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.




http://www.culturewars.com/2004/DaVinci.html

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.

Voices From The Underground

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

Reviewed by Anne Barbeau Gardiner

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.