The Da Vinci Code (Robert Langdon, #2)

by Dan Brown

sepulchral

“Yes, that’s my favorite flower. It’s called a fleur-de-lis. We have them in the garden. The white ones. In English we call that kind of flower a lily.” “I know those! They’re my favorite too!” “Then I’ll make a deal with you.” Her grandfather’s eyebrows raised the way they always did when he was about to give her a challenge. “If you can keep my key a secret, and never talk about it ever again, to me or anybody, then someday I will give it to you.” Sophie couldn’t believe her ears. “You will?” “I promise. When the time comes, the key will be yours. It has your name on it.” Sophie scowled. “No it doesn’t. It said P.S. My name isn’t P.S.!”

Slowly, as if moving underwater, Langdon turned his head and gazed through the reddish haze toward the Mona Lisa. The fleur-de-lis … the flower of Lisa … the Mona Lisa.

“Sophie,” Langdon said, “the Priory’s tradition of perpetuating goddess worship is based on a belief that powerful men in the early Christian church ‘conned’ the world by propagating lies that devalued the female and tipped the scales in favor of the masculine.” Sophie remained silent, staring at the words. “The Priory believes that Constantine and his male successors successfully converted the world from matriarchal paganism to patriarchal Christianity by waging a campaign of propaganda that demonized the sacred feminine, obliterating the goddess from modern religion forever.” Sophie’s expression remained uncertain. “My grandfather sent me to this spot to find this. He must be trying to tell me more than that.” Langdon understood her meaning. She thinks this is another code. Whether a hidden meaning existed here or not, Langdon could not immediately say. His mind was still grappling with the bold clarity of Saunière’s outward message. So dark the con of man, he thought. So dark indeed. Nobody could deny the enormous good the modern Church did in today’s troubled world, and yet the Church had a deceitful and violent history. Their brutal crusade to “reeducate” the pagan and feminine-worshipping religions spanned three centuries, employing methods as inspired as they were horrific. The Catholic Inquisition published the book that arguably could be called the most blood-soaked publication in human history. Malleus Maleficarum—or The Witches’ Hammer—indoctrinated the world to...

Aringarosa

antediluvian,

“Princess, look at these silly creatures,” he had told her, pointing to the gargoyle rainspouts with their mouths gushing water. “Do you hear that funny sound in their throats?” Sophie nodded, having to smile at the burping sound of the water gurgling through their throats. “They’re gargling,” her grandfather told her. “Gargariser! And that’s where they get the silly name ‘gargoyles.’ ” Sophie had never again been afraid.

“Rémy is Lyonais,” Teabing whispered, as if it were an unfortunate disease. “But he does sauces quite nicely.” Langdon looked amused. “I would have thought you’d import an English staff?” “Good heavens, no! I would not wish a British chef on anyone except the French tax collectors.”

“It’s known as skitoma,” Langdon added. “The brain does it sometimes with powerful symbols.”

“In my experience,” Teabing said, “men go to far greater lengths to avoid what they fear than to obtain what they desire. I sense a desperation in this assault on the Priory.”

cilice,

An ancient word of wisdom frees this scroll … and helps us keep her scatter’d family whole … a headstone praised by templars is the key … and atbash will reveal the truth to thee.

Sex as a pathway to god Including Jews

Langdon’s Jewish students always looked flabbergasted when he first told them that the early Jewish tradition involved ritualistic sex. In the Temple, no less. Early Jews believed that the Holy of Holies in Solomon’s Temple housed not only God but also His powerful female equal, Shekinah.

“I think the headstone references a literal stone head,” Langdon explained, savoring the familiar excitement of academic breakthrough. “Not a grave marker.” “A stone head?” Teabing demanded. Sophie looked equally confused. “Leigh,” Langdon said, turning, “during the Inquisition, the Church accused the Knights Templar of all kinds of heresies, right?” “Correct. They fabricated all kinds of charges. Sodomy, urination on the cross, devil worship, quite a list.” “And on that list was the worship of false idols, right? Specifically, the Church accused the Templars of secretly

performing rituals in which they prayed to a carved stone head … the pagan god—”

“Baphomet!” Teabing blurted. “My heavens, Robert, you’re right! A headstone praised by Templars!” Langdon quickly explained to Sophie that Baphomet was a pagan fertility god associated with the creative force of reproduction. Baphomet’s head was represented as that of a ram or goat, a common symbol of procreation and fecundity. The Templars honored Baphomet by encircling a stone replica of his head and chanting prayers. “Baphomet,” Teabing tittered. “The ceremony honored the creative magic of sexual union, but Pope Clement convinced everyo...

Langdon concurred. The modern belief in a horned devil known as Satan could be traced back to Baphomet and the Church’s attempts to recast the horned fertility god as a symbol of evil. The Church had obviously succeeded, although not entirely. Traditional American Thanksgiving tables still bore pagan, horned fertility symbols. The cornucopia or “horn of plenty” was a tribute to Baphomet’s fertility and dated back to Zeus being suckled by a goat whose horn broke off and magically filled with fruit. Baphomet also appeared in group photographs when some joker raised two fingers behind a friend’s head in the V-symbol of horns; certainly few of the pranksters realized their mocking gesture was in fact advertising their victim’s robust sperm count. “Yes, yes,” Teabing was saying excitedly. “Baphomet must be what the poem is referring to. A headstone praised by Templars.” “Okay,” Sophie said, “but if Baphomet is the headst...

“Cryptanalysts call it the fold-over. Half as complicated. Twice as clean.”

Looking at Sophie’s substitution matrix, Langdon felt a rising thrill that he imagined must have rivaled the thrill felt by early scholars when they first used the Atbash Cipher to decrypt the now famous Mystery of Sheshach. For years, religious scholars had been baffled by biblical references to a city called Sheshach. The city did not appear on any map nor in any other documents, and yet it was mentioned repeatedly in the Book of Jeremiah—the king of Sheshach, the city of Sheshach, the people of Sheshach. Finally, a scholar applied the Atbash Cipher to the word, and his results were mind-numbing. The cipher revealed that Sheshach was in fact a code word for another very well-known city. The decryption process was simple. Sheshach, in Hebrew, was spelled: Sh-Sh-K. Sh-Sh-K, when placed in the substitution matrix, became B-B-L. B-B-L, in Hebrew, spelled Babel.

IN LONDON LIES A KNIGHT A POPE INTERRED.

“Not the foggiest. But I know in precisely which crypt we should look.”

Boolean

Langdon thought of Leigh Teabing and Westminster Abbey. It seemed a lifetime ago. “Was the Church pressuring your husband not to release the Sangreal documents at the End of Days?” “Heavens no. The End of Days is a legend of paranoid minds. There is nothing in the Priory doctrine that identifies a date at which the Grail should be unveiled. In fact the Priory has always maintained that the Grail should never be unveiled.” “Never?” Langdon was stunned. “It is the mystery and wonderment that serve our souls, not the Grail itself. The beauty of the Grail lies in her ethereal nature.” Marie Chauvel gazed up at Rosslyn now. “For some, the Grail is a chalice that will bring them everlasting life. For others, it is the quest for lost documents and secret history. And for most, I suspect the Holy Grail is simply a grand idea … a glorious unattainable treasure that somehow, even in today’s world of chaos, inspires us.”