TRINOSOPHISTS, LODGE OF. A body of Masons once, if not at present, very popular and influential in Paris. It was at one time the most intelligent society of Freemasons ever known. It adhered to the ancient Landmarks, but gave clearer and more satisfactory interpretations of the symbols of Freemasonry than are aftbrded in the symbolical Lodges It practiced five degrees as follows: 1. Apprentice; 2. Fe• low•Crsft; 3. Master; 4. Rose Croix, reformed— rectifie 5. Grand Elect Knight K.•. S.•. We have elsewhere given an account of the Rose Croix degree as it is practiced in this Lodge. The following extracts from the preliminary instruc tions to a candidate for initiation into the third degree will be found interesting, and will serve to illustrate the way in which these Trinosophical Masons explain the ceremonies and symbols of Freemasonry. "Man, cast, as it were, by accident, upon the earth, feeling that he is born free, and yet seeing himself a slave, seeking the good, and yet often finding the bad, and not being able to attribute to the same author both good and evil, imagined that there were two principles—distinct and separate, eternally antagonistic to each other. It is thus that the ancient Persians recognized Oromazdes, the good principle, and Arimanius, the principle of evil; the Jews, Jehovah and the serpent, and the tians Osiris and Typhon. Masons who form an elect family in the social order, who study and seek the true and the good, also have their traditions and allegories. They have the history of the death and resurrection of 11.•. A.•., the perfect workman, assassinated by three wicked fellows, notwithstand ing the efforts of the nine good F.• C's.•. to save him. This
legend, it is true, has been mutilated, and made insignificant and often ridiculous by ignorant expounders of the Masonic mysteries; but all enlightened Masters know that this Perfect Master is the genius of beneficence and truth both in the physical and moral order. In the physical order he is the sun, that glorious luminary which gives life to all nature, and which makes his revolution in the regular space of twelve months, which become, so to speak, his eternal and inseparable companions. These twelve months form the spring, the summer, the autumn, and winter. The first nine of these give the flowers, the fruits, warmth and light. They are the nine good F.. C's... who love and wish to preserve their master. The three last are the authors of the rains, the frosts, and darkness. It may be said that they kill nature and the sun himself. They are the three bad F.•. C's.•. In the moral and spiritual order, H.• . M.• . is the Eternal Reason by which all things are weighed, governed, and preserved. He is also Knowledge, Justice, and Truth, by which the Eternal Reason is manifested. The good F.•. C's.•. are the virtues that honor and bless humanity; the wicked F.•. C's, are the vices which degrade and kill it." TRrVIUM. The name given, in the middle ages, to the first three of the seven liberal arts: grammar, rhetoric, and logic. The other four, consisting of arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy, were called the quadrivivm.