Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick. Joe,
Speaker 1: what do you think of when I say the word triedent? Uh? Gum?
Speaker 1: Is that the wrong answer? No? Wait, give me another shot.
Speaker 1: All right? Okay? I think of Ariel's father in The
Speaker 1: Little Mermaid. I think he's got one. He does. Yes,
Speaker 1: he has some form of trident, as I recall. Wait, No,
Speaker 1: that's not a good answer either, is it. No? Wait,
Speaker 1: let's see. How about I think of the devil, right,
Speaker 1: the devil's got a trident? He does? He has that
Speaker 1: that pitchfork, which is essentially a trident, a a three
Speaker 1: pronged spear for you know, stabbing sinners in the backside.
Speaker 1: I imagine, why are you asking me about a particular
Speaker 1: three tipped spear weapon, Robert, because that is what we
Speaker 1: were talking about today here on Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 1: Mind Now, Robert, when you said let's do an episode
Speaker 1: about tridents, Originally I admit I have a skeptical I
Speaker 1: was like, what is there to say about tridents? But okay,
Speaker 1: I'm glad I trusted you because we found some weird
Speaker 1: stuff about tridents. This is a topic that I think
Speaker 1: it's been brewing for a while for me, because like
Speaker 1: I grew up seeing these images of you know, Neptune
Speaker 1: or Poseidon with a trident, certainly at the Devil and
Speaker 1: the Pitchfork, and I never really thought about it that
Speaker 1: much because on one level, it didn't look like a
Speaker 1: very good weapon, Like I just I couldn't imagine like
Speaker 1: really cool fighting scenarios with it. I was kind of awkward.
Speaker 1: It looks awkward. Yeah, And then when you see it
Speaker 1: used in gladiatorial combat, which we'll we'll discuss in this episode,
Speaker 1: that too looks awkward in force, like that poor guy,
Speaker 1: uh forced to fight for his life and he's given
Speaker 1: such a stupid weapon to do it with. You know,
Speaker 1: it looks like it would be much better if you
Speaker 1: were trying to accurately spear of fish and if you're
Speaker 1: trying to like fight a gladiator in the arena. Yes,
Speaker 1: and and indeed that is one of the practical uses
Speaker 1: of the trident, which will will also discuss here. But
Speaker 1: I think the thing is, I just I kept encountering
Speaker 1: the trident in various places. You know, different symbols of
Speaker 1: the trident. Um. You know, I went with my family
Speaker 1: to Barbados and the flag. Uh, there has this this
Speaker 1: really cool trident image if you start looking for it.
Speaker 1: The trident seems to be everywhere and just cultures around
Speaker 1: the world. You know where the trident is not is
Speaker 1: in nature. That's right. You look around for trident shapes
Speaker 1: in nature. Now there are branching tree shapes everywhere in nature. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you know, you can maybe argue that I guess
Speaker 1: there's some sort of trident things. They're like plants with
Speaker 1: three leaf structures. There's like clover and stuff. But I
Speaker 1: try to think of like a three legged animals, say,
Speaker 1: that would be a good analogy in nature for the trident.
Speaker 1: But there's no such thing. There is no three legged
Speaker 1: animal in nature, not a naturally occurring one. I mean,
Speaker 1: do you do find dogs with three legs? Of course
Speaker 1: there's one of the office. Oh yeah, yeah, Oh, I
Speaker 1: mean three legged dogs are great, But yeah, there are
Speaker 1: not animals that are supposed to have three legs. And
Speaker 1: that's kind of odd, isn't it. Like wouldn't you expect
Speaker 1: there'd be at least one animal out there that has
Speaker 1: three legs. But no, this does not occur. This is
Speaker 1: just not something that d NA on Earth makes molecules do. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and now you mentioned trees and streams and things of
Speaker 1: this nature, and I do think that is probably part
Speaker 1: of the appeal of of the trident symbol. It implies
Speaker 1: movement into vision. It's also a three in one image,
Speaker 1: three points obeying the thrust of a single combatant, a
Speaker 1: natural visual expression too, of power, both in the power
Speaker 1: of of tool use and in the power of of
Speaker 1: one commanding others to follow their command. So it's no
Speaker 1: wonder that we see see various trident weapons in the
Speaker 1: clutch of gods and demons or other beingings that are
Speaker 1: that are that that we uh that that we embody
Speaker 1: with power. Okay, So it sounds like you're setting up
Speaker 1: the trident as a kind of a divine tool or
Speaker 1: divine weapon by virtue of its three prongs. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's where we see it all over the place. And
Speaker 1: we'll get to those wonderful examples of the trident as
Speaker 1: the divine weapons. Is the some sort of of holy
Speaker 1: instrument that the gods use to u, you know, to
Speaker 1: inflict damage on the earth. Poor mortals and rival demons,
Speaker 1: and the stemming from that, we also get various holy
Speaker 1: weapons and sacred items that are used by by warriors
Speaker 1: and rulers in various cultures. But then we also have
Speaker 1: these just ancient tools that we also find around the world.
Speaker 1: Three pronged fishing spears. Now, why would three prongs be
Speaker 1: especially useful in a fishing spear as opposed to any
Speaker 1: other kind of spear, like say, a hunting spear. I
Speaker 1: was thinking about this, and it seems to me correct
Speaker 1: me if you disagree. The advantage of a three pronged
Speaker 1: spear might have to do with the properties of how
Speaker 1: water interacts with light and the refraction of light as
Speaker 1: it passes through the surface of a body of water. Oh, yes,
Speaker 1: we've talked about this, and you can, of course. The
Speaker 1: easiest way to experience this is to have like a glass,
Speaker 1: a clear glass for half filled with water, and then
Speaker 1: you stick a pencil in it and look at the
Speaker 1: glass from the side and and and there's an optical
Speaker 1: illusion that throws you off there. Yeah. So, if there
Speaker 1: if there is difficulty in seeing exactly where you need
Speaker 1: to stab to hit something in the water, especially if
Speaker 1: it's something like a fish, not like a whale or
Speaker 1: something that's like a big easy target to him. But
Speaker 1: if it's like a fish, I can imagine it being
Speaker 1: sometimes difficult to aim correctly to hit the fish with
Speaker 1: a single pronged spear. But if you've got more sort
Speaker 1: of a range of attack points that you can aim
Speaker 1: roughly perpendicular to the fish, then you might have a
Speaker 1: better chance of getting it with somewhat approximate aim. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I like this hypothesis. This, Uh, this, this sounds reasonable.
Speaker 1: Now for whatever reason, uh, people have been using spears
Speaker 1: to fish with since very ancient times. Their fifteenth century
Speaker 1: b c. Egyptian depictions of it. The Book of Job
Speaker 1: refers to spear fishing as well. And today you can
Speaker 1: still you can go online and you can shop for
Speaker 1: fishing spears. You'll find quite a quite quite a few
Speaker 1: different types. You can get your two pronged or bident
Speaker 1: style spears. You can get four or five pronged spheres.
Speaker 1: You can get your three pronged tridents, which I see
Speaker 1: referred to as frog spears. I don't know white white
Speaker 1: three is particularly good for for frogs versus these other models. Um,
Speaker 1: but I was looking around about it, and I actually
Speaker 1: looked up a Gizmoto article titled so you want to
Speaker 1: go spear fishing for the very first time? And the
Speaker 1: author shares the following quote spear tips. We used both J. B.
Speaker 1: L's three pronged barbed paralyzer thirty four dollars and basic
Speaker 1: single point spear tip with fold out barbed. The paralyzer
Speaker 1: reduced the need for pinpoint accuracy, but wasn't quite as
Speaker 1: good as the single point at retaining fish once they
Speaker 1: were speared. The compromises of life, Yes, now, I have
Speaker 1: to admit, for the longest, like basically up until this week,
Speaker 1: I just always assumed that the tridents that you see
Speaker 1: held by various gods and beings and in these various
Speaker 1: myths and artistic depictions, I just assumed that they were
Speaker 1: all fishing spears that had been you know, transformed from
Speaker 1: a mundane tool to a divine object. Because we see
Speaker 1: this kind of movement a lot, right, We see God's
Speaker 1: wielding things like hammers. Oh yeah, Thor's hammer. It's what's
Speaker 1: it called mule near? That sounds right, mule dear? Okay,
Speaker 1: so mule dear um. But you know it, it makes sense, right,
Speaker 1: you have these these these these objects, these tools, and
Speaker 1: then when we we we create these gods, we give
Speaker 1: them things signify various powers and acts. Um. There's a
Speaker 1: there's one curious case two of the Chinese. He's a ruyee,
Speaker 1: which is a scepter, a royal scepter, so a symbol
Speaker 1: of divine power, right, you know, you just one with
Speaker 1: power would brandish it. It identifies that they have the
Speaker 1: power to command people around. And then you can, if
Speaker 1: you want, you can point it at various things and say, hey,
Speaker 1: you give me that. Right, That's basically the function of
Speaker 1: a scepter, except this particular scepter has also clearly been
Speaker 1: used as a backscratcher. So there there's kind of you see,
Speaker 1: different theories about this, whether it began as a backscratcher
Speaker 1: or it is just a you know, just a symbol
Speaker 1: of power that was then used as a backscratcher later on.
Speaker 1: So divine emperor's itch too. Yeah. But but it's it's
Speaker 1: interesting because which which direction is the movement going. Is
Speaker 1: the object going from mundane, practical object to something that
Speaker 1: is merely symbolic, or is the movement going in the
Speaker 1: other direction, something that has no practical purpose. But then
Speaker 1: a practical purpose emerges for it. Well, that's a really
Speaker 1: good question. I would tend to assume that it could
Speaker 1: go both ways, right, But which which did it go
Speaker 1: in this case? Because obviously, yeah, practical tools take on divine,
Speaker 1: divine aspects, especially when they become you know, embedded in
Speaker 1: our consciousness, like if we use them a lot, the
Speaker 1: tool sort of becomes an extension of the body. So
Speaker 1: in the same way that the body has a counterpart
Speaker 1: in heaven. Of course, the tool is an extension of
Speaker 1: the body has a counterpart in heaven. I mean, there
Speaker 1: is no actual Thor's hammer, But if you have a
Speaker 1: king or an emperor with a divine scepter, you know
Speaker 1: they've got it around. They might as well use it
Speaker 1: for things that they need. A big stick for scratching
Speaker 1: backs might be one of those things. There might be
Speaker 1: other things too. Now, coming back to tried dent's before
Speaker 1: we proceed with some mythological examples, we should probably touch
Speaker 1: on the the etymology of the word uh tri dent
Speaker 1: comes from the Latin tried dentists or three toothed as
Speaker 1: opposed to buy dent, which we also have have referred to.
Speaker 1: And we'll referred to, which would be a two toothed
Speaker 1: weapon which has enjoyed avoid arguably less symbolic success that
Speaker 1: you do see it pop up in artistic depictions. Now,
Speaker 1: I just thought of a great superhero superhero who fights
Speaker 1: with the tuning fork, be like a musical superhero. It
Speaker 1: would be called like the tuner. The tuner, yeah, tuner
Speaker 1: is Yeah, that's essentially a bident. All right, So let's
Speaker 1: talk about some some mythic examples of trident use, or
Speaker 1: things that at least appear to be tridents and have
Speaker 1: been treated as tridents by in various interpretations. Robert, please
Speaker 1: please tell me you're gonna take me to ancient Babylon.
Speaker 1: Of course, we always go to ancient Babylon. It's the
Speaker 1: best place to go all the best gods. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna actually check in with our old friend mar
Speaker 1: Duke here. Um. Mar Duke is often seen with an
Speaker 1: odd looking three toothed weapon, uh that is sometimes interpreted
Speaker 1: as a form of trident. Now, mar Duke was a
Speaker 1: Babylonian thunder god who eventually rose up in the pantheon
Speaker 1: to the point that he became considered the prime god
Speaker 1: of Babylon and was apparently described with fifty different names,
Speaker 1: and he's also the slayer of the primordial Tiamat uh.
Speaker 1: And there's actually a wonderful uh image depicting this where
Speaker 1: you see this uh, this winged of like lion, dragon
Speaker 1: like monster and here comes mar Duke with these with
Speaker 1: one of these weapons in each hand. Why would he
Speaker 1: have a trident? Why would he have a phishing spear?
Speaker 1: Because there are plenty of other Babylonian gods that are
Speaker 1: that are associated with the ocean, they would be the
Speaker 1: ones to have the trident, right. Uh. So I was
Speaker 1: reading about this, I found a book by Derek m
Speaker 1: Elsom titled Lightning, Nature and Culture, which has a lot
Speaker 1: of info in it about various thunder and lightning gods.
Speaker 1: So if that's if that's your jam, I highly recommend
Speaker 1: picking that up. But the author makes a connection between
Speaker 1: the trident weapon of mar Duke and not fishing, but lightning. Lightning,
Speaker 1: of course, is a traditional weapon of mighty gods, right,
Speaker 1: I mean that's the weapon of Zeus, and Zeus is
Speaker 1: sometimes depicted holding three thunderbolts in his hand. Elsa writes
Speaker 1: the images of successive storm gods in Mesopotamia depicted on
Speaker 1: monuments and cylinder seals reveal developments in the depiction of lightning.
Speaker 1: Lightning was originally shown by two or three wavy or
Speaker 1: zigzag lines representing the celestial flames of its flashes or bolts.
Speaker 1: They were later joined together at the bottom by a
Speaker 1: short stem handle or sometimes a longer staff that the
Speaker 1: storm god would hold and throw. The two pronged bident
Speaker 1: and and three pronged trident thunder weapon should not be
Speaker 1: confused with Poseidon's trident, which usually has barbs on the
Speaker 1: prongs like a fishing spear. He continues. An alternative development
Speaker 1: and imagery along with the addition of a short stem
Speaker 1: or staff to the lightning flashes, was that two or
Speaker 1: three of the wavy lines were placed together to form
Speaker 1: a bundle of lightning flashes. The middle of this bundle
Speaker 1: was later modified and molded together to create a hand grip,
Speaker 1: and the single underbolt or karania was formed with two
Speaker 1: active ends. So what we're seeing here isn't a double
Speaker 1: bladed trident sword as much as a clutch of three thunderbolts.
Speaker 1: With the style drifting over the years. You know, I
Speaker 1: think I misspoke a minute ago when I said Zeus
Speaker 1: is holding the three thunderbolts. Zeus is sometimes depicted holding
Speaker 1: something that looks like a bundle of thunderbolts or something
Speaker 1: like that. But specifically, what I was thinking of was
Speaker 1: the god a DoD or hadd, another ancient Near Eastern
Speaker 1: storm god who clutched three thunderbolts exactly like you're talking
Speaker 1: about it. It also reminds me of another odd weapon
Speaker 1: slash symbol that one comes across in a Hindu iconography,
Speaker 1: and one that has also intrigued me in the past,
Speaker 1: the vadra. One finds the vadra either as an embellishment
Speaker 1: on the pommel of a sword or on both ends
Speaker 1: of a hilt in the same manner as this. Uh,
Speaker 1: this this symbol that Marduke is holding, and also points
Speaker 1: out that this too is a highly hillis thunderbolt quote
Speaker 1: shaped like a double ended flower bulb or club. That
Speaker 1: is a wicked sword. I mean it looks like it
Speaker 1: looks like a good old sword hat made out of
Speaker 1: gold fire. Yeah. Yeah. If you if you want to
Speaker 1: see this for yourself, just do an image search for
Speaker 1: vadra that's v A j r A and then sword
Speaker 1: and you'll see some wonderful examples of this, But there
Speaker 1: are also straight up tridents in the in the Hindu pantheon, right,
Speaker 1: that's right. Shiva has a weapon that is known as
Speaker 1: the trishula, which we'll get to in a minute. But
Speaker 1: before we get to Ta Shiva, we should probably talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about Poseidon or Neptune or well, first
Speaker 1: we should take a break, and then when we come back,
Speaker 1: we will get into the Greek god of the sea.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank alright, we're back. Sorry to keep Poseidon
Speaker 1: waiting like that, but but he's patient, right, he's not
Speaker 1: so patient, right the Sidon, because Sidon holds the grudges,
Speaker 1: doesn't Hey, he does. He's the enemy of Odysseus, that's right. Uh,
Speaker 1: and reaks a lot of havoc u in Odysseus's direction
Speaker 1: with that try that symbolic divine weapon that he uses
Speaker 1: to just pretty much what make anybody's life miserable that
Speaker 1: gets in his way? Now what I can't remember. How
Speaker 1: does Poseidon use his his trident against Odysseus. Well, in general,
Speaker 1: he uses it to basically just to stir things up,
Speaker 1: quite literally, to to to stir up storms, devatating, devastating waves,
Speaker 1: to create new sources of water, just general geologic chaos.
Speaker 1: I don't is that the best use of tool physics?
Speaker 1: If you're using a trident to stir things up, wouldn't
Speaker 1: it be better if he had a powerful magic spoon
Speaker 1: or something with a large flat surface to really get
Speaker 1: the waters churning like an or Yeah, it seems like
Speaker 1: a tried. It might be better if you wanted to,
Speaker 1: I don't know what, like dissolve some sugar into the water.
Speaker 1: This is a great question though, because it gets down
Speaker 1: to the heart of why does Poseidon have this weapon?
Speaker 1: Like I've having just grown up seeing images of Poseidon
Speaker 1: my whole life, I just I never really questioned it,
Speaker 1: like that's the weapon he has? And then when I
Speaker 1: thought about it, I'm like, Oh, it's a fishing spear, right,
Speaker 1: That's all there is to it. Well, yeah, he's got
Speaker 1: of the sea. There's some fish in the sea, I think, right,
Speaker 1: aren't there fish in the sea? That's what I'm told
Speaker 1: makes sense now. The mythic origins of the weapon very
Speaker 1: is one might expect with with myth and mythic traditions. Uh.
Speaker 1: It was perhaps the work of of the master crafts
Speaker 1: people or giants who were known as the Telconese who
Speaker 1: also created Chronus's sickle, or it was the gift of
Speaker 1: the cyclothes that's plural for Cyclops. Now, didn't Poseidon have
Speaker 1: a son who was a cyclops? He did? He did it?
Speaker 1: Gets it gets complicated, um, But this is what Apollodorus
Speaker 1: had to say in the library, as translated by Fraser Okay.
Speaker 1: And the cyclothes then gave Zeus thunder and lightning and
Speaker 1: a thunderbolt, and on Pluto they bestowed a helmet, and
Speaker 1: on Poseidon a trident. Armed with these weapons, the gods
Speaker 1: overcame the Titans shut them up in Tartarus and appointed
Speaker 1: the hundred handers their guards. But they themselves cast lots
Speaker 1: for the sovereignty. And to Zeus was a lot to
Speaker 1: the dominion of the sky, and to Poseidon the dominion
Speaker 1: of the sea, and to Pluto the dominion in Hades.
Speaker 1: So is it better to get the sea or to
Speaker 1: get Hades. I always thought that, like Poseidon came in
Speaker 1: second I was kind of my read. But that's that's
Speaker 1: like kind of a land locked way of looking at it, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, I was that's me as a child in
Speaker 1: Tennessee thinking about about the ocean. But if you were
Speaker 1: a Greek, it might well be the opposite, or it
Speaker 1: might well be the case that that Zeus and Poseidon
Speaker 1: are on equal footing. Yeah, if you're a seafaring culture,
Speaker 1: say a lot of your economy is based on trade
Speaker 1: across the oceans or on fishing. Uh, you've got to
Speaker 1: think that a god of the sea is much more
Speaker 1: consequential than we would normally consider a god of the
Speaker 1: sea living in you know, some kind of landlocked area.
Speaker 1: Like you say, I mean the whims of the sea
Speaker 1: decide your fortunes and then Hades. I mean certainly that
Speaker 1: had is. It's everybody right, there's no whims of Hades.
Speaker 1: Hades is just it's like death and taxes. So maybe
Speaker 1: they all maybe they're these they are truly equal, uh,
Speaker 1: portions of the cosmos. But this actually ties into some
Speaker 1: of the research I was looking at. HB. Walters wrote
Speaker 1: a paper in that was published in the Journal of
Speaker 1: Hellenistic Studies. So we got we got an archaic but
Speaker 1: scholarship here. Yeah, this is this is this one's a
Speaker 1: bit old, but but it actually reads really really well.
Speaker 1: It's a very nicely written paper. But he discusses the
Speaker 1: artistic evolution of the trident and discusses that that, you know,
Speaker 1: the writing of the trident predates any artistic depiction that
Speaker 1: was then known. But if you look at the Iliad,
Speaker 1: there's nothing to indicate the shape of the trident. There's
Speaker 1: there's merely the suggestion, based on the word choice, that
Speaker 1: it's composed of three parts in some key way. So
Speaker 1: it could be like three sticks bound in the middle
Speaker 1: or something, I guess. I mean, if it's if you're
Speaker 1: just looking at the word and there's some room for interpretation,
Speaker 1: they're interesting. So Walters looked at various early artistic examples
Speaker 1: and he traced an interesting evolution for the depiction of tridents. Uh,
Speaker 1: not from like a fishing spear to more elaborate uh,
Speaker 1: you know, three pronged weapons or symbols, but from a
Speaker 1: lotus bud to this barbed, three pronged spear that we
Speaker 1: associate with with the side and the neptin. Now, what's
Speaker 1: the significance of the lotus bud? Well, this is interesting.
Speaker 1: This gets back to what was something we're talking about earlier.
Speaker 1: The trident. The proper trident may not appear in nature,
Speaker 1: but something like a lotus bud does, and has this
Speaker 1: trifold design and instantly speaks to us with various you know,
Speaker 1: symbology related to uh to you know, units of three.
Speaker 1: I want to come back to the significance of that
Speaker 1: symbology in a little bit. This lotus sceptor is apparently
Speaker 1: pretty common in Greek art and is typically held by
Speaker 1: a god or goddess, and Zeus himself is seen in
Speaker 1: in various depictions with a with a very similar scepter.
Speaker 1: So the idea is that this lotus bud scepter eventually
Speaker 1: somehow morphed into the three pronged weapon. Yes, the idea
Speaker 1: here is that the lotus staff was the emblem of Zeus,
Speaker 1: and that there might have been just less distinction between
Speaker 1: Zeus and Poseidon among early Greeks, and the Poseidon might
Speaker 1: have been nothing short of Zeus's marine form. I've read
Speaker 1: the exact same thing, that Poseidon was in some sense
Speaker 1: the Zeus of the sea. Yeah, and uh, and so
Speaker 1: they simply had the same scepter. But then as time
Speaker 1: goes by, as we as we have different artistic depictions
Speaker 1: a roll one after the other. You see this, uh,
Speaker 1: this evolution, you see this uh, this distinction made and
Speaker 1: this this thing. This scepter, the symbol that Poseidon is
Speaker 1: holding gradually comes to resemble a phishing spear rather than
Speaker 1: the lotus scepter of Zeus. Oh. If this is a
Speaker 1: correct explanation, this is fantastic because it matches up some
Speaker 1: stuff we've talked about on the show before that I
Speaker 1: always really like where there there's a way of interpreting
Speaker 1: an artistic tradition as deriving from a misunderstanding of previous art.
Speaker 1: One explanation for the origin of the unicorn tradition is
Speaker 1: that possibly there were ancient depictions on say, uh, cylinder
Speaker 1: seals or something like that, of natural animals naturally occurring
Speaker 1: two horned animals like the Arx or the ibex, but
Speaker 1: they're depicted in profile, so it looks like they've only
Speaker 1: got one horn shooting up out of their head because
Speaker 1: the horns are lined up with each other as the
Speaker 1: animals in profile. And so people saw that misunderstood it,
Speaker 1: thought that there was this one horned animal out there,
Speaker 1: and started the unicorn tradition. We don't know that's what happened,
Speaker 1: but that's highly possible. Uh, And so maybe what's going
Speaker 1: on here is a similar like misinterpretation of previous generations
Speaker 1: of artists depicting a god holding something. Yeah, it reminds
Speaker 1: me of the line from member to echo about books
Speaker 1: speaking to other books. But of course art works of
Speaker 1: art speak to other works of art. Yeah, so that's correct.
Speaker 1: That's really interesting, so Walter also. Walters also references the
Speaker 1: work of John O'Neill, who argued that the Hindu through
Speaker 1: shula which we're about to talk about, may have also
Speaker 1: begun as a lotus, and the same origin might might
Speaker 1: be placed on the floor de les as well, this
Speaker 1: of course being the the symbol of what the New
Speaker 1: Orleans saints. I think that's what it is. Let the
Speaker 1: good times are all but but he let the good
Speaker 1: trident are all but but but. Walters doesn't completely agree
Speaker 1: with O'Neill on this. He said, quote with these theories,
Speaker 1: I am not altogether inclined to agree, as explanation by
Speaker 1: means of symbolism is always, though fascinating, a dangerous course
Speaker 1: to pursue. Besides, my point is this that the lotus,
Speaker 1: scepter and trident are not parallel forms, but that the
Speaker 1: one grew out of the other, and that since the
Speaker 1: lotus sceptor as an attribute of Poseidon is only found
Speaker 1: in these examples of early date, whereas the trident form
Speaker 1: belongs to all periods, the lotus must be the earlier
Speaker 1: form from which the other has been evolved by a
Speaker 1: process of differentiation. And he stressed that he was far
Speaker 1: from certain on the matter. So he is saying his
Speaker 1: opinion is they're not just parallels, but that the low
Speaker 1: des scepter came first and that turned into the trident. Correct, yes, now.
Speaker 1: Writer and classicist Robert Graves also had something to say
Speaker 1: about this in his work Greek Myths uh the Greek
Speaker 1: Myths Pardon. He wrote, Poseidon's trident and zeus thunderbolt were
Speaker 1: originally the same weapon weapon the sacred lab rates or
Speaker 1: double acts, but distinguished from other when Poseidon became god
Speaker 1: of the Sea and Zeus claimed the right of the thunderbolt.
Speaker 1: So this is the kind of acts you'd imagine like
Speaker 1: an orc holding or I don't know, maybe a dwarf too,
Speaker 1: in your fantasy that it's the acts with the blade
Speaker 1: on both sides. So Graves seem to be presenting like
Speaker 1: a different type of evolution from a from a different
Speaker 1: sort of primordial symbol. But still he's talking about the
Speaker 1: same sort of uh evolution of form Alright, so this
Speaker 1: brings us back to Shiva. In Hindu traditions, Shiva is
Speaker 1: is the destroyer of evil and also also the transformer,
Speaker 1: not the robot kind, but a transformer of things and
Speaker 1: states of affairs. Correct, yes, so so Shiva is one
Speaker 1: of the Trimurty, the three gods of the cosmic lifespan
Speaker 1: Brahma is the creator, Vishnu is the sustainer, and Shiva
Speaker 1: is the destroyer of worlds now. Shiva is often seen
Speaker 1: to brandish this trishula, which means three toothed or three
Speaker 1: pronged uh and it. It is definitely a weapon as
Speaker 1: well as a symbol of power and uh. It's again
Speaker 1: also attributed to possible lightning or lotus bud origins, and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of symbolism wrapped in it to empire
Speaker 1: and transcendental reality, the power of the tri murdy and
Speaker 1: the three shaktas of will, action and wisdom. And you
Speaker 1: also see other Hindu deities that seemed to brandish such
Speaker 1: a weapon, such as the goddess Durga who slays a
Speaker 1: demon with it, as well as Parvati, the goddess of love,
Speaker 1: fertility and devotion. There's even this origin story for Ganesha,
Speaker 1: the elephant headed Remover of Obstacles, in which Parvati creates
Speaker 1: a child out of tumoric paste and brings it to
Speaker 1: life to guard her house while she's bathing. And but
Speaker 1: then this boy that she creates tries to start stop Shiva.
Speaker 1: Upon Shiva's arrival, and enraged, Shiva beheads the boy with
Speaker 1: the trishula, and angered by this, uh, Parvati demands that
Speaker 1: Shiva restore the boy, and he does so by placing
Speaker 1: an elephant's head upon the body. WHOA, wait, how do
Speaker 1: you seems like beheading with a trishula would be difficult. Well,
Speaker 1: it's not like a bladed In some depictions, though, the
Speaker 1: outer the outer barbs take on a blade like appearance,
Speaker 1: kind of that Flora Lee's kind of appearance. So that's
Speaker 1: that's the weird thing about the trident is that you
Speaker 1: have your sort of basic pitchfork designs, but then sometimes
Speaker 1: they're barbs, sometimes they're not barbs. Sometimes all three barbs
Speaker 1: are the same length. Sometimes the ones in the outside
Speaker 1: are longer, sometimes the central ones longer. Sometimes the ones
Speaker 1: on the outside have have kind of like outer blades
Speaker 1: to them. I can see that if the outside edges
Speaker 1: of the outer barbs are sharp, it's sort of like
Speaker 1: a cross between a spear and an ax. So I
Speaker 1: guess it's a polarm, you know, general pull on, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this is this is a This is a
Speaker 1: great point. Yeah. You see these trident like forms with
Speaker 1: pole arms because range and leverage make them good weapons
Speaker 1: to use against mounted soldiers, as well as the ease
Speaker 1: of their construction and adaptability from farm tools. So if
Speaker 1: you had this, um, this, this three pronged blade, and
Speaker 1: you have blades in the edge, you can you can
Speaker 1: you can really wave it back and forth as need be,
Speaker 1: as well as stab with it. And the length of
Speaker 1: it gives it not only reach but also power because
Speaker 1: it's got a lot of weight, so you can essentially
Speaker 1: just sort of drop it on your enemy. Yeah. Now
Speaker 1: here's the question I had when I was looking into
Speaker 1: all this. It just suddenly dawned on me. I'm reading
Speaker 1: about Poseidon and Neptune and Shiva, but there is another
Speaker 1: pretty popular of their figure, and at least more modern
Speaker 1: Western traditions. Uh, and that is Satan the devil who
Speaker 1: has a pitchfork, Yes, which is you know, a pitchfork
Speaker 1: being something you used to to move hay around. But
Speaker 1: you look at it, it's clearly a trident. It is.
Speaker 1: Sometimes there may be I guess more or fewer prongs, um,
Speaker 1: depending on who's illustrating the devil or devil's but very
Speaker 1: often you see a three pronged spear, you see a trident.
Speaker 1: Where did the devil get a trident? That is a
Speaker 1: good question. I wondered about that because I am quite
Speaker 1: sure the Bible does not say the devil has a pitchfork. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't remember any mention of a pitchfork. So as
Speaker 1: always I I love to get into some history of
Speaker 1: the devil um. So one answer I came across was
Speaker 1: in an academic work on the development of the idea
Speaker 1: of the Christian devil concept, and it was a book
Speaker 1: called Devil, A Mask Without a Face by Luther Link,
Speaker 1: published by the Universe Dave Chicago Press in two thousand four.
Speaker 1: I think I want to read this whole book because
Speaker 1: it was really interesting the part I read, and the
Speaker 1: part I read about the trident was just early on,
Speaker 1: so it seems like he gets into a lot of
Speaker 1: interesting ideas. But Link writes about the how the idea
Speaker 1: of the devil that we have today like the devil
Speaker 1: you see in cartoons, the w C in popular representations.
Speaker 1: It's got three major influences. One of them is early
Speaker 1: readings of the New Testament. That's the most straightforward one,
Speaker 1: because though there is a Satan in the Hebrew Bible,
Speaker 1: it is not really the same character that you see represented,
Speaker 1: say in the Christian literature. For example, in the Book
Speaker 1: of Job, the Satan character that appears is does not
Speaker 1: seem to be like an evil adversary of God, but
Speaker 1: seems to be more sort of a prosecutor figure who
Speaker 1: is skeptical of the virtues of the created humankind and
Speaker 1: wants to sort of like test our metal and and
Speaker 1: expose us as frauds before our creator. He's he was,
Speaker 1: He's just part of the court doing his job, which
Speaker 1: is to bring up the counter argument to the ruler.
Speaker 1: He's a nark. He's narking on humanity. Uh So, so
Speaker 1: that's sort of the Satan character and Joe. But then
Speaker 1: later on you see this development in the Christian tradition
Speaker 1: where where Satan takes on aspects of being an adversary
Speaker 1: of God himself. Satan is more this evil figure representing Uh,
Speaker 1: there's still some sort of prosecutor type elements that the
Speaker 1: devil plays in the New Testament. For example in the
Speaker 1: Gospels when when Satan tempts Christ in the wilderness. Right.
Speaker 1: So there again you see sort of like this prosecutor mindset.
Speaker 1: It wants to show how weak you are, it wants
Speaker 1: to make you fail. But then also there there's just
Speaker 1: this devil as a personification of sin or evil, and
Speaker 1: this definitely comes through and works like revelation. But then again,
Speaker 1: there is a whole lot that people believe about the
Speaker 1: devil that has nothing to do with the Bible. It's
Speaker 1: not in the Bible at all. It comes from things
Speaker 1: like Link points out the rebel angel character created by
Speaker 1: John Milton in Paradise Lost and continued in Romantic literature
Speaker 1: traditions and with poets like Blake and Badelaire, that this
Speaker 1: rebel angel character is not really a feature of the Bible.
Speaker 1: It's more a feature of Milton and these other poets.
Speaker 1: And then of course you've got the images created and
Speaker 1: associated with the notion of Satanic cults and black Sabbats. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is where you see all this uh, this
Speaker 1: pagan b steel imagery of of Satan as this uh this,
Speaker 1: this shaggy uh you know, lord of Hell that engages
Speaker 1: in all of these uh these crude acts with various
Speaker 1: uh witches. Yeah, exactly, And we'll get more into where
Speaker 1: those depictions come from in a minute. But with the
Speaker 1: exception link says of one ninth century old Saxon manuscript,
Speaker 1: all known literary descriptions of Satan were pretty closely based
Speaker 1: on the text of the New Testament until about fifteen
Speaker 1: eighty nine when Christopher Marlowe wrote Dr Faustus, And of
Speaker 1: course that was a play he you know, early modern
Speaker 1: play based on the faust legend, the idea of a
Speaker 1: an alchemist or a secret of knowledge, someone who is
Speaker 1: egotistical and wants to wants more power than he really
Speaker 1: has coming to him, and does a deal with the
Speaker 1: devil to get that power, but then of course realizes
Speaker 1: only too late that the deal you make with the
Speaker 1: devil is always a bad deal. And this is such
Speaker 1: a staple of our of our Satanic literature. I guess
Speaker 1: you would say in storytelling that it we often we
Speaker 1: often forget that it wasn't always baked into the pie, right,
Speaker 1: But outside of literature. Now that that's when he was
Speaker 1: talking about literature outside of literature. In the more popular folklore,
Speaker 1: the image of the devil was informed by fantasies about heretics,
Speaker 1: and which is first appearing around the twelfth century and
Speaker 1: developing more as time went on. And he says images
Speaker 1: of the devil are really scarce in early Christian history,
Speaker 1: that we have images of Satan as early as the
Speaker 1: ninth century, It really wasn't until about the thirteen hundreds
Speaker 1: that the images of Satan took on the visual characteristics
Speaker 1: we now associate with Satan and link rights. Indeed, mirroring
Speaker 1: what we were talking about earlier, that the image of
Speaker 1: the devil's pronged weapon or pitchfork is almost definitely derived
Speaker 1: from the trident of Poseidon, so directly from this imagery
Speaker 1: of the gods of classical antiquity, which itself was probably
Speaker 1: derived from these three bolts of lightning shown in the
Speaker 1: grip of the ancient Babylonian storm god a DoD or Haddad,
Speaker 1: which I mentioned earlier, and so Hadad. If you look
Speaker 1: up pictures of him, there there will be these carvings,
Speaker 1: and he'll be in profile, walking kind of like an
Speaker 1: Egyptian hieroglyphic character walking or something like that, and a
Speaker 1: DoD will have his hand out and he'll be holding
Speaker 1: what looks like lightning bolts, but he'll be clutching them
Speaker 1: like they're stalks of wheat, which is interesting, Yeah, like
Speaker 1: a harvest of lightning. But so you might be wondering, now,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, why would the god Poseidon's weapons show
Speaker 1: up in the hands of the Christian devil. That doesn't
Speaker 1: make any sense. But this is actually part of a
Speaker 1: very common motif in Christian history, not just Christian history,
Speaker 1: but especially in Christian history, of adapting characteristics of another
Speaker 1: person's religion or another religions god to serve as characteristics
Speaker 1: of your religions, devils and demons, and so. One example
Speaker 1: is that many of the names of the Christian and
Speaker 1: Jewish demons are taken from names of gods of other
Speaker 1: religions of the ancient Near East. For example, one of
Speaker 1: our favorites baelz Abub or bails Able, that's derived from
Speaker 1: the name of a Philistine god. See how Beelzebub contains
Speaker 1: Baal meaning lord, which was, you know, a god of
Speaker 1: the ancient Near East. Another one Dagon was a Mesopotamian god,
Speaker 1: later believed to be a Christian demon, and then became
Speaker 1: part of the Lovecraftian mythost. Of course, the much reviled
Speaker 1: evil demon Malok is believed to be a god of
Speaker 1: some of the Canaanites, that the god of a child,
Speaker 1: sacrifice and destruction, not to be confused with Mammon, who
Speaker 1: represents just Greek right forever stooped over looking looking for
Speaker 1: gold embedded in the roads of heaven. But yeah, so,
Speaker 1: so you've got those kind of things. And then I
Speaker 1: found another interesting entry in a more encyclopedic work called
Speaker 1: the Classical Tradition from Harvard University Press, in they're right
Speaker 1: that some medieval Christian artists relied on traditional representations of
Speaker 1: the Greek god Pan as a source for images of
Speaker 1: the devil. So yet again taking gods from another religion
Speaker 1: making them your devil, and so Pan being a god
Speaker 1: of shepherd's hunters, the wilderness, the rural areas had these
Speaker 1: goat like qualities of horns and hoofs, and its part
Speaker 1: of the more general tradition of satyr's and sylvans and fawns.
Speaker 1: It's almost like this idea of human religion, having to
Speaker 1: work with like a prop closet of existing motifs, and
Speaker 1: they're like, we have this character, dress him up. Well,
Speaker 1: what do we got? What we got this goat costume
Speaker 1: from Pan. Oh, yeah, we have this uh this tride
Speaker 1: end here that would along to the side. Uh roll
Speaker 1: those out. Let's let's let's let's get those on a character. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's totally true. It's like fifties monster movies seeing if
Speaker 1: they can like rework a costume or a prop from
Speaker 1: last week's shoot into a new prop for this movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what do we have. We have a guerrilla costume in
Speaker 1: a robot head. Let's make it work. Robot monster. Here
Speaker 1: you go. So anyway, the authors of this jury say
Speaker 1: that the devil's horns, hoofs ears, tail, hairy lower body,
Speaker 1: all of these aspects are derived from the pan and
Speaker 1: the fawn tradition of classical antiquity. And people notice this.
Speaker 1: The romantic poet Percy Shelley, who wrote Ozzymandias, look on
Speaker 1: my works, you mighty in despair, he thought it was
Speaker 1: pretty weird that people would give the attributes of fawns
Speaker 1: to the devil, as he found fawns quote quite poetical personages.
Speaker 1: But the author's right that another major way the depiction
Speaker 1: of the devil was influenced by classical art is the
Speaker 1: devil's nakedness reflecting the naked heroes of classical art, like Hercules,
Speaker 1: and that most Christian medieval art tried to avoid nudity
Speaker 1: when possible, it would cover people up, but the devil
Speaker 1: was often depicted as less covered, as more naked, more
Speaker 1: like one of these heroes of ancient Greece. Huh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it also reminds me of these various paintings
Speaker 1: of Poseidon or Poseidon, or just depictions of Poside where
Speaker 1: Poseidon is nude or nearly nude. Uh. Just this, you know,
Speaker 1: bearded man in the water with the trident. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So granting the trident of Poseidon to the devil seems
Speaker 1: to be part of a larger medieval Christian project of
Speaker 1: associating Satan with the gods and the style of classical
Speaker 1: antiquity of ancient Mesopotamia and of Greece and Rome. And
Speaker 1: so I think that's pretty persuasive. But link makes it
Speaker 1: clear that there are no literary sources that will tell
Speaker 1: us where Satan got his trident. Like you can't go
Speaker 1: into the texts of the time where they will say, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm putting a trident in Satan's hands because I want
Speaker 1: to make this comparison to Poseidon. It's all just inference
Speaker 1: we have to make through the artistic traditions. Suddenly he
Speaker 1: just has a trident in the same way that these
Speaker 1: these depictions of the actual trident of Poseidon like, suddenly
Speaker 1: it looks a little more like a fork and a
Speaker 1: little less like lightning bolts or a lotus, depending on
Speaker 1: which interpretation one relies on. Right, but Link says, you know,
Speaker 1: the devil and his demons are really first shown carrying trident,
Speaker 1: says I mentioned earlier in some ninth century art. And
Speaker 1: one good example of this I've got a picture of
Speaker 1: for us here in the notes Robert. It's from the
Speaker 1: Utrecht Psalter, which is a widely recognized work of medieval art.
Speaker 1: It's a collection of the psalms from the Bible illustrated
Speaker 1: with pen and ink drawings, which are called illuminations. And
Speaker 1: so I've got a drawing here that a company's Psalm
Speaker 1: thirty eight. Of course, Psalm thirty eight, like a lot
Speaker 1: of the Psalms has a lot of woe is Me
Speaker 1: stuff in it, so it says, Oh Lord, rebuke me,
Speaker 1: not in thy wrath, neither chasen me in thy hot displeasure,
Speaker 1: for thine arrows stick fast in me, and thy hand
Speaker 1: presseth me sore. Who you didn't even get to the
Speaker 1: stinking wounds. Oh no, do it, Robert right, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna cut to that part. My wound stink and are
Speaker 1: corrupt because of my foolishness. So you know there's that
Speaker 1: there's a T shirt design. I mean, a lot of
Speaker 1: the psalms take this form. You know, it's like my
Speaker 1: wound stink. Everything's bad, but I can rely on the
Speaker 1: Lord and they will feature a call for mercy. So
Speaker 1: the illumination of Psalm thirty eight here shows the Psalmist
Speaker 1: surrounded by three devils that are closing in on him.
Speaker 1: One is counting with his fingers, one of the devils
Speaker 1: has a measuring tape that's kind of creepy, and the
Speaker 1: third has a trident. He's just sort of holding this.
Speaker 1: It's got the prongs coming out of the side. It's
Speaker 1: sort of right angles, and it looks very pointy and unpleasant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the prongs are really spread out there. I think you'd
Speaker 1: have to you have to have a really wide set
Speaker 1: of buttocks to stab with that. I mean, it emphasizes
Speaker 1: what what you're saying, emphasizes that. A lot of times
Speaker 1: when you see the devil with the pitchfork, now it's cute,
Speaker 1: it's in cartoons because is for poking your button, you know,
Speaker 1: poking you with a little like ow ow ow. Clearly,
Speaker 1: these ancient depictions are are supposed to be more graphic
Speaker 1: and horrifically violent in in their suggestion because after the
Speaker 1: ninth century, actually, Link writes that the trident almost completely
Speaker 1: disappears from representations of Satan until the Renaissance, when it
Speaker 1: shows up again in the devil's hands in the art
Speaker 1: of the time. And so what happened in between the like,
Speaker 1: how come in the ninth century eight you've got devils
Speaker 1: with tridents? H you didn't have it before that? You've
Speaker 1: got it. Then then it pretty much goes away throughout
Speaker 1: most of the medieval period, and then it comes back
Speaker 1: again in the Renaissance. Link writes that during this medieval
Speaker 1: period where you don't see much trident, the devil is
Speaker 1: more often depicted when he's holding a tool or a weapon.
Speaker 1: It seems to be a grapnell, which is a forked hook.
Speaker 1: Not very nice. So why, yeah, why this shift? It's
Speaker 1: hard to be certain, but Links suggests there are a
Speaker 1: couple of answers. One of them is the relative influence
Speaker 1: of classical art, which would have depicted Poseidon or Neptune
Speaker 1: with a trident. And so Link writes that classical art
Speaker 1: fell out of favor with p bowl uh, and people
Speaker 1: mostly lost access to it during the Medieval period. Then
Speaker 1: interest in classical art reignited in the Renaissance. Thus the
Speaker 1: Poseidon sea god Neptune tried and came back and was
Speaker 1: put into Satan's hands again when people started paying attention
Speaker 1: to classical art again. Uh. And another thing is more practical.
Speaker 1: During the medieval period in Europe, the use of the
Speaker 1: grapnel was common for torturing criminals and heretics, and it
Speaker 1: became more widespread. And so if the goal of the
Speaker 1: devil is to punish in torture sinners, and this was
Speaker 1: very often how the devil was represented in the Middle Ages,
Speaker 1: sort of as God's accomplice in your punishment, uh, it
Speaker 1: makes sense that he would he would have access to
Speaker 1: the weapons and torture devices that people were more familiar
Speaker 1: with at the time. Yeah, that does. It makes sense
Speaker 1: that he would use an instrument of torture rather than
Speaker 1: something that resembles either an implement for fishing or moving
Speaker 1: hay around or a polearm weapon that would often be
Speaker 1: used as a way of rising up against authority. No,
Speaker 1: Satan is kind of a part of the cosmic authority
Speaker 1: that is that is bearing down on you. Right, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: But I do want to point out at the end
Speaker 1: here this discontinuity between the weapons or implements is actually
Speaker 1: a pretty minor discrepancy compared to the huge differences in
Speaker 1: the way the Devil overall is described and depicted, Like,
Speaker 1: the Devil is both a raging, hideous monster with animal
Speaker 1: qualities and at the same time I subtle, attractive, persuasive tempter.
Speaker 1: And this is actually where links the title of his
Speaker 1: book comes from, the mask without a face, that there's
Speaker 1: sort of this infinitely elastic quality to the character of
Speaker 1: the devil. All right, on that note, we're gonna take
Speaker 1: one more break, but we'll be right back with more trident.
Speaker 1: Thank thank thank Alright, we're back. So just a few
Speaker 1: other mythical examples. I want to roll through here mythical
Speaker 1: religious examples. Uh. You have Dallas trident bells, which are
Speaker 1: bells with a decorative trident like motif on top that
Speaker 1: represents the three divine teachers. And then you have this
Speaker 1: is they found this really interesting. You have offering forks
Speaker 1: in ancient Judaism and these are actually mentioned in First
Speaker 1: Samuel chapter two. Uh. So this is a little bit
Speaker 1: just one more Bible reading here. This is from the
Speaker 1: King James version, and the priest's custom with the people
Speaker 1: was that when any man offered sacrifice, the priest's servant
Speaker 1: came while the flesh was in seething with a flesh
Speaker 1: hook of three teeth in his hand, and he struck
Speaker 1: it into the pan or kettle or cauldron or pot.
Speaker 1: All that the flesh hook brought up the priest took
Speaker 1: for himself. So they did in shiloh unto all the
Speaker 1: israel Lights that came thither. I did not remember that part,
Speaker 1: Yeah I don't. Yeah, you never remember, like the the
Speaker 1: meat pot skewering scene from from Second Samuel. But there
Speaker 1: you have it. You have a three toothed uh flesh
Speaker 1: hook there, but not in the hands of the devil. No,
Speaker 1: just in the hands of people working officially or the priests.
Speaker 1: Now another trident that came up for us, Uh, is
Speaker 1: a bit more mysterious, might be fittingly mysterious, because in
Speaker 1: all of this there's this quest to figure you know,
Speaker 1: figure out like what is the trident and what does
Speaker 1: it represent? What is it stem for? And you you
Speaker 1: kind of when you try and grasp it, it seeps
Speaker 1: through your your fingers. Uh, tell us Joe about the
Speaker 1: trident of Paracelsus. All right, we're about to venture into
Speaker 1: some sketchy territory. So there is a lot of weird
Speaker 1: looking work out there you can find about this supposedly
Speaker 1: magical instrument known as the trident of Paracelsus. Paracelsus was,
Speaker 1: of course the by name of Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus bombast
Speaker 1: Us von Hohenheim, a sixteenth century Germans with Renaissance physician
Speaker 1: and alchemist, and Paracelsus is. He's an interesting kind of
Speaker 1: dual figure in history. On one hand, he was a
Speaker 1: physician and did make some real medical observations and real
Speaker 1: con ttributions to medical science, such as writing a clinical
Speaker 1: description of the symptoms of syphilis. But he was also
Speaker 1: an alchemist. He wanted to turn lead into gold, and
Speaker 1: he was a prolific fount of ideas that would later
Speaker 1: be the basis or similar to the basis for a
Speaker 1: lot of quack medicine in the centuries to come. Just
Speaker 1: one example, he wrote that in small enough doses quote
Speaker 1: similia similibus curantur or what makes a man ill also
Speaker 1: cures him, which is, of course, if you know anything
Speaker 1: about quack medicine um. He of course, he wasn't the
Speaker 1: only physician in history to suggest this, but if you
Speaker 1: know anything about quack medicine, this helped contribute to the
Speaker 1: strain of thinking that gives us the modern scourge of homeopathy,
Speaker 1: the idea that like cures like, and that by taking
Speaker 1: super deluded versions of a drug that would give you
Speaker 1: some kind of symptom, you can cure that symptom. Homeopathy
Speaker 1: is not a part of modern medical science. It is
Speaker 1: not science based medicine and uh and it can actually
Speaker 1: be really dangerous if people, in thinking that they get
Speaker 1: tricked into some kind of homeopathy cure scheme and use
Speaker 1: that instead of more proven methods. But as far as
Speaker 1: the trident goes uh. The provenance of this concept was
Speaker 1: difficult for me to figure out, but I think it
Speaker 1: is likely not actually from Paracelsis. So several sources point
Speaker 1: to the origin of this idea in the Archidoxies Magica
Speaker 1: or the Supreme Mysteries of Nature, which is an early
Speaker 1: modern grimoire about alchemy and the creation of magical talisman's.
Speaker 1: It's attributed to Paracelsis, probably falsely, possibly by another author
Speaker 1: or later editor of the works of Paracelsus. And I've
Speaker 1: been scouring a seventeenth century English translation of this volume
Speaker 1: in a slow loading PDF from the Library of Congress,
Speaker 1: but I cannot find the reference to the trident in
Speaker 1: this piece. Maybe it's in there, but if it is,
Speaker 1: I I just went right over it and was never
Speaker 1: able to find this thing. But I'm frustrated because I
Speaker 1: spent forever trying to get these pages to load, and
Speaker 1: I can't find the darn trident in there. But so
Speaker 1: maybe it's in there. Supposedly, according to later writers, it
Speaker 1: is a magic three pronged silver lemon used to cure
Speaker 1: impotence and diseases of all of the generative organs, of course,
Speaker 1: meaning generative organs are the genitals. I don't know if
Speaker 1: I want to trident near my genitals, to be honest, Well,
Speaker 1: it's complicated how you're supposed to use it. According to
Speaker 1: these later sources, I'm not sure if it needs to
Speaker 1: to be near your genitals. It might, it might not.
Speaker 1: The instructions unclear. But the French magician and occult writer
Speaker 1: Eliphas Levy, who lived eighteen ten to eighteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: had plenty of thoughts about the profundity of the Trident
Speaker 1: of Paracelsus, assuming that it really existed. Levy writes, quote,
Speaker 1: herein is the power of the trident. It's halften foundation.
Speaker 1: It is the universal law of nature. It is the
Speaker 1: very essence of the word, realized and demonstrated by the
Speaker 1: triad of human life, the Archaeus or mind, the oh
Speaker 1: or plastic mediator, and the salt or visible matter. We
Speaker 1: have given separately the explanation of this figure because it
Speaker 1: is of the highest importance and denotes the compass of
Speaker 1: the highest genius of occult sciences. I feel more and
Speaker 1: more like like the trident is one of these symbols
Speaker 1: that you can you can place it into any kind
Speaker 1: of system of belief or philosophy, or even into the
Speaker 1: various sciences, or or even just business, I guess. And
Speaker 1: the the symbol the the one becoming three or three
Speaker 1: things embodied with one thrust. It kind of leaches ideas
Speaker 1: out of whatever you you you place it in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it I mean so, I I admit that when
Speaker 1: I read that um that Levy passage is just dribble
Speaker 1: to me, like it's just you could It's almost like
Speaker 1: you could substitute any words for any other words. Right,
Speaker 1: But but but you can you can see where it's
Speaker 1: like if you if you take the trident and you
Speaker 1: stick it within alchemy or or or magic, it you
Speaker 1: can explain things that are alchemical or magical through the
Speaker 1: trident in the same way that you could use the
Speaker 1: trident as a metaphor in various other fields. Well, I've
Speaker 1: got a I've got a very loose general hypothesis about
Speaker 1: what I think might be going on here, And so
Speaker 1: see what you think about this. And I would love
Speaker 1: to see if there's a way to test this against
Speaker 1: other evidence from psychology, neuroscience, anthropology and all that. But
Speaker 1: here here's my very rough hypothesis about why we have
Speaker 1: a magical obsession with the trident and magical beliefs about
Speaker 1: three bodied things, you know, like you've got a trinity
Speaker 1: and religions there there are many like there are so
Speaker 1: many holy threes. Uh. My non magical speculation is we're
Speaker 1: obsessed with the magic power of threes because three, in
Speaker 1: a way is really a magic number for reality. In
Speaker 1: our minds, three is the number of a pattern. So
Speaker 1: a correlation happens once. Say you are in your car
Speaker 1: and you honk your car horn and a dog down
Speaker 1: the street howls. So, first time that happens, that's just
Speaker 1: an event. Then say it happens again, you hank a
Speaker 1: second time, and the dog howls again, And now the
Speaker 1: pattern detection software and your brain sort of goes on
Speaker 1: high alert. You're like, oh, is something going on here?
Speaker 1: And say if you do it a third time, you
Speaker 1: hank again, dog howls again. You have established a pattern.
Speaker 1: Now you know, you kind of know your brain works
Speaker 1: this way. If something is correlated three times, you have
Speaker 1: discovered a meaningful pattern. You've discovered a law. This is true,
Speaker 1: and this pattern of threes is exactly what the pattern
Speaker 1: of threes and jokes takes advantage of you know how
Speaker 1: there's always a pattern of three and jokes. You tell, like,
Speaker 1: if there's a you know, three men walk into a
Speaker 1: bar joke, all three of them are going to say
Speaker 1: something and have a you know something. A pattern will
Speaker 1: be established with what happens to the first two men,
Speaker 1: and then something weird will happen with what the third
Speaker 1: one says or what happens to them. And what's happening
Speaker 1: there is because there's a similarity with the first two things,
Speaker 1: you're expecting the third one to match the pattern of
Speaker 1: the first two. And by subverting your expectations, when we
Speaker 1: see what happens to the third guy in the bar,
Speaker 1: it's almost like you're violating a taboo. You know, you're
Speaker 1: subverting somebody's expectation that they are going to discover a
Speaker 1: pattern of correlations or a law. Huh yeah. And of
Speaker 1: course we see this in so many different tales as well.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's the it's you see what the three
Speaker 1: billy goats gruff exactly in Goldilocks, coming in and trying
Speaker 1: the three porridge bowls, the three beds, etcetera. Totally exactly.
Speaker 1: So three is the number of times something happens where
Speaker 1: anecdote and then repeated anecdote become phenomena. And so I
Speaker 1: suspect since one of the highest functions of our brain
Speaker 1: is pattern recognition, and three occurrences of an event or
Speaker 1: correlation is what it usually takes for us to feel
Speaker 1: like we have confidently established a pattern. The number three
Speaker 1: is in some sense kind of hard coded into us.
Speaker 1: It's like a powerful indicator of significance and red gularity
Speaker 1: in nature and in our minds, three becomes the number
Speaker 1: of law. So anyway, that that's my guess. I wonder
Speaker 1: if we're we're you know, we're suckers for three pronged instruments,
Speaker 1: which seems like such a mundane and kind of dumb
Speaker 1: thing to be obsessed with the magical powers of because
Speaker 1: threes are inherently holy and powerful in our minds because
Speaker 1: of our pattern seeking nature. Yeah, and and I like
Speaker 1: this idea too, of of of power of being positioned
Speaker 1: in the three and three, Like, if you have three
Speaker 1: individuals voting on something, then there is an ability for
Speaker 1: for two of them to agree and want to disagree,
Speaker 1: and that there still is a decision. If you have
Speaker 1: three individuals in a yoga class, then everyone has plausible deniability.
Speaker 1: If someone farts safety and numbers, once you have three,
Speaker 1: you have a group. Yes, but anyway, maybe maybe we
Speaker 1: should leave depart the realm of of religion and magic
Speaker 1: and psychology and go back to the gritty reality of
Speaker 1: tools and weapons. Because when I think of tridents in
Speaker 1: the real world and not as clutched by God's I
Speaker 1: definitely think of gladiatorial combat. Yes, you think of the
Speaker 1: rotarius or net fighter, one of the key types of
Speaker 1: gladiators who fought with the trident, a net, a weighted net,
Speaker 1: and a dagger. Now, of course, there were various different
Speaker 1: types of gladiators that that that the Romans would use
Speaker 1: in these gladiatorial sports, right they were. Each one was
Speaker 1: a character armed with with some some array of weapons
Speaker 1: and armor, and then they would engage in in combat.
Speaker 1: I am continually astonished every time I really think about
Speaker 1: the idea of gladiatorial games, and uh astonished when I realized, okay,
Speaker 1: so this was real fighting to the death. In many
Speaker 1: cases like that, they were actually fighting and trying to
Speaker 1: injure and kill each other. Why hadn't they yet discovered
Speaker 1: that you could achieve the same kind of dramatic entertainment
Speaker 1: value simply by simulating dramatic fighting without actually hurting anyone. Well,
Speaker 1: you might well ask the same question of of of today.
Speaker 1: I mean, because look look around we have We certainly
Speaker 1: have um, we have such dramatic fair as say professional wrestling,
Speaker 1: But then we also have we still have professional boxing
Speaker 1: and uh in mixed martial arts in which individuals are
Speaker 1: are still engaging in actual intentional violence against each other.
Speaker 1: Though granted with with with rules in place, but even
Speaker 1: with with gladiate gladiator sport, there were rules there, There
Speaker 1: were there were there were quite a few rules to
Speaker 1: to maintain a sense of order to everything. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess that's kind of the appeal of making people,
Speaker 1: you know, engage in uh in violent acts against each other,
Speaker 1: as that they're obeying these these set of rules that
Speaker 1: you've established for them. Yeah, I mean, whether or not
Speaker 1: you have rules, I mean, I understand why it can
Speaker 1: be excited fighting to to watch people fight. We do
Speaker 1: that in our fiction all the time, Like we've got
Speaker 1: you know, you've got violent movies and TV shows where
Speaker 1: there's mortal conflict between characters and you can get invested
Speaker 1: in it and it gets you wrapped up in the narrative.
Speaker 1: But it seems like that's so easy to do with
Speaker 1: just like a play. You know, you don't have to
Speaker 1: actually be hurting each other, and you can you can
Speaker 1: have with a fake fight, you can have a better fight.
Speaker 1: It tells a better story that and and also one
Speaker 1: in which the right individual, the correct individual, wins. That's
Speaker 1: very often the problem with a legit fight for entertainment
Speaker 1: purposes is that it is either not a good contest
Speaker 1: or the wrong individual wins. Like there's a there's an
Speaker 1: individual that if they were to win, that would tell
Speaker 1: the best story, and instead they're the one staring up
Speaker 1: at the lights. Yeah, yeah, I guess I didn't mean
Speaker 1: to get all sanctimonious and moralize here, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think I'm gonna stand by it. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Making people actually hurt each other for entertainment, it just
Speaker 1: doesn't seem great to me. I'm against it as well.
Speaker 1: Uh it is. It is. When you look at the
Speaker 1: Roman gladiatorial sport, it is both ridiculous and barbaric at
Speaker 1: the same time. For instance, the Ritarius here fighting with
Speaker 1: this trident, which was sometimes barbed but typically smooth. Generally
Speaker 1: five semi centimeters between the spikes, and each cone spike
Speaker 1: is about twelve to fifteen millimeters, and they were, in
Speaker 1: essence a sea themed gladiator. You know, they're fighting with
Speaker 1: a fishing net and a fishing spear, and sometimes they're
Speaker 1: even fighting in flooded conditions, and they were often they
Speaker 1: often seem to embody more feminine elements as well, compared
Speaker 1: to the more armored masculine gladiator types such as the
Speaker 1: Mermillio or the Secretur, which was essentially a fish had
Speaker 1: a fish like helm, So you had a fisherman battling
Speaker 1: a fish, someone dressed up as a fisherman battling someone
Speaker 1: dressed up as a fish, and it might beat the death.
Speaker 1: This prefigures the Mortal Kombat and the third act of Jaws. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously this is a this is a violent Roman spectacle,
Speaker 1: and and there are very they were very strict combat
Speaker 1: rules set in place, so it's not it's not like
Speaker 1: a real world example of of a trident. It's a
Speaker 1: it's an artificial but potentially lethal combat scenario, right. But
Speaker 1: I was wondering, like, to what extent is it? Is
Speaker 1: it a practical weapon at all? Because it never seemed
Speaker 1: practical to me. I would see these images of Zeus
Speaker 1: or the Devil with a trident and it just did
Speaker 1: not look like a good weapon choice. No. Yet again,
Speaker 1: it looks kind of cartoony. It's like in those early cartoons.
Speaker 1: It looks like it's for one cartoon character to poke
Speaker 1: another one in the butt. Yeah, and so you wonder
Speaker 1: we'll do do these gladiators with a tried and to
Speaker 1: they trident? Are they? Are they to disadvantage? I mean
Speaker 1: certainly they have a reach advantage, but then they don't
Speaker 1: have much armor on uh, and all they can do
Speaker 1: is if the if their opponent gets into close, they
Speaker 1: would have to I guess, drop the trident and use
Speaker 1: their dagger as a last resort weapon. So I was
Speaker 1: looking into this just to see like did anyone did
Speaker 1: they actually ever kill anyone with a trident? And I
Speaker 1: found a paper was published in Forensic Science International from
Speaker 1: two thousand five by Favian cons and Carl Groschmidt titled
Speaker 1: head Injuries of Roman Gladiators What Yeah, whoa And they
Speaker 1: point out that there's a lot of forensic evidence on
Speaker 1: gladiator combat. Quote. The gladiator weaponry is well known through
Speaker 1: historical sources at least one injury per known type of
Speaker 1: offensive weapon could be identified, as well as evidence for
Speaker 1: the most popular the gladiator trident, which was found to
Speaker 1: be represented by one paramortem that means at the at
Speaker 1: or near the time of death and to anti mortem
Speaker 1: or before death injuries. Overall, the reportedly very strict nature
Speaker 1: of combat rules for gladiator fights could be confirmed by
Speaker 1: the absence of multiple paramortal traumatized individuals showing a lack
Speaker 1: of the excessive violence commonly observed on medieval battleground victims.
Speaker 1: So they were looking at human skulls here from a
Speaker 1: gladiator cemetery in ancient Ephesus, which is a modern day Turkey.
Speaker 1: This was originally unearthed in so Here's what they had
Speaker 1: to say about their findings. Quote. Eleven individuals exhibited a
Speaker 1: total of sixteen well healed uh anti mortal cranial traumata.
Speaker 1: Five of the eleven individuals showed multiple trauma. Ten individuals
Speaker 1: exhibited a total of ten paramortal cranial traumata. This is
Speaker 1: a surprisingly high frequency of deadly head injuries, taking into
Speaker 1: account that most of the gladiator types wore helmets. A
Speaker 1: possible explanation could be the frequently reported death blow technique
Speaker 1: used by the hammer carrying death god Dispater. Yikes, what
Speaker 1: is going on there? Okay, so this was this was
Speaker 1: new to me. I I'm not that well versed in
Speaker 1: gladiator gladiatorial combat, but Dispater was a costumed arena servant
Speaker 1: in character as a death god that would finish a
Speaker 1: sufficiently wounded gladiator off with a hammer. That's horrible. Now,
Speaker 1: they wrote quote, it is not known exactly how this
Speaker 1: execution was performed, but um, I have to say I
Speaker 1: have a powerfully strong guess about how they might have
Speaker 1: carried this out. But as for trident wounds to the skull,
Speaker 1: they all seem to have involved two, but not three wounds.
Speaker 1: And that makes sense, right, because even with a reasonably
Speaker 1: narrow trident, Uh, you know, how are you going to
Speaker 1: land all three um teeth of that thing on the
Speaker 1: human skull. I'm just trying to think how there are
Speaker 1: these head wounds that are there in the evidence from
Speaker 1: people's bones, but they appear to have survived also, like
Speaker 1: some people died with apparently healed overhead wounds from from
Speaker 1: the combat. Yeah. I mean, this is a this is
Speaker 1: a brutal, brutal time and place as long as you're
Speaker 1: able to continue and they don't have to call disspader
Speaker 1: over there to to deal with you. Now, as for
Speaker 1: other functional tridents and like military and combat history, where
Speaker 1: you talked about pol arms a little bit, but I'll
Speaker 1: I want to throw in that in that older book
Speaker 1: of the Night of the Gods by John O'Neill that
Speaker 1: have referenced earlier, um, he describes an imperial Chinese trident
Speaker 1: with the third blade turned back toward the wheelder, So
Speaker 1: it's going to you know, uh, slicked back if you will.
Speaker 1: So the first blade is for slicing, it's kind of
Speaker 1: you know, very blade like the middle one is longer
Speaker 1: and it's for stabbing, and then this other one comes
Speaker 1: back for slicing as well. So it was just an
Speaker 1: interesting take on the trident design that I've never seen before.
Speaker 1: So what kind of tried and does Aquaman have? This
Speaker 1: is I'm glad you brought this up, Joe, because if
Speaker 1: you if you look at some of these comic book
Speaker 1: images of Aquaman, he does have a trident, and very
Speaker 1: often it is depicted as just a trident, but other
Speaker 1: times there are extra barbs. So he ironically no longer
Speaker 1: has a trident, he has uh tented dent or something,
Speaker 1: And a lot of people pointed out with the new
Speaker 1: DC Cinematic Universe version of Aquaman, but you also see
Speaker 1: this in the comics. You see, uh, you see these
Speaker 1: images of Aquaman with this ridiculous non trident in his hands.
Speaker 1: Why do they do that? Do they not even? Wait?
Speaker 1: Is is Aquaman related to Poseidon or Neptune? Or is
Speaker 1: I don't know my Aquaman or I'm not superversed in
Speaker 1: the comic either, but I understand there is a lot
Speaker 1: they have injected a lot of of of like Greek
Speaker 1: undersea mythology into the property. Yeah, yeah, is he played
Speaker 1: by cal Drogo, Yeah, Jason Momoa very striking as Aquaman. Well,
Speaker 1: I say, give him three prongs. You know what they
Speaker 1: should really do with Aquaman is give him the impossible trident. Oh. Yes.
Speaker 1: This is the twentieth century optical illusion, which is, if
Speaker 1: you start at first glance, you see a trident, you
Speaker 1: see three prongs, like essentially a tuning fork with three prongs.
Speaker 1: But then when you start, when you really look at it,
Speaker 1: you realize there is no middle prong. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: just a bid dent as opposed to a trident. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's an optical illusion. Well, actually there, I don't know
Speaker 1: if there even are the two prongs on the side,
Speaker 1: because the three dimensional representation of them doesn't line up.
Speaker 1: So you're just given this repeatedly false perspective where one
Speaker 1: edge bleeds into another. The more you look at it,
Speaker 1: the more it hurts your brain because you really want
Speaker 1: to form a three D image out of it, and
Speaker 1: it's increasingly difficult to do. So this was not mc
Speaker 1: escher was it seems like it should be. It wasn't,
Speaker 1: but but it's it's the very type of optical illusion
Speaker 1: that he often played with. But see, that's perfect for
Speaker 1: for a god to have his weapons. So if you've
Speaker 1: got Aquaman and he's somehow like he's like the Thor
Speaker 1: of d c uh, he's like a traditional Greek god character,
Speaker 1: he must have access to some kind of forbidden geometry.
Speaker 1: Here you would get the forbidden geometry combined with the
Speaker 1: traditional trident of the sea god. I feel like this
Speaker 1: is the very kind of thing that surely Grant Morrison
Speaker 1: did this at some point, had a character with an
Speaker 1: impossible trident. Oh yeah, that seems perfect, all right, So
Speaker 1: there you have it, the Trident. If you want to
Speaker 1: check out more episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind,
Speaker 1: past episodes even on Mythic Weapons, head on over to
Speaker 1: stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That is where
Speaker 1: you will find them, as well as links out to
Speaker 1: our various social media accounts. And if you want to
Speaker 1: support the show, just rate and review us wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. Big thanks as always to our wonderful
Speaker 1: audio producers Alex Williams and Tarry Harrison. If you would
Speaker 1: like to get in touch with us to let us
Speaker 1: know your feedback about this episode or any other, to
Speaker 1: request a topic for the future, to just say hi,
Speaker 1: let us know where you listen from how you found
Speaker 1: out about the show, You can email us at blow
Speaker 1: the Mind at how stuff works dot com. And now, Robert,
Speaker 1: I am to understand you wanted to feature a bracing
Speaker 1: industrial easter egg for this show. Yeah, yeah, we've We've
Speaker 1: never featured any industrial music on the show before, but
Speaker 1: this is a perfect track to close out with. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a band you've interviewed before on our website,
Speaker 1: I think, right, Robert, Yeah, so the band is three Teeth.
Speaker 1: They actually get their name from the trident tri dent
Speaker 1: three teeth, it seems appropriate that yeah, and this is
Speaker 1: this is the track Divine Weapon off the two thousand
Speaker 1: seventeen album shut Down Dot exc Yeah. I chatted with
Speaker 1: the frontman, Alexi Mencola about the band's name and the
Speaker 1: use of trident symbolism a couple of years back, and
Speaker 1: when I reached out to them about using the track
Speaker 1: on this episode. Uh Lex also pointed out that the
Speaker 1: Shutdown Dot e x C vinyl actually has a gatefold
Speaker 1: trident when you open it that maps the trident of
Speaker 1: of Paracelsus that we talked about earlier. And you can
Speaker 1: find out more about that release and the band at
Speaker 1: three Teeth that's with a numeral three teeth dot org
Speaker 1: or look them up wherever you get your music. So
Speaker 1: if you have an appetite for some industrial metal, here
Speaker 1: you go. S S S S y A. Try now
Speaker 1: wid how that called j our wa God where I
Speaker 1: jake b while by ain't I ain't will