Sadhu Trident Pendant

A Hindu holy man, or sadhu, carried aloft a bronze trident or trishula as he walked. The trident served as a symbol of Shiva – Shiva’s weapon of Destruction – and was said to destroy evil, and the three worlds – the physical world, the past, and the world of the mind. Shiva acts to destroy these three worlds to yield a single, unified world of existence of bliss. So much importance was attached to the trident that it was essentially treated as Shiva’s very presence, a stand-in for the god himself.

The original piece on which this pendant is based measured just under 14 inches long and a little over 5 inches wide. Here it has been miniaturized to 1.5 inches long and about half an inch wide, maintaining its proportions, and suspended from a 16-inch sterling silver wheat chain by a handmade silver bale.