I’ve been bamboozled!

November 7th, 2004 by lynnylchan under Uncategorized

I just spent the whole day reading ‘The Da Vinci Code’. Poof. My head is spinning. The author is a genius. I read ‘Angels and Demons’ last week, and I had this overwhelming feeling of being bamboozled, tricked, taken for a ride…

It all sounds incredibly accurate. So it leads you to believe that there must at least be SOME truth in the books, seeing how the Illuminati and Priory of Sion are true and have existed. But the true genius of Dan Brown’s work is convincing you that it must be true. The Illuminati must exist, the path is too accurate. That’s one thing that troubles me. He could have chosen any artworks, I assume he has a solid grasp of them. I don’t dispute that a tourist could follow the path. But the question of whether or not it is truly the Path Of Light remains. It’s like going to New Zealand on a Middle-Earth tour. Yes, you’re on location, but that doesn’t make you an elf or orc or hobbit. There are plenty of statues and whatnot in Rome. Yes, I know Bernini placed the statues there explicitly. But he was also a very prolific artist, and he probably has lots of other artworks around Rome as well.

I think the symbolism in ‘Da Vinci Code’ is purely author-created. As in, I don’t doubt that the symbols have the meaning he ascribes, but the way they turned out in the book is all entirely his doing. There are plenty of male and female symbols out there, but the blade and chalice relate directly to the final ending, which is probably why he used them.

As for the more pressing issue of the supposed ‘doctoring’ of the Bible, well… There is plenty of historical proof that other gospels exist, like the gospel of Thomas and the Gnostic gospel. Yet all these gospels tell us was that Jesus was a man, a very good and charismatic man, who was probably married and had kids and was mortal. So the implications are that he never claimed descent from God, and there was no resurrection and Ascension. Wow, that’s a lot to change! No wonder there’s so much resistance! If Jesus was mortal, his claim of divinity implies two things: Either he was a megalomaniac who decided to claim to be the Messiah, or the church rewrote the gospels. If Jesus was truly mortal and HUMBLE, then all the Bible verses we hold dear are meaningless. John 3:16 means nothing without the claim of being God’s son. The church has been meddling with us big time!

But let’s consider the position of the Priory of Sion. Why were they so focused on Mary Magdalene? I know that her role has been played down by the church. At the least, she was a wealthy woman and not a whore. At most, she was to be the foundation of the ministry of Jesus. Okay. But the brotherhood reveres her, and I think this goes beyond their desire to uphold truth. It goes back to their pagan-worshipping ways, the sacred feminine. So, they are defending her because what the church has done to her memory is indicative of what they have done to goddess worship around the world. I still don’t understand why her particularly. How about Venus, Ishtar, Astarte, Isis? Do they revere these too? Their history is so convoluted I forget what they were trying to do in the first place, apart from finding and protecting the tomb.

I personally think it’s highly believable that the church meddled in the writing of the Bible. The prophecies fit, of course, and the properties of God are congruent throughout the book. But there have been incongruencies pointed out as well. If Jesus was merely mortal, then where is the Messiah the prophets foretold? Prophecies are tricky things, their very nature is to be hazy in meaning. You can interpret them any which way, and when something comes along that fits the pattern, you can declare the prophecy true. Hindsight 20/20.

But in all fairness, religion is about delusion, after all. Either we make ourselves flawless gods and forever mould ourselves in their image, or we make flawed gods who nevertheless are powerful and can strike us down with lightning (Zeus the philanderer comes to mind). And the part where it is stated that God made us in his image - I’m going to burn in hell for this, so I might as well be clear. He didn’t make us in his image. We made Him in ours. All through culture, people have done that, with perhaps a few supernatural add-ons. The Greek gods were a case in humanity made powerful, and the Egyptian pantheon humans made special with animal heads. A good point was made in Angels and Demons. By assimilating the pagan religions, Christianity also assimilated their ideas of God’s image. I personally believe God doesn’t look like anything. That is a non-rational question that cannot be answered by reason. God is pure energy, He is a presence. The presence we feel in church and in worship is a manifestation of energy. This isn’t to say that there isn’t a God. I believe there is. I just don’t think he’s an old man with long white hair and beard. If you’ve ever read the comic Lucifer, you would see. (More burning in hell, reading satanic comics…) Michael the archangel comes into the presence of God. There is no picture of God, only a word bubble that is a perfect ellipse. No indication of where the voice is coming from. Because, in the sanctum sanctotum, what lives in there is pure energy, Michael, and it is all around you. That is why God is omnipresent and omnipotent.

That’s a properly long rant. If I come up with more ideas I’ll write more!