If you’re talking about Ireland, you’ll definitely have many pictures or symbols like the beautiful landscape of Konemara, Guinness, sheep or its famous pubs. But today, we are going to focus on one of these symbols, the tricycle, which represents the Celtic heritage of the Emerald Islands. Also known as triskel, triskel, triskelion or triskelion, meaning “three legs”, this symbol, widely used by the Celts, is a spiral with three branches or three legs, meaning many things.

Many interpretations

The tricycle can be thought of as representing motion because it is positioned so that all three arms seem to move outward from its center.

Its three arms or even its limbs or legs, their interpretation is often associated with the search for equilibrium between the three dimensions of body, soul, spirit or water, earth and fire. Or past, present and future.

However, the first possible interpretations of the symbol seem to be related to the sun and its three main points in the sky: sunrise, sunrise, and sunset.

So it can vary depending on the age, culture, mythology and history, which is why the meaning of the tricycle is so different.

If the clover has become an important symbol in Ireland, it owes much to its shape, which is strangely reminiscent of the Triskelian.

Triskelion: A universal symbol

Although the Tricycle Celts were widely used, the earliest form of this symbol was in Malta (4400-3600 BC) and in Newgrange, County Meath, Ireland in 3200 BC, where the Celts have not yet been established!

For example, we see this symbol in Greek antiquity.

Another proof of the widespread presence of the symbol: the Sicilian flag has a triskelian figure (representing a three-legged creature).

Triple Spiral of Newgrange, Ireland

The historic site of Newgrange, one of the most famous prehistoric monuments in the world, located in County Meath, Ireland, certainly has a carving of a triple spiral. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The interior is a kind of burial chamber where the ashes of the deceased are deposited.

Newgrange tumulus has a very strange feature: only a few days a year, at the end of winter, sunlight penetrates through a small opening above the entrance and illuminates the entire interior for about ten minutes.

Newgrange is the largest and largest of the three Neolithic cemeteries found in the Boyne Valley, just a few miles from Drogheda. It is a large tumor with a diameter of more than 80 m and a height of about 10 m. There are two other tombs nearby, Douth and Noth from the Neolithic period. Built around 3,200 BC, these megalithic structures are much older than the Stonehenge site in England and the pyramids in Egypt.

It is believed that these tombs were to be used not only for funerals but also for ceremonies or other public gatherings. The site attracts about 200,000 visitors every year.