What's the Significance of the Triad Claw?

If you look at enough historical paintings or portraits, eventually you'll notice that many of the subjects are flashing a gang-sign: the triad claw, which is either an "M" shape or a "VVV", depending on how you look at it.

Alfonso V of Aragon (1557) by Vicente Juan Masip

You'll find this hand signal in portraits of political figures, artists, religious figures, entertainers over a span of centuries, including today.

Cardinal Ratzinger

So what is it?

Some speculate it's a Masonic hand gesture, which seems to be correct, but the portraits from the 16th century predate masonry. Some speculate it's a signal of "crypto-jews", i.e. people of jewish ancestry who converted to catholicism, but retained their ethnic and religious identity in secret. Another possibility, especially in the older portraits is that it's a symbol of initiation in Rosicrucianism. All of these explanations are essentially the same. That is, this hand sign is a sign of initiation in an underground religious or spiritual society.

The alternative media and conspiracy media seems to be imbued with a strain of medieval thinking, or latent christianity. There's a tendency to regard any other spiritual or religious viewpoint as "satanic" or evil, certainly opposed to the well being of ordinary people. Most of the web sites that delve into this topic follow that line of reasoning.

The esoteric tradition, the perennial religion, is ancient, probably as old as humanity itself. However, forced conversion of people to  Christianity or Islam and attempting to stomp out all competing forms of knowledge and belief is a relatively new thing, hopefully an aberration in human history. From my perspective, the western world's still recovering from the attempt to steamroll any competing religious and spiritual point-of-view.

Anyway, I'll continue searching for the oldest recorded use of this hand sign and see if that sheds any light on its significance. (See more recents posts on this including 13th century paintings, Renaissance Paintings, and Glorious Revolution Paintings.)