Friday, December 15, 2006

La Très Sainte Trinosophie

"A man who knows everything and who never dies" [Voltaire]

La Tres Sainte Trinsophie Titlepage


2 people at altar


Two Lions Emblem


Coiled Snake, Chalice and Sword


Ibis Pyre and Candle


Triangular Symbol in Cloud


Ibis, Flame on Altar


Circular Symbol with Ancient Script


Crowned Lion and Grapes above Altar Pyre


Horse with Corpse; Person and Corpse


Person Arising from Coffin


Snakes Symbol with Feather Decoration


Man and Woman Grapple Next to Tree


Centurion and woman with Symbol from Sun


Crown Symbol with Feathering Motif


Idiogrammatic Script


Idiograms


Circular Symbols and Table of Symbols


Hebrew in Target Symbol and Idiograms


Idiograms in Triangular Layout


Lamp, Wreath, Winged Symbol and Torches

The 'Cosmic Master of the Age of Aquarius' and mysterious adept, the Count de Saint-Germain, allegedly died in 1784. He was a spy, virtuoso violinist, diplomat, friend at the Court of Louis XV, adventurer and was said to be able to transform iron into gold. A veritable procession of people have claimed to be the still living Count de Saint-Germain since 1784.
"During the centuries after his death, numerous myths, legends and speculations have surfaced. He has been attributed with occult practices like snake charming and ventriloquism. There are stories about an affair between him and Madame de Pompadour. Other legends report that he was immortal, the Wandering Jew, an alchemist with the elixir of life, a Rosicrucian or an ousted king, a bastard of Queen Maria Anna of Spain, that he prophesied the French Revolution. Casanova called him the violinist Catlini. Count Cagliostro was rumored to be his pupil."
Either the Count de Saint-Germain or Cagliostro is considered to be the author of 'La Très Sainte Trinosophie' (The Most Holy Three-fold Wisdom), from the latter half of the 18th century. It has been called "the rarest of occult manuscripts"1 and the only surviving copy is owned by the library in Troyes, France.

'Trinsophie' is an allegorical alchemistry work and ritual egyptian magical treatise containing an intentionally coded text with arabic, chaldean hebrew, cuneiform, ionic greek, syriac, esoteric idiograms and heiroglyphs amongst the french writing. A full translation is available online if you look hard enough -- I tend to regard the esoteric arts as a fascinating well from which to draw outstanding and eclectic imagery for this site, but if you want to incorporate the mystical and theosophical practices into your life then you ought to inject your own energies into the process, as thou wilt.

Suffice it to say that 'Trinsophie' remains an important codex in masonic, rosicrucian and hermetic traditions.
  • After laboriously going through the page scans and extracting (almost all) the available images, I discovered that there is a turn-the-pages flash alternative version of 'La Très Sainte Trinosophie' at La Médiathèque de l’Agglomération Troyenne [link updated Aug 2014]- click the cover page for flash or the link at the bottom of the page for the slow html version. In keeping with the subject matter perhaps, I found the image quality to be a little 'odd' in appearance when I worked out how to enlarge the pages somewhat. I don't think I oversized them - they're not exactly pixelated - but I ended up slighty reducing the size of what I understood to be the 100% page views. In any event, I removed all the library stamps and cleaned up a lot of the artifact in all the above images, which are approximately in the order in which they appear in the book.
  • 1In the course of background reading I came upon the Sub Rosa magazine site. Their latest pdf issue has an article about the mysterious Manly Hall, who went some way in the first half of the 20th century towards researching the background to 'Trinsophie'.
  • Adam McLean's Levity site has various discussions about 'Trinsophie'.
  • Many thanks to Christian at Zénon Annexe for unearthing this gem.
  • Previously: alchemy/The Treasures of Troyes.

9 comments:

  1. If I'm not mistaken, the Hebrew on the second picture says "Give him Pain".

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  2. And image 2096 contains a direct reference to Elvis.

    Look again here: http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/1717/1584/1600/56431/image%2096.jpg

    ReplyDelete
  3. Damn' link cannot be seen in its entirety. It's the sixth from the bottom in this post.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Fifth from the top says "Preist, Doctor, Woman"

    ReplyDelete
  5. If it's from Cagliostro, I would not be surprised if the whole book is a hoax..Cagliostro was known to have a little inclination for swindle..

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  6. He was Saint-Germain and II. Rakoczi Ferenc hungarian Lord from the castle of Sarospatak.

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  7. I think the third picture represents the endless live. the red lion is the philosophers stone and it gives the grey lion a live that never will end. the two arrows are only one arrow, but he will don't shot by them, because he don't can die. Maybe is that the 4. dimension?
    I'm sorry for my bad English..

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  8. Gabriel, I think 5th from top says Priest, Doctor, Wizard (ashaf)

    The writing is pretty sketchy though, especially number 19!

    ReplyDelete

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