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.