The Da Vinci code

[Butterbeer]

Tessar:

Plus come -on-. No woman will ever be the equal of a man.


Most of them refuse to stoop that low .

Eärniel :

How delightfully honest of you, Tessar.

...yes ...it's a very dangerous game diving off those lofty and airy flights of fancy that they inhabit so often ...

[inked]

Ahem*, -cough, cough- the complaints that the feminine has been suppressed by the Church (usually meaning the Roman Catholic Church, of course) are made by ignorant persons. And here we mean ignorant in the dictionary definition. Those allegations are made by persons who have no acquaintance with the historical facts of the cult of the Virgin Mary and its profound elevation of women from the mere chattel to the MOther of God.

Which by the way is another proof that Jesus was indeed Jewish: he was male and thought he was God, as did his mother.

The women win!

[Elfhelm]

LOL!

Actually, the feminists do include the apotheosis of the Virgin Mary in their theories. After all, when the only good woman is one who doesn't have sex, it's a sin to be normal.

[Beren3000]

Originally Posted by sun-star

Nice to see you again, Beren

Thanks, it's nice to talk to you again, too!

Originally Posted by sun-star

And it seems to me that the idea of the sacred feminine participates in the same tradition of seeing women as solely or primarily physical beings.

Right! I remember now; on first reading The Da Vinci Code, I thought: "only a man could've come up with such a notion!"
So it seems that I've been of your opinion (but had forgotten it )

Originally Posted by Elfhelm

Actually, the feminists do include the apotheosis of the Virgin Mary in their theories. After all, when the only good woman is one who doesn't have sex, it's a sin to be normal.

I'm not well versed on the Catholic view of the Virgin, but I think the general idea is: this woman is extraordinarily good because she didn't have sex. It's not like: she is a model of the average God-fearing woman and every other woman should follow her lead and stay celibate. Her virginity is what makes her extra holy, not just "good". Do you see what I'm getting at?

[Elfhelm]

Yes, I do see that. It's not my argument. I'm quoting. What they say is that by putting women on a pedestal we are in fact demeaning them. I don't know. I hold doors and such.

Funny, when I read DaVinci Code I thought it was written by a woman under a pseudonym, but my wife adamantly insisted that only a guy could have said those things.

[inked]

Well, at the risk of drawing upon my head the ire of every female, let me say that if feminists are unhappy with the apotheosis of the Virgin Mary, it is simple proof that one cannot make women happy. Men can only bring to a woman's attention that she is not happy. Whereupon she will blame the man for not being happy. But, as Mel Gibson pointed out in that SERIOUS DaVincial movie WHAT WOMEN WANT
...
....
.....
......
they don't know what they want!

QED Women cannot be made happy. They must find happiness within themselves just like everybody else.

[inked]

Here's a review written in the manner of Screwtape. Lewis fans will find it enjoyable on many levels, not least since it skewers so robustly many assumptions........

http://www.ericmetaxas.com/essay-screwtapedavinci.html

enjoy

[Elfhelm]

Originally Posted by inked

Here's a review written in the manner of Screwtape. Lewis fans will find it enjoyable on many levels, not least since it skewers so robustly many assumptions........

http://www.ericmetaxas.com/essay-screwtapedavinci.html

enjoy

I wouldn't call Silas a "Christian bigot". This psychotic monk is obviously not such a common creature.

The history of the Church does support the notion that it has been murderous and under the influence of evil men.

If the movie implies Jesus is not divine, why can Sophie cure by touch?

But yes, there are actually a lot of people who think Jesus was merely a mortal.

Was he married to Mary Magdalen and did they have children? That is the actual disbelief that Dan Brown wants us to suspend.

I didn't catch the bit about orgasm being the truest form of prayer. Perhaps I need to see the movie again. Or maybe the reviewer does!

Then there's a bunch of psychologizing, as if the reviewer can read minds. Excessive verbiage that is total rabbit trails. Further psychologizing. Speaks of the garden of Eden as fact, then implies someone else isn't factual.

But wait, you're saying women weren't oppressed? What river in Egypt are you floating on?

He then says Nature deities don't exist, but implies that other ones do. Not very logical.

OK. If goddess worship predating Christianity is NOT a good reason, because theoretically the horse isn't as good as a car, WHY THE HECK DON'T YOU ADMIT THAT EVOLUTION IS RIGHT? Why do you say the Ten Commandments are better than the Ten Amendments?! Eh? Which is it? The one you want at this particular time? And if someone else uses that stupid logic, it is THEY who must be laughed at? But they learned this trick from the Church.

Next trick: insult the audience.

Well, when he gets to Constantine, he misses the chance to actually fight the exagerations with fact. Simply, that Iranaeus predated Constantine by a few hundred years. That in fact there were only about one hundred years when Gnosticism was not considered heretical. And that for the intervening 200 years it may have been practiced in secret.

The writer construes Mary Magdalen with the prostitute who bathed Jesus' feet. He is automatically moved to my list of ignorant people. He also insults her honor. That moves him to the next list over, which shall be unnamed here.

Criticism of the writing skill seems to be confined to the author's choice of naming the character. There really are several glaringly bad writing examples one could quote. But can this writer even see them?

All in all, a pretty useless document. It seems the writer took great personal pleasure in writing it. I don't doubt that those who have formed an opinion without reading the book or seeing the movie will believe everything he says, and think him witty.

[inked]

Elfhelm,

I can see that you haven't read THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS in a while. Kinda lost your edge there in the appreciation of irony? Or are you more of a literalist than you or anyone else has dreamt?

Perhaps re-reading the introduction to TSL will help? Particularly that line about the devil being a liar and that everything Screwtape says cannot be taken at face value?

Hmmmm?

[Elfhelm]

Originally Posted by inked

Elfhelm,

I can see that you haven't read THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS in a while. Kinda lost your edge there in the appreciation of irony? Or are you more of a literalist than you or anyone else has dreamt?

Perhaps re-reading the introduction to TSL will help? Particularly that line about the devil being a liar and that everything Screwtape says cannot be taken at face value?

Hmmmm?

That'll never happen. I read the silly children's books to my kids and lost my taste for him entirely.

By the way, in case this fire needs gasoline, here's a fin bit!!!!!!

=====================
It is computed from historical records that nine million of persons were put to death for witchcraft after 1484, or during a period of three hundred years, and this estimate does not include the vast number who were sacrificed in the preceding centuries upon the same accusation. The greater number of this incredible multitude were women....

In looking at the history of witchcraft we see three striking points for consideration:

First: that women were chiefly accused.
Second: that men believing in women's inherent wickedness, and understanding neither the mental not the physical peculiarities of her being, ascribed all her idiosyncracies to witchcraft.
Third: that the clergy inculcated the idea that woman was in league with the devil, and that strong intellect, remarkable beauty, or unusual sickness were in themselves proof of this league.


Catholics and Protestants yet agree in holding women as the chief accessory of the devil....Luther said: "I would have no compassion for a witch, I would burn them all." He looked upon those who were afflicted with blindness, lameness or idiocy from birth, as possessed of demons and there is record of his attempt to drown an afflicted child in whom he declared no soul existed, its body being animated by the devil alone. But a magistrate more enlightened or more humane than the great reformer, interfered to save the child's life. Were Luther on Earth again today with the senitments of his lifetime, he would regard the whole community as mad. Asylums for the blind, dumb, and idiots, curative treatment for cripples and all persons naturally deformed, would be to him a direct intervention with the ways of providence. The belief of this great reformer proves the folly of considering a man wise, because he is pious.

...Old women for no other reason than that they were old, were held to be the most suscepctible to the assaults of the devil, and the persons most especially endowed with supernatural powers for evil....We discover a reason for this intense hatred of old women in the fact that woman has chiefly been looked upon from a sensual view by Christian men, the Church teaching that she was created solely for man's sensual use. Thus when by reason of declining years she no longer attracted the sensual admiration of man, he regarded her as having forfeited all right to life.

During the witchcraft period...the chief lesson of the church that betrayal of friends was necessary to one's own salvation, created an intense selfishness. All humanitarian feeling was lost in the effort to secure heaven at the expense of others, even those most closely bound by ties of nature and affection. Mercy, tenderness, and compassion were all obliterated. Truthfulness escaped from the Christian world; sorrow and cruelty reigned pre-eminent. All regard that existed for others grew up outside of church teaching and was shown at the hazard of life. Contempt and hatred of woman was inculcated with greater intensity; love of power and treachery were parts of the selfish lessons of the Church. All reverence for length of years was lost. The sorrows and sufferings of a long life appealed to no sympathetic cord in the heart. Instead of the tenderness and care due to aged women, they were so frequently accused of witchcraft that for years it was an unusual thing for an old woman in the north of Europe to die in her bed. Besides the thousands of accused who committed suicide in order to escape the horrors incident upon trial, many others tired of life amid so much humiliation and suffering, falsely accused themselves, preferring a death by the torture of fire to a life of endless isolation and persecution.

Matilda Joslyn Gage

[Elfhelm]

hold it... wait a sec!!!

Are you NOW saying it is the DEVIL who started that lie about Mary Magdalen being a prostitute? Because in another thread you said Gregory was inspired by God to tell this lie.

[inked]

Elfhelm,

Close personal friends with Philip Pullman, are you?

I see that you may have missed the point in its entirety now that you responded as per CSL and Narnia. Reminds me of your noting pearls and swine, it does, precioussssssssssssssssssss.


As records your inaccuracies about witchcraft, I refer you to that eminently secular organ, THE NEW YORKER magazine for refutation. It was an article on Wicca that refuted this gross distortion of history. And it traces the origin of the false numbers to their source(s). I think it was about April, 2001.

However, I cannot access the specific site from my office. So watch this thread for the precise referral later today.

Meanwhile, I would strongly suggest that you read THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS. It shouldn't do you any harm, and it may do you good!

[Elfhelm]

Thanks for playing.

No, I don't know Pullman either. But it's fun playing devil's advocate. This thread needs one.

So, the question remains. Does this person NOT believe Mary Magdalen was a prostitute? Is that why he's pretending to speak for the devil and saying she is? So he always means the opposite of what he's saying? In other words, the character of Screwball wants to take advantage of the banal misrepresentation of this woman to further his agenda of lies? If so, which statements are lies and which are true? And what point does it serve?

I'd be interested to see what a WRITER with a particular NAME wrote that was published in the NYT as a refutation of Ms. Gage. And I wonder what is the difference between someone who tries to deny the witch burnings and a person who denies the Holocaust?

How's my DA look now? :-)

[Elfhelm]

I found it ... ain't Google grand?

=====================
Historians and Scholars Produce New Picture of Witches and Witch Hunts, but Questions Remain

New York Times/October 22, 2005
By Peter Steinfels

...

And, finally, how many victims were there? "For witchcraft and sorcery between 1400 and 1800, all in all, we estimate something like 50,000 legal death penalties," writes Wolfgang Behringer in "Witches and Witch-Hunts" (Polity, 2004). He estimates that perhaps twice as many received other penalties, "like banishment, fines or church penance."

Other recent estimates range from 40,000 to 100,000 executions over those early modern centuries. These remain appalling numbers, even when put in the context of the far greater numbers killed in religious wars and the fact that resort to capital punishment was at one of its high points in European history.

No one should underestimate the cruelty these numbers represent. "Witchfinders," Malcolm Gaskill's full-blooded account, just published by Harvard University Press, of the most notorious witch hunt in English history, makes that clear in engrossing detail.

But contemporary historians bridle at the huge numbers that have become part of the witch hunt mythology-and the implicit or explicit comparisons to the Nazi campaign of genocide. Professor Behringer traced the estimate of nine million victims back to wild projections made by an 18th-century anticlerical from 20 files of witch trials. The figure worked its way into 19th-century texts, was taken up by Protestant polemicists during the anti-Catholic Kulturkampf in Germany, then adopted by the early 20th-century German neopagan movement and, eventually, by anti-Christian Nazi propagandists.

In the United States, the nine million figure appeared in the 1978 book "Gyn/Ecology" by the influential feminist theoretician Mary Daly, who picked it up from a 19th-century American feminist, Matilda Gage.

Do such unfounded myths do anyone any good? Certainly many feminists, including some identifying themselves as neopagans, agree with contemporary historians about the answer: No.
========================

I still don't see where he gets his "correct" number.

But even so, isn't even the lowest number - forty thousand - still amazing? And can it ever be justified? Can anyone really say that women were not persecuted because some men "of the cloth" had psychotic misogynistic tendencies?

And isn't it true that these men who hate women are all celibate?

Isn't this a mental disorder of some sort?

Or shall we rather continue to mince words?

[inked]

Close, Elfhelm,

Here's what I had in mind:

The whole enchilada:

Atlantic Monthly Wicca reference:

http://jbburnett.com/resources/atlm...-goddesses.html

See what happens when you are at work and the old neurons connect the Atlantic Monthly with the New Yorker. Alas, age and all that.....

[inked]

Originally Posted by Elfhelm

I found it ... ain't Google grand?

=====================
Historians and Scholars Produce New Picture of Witches and Witch Hunts, but Questions Remain

New York Times/October 22, 2005
By Peter Steinfels

...

And, finally, how many victims were there? "For witchcraft and sorcery between 1400 and 1800, all in all, we estimate something like 50,000 legal death penalties," writes Wolfgang Behringer in "Witches and Witch-Hunts" (Polity, 2004). He estimates that perhaps twice as many received other penalties, "like banishment, fines or church penance."

Other recent estimates range from 40,000 to 100,000 executions over those early modern centuries. These remain appalling numbers, even when put in the context of the far greater numbers killed in religious wars and the fact that resort to capital punishment was at one of its high points in European history.

No one should underestimate the cruelty these numbers represent. "Witchfinders," Malcolm Gaskill's full-blooded account, just published by Harvard University Press, of the most notorious witch hunt in English history, makes that clear in engrossing detail.

But contemporary historians bridle at the huge numbers that have become part of the witch hunt mythology-and the implicit or explicit comparisons to the Nazi campaign of genocide. Professor Behringer traced the estimate of nine million victims back to wild projections made by an 18th-century anticlerical from 20 files of witch trials. The figure worked its way into 19th-century texts, was taken up by Protestant polemicists during the anti-Catholic Kulturkampf in Germany, then adopted by the early 20th-century German neopagan movement and, eventually, by anti-Christian Nazi propagandists.

In the United States, the nine million figure appeared in the 1978 book "Gyn/Ecology" by the influential feminist theoretician Mary Daly, who picked it up from a 19th-century American feminist, Matilda Gage.

Do such unfounded myths do anyone any good? Certainly many feminists, including some identifying themselves as neopagans, agree with contemporary historians about the answer: No.
========================

I still don't see where he gets his "correct" number.

But even so, isn't even the lowest number - forty thousand - still amazing? And can it ever be justified? Can anyone really say that women were not persecuted because some men "of the cloth" had psychotic misogynistic tendencies?

And isn't it true that these men who hate women are all celibate?

Isn't this a mental disorder of some sort?

Or shall we rather continue to mince words?

Well, on comparison to the Salem witch trials here in Massachusetts, the usual reason the folks were selected was economic, wasn't it? At least I read that somewhere once upon a time (but see disclaimer above about aged neurons!).

Of course it's atrocious that women were killed for whatever reason under the pretext of witchcraft. Probably any reason sufficed...even entertainment. Yet, the numbers of individuals killed for these 'religious' reasons pales into insignificance next to the political killings under Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot,etc in the 20th century for the furtherance of the communist regimes and Hitler's hyper-pogram and genocide of Jews (not to forget the gypsies and Germans deemed not-worthy-of-life).

These events from witch trials to political murder as a means of social change would be the best evidence that the Church is right about the nature of humanity being depraved. (I am not an advocate of total depravity, by the way.) The evidence speaks for itself. And, since the Church is a human institution in part (redeemed and forgiven but not yet perfected) it saddens me that it participates in that condition. The Church certainly knows better and should be empowered to do better. I agree.

But to say that the action is purely the result of misogyny and to lay the base on the Church alone seems to miss the far larger picture of Nazi and Communist uses of murder of both sexes.

As to whether all men who hate women are celibate, I would have to answer no. That would be on the basis of the above political murders and the horrendous crimes of folk like Ted Bundy and the Green River Killers and the BTK. They were not celibate. So it is not true that all men who hate women are celibate, is it?

I like mince(d) words, onions, garlic, meat-pies. Let us mince!

[Elfhelm]

If this isn't "religious", I don't know what is...

===================

Tis very Remarkable to see what an Impious and Impudent Imitation of Divine Things is Apishly affected by the Devil, in several of those matters, whereof the Confessions of our Witches and the Afflictions of our Sufferers have informed us.

That Reverend and Excellent Person, Mr. John Higginson,in My Conversation with him, Once invited me to this Reflection; That the Indians which came from far to settle about Mexico, were in their Progress to that Settlement, under a Conduct of the Devil, very strangely Emulating what the Blessed God gave to Israel in the Wilderness.

Acosta is our Author for it, that the Devil in their Idol Vitzlipultzli governed that mighty Nation. He commanded them to leave their Country, promising to make them Lords over all the Provinces possessed by Six other Nations of Indians, and give them a Land abounding with all precious things. They went forth, carrying their Idol with them, in a Coffer of Reeds, supported by Four of their Principal Priests; with whom he still Discoursed, in secret, Revealing to them the Successes, and Accidents of their way. He advised them, when to March, and where to Stay, and without his Commandment they moved not. The first thing they did, wherever they came, was to Erect a Tabernacle, for their False God; which they set always in the midst of their Camp, and there placed the Ark upon an Altar. When they, Tired with pains, talked of proceeding no further in their Journey, than a certain pleasant Stage, whereto they were arrived, this Devil in one night horribly kill'd them that had started this Talk, by pulling out their Hearts. And so they passed on, till they came to Mexico.

The Devil which then thus imitated what was in the Church of the Old Testament, now among Us would Imitate the Affayrs of the Church in the New. The Witches do say, that they form themselves much after the manner of Congregational Churches; and that they have a Baptism and a Supper, and Officers among them, abominably Resembling those of our Lord.

But there are many more of these Bloody Imitations, if the Confessions of the Witches are to be Received; which I confess, ought to be but with very much of Caution.

What is their striking down with a fierce Look? What is their making of the Afflicted Rise, with a touch of their Hand? What is their Transportation thro' the Air? What is their Travelling in Spirit, while their Body is cast into a Trance? What is their causing of Cattle to run mad and perish? What is their Entring their Names in a Book? What is their coming together from all parts, at the Sound of a Trumpet? What is their Appearing sometimes Cloathed with Light or Fire upon them? What is their Covering of themselves and their Instruments with Invisibility? But a Blasphemous Imitation of certain Things recorded about our Saviour, or His Prophets, or the Saints in the Kingdom of God.


- Cotton Mather

==========================

It's pretty obvious that the delusions the ACCUSERS had came from reading the Bible.

Maybe I'll agree that "purely misogyny" is too general a charge, but that misogyny is present is clear.

And of course, Cotton Mather here had three wives, so he must not have been celibate.

But in Europe, those guys were anti-woman.

[inked]

DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU ARE EATING OR DRINKING AT THE COMPUTER!
You may aspirate or spew damaging stuff onto your set-up!

James Lileks on That Book:

But on Saturday I read: sat outside in the gazebo and hammered my way through “The Da Vinci Code.” If “Angels and Demons” was a Tom Clancy novel for Art History majors, “Code” is “24” for pagans, I suppose. The writing, as others have noted, is bad – not unbearably so, but reading the book is like being borne along by a rushing stream of flat ginger ale. You’re certainly going somewhere, but the medium of your conveyance lacks distinction. Some moments were laughable – I could not imagine the character “Teabing” as anything other than “Teabag,” and almost imagined a bottom-heavy wet man with a string tied to his head. I did put the book down, laughing, when the author suggested that Walt Disney was in on the conspiracy to bring forth the truth about the Goddess. Why? Because of “The Little Mermaid,” which was just full of Piscean symbolism. Because the ancients, you know, revered fish, or crabs, or water, or something or other.

Those ancients: they revered everything. They worshipped the circle! Also the square. And, according to a 10th century French monk, the rectangle had certain mystical connotations as well, and that’s why our beds are rectangular. Up until the Council of Sealy, convened by King Quoil, everyone slept in circular beds like the ancient Zoroastrans, beds from which no one ever fell. But rectangular beds were easier to fall out of, so the Council mandated such shapes so people would be reminded of the Fall of Man, preferably on a nightly basis. And so forth. On and on. The wisdom of the ancients. They believed the moon was the Breast of the Goddess of Night! All well and good, So-crates, but we’ve been there, and it’s a rock covered in dust.

Blasphemer! You – no, sorry, only the evil horrible CHURCH accuses people of blasphemy, we pagans are a come-one-come-all sort of people, accepting of all beliefs. Except for Christians, who go straight to the Coliseum for lion appetizers. Anyway, the moon has mystical goddess powers! It affects the tide and the cycle of a woman’s womb!

Well, gravity will do that. All due respect, you guys didn’t have the whole story back when you were assembling cosmologies based primarily on observation. I mean, you made a nice start, but you were also poking through bird guts to see if the augurs were good. Nowadays we’ve come to believe that half-digested seeds are an insufficient means for predicting likely outcomes. The financial industry hasn’t used them for decades.

But we believed in the Goddess, and you, the patriarchal Western evil sex-denying female-fearing popish testosterone-intoxicated tool user has utterly removed the Holy Female from your spiritual realm!

Right. Exactly. Women, all gone. No sacred dames. Aside from that Mary, Mother of, but she’s just a footnote, and you hardly hear anything about her. You’re quite right; Western civilization is bound up in a cinched surplice of denial and prudery, and we spend our days in fear of the Holy Sexual Whatever. I – hold on, the TiVo just bonged – whoa! "G-string Divas" marathon on HBO tonight! Alright. Anyway, you’re quite correct; we do have a certain veneer of “civilization” draped around sex, inasmuch as the Twins do not open with the pitcher rutting with a consort on the mound. Which I’m sure is named after some part of Venus’ anatomy, and if only we knew it, we would be amazed at how some of our words and terms were derived from ancient cultures, man! Did you know George Washingon was a Mason and a hemp farmer? They’ll never let you know that. How do I know? I read it in a book in the library. Anyway, pass the bong.

You are missing the point! At this very moment, self-mortifying Opus Dei monks are plotting to suppress the old and ancient ways!

And more power to ’em. A bloody albino shows up at my door tomorrow, I’ll put him up, with gratitude. The alternative worldview postulated in “The Da Vinci Code” does not exactly give us anything transcendent and wonderful, friend; the most “sacred ritual” described consists of some old French grandfather, nagoy and panhandled, moaning under some grindy-hipped fleshy woman “with long silver hair,” while observers – yes, observers! – stand around in masks holding orbs, chanting. I met her in the grotto and she sheathed my sword, da doo ron ron, da doo ron ron. This may be why the interminable Latin mass became popular: absolutely zero chance of seeing Granny get it on in front of the bridge club.

http://www.lileks.com/bleats/archive...06/053006.html

[Elfhelm]

LOL! this is funny, yeah!

Pass the bong! That's how I end all my own conspiracy twaddle send-ups. Did I write that one?

/me looks again...

Oh no, it was someone else.

I could have, though. LOL! Teabag indeed. Do you think he was riffing on Lionel Trilling's name? Trying for that English academic stuffiness cliche?

=================

But on the serious side, yes, it is true. There were wise women. They were midwives. They had an oral tradition of herbology. And they were hunted and killed BY THE CHURCH as witches. That's historical fact, whether you agree with the estimated numbers or not.

[Elfhelm]

How about this review:

++++++++++++++++++
Voices From The Underground

Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code (Doubleday, 2003), $24.95, 454 pp.


Reviewed by Anne Barbeau Gardiner



For those of us who remember the Doubleday Image books, which were a series of solidly Catholic works, it's sad to reflect on what has happened to this publisher. We have in The Da Vinci Code, God help us, a best-seller which is not only deeply anti-Catholic – indeed one could reasonably call it "hate speech" – but also profoundly corrupt, worse than pornography. Why? Because it is propaganda for what was rightly called in the Old Testament an abomination – ritual orgiastic sex with a "priestess" in front of a chanting crowd. The great Hebrew prophets thundered against this use of sex as a religious rite, and with good reason. Those who got addicted to it were virtually beyond reclaiming. They were not likely to repent when they deluded themselves into thinking that this sin exalted rather than defiled them. Sad that a book advocating such a monstrous perversion should come out of Doubleday.

But why should this novel have made it to the best-seller list? The answer is that Dan Brown has produced here an ingenious thriller. But that is only the packaging of the story. What he has placed on the inside, under the wrappers, is an indoctrination into Gnosticism. The reader is intended to swallow the Gnostic poison while enjoying the murder mystery. The reader is also meant to imbibe many lies about Christian history which appear as factual declarations in the mouths of two well-educated characters who reinforce each other. Outrageous lies are given as indubitable facts – for example, that the medieval Church killed five million women in 300 years, that Christians were constantly making war on Pagans before 325 A.D. (in fact they endured ten great persecutions without ever lifting a sword against the Pagan Romans), and that the Crusades were launched to destroy information about Mary Magdalene's having been the wife of Jesus (125, 232, 254). We are told in dogmatic tones that Original Sin was an idea devised to counter the "sacred feminine" and that Christians regarded Jesus Christ as a mere mortal until "the great deception" of His divinity was imposed by Constantine on the Nicene Council (238, 295). All this would be laughable, were it not meant to entrap young and uneducated readers.

The author pretends to be on the side of the true Jesus and presents him as "the original feminist" who "intended for the future of His Church to be in the hands of Mary Magdalene," but Peter foiled his plan. (248). Everything from Genesis to the modern Church is presented in this book as a struggle against the only religion that really counts for Brown – goddess-worship, which turns out in the end to be Magdalene worship.

In this book there is a secret society whose members share a fascination with "goddess iconology, paganism, feminine deities, and contempt for the Church" (113). Only gradually is it made clear that this society practices the abomination of ritual sex. The three monotheistic religions are all dismissed as women-hating because they dared to "recast as a shameful act" the ritual sex by which "holy men" used to become one with their "female counterparts" (125). Note the use of holy for men engaged in this perversion. The book is chock full of references to pentacles, roses, pyramids, blades and chalices, all of which are obsessively connected with sex and goddess worship. A great many images found in literature, art and architecture are twisted here into symbols of sexual union – including the square cross and the star of David. Such obsessiveness of association is deviant and could well be a symptom of mental disorder. One can only hope it's not contagious for the millions of readers expecting to enjoy a thriller.

Brown's Mary Magdalene is not the Catholic saint we know. She stands here for the goddess of sex once called Isis, Astarte or Venus. The secret society in Brown's story "worships Mary Magdalene as the Goddess, the Holy Grail, the Rose, and the Divine Mother" (255). It sees Our Lord as the equivalent of the horned gods of Paganism, such as Baal. We have witnessed many sacrileges in recent years, such as a Crucifix dipped in urine and a Madonna adorned with elephant dung. But this book may be worse. It is the equivalent of Belshazzar's feast, where the sacred cup belonging to the Holy of Holies was monstrously profaned. Brown takes the Holy Grail, the cup in which Christ is thought to have consecrated the Blessed Sacrament at the Last Supper, and tramples it by reducing it to something carnal. He tries to persuade the reader that the Holy Grail had nothing to do with the Eucharist, but was only about Mary Magdalene's procreative organs. Christians were deluded, and the "blood of Christ" resided all along only in this particular woman and her physical descendants, nowhere else. The descendants of Magdalene have been guarded down the ages by the secret society because their existence is supposed to prove that the Church foisted a deception on the world. Thus, once the murder-mystery wrapper is removed, Browns book turns out to be hate-speech, blasphemy and sacrilege all rolled into one.

On the last page, the Harvard professor finds Magdalene's grave but decides against publicizing what's in it, the documentary proof that the Church is a fraud. Why? Because it wouldn't do for the hoi polloi to know the "Truth." Here Brown preaches Gnostic doctrine: that the stupid many, unlike the superior few, cannot live without lies. He shows the Bible as a web of lies, too, for he quotes Da Vinci saying, "Many have made a trade of delusions and false miracles, deceiving the stupid multitude," and adds that this is in reference to the Bible (231).

The Da Vinci Code is full of anagrams, puzzles, riddles and codes. This highlights what is most seductive about Gnosticism, its appeal to superficial cleverness. For the Gnostic, truth is an esoteric code that only the very clever can decipher. Brown treats his readers as if they belonged to this exclusive club of code-breakers. Trouble is, when all the puzzles are solved – and he solves them by his mouthpiece the Harvard professor so the reader doesn't have to take any trouble – what is left is banal and sordid. In contrast to the infinite depth and holiness of the Christian mysteries, the Gnostic mysteries turn out to be dull and dirty, like an expanse of foul-smelling mud. Or like coming to the last of several nesting boxes and finding that instead of a rare gift, you have only a pornographic image.

It's no accident that the professor who speaks for Brown ends up sounding like an atheist. He tells the naive girl that "every faith in the world is based on fabrication," and every religion uses "metaphors," but foolish ordinary people believe these stories "literally," while those "who truly understand their faiths understand the stories are metaphorical" (341-2). In other words, clever people are atheists because they regard every religion as made up. Well where does that leave Brown's goddess worship by ritual sex? This too must be a fabrication. How insubstantial this is, like a weird incoherent dream. Yet such a view of reality has tragic and eternal consequences, and one rightly fears for the young, unwary reader.

Brown's constant use of flattery to inveigle women reminds one of a comic routine that Elaine May and Mike Nichols used to perform. In a brief seduction scene, May would protest, "I want you to respect me," and Nichols would exclaim enthusiastically as he pawed her, "I respect you, I respect you!" In the same way, Brown uses women as if they consisted only of sexual organs and at the same time exclaims with enthusiasm, "you're sacred, you're sacred!"

In chapter 74, Brown finally gives a lengthy description of ritual sex. By this point he imagines that the reader has fallen under his Gnostic spell, so it is safe for the professor tell the ingenue about a ceremony that only looks "like a sex ritual," but is actually "a spiritual act" meant to "achieve gnosis." When the girl wonders how "orgasm" can be called "prayer," the professor assures her that ritual sex "is not a perversion" but a "deeply sacrosanct ceremony." (And Brooklyn Bridge is for sale, too.) He declares that ancient Jews and "priestesses" engaged in these rituals in Solomon's Temple and worshiped a Goddess called Shekinah. He even dares to decipher the sacred Tetragrammaton, the name of the biblical God, as meaning the same as Yin/Yang. Using a "soft voice," he tells the girl how "mankind's use of sex to commune directly with God posed a serious threat to the Catholic power base," and this is why the Church had to "demonize sex" (309). These are all lies. One may ask if he is not the one demonizing sex by reducing it, as he does, to a single monstrous perversion.

In the last lines of the Da Vinci Code (454), after Mary Magdalene's grave has been found, the professor kneels in reverence and seems to hear a voice speaking to him from the abyss below: "For a moment, he thought he heard a woman's voice ... the wisdom of the ages ... whispering up from the chasms of the earth." One cannot help here but be reminded of Dante, the greatest Catholic poet, in whose Inferno the deep chasms of the earth are teeming with wicked demons and damned souls. By Brown's own admission here, the pretended "wisdom" that has inspired his book is lodged in the underworld. This is the voice, then, not of Mary Magdalene, but of a demon. Indeed this whole book, while superficially clever, comes straight out of hell. It is especially wicked to use the name of Mary Magdalene to cover the gross abominations of Gnosticism, which include goddess worship and ritual sex.

This review was published in the February, 2004 issue of Culture Wars.
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I must say, I have studied a lot about Gnosticism and I don't see any reference to orgiastic sex in any of those Gospels.

I also missed the Magdalen as sex goddess thing she's referring to.

It's pretty clear that she thinks Dan Brown needs an exorcism of some sort.

Now this is the Church as I know it, not all watered down for us overly tolerant American liberals!