Today, Google is celebrating St. Patrick’s Day with the triskelion, the triple spiral. I wrote about the triskelion in the Winter Solstice issue of Hag Stone Journal:

Newgrange, in Ireland, is a Neolithic monument aligned with the winter solstice sunrise, and is even older than Stonehenge. Bones, grave goods, and votive offerings have been found in its chambers. The entrance to the Newgrange monument is guarded by large boulders carved with circles, spirals, chevrons, and other symbolic shapes.

Both Stonehenge and Newgrange took considerable time, effort, and power to build, and must have served some powerful purpose in their time, perhaps as sacred burial sites or centers of solar-based religious rites. In Newgrange, the sunrise on winter solstice illuminates an inner chamber and a triple spiral carving on the wall called a triskelion.

A triskelion has three-fold rotational symmetry, which means its appearance is the same in three distinct orientations. Although thought by some to be a Celtic symbol, the triskelion inside Newgrange predates Celtic people’s arrival in Ireland. It is unknown what the symbol signifies, but it is quite evocative that the winter solstice sunrise illuminates the triskelion in the ancient and mysterious Newgrange site.

I attempted to create my own version of the triskelion symbol to add to my winter altar. It took a few tries to get the proportions correct. I found the careful coloring of the spiral shape to be meditative.

You can check out more Hag Stone Journal issue topics here: https://hagstonejournal.com/issues/