Triskele Meaning: The Triple Spiral from Newgrange to Today

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This is the last of my Celtic symbols series, and I saved the oldest for the end. The triskele is older than the Celts, older than the pyramids and still turning up on jewellery, flags and tattoos.

So here is the honest version of the triskele meaning: where it comes from, what we actually know and what people have added since.

Jump to:

• What is a triskele?
• The Newgrange triple spiral and its meaning
• The Celtic triskele: Iron Age art
• The triskelion in ancient Greece
• Spirals in early Christian manuscripts
• Three legs: Sicily and the Isle of Man
• Triskele meaning: what we know and what we don’t
• The triskele today
• Triskele jewellery and tattoos
• Triskele vs triquetra vs Celtic knot
• Triskele FAQ
• More Celtic symbols

What is a triskele (triskelion)?

A triskele is a design with three arms, legs or spirals coming out from a shared centre. Each arm turns the same way, so the whole thing looks like it is spinning.

The name is Greek. Triskeles means “three-legged”, from tri (“three”) and skelos (“leg”). The Online Etymology Dictionary dates triskelion in English to 1880 and triskele to 1885. The plural is triskelia.

There are two main forms, and people mix them up all the time:

• The triple spiral. Three spirals joined at the middle, often drawn as one unbroken line. This is the Newgrange version and the one most Irish people mean.
• The three legs. Three bent human legs, joined at the hip. This is the version on the flags of Sicily and the Isle of Man.

Dictionary.com gives triskelion as “trih-SKEL-ee-on”, with “try-SKEL-ee-on” as an alternative. Triskele itself you will hear as TRY-skeel or TRIS-keel. Nobody will throw you out of a pub for either.

The Newgrange triple spiral and its meaning

The most famous triple spiral in the world is at Newgrange in the Boyne Valley, Co. Meath. Heritage Ireland dates Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth to about 3200 BC. newgrange.com notes that makes it older than Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids of Giza.

It is Neolithic, built by farming people of the New Stone Age. Let me say it plainly: the people who carved these spirals were not Celts. The newgrange.com site puts the design about 2,500 years before the Celts arrived in Ireland.

The two best-known triple spirals at Newgrange:

• The entrance stone (K1). Heritage Ireland describes a large triple spiral with double loops on its left side. This is the one on the postcards.
• The inner chamber (stone C10). A smaller one sits in the back recess. Knowth.com measures it at about 30 by 28 cm, less than a third the size of the entrance design.

newgrange.com also points to a looser one on passage stone L19. Knowth.com says its spirals are barely connected, so not everyone counts it.

Mythical Ireland says no other Stone Age monument in Ireland has a triple spiral. Knowth.com places it within the wider carving tradition of Brú na Bóinne.

UNESCO made Brú na Bóinne a World Heritage Site in 1993. It calls the area “Europe’s largest and most important concentration of prehistoric megalithic art”.

Newgrange is also famous for the winter solstice. At dawn around the shortest day, sunlight comes through the roof-box above the door and lights up the chamber. You can only visit through the Brú na Bóinne Visitor Centre.

A new idea about the Newgrange spirals

In April 2025, archaeologist Joe Fenwick of the University of Galway proposed that the kerbstone spirals track the solar year. The entrance stone marks the winter solstice sunrise and kerbstone K52, at the back, the summer solstice sunset.

On the entrance stone, spirals left of a vertical line wind inward, like the shortening days. Those on the right wind outward, like the lengthening days.

His reading covers the kerbstone spirals in general, not the triple spiral itself. It is a proposal, not a settled fact. Still, it is a more grounded idea than most you will read online.

The Celtic triskele: Iron Age La Tène art

So where do the Celts come in? La Tène art reached Ireland nearly 3,000 years after Newgrange was built.

Britannica says the La Tène art style began in the mid-5th century BC, when Celtic peoples on the Continent met Greek and Etruscan art. It is known for S-shapes, curves and spirals. In Ireland, La Tène work may date from 300 BC or a little earlier.

Irish La Tène art shows up mostly in metalwork, with some stone carving in the northern half of the country. Two pieces worth knowing:

• The Turoe Stone, Co. Galway. A rounded stone about 1.2 metres tall. Heritage Ireland lists triskeles, trumpet patterns and spiral circles among its carvings. It was carved before AD 300.
• The Petrie Crown. A bronze headdress from about the 2nd century AD, decorated with spirals ending in tiny birds’ heads. It is in the National Museum of Ireland, Archaeology, on Kildare Street in Dublin.

Did the Celts invade Ireland and bring the style with them? The archaeologist Barry Raftery looked at this in Pagan Celtic Ireland (1994). He saw Irish La Tène objects as the portable trappings of a rising elite, not proof of a mass invasion.

Either way, “Celtic triskele” is a fair name for the Iron Age versions. It is not a fair name for Newgrange.

The triskelion in ancient Greece

The triple spiral turns up well beyond Ireland. This beaked jug is Mycenaean Greek, from the Late Helladic III period, about 1400 to 1350 BC. It sits in the Ancient Agora Museum in Athens.

An earlier version of this page called it Egyptian. It isn’t. My apologies to the Greeks.

The three-legged triskeles turns up in Greek art by the late 6th century BC, as a shield emblem painted on Athenian vases, and later on coins. That brings us to Sicily further down.

Spirals in early Christian manuscripts

The spiral did not vanish when Christianity reached Ireland. The monks kept it and put it in their books.

The Book of Durrow dates from about AD 650 to 700. Trinity College Library calls it one of the earliest intact gospel books to survive in Western Europe. Trinity says the spiral and whorl patterns on one of its pages trace back to the pre-Christian La Tène style.

The Book of Kells, made around AD 800, Trinity says, takes it further. Its Chi Rho page is crowded with swirling spiral roundels. Both books are kept at Trinity College Dublin.

So the idea of spirals turning from a centre runs from a Stone Age tomb to a Christian gospel book. That is roughly 4,000 years of people in Ireland liking the same shape.

Three legs: Sicily and the Isle of Man

Sicily and the Trinacria

Sicily’s symbol is the Trinacria: three bent legs around a Gorgon’s head. The ancient name Trinacria comes from the island’s triangular shape.

Pliny the Elder explains the name in his Natural History. He names the three capes as Pelorus, Pachynus and Lilybaeum. He says nothing about legs, though.

The three-legged symbol appears on coins of Agathocles of Syracuse, from 317 to 310 BC. Harvard Art Museums holds one, with the triskeles under a chariot. Coin specialists read it as his claim to rule the whole island.

The modern flag became official on 4 January 2000. The wings on the Gorgon’s head were added in 1848, and the ears of wheat in the 1940s.

The Isle of Man

The Isle of Man’s three legs are medieval, not Greek or Roman. Manx National Heritage says the legs became the royal arms of Man in the 13th century. Heraldic rolls from about 1270 already link them to the island.

The Manx Sword of State, thought to date from about 1300, carries one of the earliest surviving versions.

The motto is “Quocunque Jeceris Stabit”, meaning “Whichever way you throw it, it will stand.”

Nobody is sure why Man took the symbol. One theory, noted by Manx National Heritage, points to a triskele on coins of the 10th-century Norse king Anlaf Cuaran, who ruled Dublin and the Isle of Man. The story tying it to the sea god Manannán has no early evidence.

Triskele meaning: what we know and what we don’t

This is where it gets thin. Very little about the triskele’s meaning is written down.

What we don’t know

We don’t know what the Newgrange builders meant. They left no writing. Their art is abstract, so nobody can read it like a picture. Knowth.com says plainly that the original meaning is unknown.

The earliest recorded uses

• Sicily: on Agathocles’ coins, read by coin specialists as a claim to the whole island.
• Isle of Man: standing firm, from the motto “Whichever way you throw it, it will stand.”
• The US Department of Transportation: its seal has a triskelion that officially signifies motion, under US federal regulations (49 CFR 3.1).

Modern readings

These are the meanings you will see on jewellery tags and tattoo sites. They are modern ideas, not ancient ones:

• Life, death and rebirth
• Past, present and future
• Land, sea and sky
• Mind, body and spirit
• Personal growth and moving forward
• In neo-pagan circles, the Triple Goddess

Nothing wrong with any of these. Symbols pick up meanings as they go. Just don’t let anyone tell you the Newgrange builders wrote them down.

The triskele today

A few places it turns up today:

• The US Department of Transportation seal. A white triskelion on a blue circle, its three branches curving counter-clockwise.
• Brittany. The triskell is a popular badge of Breton identity, helped along by the harper Alan Stivell in the 1970s.
• The Irish Air Corps roundel. Flags of the World calls it a “Celtic boss”. From 1939 it was a two-part green and orange swirl. Since 1954 it has been a three-part swirl in green, white and orange.
• The films. In Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), SHIELD’s headquarters is called the Triskelion.

Triskele jewellery and tattoos

The triskele is one of the most popular Irish designs for pendants, rings and tattoos. A few practical points before you buy or book:

• Spiral or legs? The triple spiral says Newgrange and Ireland. The three legs say Sicily or the Isle of Man.
• Which way it turns. Spirals can turn clockwise or anticlockwise. Neither has a documented meaning, so pick the one you like.
• One line or three. The Newgrange style reads as one continuous line. Many modern designs break it into three separate spirals.
• Pairing. Some people combine a triskele with a triquetra or a Celtic knot border. They are different symbols, so know which is which.

Is a triskele tattoo offensive?

Usually not. The Anti-Defamation League links one angular form, made of three sevens, to white supremacist groups. It says curved triskeles are used far more widely by ordinary people. Context matters, so steer clear of the angular “three sevens” version.

Triskele vs triquetra vs Celtic knot

These three get confused more than any other Celtic designs. The short version: the triskele spins out from a centre, while the triquetra and the Celtic knot weave over and under.

The triquetra takes its name from the Latin triquetrus, “three-cornered”. It became common in Insular art from about the 7th century, including the Book of Kells. The Trinity reading grew strongest with the Celtic revival of the 1800s.

The triskele is thousands of years older and has no fixed religious meaning. If you want a symbol of faith, the triquetra fits better. If you want one of movement, or of Ireland before history, the triskele is your man.

Do you have any views on the triskele? Tell me in the comments below.

Triskele FAQ

What does the triskele mean?

The honest triskele meaning is that nobody knows what it meant to the people who carved it at Newgrange around 3200 BC. The only written meanings are later ones, such as “motion” on the US Department of Transportation seal. Life, death and rebirth is a popular modern reading.

Is the triskele Celtic?

Partly. The Newgrange triple spiral is Neolithic and about 2,500 years older than the Celts in Ireland. Celtic Iron Age artists later used triskeles in La Tène metalwork and stone, such as the Turoe Stone.

What is the difference between a triskele and a triquetra?

A triskele has three spirals or legs turning out from one centre. A triquetra is three interlaced arcs that form a knot. The triskele is far older, while the triquetra is mostly early Christian and later.

Where can I see the triple spiral at Newgrange?

The biggest one is on the entrance stone at Newgrange, Co. Meath, about 40 to 50 km north of Dublin. A smaller one is in the back recess of the inner chamber. Visits start at the Brú na Bóinne Visitor Centre.

Why does the Isle of Man flag have three legs?

The three legs have stood for Man since the 13th century, and nobody is sure why. One theory points to the Norse kings of Dublin. The motto says it will stand whichever way you throw it.

Is the triskele pagan or Christian?

Both, at different times. It began long before Christianity, and Iron Age Celts used it too. Irish monks then put spiral designs in gospel books like the Book of Durrow and the Book of Kells.

More Celtic symbols

• Celtic Symbols and Their Meanings
• The Triquetra (Trinity Knot)
• The Celtic Knot and Its Meanings
• The Dara Knot, the Celtic Symbol for Strength
• The Celtic Tree of Life Symbol
• The Awen Celtic Symbol
• Druid Symbols and Their Real Ages
• St Brigid’s Cross
• The Irish Harp
• The Newgrange winter solstice

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