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"And the priest's custom with the people was, that, when any man offered sacrifice, the priest's servant came, while the flesh was in seething, with a fleshhook of three teeth in his hand; And he struck it into the pan, or kettle, or caldron, or pot; all that the fleshhook brought up the priest took for himself." (Bible, 1 Samuel 2:13-14, KJV.)
On the trident:
There are fire and serpent ties, which both suggest the Devil. One can think of the devil using the (supposedly) ancient esoteric maxim: "daemon est deus inversus," that is, the "demon [or devil] is god inverted." (Helena Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, vol. 1, p. 411.)
Following this train of thought, it is possible to think the trident itself is a sort of trinitarian "shadow-side" symbol. Lucifer, who is commonly identified with the Devil or Satan, ostensibly proclaims in Isaiah 14:14: "I will make myself like the Most High."
In Greco-Roman mythology, of course, the chief Olympian deities are the three brothers Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades. The world has also traditionally been conceived in terms of three layers or spheres. "The world was divided among the three brothers, Zeus having the heavens, Poseidon the sea, and Aidoneus the underworld." (Richard Payne Knight, The Symbolical Language of Ancient Art and Mythologie: An Inquiry, New York: J.W. Bouton, 1892, p. 446.)
"We are three brothers born by Rheia to Kronos, Zeus, and I [Poseidon], and the third is Aides [Haides] lord of the dead men. All was divided among us three ways, each given his domain. I [Poseidon] when the lots were shaken drew the grey sea to live in forever; Aides drew the lot of the mists and the darkness, and Zeus was allotted the wide sky, in the cloud and the bright air. But earth and high Olympos are common to all three." (Homer, Iliad, Lattimore, trans., 15. 187ff.)
Some of the 16th-century occultists, like Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, articulated three sorts of magic, corresponding with three "worlds."
Relatedly, the three prongs of the trident might also symbolize the alchemical combination of air, water, and fire; or, alternatively, the combination of the three "essentials" of Salt, Sulfur, and Mercury. This is speculation, based partially upon the fact that the trident symbolizes lightning (air-fire) but is also associated with water deities.
In alchemy, "[t]he Three Essentials originated from the First Matter [prima materia] at the beginning of creation." (Dennis William Hauck, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Alchemy, New York: Penguin, 2008, p. 102.)
However, alchemically speaking, with (one assumes) the proper rituals, the "clock" can supposedly be turned-back (to the primordial time that the Egyptians designated "Zep Tepi"). But this is a return to disorder.
Hence, the trident - at once a symbol of disintegrating fire/lightning and of gnashing teeth - is a liminal (threshold) symbol. To put it differently, the teeth are the gatekeepers of the mouth - one of the sacred "nine bodily gates" in Tantric sex-magic. The teeth/mouth are a gateway into the digestive system, which facilitates the breakdown of matter for use by the body.
Put together, one could make a case that the trident is an emblem of breakdown - chewing, if you like. It signals a process of dissolution or digestion.
It is an analog to the fire into which the Phoenix-bird must consign herself before her reanimation. The Phoenix is consumed by fire, the way the mouth consumes food-matter. The trident may thus fit into the "ordo ab chao" ("order out of chaos") symbol complex.
An interesting Lexi-Link is that "[t]he Three Treasures of Taoist alchemy are Shen (Mercury), Chi [Qi] (Sulfur), and Ching (Salt)," (Hauck, loc. cit.) and, at the same time, "[t]he [Hebrew] letter shin of the fire in the qabalistic world is symbolized by the teeth." (Jean Dubuis, "The Becoming of Man," Patrice Malézé, trans., Philosophers of Nature, lecture, 1992.)
The Taoist "Shen" is a close-syncromystic cousin to the Hebrew letter 'Shin" (of which more below). One guess: what shape do you think that the Hebrew letter Shin has? It's a trident, of course!
Rurik the Swede, whose emblem was a falcon flying down from his nest, was the first king of the Slavic Rus.