By Nyasigo Kornel
Author: Dan Brown
Genre: Religion, Thriller, Crime, Fiction, Mystery novel
Publisher: Doubleday (U.S.) & Bantam (UK)
Pages: 454 pages
ISBN: 0-385-50420-9
Year: 2003
The Da Vinci Code has helped perpetuate popular interest in speculation concerning the Holy Grail legend and the role of Mary Magdalene in the history of Christianity. According to the premise of the novel, the Vatican knows it is living a lie, but continues to do so to keep itself in power.
It is a worldwide bestseller with more than 60.5 million copies in print (as of May 2006) and has been translated into 44 languages. It is thought to be the thirteenth best-selling book of all time.
As explained by Leigh Teabing to Sophie Neveu, the figure at the right hand of Jesus is supposedly not the apostle John, but Mary Magdalene.
According to the book Mary Magdalene was the wife of Jesus Christ and was in fact pregnant with his child when Jesus was crucified.
The absence of a chalice in the painting supposedly indicates that Leonardo knew that Mary Magdalene was actually the Holy Grail (the bearer of Jesus' blood). This is said to be reinforced by the letter "V" that is created with the bodily positions of Jesus and Mary, as "V" is the symbol for the sacred feminine.
The apparent absence of the "Apostle John", under this interpretation, is explained by identifying John as "the Disciple Jesus loved", allegedly code for Mary Magdalene (see also Second Apocalypse of James).
The book also notes that the color scheme of their garments are inverted: Jesus wears a red blouse with royal blue cape; John/Mary wears a royal blue blouse with red cape — perhaps symbolizing two bonded halves of marriage.
Also, if you move John/Mary to Jesus's right, you will see his head fits perfectly onto Jesus' shoulder as if to lay her head on his shoulder.
According to the novel, the secrets of the Holy Grail, as kept by the Priory of Sion, are as follows: The Holy Grail is not a physical chalice, but a woman, namely Mary Magdalene, who carried the bloodline of Christ.
The Old French expression for the Holy Grail, San gréal, actually is a play on Sang réal, which literally means "royal blood" in Old French.
The Grail relics consist of the documents that testify to the bloodline, as well as the actual bones of Mary Magdalene.
The Grail relics of Mary Magdalene were hidden by the Priory of Sion in a secret crypt, perhaps beneath Rosslyn Chapel.
The Church has suppressed the truth about Mary Magdalene and the Jesus bloodline for 2000 years. This is principally because they fear the power of the sacred feminine in and of itself and because this would challenge the primacy of Saint Peter as an apostle.
Mary Magdalene was of royal descent (through the Jewish House of Benjamin) and was the wife of Jesus, of the House of David. That she was a prostitute was slander invented by the Church to obscure their true relationship.
At the time of the Crucifixion, she was pregnant. After the Crucifixion, she fled to Gaul, where she was sheltered by the Jews of Marseille. She gave birth to a daughter, named Sarah. The bloodline of Jesus and Mary Magdalene became the Merovingian dynasty of France.
The existence of the bloodline was the secret that was contained in the documents discovered by the Crusaders after they conquered Jerusalem in 1099 (see Kingdom of Jerusalem). The Priory of Sion and the Knights Templar were organized to keep the secret.
The secrets of the Grail are connected, according to the novel, to Leonardo Da Vinci's work as follows:
Leonardo was a member of the Priory of Sion and knew the secret of the Grail. The secret is in fact revealed in The Last Supper, in which no actual chalice is present at the table. The figure seated next to Christ is not a man, but a woman, his wife Mary Magdalene.
Most reproductions of the work are from a later alteration that obscured her obvious female characteristics.
The androgyny of the Mona Lisa reflects the sacred union of male and female which is implied in the holy union of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Such parity between the cosmic forces of masculine and feminine has long been a deep threat to the established power of the Church. The name Mona Lisa is actually an anagram for "Amon L'Isa", referring to the father and mother gods of Ancient Egyptian religion (namely Amun and Isis).
A number of different authors also speculate about the possibility of Jesus becoming a father. There are at least three children attributed to him, a daughter Tamar, born before the Crucifixion, and two sons Jesus (the Jesus Justus from the New Testament) and Josephes, both born after the Resurrection. Their names are now part of the common culture of conspiracy writers, however only two decades ago, when Holy Blood, Holy Grail was written, the names were never mentioned.
The royal descents that lie at the heart of The Da Vinci Code mysteries centre on the family of Josephes, who is supposed to be the grandfather of Aminadab del Graal, first of the "Fisher Kings". However the genealogies that are quoted in Grail lore appear to record too few generations, with children regularly being born to fathers in their 40s.
The mystery within the mystery
Part of the advertising campaign for the novel was that the artwork in the American version of the bookjacket held various codes, and that the reader who solved them via the author's website would be given a prize. Several thousand people actually solved the codes, and one name was randomly chosen to be the winner, with the name announced on live television, Good Morning America, in early 2004. The prize was a trip to Paris.
The five hidden puzzles reveal
That the back of the book jacket conceals latitude and longitude coordinates, written in reverse, light red on dark red. Adding one degree to the latitude gives the coordinates of the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency in Northern Virginia, which is the location of a mysterious sculpture called Kryptos. The coordinates were taken from part of the decrypted text of part 2 of the sculpture (part 4 has never been solved). When Brown has been asked why the coordinates are one degree off, his reply has been, "The discrepancy is intentional".
There is a secret message hidden in the text of the book flaps. The message: Is there no help for the widow's son (a reference to Freemasonry).
The words "only WW knows" can be seen on the back cover. This too is a reference to part 2 of the Kryptos sculpture.
A circle with numbers, when combined with text from the book, reveals a secret message.
There is reverse writing on the cover of the book, which is the riddle for the first cryptex.
Brown, both via his website and in person, has stated that the puzzles in the bookjacket give hints about the subject of his next novel, The Solomon Key. This repeats a theme from his earlier novels. For example, Deception Point had an encrypted message which, when solved, said, "The Da Vinci Code will surface".
In the simplified Chinese version of The Da Vinci Code, the cover has a secret text; however, this text can be easily seen. It reads: "13-3-2-1-1-8-5 O, Draconian devil! Oh, Lame Saint! P.S. Find Robert Langdon." This is the multiply encrypted clue written in invisible ink next to the dead body in the museum which kicks off the plot of the entire novel.
David A. Shugarts was the first to expose this in his book 'Secrets of the Widow's Son: The Mysteries Surrounding the Sequel to The Da Vinci Code'.
The novel is part of the exploration of alternative religious history. Its principal source book is listed as per the court case, Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince's The Templar Revelation, as well as the books by Margaret Starbird.
Holy Blood, Holy Grail was stated by Dan Brown not to be amongst his primary research material for the book.
It has been claimed that The Da Vinci Code is a romanticised version of this work, which was itself based on a series of documentaries that ran on the BBC in the 1970s, all written and/or directed by Henry Lincoln.
The main similarity includes the idea that the Merovingian kings of France were descendants from the bloodline of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene. In reference to Richard Leigh and Michael Baigent (two of the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail), Brown named the principal Grail expert of his story "Leigh Teabing" (an anagram of "Baigent Leigh").
Brown confirmed this during the court case. In reply to the suggestion that Lincoln was also referenced, as he has medical problems resulting in a severe limp, like the character of Leigh Teabing, Brown stated he was unaware of Lincoln's illness and the correspondence was a coincidence.
After losing before the High Court in July 12, 2006, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh appealed, unsuccessfully, to the Court of Appeal. Following the trial, it was found that the publicity had actually significantly boosted UK sales of Holy Blood, Holy Grail.
Brown has reworked themes and characters from his own earlier novel Angels and Demons, specifically the main character, Robert Langdon.
European readers and critics noted some striking similarities between the "Da Vinci Code" and a Norwegian novel, "Sirkelens ende" ("Circle's End") by Tom Egeland, published in 2001 (two years before the Da Vinci code).
Like the "Da Vinci Code", "Circle's End" involves an ancient mystery and a worldwide conspiracy, the discovery that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, and an albino as one of the central characters.
Umberto Eco's earlier Foucault's Pendulum also deals with conspiracies, codes, a chase around the monuments of Paris, including the Holy Blood conundrum (which is mentioned in passing) and the Knights Templar, but does so in a more critical fashion — it is in fact a satire about the futility of conspiracy theories and the people who believe them. Foucault's Pendulum has since been dubbed "the thinking man's The Da Vinci Code".
Foucault's Pendulum itself is reminiscent in plot, theme and structure to the earlier The Illuminatus! Trilogy, by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, published 13 years earlier.
Opus Dei was then cast in the role of the "evil opposition", used to destroy the bloodline. As the bloodline has never proven to be real, but merely a theory proposed in "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail", there is no direct inspiration for this.
It is believed Opus Dei's alleged controversial past allowed Brown to weave the organisation into his novel. On a symbolic level, the Priory of Sion (male and female membership and leadership, "good") and the Opus Dei (male-only leaders, "bad") are at opposite sides of the scale.
The latter is thus depicted as the attack dog of the Catholic Church, seeking to destroy the former and maintain the status quo. According to the novel, man needs woman for wholeness and, in fact, for experiencing the divine by means of sex (see the Hieros Gamos ritual)--for example, in one's orgasm, there is a short period of time when a person's mind is completely empty, when one makes contact with God.
The book generated criticism when it was first published, due to speculations and misrepresentations of core aspects of Christianity, the history of the Catholic Church, and descriptions of European art, history, and architecture. The book has received mostly negative reviews from Catholic and other Christian communities, as well as historians.
On Febrary 22, 2004, an article titled "The Last Word: The Da Vinci Con" appeared in the New York Times by writer Laura Miller. Miller attacks the Da Vinci Code on multiple levels referring to it as "based on a notorious hoax", "rank nonsense", and "bogus", as she points out how heavily the book rests on the fabrications of Pierre Plantard who in 1953 was arrested and convicted for just such frauds.
Dan Brown himself dilutes the suggestion of some of the more controversial aspects being fact on his web site: "The "FACT" page makes no statement whatsoever about any of the ancient theories discussed by fictional characters. Interpreting those ideas is left to the reader".
However, it also says that "these real elements are interpreted and debated by fictional characters", "it is my belief that some of the theories discussed by these characters may have merit." and "the secret behind The Da Vinci Code was too well documented and significant for me to dismiss." It is therefore entirely understandable why there would continue to be confusion as to what is the factual content of the book.
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