Breaking the DaVinci Code

It is the inspiration of kings. The quest of the knight. The song of the troubadour. The only means of restoring the wounded Fisher King. Few myths are as enduring as that of the Holy Grail. Now, to the compilation of its tales, we can add Dan Brown’s bestseller The DaVinci Code (Doubleday, New York, 2003).

According to legend, the Grail was either the cup from which Christ drank at the Last Supper or the cup which caught his blood at the crucifixion. Some believe it to be the Christianized version of Cerridwen’s cauldron, the chalices of the Tarot. In any case, the Grail is considered a sacred vessel which contained sacred blood. With the unearthing of Nag Hammadi and the Dead Sea Scrolls, theories arose that the vessel itself was not a literal cup, but the wife of Jesus and the holy bloodline of their descendants – information protected by the Knights Templar for centuries in order to protect the descendants and maintain Christendom’s faith in the divinity of Christ.

Add to that murder, corruption, obsession, classical art, cryptograms, one Harvard professor, and you get The DaVinci Code. It’s an odd mix of fact and conspiracy theory which roars by so quickly that the reader is captured in its intellectual slipstream. In fact, at times, the near-constant climaxes in the plot and switchback turns of scene changes become so dizzying that it makes for an exhausting read.

The story features Robert Langdon, the second Brown novel to which the Harvard professor is central (he also starred in Angels and Demons, which Brown published in 2001). This time, Langdon is framed in a murder and must decipher messages left in the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci in order to locate the true killer. The codes themselves are ingenious, painfully obvious, and almost impossible to break until Brown graciously provides the reader with the solution.

The setting of the novel is romantic and splendid, from the gallery of the modern Louvre to the chambers of the Westminster Abbey. The very words taste like the splendor of Medieval Europe. The characters, if not wholly believable, inspire the proper mix of either empathy or disdain, which Brown switches on the reader at a moment’s notice. The sole flaw in characterization comes when Grail enthusiast Leigh Teabing explains the legend to the novel’s heroine – police cryptologist, Sophie Neveu. Brown needed to outline the legend for the uninitiated in order for the rest of the plot to unfold properly. This is a cumbersome task in the midst of a fast-paced thriller, which, to his credit, Brown carries off succinctly. Unfortunately, Sophie, who heretofore had been a genius at anagrams and crime-solving, replaces the reader in ignorance and becomes something of a wide-eyed, naive dolt throughout the scene.

The most obvious question posed by the novel is: Is it true? Did Jesus marry and father children? Was this secret and it descendants protected from the church for centuries by the Knights Templar? Is the secret revealed in the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci?

There’s compelling evidence that Jesus was, in fact, not celibate. Jesus’ behavior at the wedding at Cana was only socially acceptable were he the groom. He is called a Rabbi, which carries with it the expectation of a married man. Mary Magdalene anointed Jesus’ body after his death, which would only have been permissible if she were his wife. The Greek word for “woman” and “wife” are the same and thus Mary Magdalene as the “woman who followed Jesus” could easily have been a mistranslation intended to convey that she was his spouse. Such theories have generally been refuted by Christendom on the basis that scripture never explicitly states that Jesus was married and that the Christian doctrine of Jesus’ divinity rests in part on the basis of his celibacy – a belief not shared by Jews.

After the book’s publication, art historians were quick to criticize Brown’s treatment of Leonardo da Vinci in the story. Leonardo spent less time in Rome and was commissioned by the Vatican much less than Brown suggests. The theories on both the Mona Lisa and the Vitruvian Man put forth in The DaVinci Code are shaky at best. And Brown’s connection between the details of Leonardo’s work and the sacred feminine are almost completely unfounded.

But otherwise the major icons in the story are above dispute. Opus Dei is, in fact, a conservative Catholic sect, controversial for its aggressive recruitment and use of corporal mortification. The Priori of Sion is, indeed, a 900-year-old secret society whose leadership has included some notoriety. The Heiros Gamos is a genuine ritual still practiced in varying forms by modern Pagans.

However, the more important questions raised in the book aren’t the obvious ones. The story highlights the dichotomies of truth versus secrecy and science versus religion. How important (and objective) is knowledge? How much are we willing to pay to have mystery in our lives? Are knowledge and reason more important than a truth that brushes our cheeks like the wispy hint of a cobweb?

One facet of our human existence is the desire to seek answers to the unanswerable, to seek that which feels true to the heart despite reason. And the legends of the Holy Grail speak to that desire. Ultimately, the book is about the loss of the sacred feminine and humanity’s gnawing sense that She has been extracted from our notions of God. Brown manages to seamlessly blend fiction with a sophisticated understanding of the relationship between the church and modern witchcraft which avoids the common pitfalls of anti-Christian or anti-Pagan bias. His treatment of Goddess spirituality places Pagans squarely in a context compatible with scholars and historians while maintaining the tantalizing sense of beauty lying just beyond one’s grasp.

Myths are a vehicle for veiling truth. And it’s heartening to imagine that knowledge of the Goddess has remained, veiled in symbolism or the Tarot cards or famous works of art. That like those questing for the Holy Grail, the sincere seeker can find Her in all things. She is ever-present, wrapped in the commonplace. Waiting for us to find Her again.