The Lost Symbol (Robert Langdon, #3)

by Dan Brown

To live in the world without becoming aware of the meaning of the world is like wandering about in a great library without touching the books. The Secret Teachings of All Ages

For three years, Peter Solomon

Mars meteorite ALH-84001, the handwritten pictographic diary of Sitting Bull, a collection of wax-sealed Ball jars containing original specimens collected by Charles Darwin.

Beyond the threshold was only inky blackness . . . a yawning void. A hollow moan seemed to echo out of the depths. Katherine felt a cold blast of air emanating from within. It was like staring into the Grand Canyon at night.

The Hand of the Mysteries.

our thoughts actually interacted with the physical world, whether or not we knew it, effecting change all the way down to the subatomic realm. Mind over matter.

frightened world came together and focused in shared grief on this single tragedy, the outputs of thirty-seven different Random Event Generators around the world suddenly became significantly less random. Somehow, the oneness of this shared experience, the coalescing of millions of minds, had affected the randomizing function of these machines, organizing their outputs and bringing order from chaos.

study—theintentionexperiment.com—aimed at discovering how human intention

entanglement theory,

Superstring theory

Zohar,

vitiligo,

‘the Hand of the Mysteries.’

OCR translation modules

Old Frisian,

M...

Akka...

Coding a search spider

Noetics?”

Noetics

esoteric.”

“Fascinating,” Katherine said, stroking her chin. “So essentially you’re examining a population of individuals . . . as if it were a single organism.” “Exactly. A metasystem. A single entity

defined by the sum of its parts.

The human body, for example, consists of millions of individual cells, each with different attributes and different purposes, b...

thought . . . any tiny idea that forms in your mind . . . actually has mass? What if I told you that a thought is an actual thing, a measurable entity, with

“You’re good. Now take it a step further. What happens if many people start focusing on the same thought? All the occurrences of that same thought begin to merge into one, and the cumulative mass of this thought begins to grow. And therefore, its gravity grows.”

if enough people begin thinking the same thing, then the gravitational force of that thought becomes tangible . . . and it exerts actual force.”

“And it can have a measurable effect in our physical world.”

Fountain of Youth and Shangri-la,

“In short, the Ancient Mysteries refer to a body of secret knowledge that was amassed long ago. One intriguing aspect of this knowledge is that it allegedly enables its practitioners to access powerful abilities that lie dormant in the human mind. The enlightened Adepts who possessed this knowledge vowed to keep it veiled from the masses because it was considered far too potent and dangerous for the uninitiated.”

tarot and I Ching gave men the ability to see the future;

alchemy gave men immortality through the fabled Philosopher’s Stone;

Wicca permitted advanced practitioners to cast ...

The forefathers who founded this capital city first named her “Rome.” They had named her river the Tiber and erected a classical capital of pantheons and temples, all adorned with images of history’s great gods and goddesses—Apollo, Minerva, Venus, Helios, Vulcan, Jupiter. In her center, as in many of the great classical cities, the founders had erected an enduring tribute to the ancients—the Egyptian obelisk. This obelisk, larger even than Cairo’s or Alexandria’s, rose 555 feet into the sky, more than thirty stories, proclaiming thanks and honor to the demigod forefather for whom this capital city took its newer name. Washington. Now, centuries later, despite America’s separation of church and state, this state-sponsored Rotunda glistened with ancient religious symbolism. There were over a dozen different gods in the Rotunda—more than the original Pantheon in Rome. Of course, the Roman Pantheon had been converted to Christianity in 609 . . . but this pantheon was never converted; vestiges of its true history still remained in plain view.

“this Rotunda was designed as a tribute to one of Rome’s most venerated mystical shrines. The Temple of Vesta.”

vestal virgins?”

“The Temple of Vesta in Rome,” Langdon said, “was circular, with a gaping hole in the floor, through which the sacred fire of enlightenment could be tended by a sisterhood of virgins whose job it was to ensure the flame never went out.”

” “No, not anymore, but for years the center of this room had a large opening precisely where Peter’s hand is now.”

“In fact, you can still see the marks in the floor from the railing that kept people from falling in.”

“The hole in the floor,” Langdon told them, “was eventually covered, but for a good while, those who visited the Rotunda could see straight down to the fire that burned below.” Sato turned. “Fire? In the U.S. Capitol?” “More of a large torch, actually—an eternal flame that burned in the crypt directly beneath us. It was supposed to be visible through the hole in the floor, making this room a modern Temple of Vesta. This building even had its own vestal virgin—a federal employee called the Keeper of the Crypt—who successfully kept the flame burning for fifty years, until politics, religion, and smoke damage snuffed out the idea.”

Nowadays, the only reminder that a flame once burned here was the four-pointed star compass embedded in the crypt floor one story below them—a symbol of America’s eternal flame, which once shed illumination toward the four corners of the New World.

apotheosis.

apotheosis literally means ‘divine transformation’—that of man becoming God. It’s from the ancient Greek: apo—‘to become,’ theos—‘god.’

“Apotheosis means ‘to become God’? I had no idea.”

The Apotheosis of Washington.

George Washington being transformed into a god.”

” “Actually, I’m sure you have.” Langdon raised his index finger, pointing straight up. “It’s directly over your head.”

The Apotheosis of Washington—a 4,664-square-foot fresco that covers the canopy of the Capitol Rotunda—was completed in 1865 by Constantino Brumidi. Known as “The Michelangelo of the Capitol,” Brumidi had laid claim to the Capitol Rotunda in the same way Michelangelo had laid claim to the Sistine Chapel, by painting a fresco on the room’s most lofty canvas—the ceiling. Like Michelangelo, Brumidi had done some of his finest work inside the Vatican. Brumidi, however, immigrated to America in 1852, abandoning God’s largest shrine in favor of a new shrine, the U.S. Capitol, which now glistened with examples of his mastery—from the trompe l’oeil of the Brumidi Corridors to the frieze ceiling of the Vice President’s Room. And yet it was the enormous image hovering above the Capitol Rotunda that most historians considered to be Brumidi’s masterwork.

“That’s George Washington on the central panel,” Langdon said, pointing 180 feet upward into the middle of the dome. “As you can see, he’s dressed in white robes, attended by thirteen maidens, and ascending on a cloud above mortal man. This is the moment of his apotheosis . . . his transformation into a god.”

“you can see a strange, anachronistic series of figures: ancient gods presenting our forefathers with advanced knowledge. There’s Minerva giving technological inspiration to our nation’s great inventors—Ben Franklin, Robert Fulton, Samuel Morse.”