THE
DA VINCI CODE
HOLY GRAIL
etc
MAY
13th 2006
The
collection of facts and fiction (mostly the latter) that have been used
in Dan Brown's book and others are of little or no significance, though
it is true that the early Christian church as it was accepted, adopted
and spread by the political powers, submitted to the patriarchal
traditions of the epoch and the societies involved. It is not so much
that that female emancipation and the role of women as priests was
suppressed as that matters were left as they were. The role of
motherhood was revered but doctrinal authority left as the male
prerogative. That may change now if, when and where people want it to.
As for the theory that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and had
children, there is no evidence at all for this but it would be of no
consequence even if it was true. The fact that he was a human being who
lived when and where he did means many of us are reasonably closely
related to him anyway. All the mystical and secret stuff in these books
is just hokum which people love to indulge in. It is quite harmless
unless people take it seriously. The symbolism of the
pentacle/pentangle/pentagon is not mysterious, it is related to
mathematical principles of harmony which will automatically feature as
preferred proportions in nature, as I have explained in MATHEMATICA.
There are of course 'mysteries' and 'secrets' of nature to be
discovered. To a certain extent there are 'secret societies', since we
acknowledge rights to privacy and commercial confidentiality, so a
company or society with intellectual property could be called in some
sense a secret society. There is nothing weird about that, and there is
no way that knowledge of nature can be withheld or denied to
seekers of truth. In order to patent anything it has has to be openly
declared - that is what the word patent means. It cannot be secret.
There have recently been moves to patent discoveries of basic genetic
nature, and that is going to cause quite a row before a line is drawn
to stop it, but stopped or invalidated it will be unless the patented
knowledge is shared freely.