Most Holy Trinosophia: Part Two: The Rarest of Occult Manuscripts

La Très Sainte Trinosophie is MS. No. 2400 in the French Library at Troyes. The work is of no great length, consisting of ninety-six leaves written upon one side only. The calligraphy is excellent. Although somewhat irregular in spelling and accenting, the French is scholarly and dramatic, and the text is embellished with numerous figures, well drawn and brilliantly colored. In addition to the full-page drawings there are small symbols at the beginning and end of each of the sections. Throughout the French text there are scattered letters, words, and phrases in several ancient languages . . There are also magical symbols, figures resembling Egyptian hieroglyphics, and a few words in characters resembling cuneiform. At the end of the manuscript are a number of leaves written in arbitrary ciphers, possibly the code used by St.-Germain’s secret society. The work was probably executed in the latter part of the eighteenth century, though most of the material belongs to a considerably earlier period.

As to the history of this remarkable manuscript, too little, unfortunately, is known. The illustrious Freemasonic martyr, the Comte Allesandro Cagliostro, carried this book amongst others with him on his ill-fated journey to Rome. After Cagliostro’s incarceration in the Castle San Leo, all trace of the manuscript was temporarily lost. Eventually Cagliostro’s literary effects came into the possession of a general in Napoleon’s army, and upon this officer’s death La Très Sainte Trinosophie was bought at a nominal price by the Bibliothèque de Troyes. In his Musée des Sorciers, Grillot de Givry adds somewhat to the meager notes concerning the manuscript. He states that the volume was bought at the sale of Messena’s effects; that in the front of the book is a note by a philosopher who signs himself

The title of the manuscript, La Très Sainte Trinosophie, translated into English means "The Most Holy Trinisophia" or "The Most Holy Three-fold Wisdom". The title itself opens a considerable field of speculation. Is there any connection between La Très Sainte Trinosophie and the Masonic brotherhood of Les Trinosophists which was founded in 1805 by the distinguished Belgian Freemason and mystic Jean Marie Ragon, already referred to? The knowledge of occultism possessed by Ragon is mentioned in terms of the highest respect by H. P. Blavatsky who says of him that "for fifty years he studied the ancient mysteries wherever he could find accounts of them". Is it not possible that Ragon as a young man either knew St.-Germain or contacted his secret society? Ragon was termed by his contemporaries "the most learned Mason of the nineteenth century". In 1818, before the Lodge of Les Trinosophists, he delivered a course of lectures on ancient and modern initiation which he repeated at the request of that lodge in 1841. These lectures were published under the title Cours Philosophique et Interprétatif des Initiations Anciennes et Modernes. In 1853 Ragon published his most important work Orthodoxie Maçonnique. Ragon died in Paris about 1866 and two years later his unfinished manuscripts were purchased from his heirs by the Grand Orient of France for one thousand francs. A high Mason told Madam Blavatsky that Ragon had corresponded for years with two Orientalists in Syria and Egypt, one of whom was a Copt gentleman.

Ragon defined the Lodge of the Trinosophists as "those who study three sciences". Madame Blavatsky writes: "It is on the occult properties of the three equal lines or sides of the Triangle that Ragon based his studies and founded the famous Masonic Society of the Trinosophists". Ragon describes the symbolism of the triangle in substance as follows: The first side or line represents the

The word Trinosophie quite properly infers a triple meaning to the contents of the book, in other words that its meaning should be interpreted with the aid of three keys. From the symbolism it seems that one of these keys is alchemy, or soul-chemistry; another Essenian Cabbalism; and the third Alexandrian Hermetism, the mysticism of the later Egyptians. From such fragments of the Rosicrucian lore as now exists, it is evident that the Brethren of the Rose Cross were especially addicted to these three forms of the ancient wisdom, and chose the symbols of these schools as the vehicles of their ideas.

The technical task of decoding the hieroglyphics occurring

"The various texts are written in Chaldean Hebrew, Ionic Greek, Arabic, Syriac, cuneiform, Greek hieroglyphics, and ideographs. The keynote throughout this material is that of the approach of the age when the Leg of the Grand Man and the Waterman of the Zodiac shall meet in conjunction at the equinox and end a grand 400,000-year cycle. This points to a culmination of eons, as mentioned in the Apocalypse: "Behold! I make a new heaven and a new earth," meaning a series of new cycles and a new humanity.

"The personage who gathered the material in this manuscript was

The considerable extent of the notes and commentaries has made it advisable to place them together at the end of the work rather than break up the continuity of the text by over-frequent interpolations.

La Très Sainte Trinosophie is not a manuscript for the tyro. Only deep study and consideration will unravel the complicated skein of its symbolism.Although the text matter is treated with the utmost simplicity, every line is a profound enigma. Careful perusal of the book, and meditation upon its contents, will convince the scholar that it has been well designated "the most precious known manuscript of occultism."