Also called trinity knot, Celtic triangle, three-cornered knot
A knot of three interlaced arcs, common in early medieval Irish and Anglo-Saxon art such as the Book of Kells, later read as a symbol of the Christian Trinity and today worn as a Celtic and Pagan sign of threefold protection and unity.
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The triquetra appears among the interlaced ornament of Insular manuscripts like the Book of Kells, now at Trinity College Dublin. There it is decorative; scholars caution that we do not know what meaning, if any, the scribes attached to it.
Triquetras are carved on high crosses and grave slabs and on the stone frithstool, a sanctuary seat, at Hexham Abbey in Northumberland.
The Celtic revival popularized the knot as a Trinity symbol. In the 1990s the television series Charmed put it on the cover of the sisters' Book of Shadows, and many Pagans now read it as the triple goddess or as threefold protection.
Three-part interlaced designs turn up widely, from Anatolian and Persian pottery of the 4th century BCE to Germanic metalwork with the related valknut. The classic triquetra flourished in Insular art of Ireland and Britain from around the 7th century: metalwork, carved crosses and illuminated manuscripts including the Book of Kells, made around 800. The word triquetra is simply Latin for three-cornered.
Whether the early medieval artists meant it as the Holy Trinity is unknown, and specialists warn against reading too much into ornament. The Trinitarian reading became popular with the 19th-century Celtic revival, when Irish jewelry and church art used it as a Christian emblem. In the late 20th century it was adopted by Pagans and fans of Charmed, and it is now among the most popular Celtic designs for jewelry and tattoos.
The pentagram is a five-pointed star drawn in one unbroken line; a pentacle is that star set inside a circle, or, in ritual magic and Wicca, a disc engraved with it. Used for thousands of years for health, protection and the five elements, it only gained its sinister reputation in the 19th century.
Two rowan twigs bound into an equal-armed cross with red thread and placed over doors, byres and cradles to keep witches and fairies out.
An endless interlaced knot of four loops, drawn, carved or tied as a protective sign over doors and worn as a pendant. The design is popular in modern witchcraft, but its specific witch's-knot lore is recent; the older relative is the Nordic looped square called Saint John's arms.
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