Continued from: A Different Da Vinci Code
Q: Does that make The DaVinci Code a bad story?
A: No!.. It's great for the story, just questionable for the premise. When all elements in a belief arise out of the same stew, so to speak, we may suspect a certain conspiratorial circularity, perhaps with Hermes somewhere in the details!… The revelations that one generation of believers discovers may have been planted for them by their predecessors.
For example, early French Gnostics, feeling the way they did about traditional Christianity and venerating Mary Magdalene, might easily have claimed that her child, real or invented, was "special" and had been amongst them. This will always remain a matter of belief, since it is beyond proof either way. There is also a claim that Joseph of Arimathea brought the Holy Grail to the British Isles , only there it was a cup. In fact, we have a surplus of grail contenders, although it's obvious that the French label is the one that stuck. There were also enough pieces of the True Cross for sale in the Middle Ages to rebuild Noah's Ark. There is even a current hypothesis that the famous Shroud of
Turin was an early photography experiment by, and possibly even a self-portrait of- guess who?-our old friend Leonardo. Did we mention that he knew something about chemistry?… He studied light-sensitive compounds of silver….fascinating!
Q: Why do I get the feeling that Professor Nemo is not quite ready to join in the stampede?
A: Simply because at this distance the proof that a Mary Magdalene holy bloodline must turn upon can never be produced outside of direct testimony from Jesus, and is not even a part of the larger context. If the early Church did indeed downplay the well evidenced importance of Mary Magdalene to the Christian movement…or even if it revised the Jewish cultural norm of Jesus possibly being a married person, this may well have been a desperate attempt to counter the pervasive Gnostic influences of its spiritual environment. If so, it's all part of that same turbid stew… To whatever extent the early Gnostics were thinking Hermetically, they would have been looking for alternate spiritual figures and incorporating them into their spiritual writings. Later, similarly minded Gnostic groups would have a ready-made "secret gospel truth" to show their recruits during the Renaissance… There have been as many wildly differing ancient religious accounts as there were biases, and conspiracy theories raged in the past just as they do today. We tend to forget that ancient does not necessarily mean true, and that there is no view without point of view… The human hunger for spiritual power and fulfillment is truly boundless and has always provided a good livelihood for those inclined to take advantage of it. That's precisely why we must never permit faith of any flavor to become a mask for ignorance. Choice is only that when we know exactly what we are choosing… Most importantly, the promise of "secret proof" in matters of faith is, logically speaking, an inanity and the stuff of hoaxes, since faith and proof are contradictory concepts. It would be like jumping into a swimming pool blindfolded, simply because someone tells you that it has been filled with water… But isn't that exactly what mystery cults are really all about?… You can also be quite sure that any secret text in France that promoted Gnosticism would have surfaced in the wake of the fierce anticlericalism of the French Revolution… The most compelling evidence we have at hand is that of Jesus' own sayings from all available sources. Nothing anywhere indicates a desire or anticipation of founding a hereditary dynasty, even though all accounts, including the Gnostic ones, were written well after Jesus' death…. This is critical because the whole biblical tradition is based on the foretelling of all major events, and Jesus referenced prior messianic prophecies continually.
Q: So, is that it?
A: It is for me. I've made sure to leave plenty of loose ends for you to check out on your own so you can see for yourself just how much this secret tradition has shaped your world. You will find reams of facts, endless opinions, bewildering hocus-pocus, crass commercialism, and a long word-list of newer occultisms that will truly make your head spin. The hard part is trying to figure out how much of anything you read is true so that you can make up your own mind. Try not to get lost, as many do, in attempting to make sense out of six odd millennia of complex mysticism. Like an onion, it's much the same thing, layer after layer…You may also wish to check out the works of other Renaissance age artists for similar "deep secrets"…so what if the exclusive Priory of Sion suddenly needs a larger place to meet!… You see, Leonardo had no need to be a Grand Master knight with a secret text in order to encode his message… He just needed to be a Renaissance Hermeticist…. In fact, looking at his work strongly indicates that Leonardo was pro-John the Baptist rather than a pro-Mary Magdalene. This Hermetic-style Gnostic cult, known as Johannites, to which Leonardo is rumored to have belonged and which is also closely linked to the Knights Templar, apparently goes all the way back to the Mandaeans of the Middle East, a group with "secret knowledge." Johannites believe that John (High King of Light ) got a raw deal, having been supplanted by Jesus, who also perverted his teachings. From this religious perspective, Hermes and John the Baptist may very easily become intermingled as mutual opponents of Jesus.
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