, creator, for like Zeus, Poseidon is a creator God, bringing into the world much of what it is made of.

I will try to explore these in the next few posts.

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