da Vinci, schma Vinci.

I’m reading “The da Vinci Code”, which isn’t so much a novel as a string of bizarre, mostly mistaken or at least misinterpreted assertions strung together within a vaguely engaging, though thin, plot. The main character, Robert Langdon, does not speak to anyone so much as lecture, constantly. Every time he talks, or even thinks to himself, he seems to find a way to expound a hidden truth. He seldom makes it through a sentence without using the term "The Sacred Feminine".

In the forward of the book, Dan Brown asserts:

“FACT: The Priory of Scion – a European secret society founded in 1099 – is a real organization. In 1975 Paris’s Bibliotheque Nationale discovered parchments known as Les Dossiers Secrets, identifying numerous members of the Priory of Scion, including Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo, and Leonardo da Vinci."

By now everybody knows the central secrets at the center of the book.

1 - The church has spent the last two thousand plus years repressing the importance of women in the church, and by extension, repressing women in general.

2 - Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married, and had children, whose descendants walk among us today.

These assertions are made based on the author having read, and believed every single word of a book called “Holy Blood, Holy Grail”, which is based on the assertions of the document mentioned in the forward to The da Vinci Code. The Priory of Scion is supposedly devoted to protecting the bloodline of Jesus, whose descendants include most European royalty. It’s all pretty tenuous to begin with.

Unfortunately, the document that all of this is based on has been conclusively proven to be a total fraud, perpetrated so the actual author could claim to be the legitimate King of France. Even more unfortunately, exposure of this fraud tends to discount these actual secrets:

1 -The church actually HAS spent the last two thousand plus years repressing the importance of women in the church, and by extension, repressing women in general. This isn’t actually a secret, anyway, so much as POLICY.

2 - Although Jesus and Mary Magdalene were probably not married, she was a very important disciple of Jesus.(She even wrote her own gospel.) Her not being noted as an actual apostle is a very clear indication that the churches repression of women started very, very early. And, yes, her being generally cast by the church as a prostitute sure does confirm the whole repression thing, doesn’t it?

So, although Dan Brown’s intentions were actually very noble, basing his assertions on fraud, rather than facts just serves to bolster the repression of the actual facts by obscuring them in a haze of nonsense and paranoia.

And on top of all that, the book is actually pretty awful. Not Stephen King awful, or even Michael Crichton awful, but pretty awful nonetheless. I hope the book I am waiting for at the library comes in soon, so I can read it instead. It’s about String Theory. Don’t get me started on String Theory. I’ll probably blog on it later.