śrī turīyā ṣoḍaśī trailokya vijaya kavacam

An armour for the sixteen-syllabled vidya, framed as a conversation on the peak of Kailasa in which Skanda asks his father for it — addressing him as one who increases his affection for his son, which is an unusually domestic way to open a tantric text. Ishvara's answer begins by piling up the word for secret: more secret than the secret, more hidden than the hidden, and great. The record salutes Mahatripurasundari before anything else, so Shodashi and she are taken as one goddess here, as they are in the sahasranamavali beside it in this cluster. It is one of several armours in this corpus called Trailokyavijaya — the others belong to Bhairavi, Chinnamasta, Bala and Kali — and the name marks a family of texts rather than a single one.