Top 10 Desi Movies

But the secret of Mary and Jesus's bloodline has never been completely lost. It is the truth that lies behind the legends of the Holy Grail. It has been hinted at in works of art, such as Leonardo Da Vinci's 'Last Supper.' It has been preserved in secret Gospels that have recently come to light again, and through a cache of documents from the Temple in Jerusalem. These were found by a group of knights in the Middle Ages, and subsequently protected by a secret society. At the right time, this society will come forward and make the secret public. When they do, it will mean the end of Christianity as we know it – and a good thing too.

This is the back story to The Da Vinci Code. And author Dan Brown says that this back story is historically true. The book begins with a page headed 'Facts,' which says that  all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.

When Dan Brown was interviewed on NBC's Today Show, Matt Lauer asked him 'How much of this is based on reality?' Brown replied,

Absolutely all of it. Obviously Robert Langdon is fictional, but all of the art, architecture, secret rituals, secret societies – all of that is historical fact.

And on the ABC News Special, Dan Brown said that he himself believes this back story. "


From Wikipedia

The Da Vinci Code is a mystery/detective novel by American author Dan Brown, published in 2003 by Doubleday Fiction. It is a worldwide bestseller with more than 60.5 million copies in print (as of May 2006) and has been translated into 44 languages. Combining the detective, thriller and conspiracy fiction genres, the book is part two of a trilogy that started with Brown's 2000 novel Angels and Demons, which introduced the character Robert Langdon. In November 2004, Random House published a "Special Illustrated Edition", with 160 illustrations interspersed with the text.

The plot of the novel involves a conspiracy by the Catholic Church to cover up the "true" story of Jesus. In the book, the Vatican knows it is living a lie but continues to do so to keep itself in power. The novel has helped generate popular interest in speculation concerning the Holy Grail legend and the role of Mary Magdalene in the history of Christianity. Fans have lauded the book as creative, action-packed and thought-provoking. Critics have attacked it as poorly written, inaccurate and creating confusion between speculation and fact. From a religious point of view, some critics consider it sacrilegious, and decry the many negative implications about the Catholic Church and Opus Dei.

Dan Brown's novel was a smash hit in 2003, even rivaling the sales of the highly popular Harry Potter series. [citation needed] It spawned a number of offspring books and drew glowing reviews from the New York Times, People Magazine and the Washington Post [1]. It also re-ignited interest in the history of the Catholic Church. As well as re-invigorating interest in the church, The Da Vinci Code has also spawned numerous "knockoffs" (as they are referred to by Publishers Weekly) [2], or novels that have a striking resemblance to The Da Vinci Code, including Raymond Khoury's The Last Templar, and The Templar Legacy by Steve Berry.

Sony's Columbia Pictures has adapted the novel to film, with a screenplay written by Akiva Goldsman, and Academy Award winner Ron Howard directing. The film was released on May 18, 2006, and stars Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon, Audrey Tautou as Sophie Neveu, and Sir Ian McKellen as Leigh Teabing. The Da Vinci Code has also inspired webquests.



Secret of the Holy Grail




Detail of the The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci.

As explained by Leigh Teabing to Sophie Neveu, the figure at the right hand of Jesus is supposedly not the apostle John, but Mary Magdalene. According to the book Mary Magdalene was the wife of Jesus Christ and was in fact pregnant with his child at the time of his crucifixion. The absence of a chalice in the painting supposedly indicates that Leonardo knew that Mary Magdalene was actually the Holy Grail (the bearer of Jesus' blood). This is said to be reinforced by the letter "M" that is created with the bodily positions of Jesus, Mary, and the male apostle (Saint Peter) upon whom she is leaning.
Saint Peter is also positioned with the blade of his hand next to Mary Magdalene's throat in a threatening gesture. This is supposedly because Peter is jealous of Jesus' greater love for Mary Magdalene than for his disciples. Mary Magdalene and Jesus also create a 'v' shape - the female symbol, for feminity, womanhood and fertility. They are also mirror images of each other - Jesus in red robe and blue cloak, Mary Magdalene in a blue robe and red cloak.

The apparent absence of the "Apostle John", under this interpretation, is explained by identifying John as "the Disciple Jesus loved", allegedly code for Mary Magdalene (see also Second Apocalypse of James). The book also notes that the color scheme of their garments is exactly inverted: Jesus wears a red blouse with royal blue cape; John/Mary wears a royal blue blouse with red cape — perhaps symbolizing two bonded halves of marriage.

According to the novel, the secrets of the Holy Grail, as kept by the Priory of Sion, are as follows:

* The Holy Grail is not a physical chalice, but a woman, namely Mary Magdalene, who carried the bloodline of Christ.

* The Old French expression for the Holy Grail, San gréal, actually is a play on Sang réal, which literally means "royal blood" in Old French.

* The Grail relics consist of the documents that testify to the bloodline, as well as the actual bones of Mary Magdalene.

* The Grail relics of Mary Magdalene were hidden by the Priory of Sion in a secret crypt, perhaps beneath Rosslyn Chapel.

* The Church has suppressed the truth about Mary Magdalene and the Jesus bloodline for 2000 years. This is principally because they fear the power of the sacred feminine, which they have demonized as Satanic.

* Mary Magdalene was of royal descent (through the Jewish House of Benjamin) and was the wife of Jesus, of the House of David. That she was a prostitute was slander invented by the Church to obscure their true relationship. At the time of the Crucifixion, she was pregnant. After the Crucifixion, she fled to Gaul, where she was sheltered by the Jews of Marseille. She gave birth to a daughter, named Sarah. The bloodline of Jesus and Mary Magdalene became the Merovingian dynasty of France.

* The existence of the bloodline was the secret that was contained in the documents discovered by the Crusaders after they conquered Jerusalem in 1099 (see Kingdom of Jerusalem). The Priory of Sion and the Knights Templar were organized to keep the secret.

The secrets of the Grail are connected, according to the fictional novel, to Leonardo Da Vinci's work as follows:

* Leonardo was a member of the Priory of Sion and knew the secret of the Grail. The secret is in fact revealed in The Last Supper, in which no actual chalice is present at the table. The figure seated next to Christ is not a man, but a woman, his wife Mary Magdalene. Most reproductions of the work are from a later alteration that obscured her obvious female characteristics.

* The Mona Lisa is actually a self-portrait by Leonardo as a woman. The androgyny reflects the sacred union of male and female which is implied in the holy union of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Such parity between the cosmic forces of masculine and feminine has long been a deep threat to the established power of the Church. The name Mona Lisa is actually an anagram for "Amon L'Isa", referring to the father and mother gods of Ancient Egypt (namely Amon and Isis).

A number of different authors also speculate about the possibility of Jesus becoming a father. There are at least three children attributed to him, a daughter Tamar, born before the Crucifixion, and two sons Jesus (the Jesus Justus from the New Testament) and Josephes, both born after the Resurrection. Their names are now part of the common culture of conspiracy writers, however only two decades ago, when Holy Blood, Holy Grail was written, the names were never mentioned. The royal descents that lie at the heart of The Da Vinci Code mysteries centre on the family of Josephes, who is supposed to be the grandfather of Aminadab del Graal, first of the "Fisher Kings". However the genealogies that are quoted in Grail lore appear to record too few generations, with children regularly being born to fathers in their 40s.

How secret is the secret?

In regards to the novel, there is an inconsistency in the presentation of "the secret"; when told of the "fact" that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, characters in the novel Langdon and Neveu react with shock and surprise, yet on page 244 (page 398 in Large Print Edition) Teabing says without a challenge "it's a matter of historical record" and offers other support for it being common knowledge among scholars for centuries, and in contemporary times, educated people in general.

The mystery within the mystery

Part of the advertising campaign for the novel was that the artwork in the American version of the bookjacket held various codes, and that the reader who solved them via the author's website would be given a prize. Several thousand people actually solved the codes, and one name was randomly chosen to be the winner, with the name announced on live television, Good Morning America, in early 2004. The prize was a trip to Paris.
Warning: Solution details follow.

The five hidden puzzles reveal:

* That the back of the book jacket conceals latitude and longitude coordinates, written in reverse, light red on dark red. Adding one degree to the latitude gives the coordinates of the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency in Northern Virginia, which is the location of a mysterious sculpture called Kryptos. The coordinates were taken from part of the decrypted text of part 2 of the sculpture (part 4 has never been solved). When Brown has been asked why the coordinates are one degree off, his reply has been, "The discrepancy is intentional".

* There is a secret message hidden in the text of the book flaps.

* The words "only WW knows" can be seen on the back cover. This too is a reference to part 2 of the Kryptos sculpture.[3]

* A circle with numbers, when combined with text from the book, reveals a secret message.

* There is reverse writing on the cover of the book.

Brown, both via his website and in person, has stated that the puzzles in the bookjacket give hints about the subject of his next novel, The Solomon Key. This repeats a theme from his earlier novels. For example, Deception Point had an encrypted message which, when solved, said, "The Da Vinci Code will surface".

In the simplified Chinese version of the Da Vinci Code, the cover has a secret text; however, this text can be easily seen. It reads: "13-3-2-1-1-8-5 O, Draconian devil! Oh, Lame Saint! P.S. Find Robert Langdon." This might mean that other versions of Da Vinci code may have a message.


Inspiration and influences

The novel is part of the mid-twentieth-century exploration of alternative religious history. Its principal source book is Holy Blood, Holy Grail (which is explicitly named, among several others, at the beginning of chapter 60). It has been claimed that The Da Vinci Code is a romanticised version of this work, which was itself based on a series of short films that ran on the BBC in the late 1970s. Similarities include Mary Magdalene as the living Holy Grail, the divine origin of the French royal dynasty, occultism, ancient Egyptian wisdom, papal conspiracy and the use of steganography. In the book, the French painter Poussin with his "Et in Arcadia ego" canvas plays the same role that Brown later assigned to Leonardo da Vinci (years later one of the authors openly admitted to the press that the entire story had been invented). In reference to Baigent (one of the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail), Brown named the villain of his story "Teabing" (an anagram of "Baigent").

Brown has reworked themes from his own earlier Robert Langdon novel, Angels and Demons.

Umberto Eco's earlier Foucault's Pendulum also deals with conspiracies, including the Holy Blood conundrum (which is mentioned in passing) and the Templars but does so in a more critical fashion — it is in fact a satire about the futility of conspiracy theories and the people who believe them. Nevertheless, Foucault's Pendulum has been dubbed "the thinking man's The Da Vinci Code".

Foucault's Pendulum itself is reminiscent in plot, theme and structure to the earlier The Illuminatus! Trilogy, published 13 years earlier.

Christian anarchism has also been thought to have had an influence on the book.

Some forms of neopaganism also seem to be an influence on the novel, in that it repeatedly stresses that the "natural" form of religion is to be governed by (at least?) two gods, one male god and a female goddess. This was, in the novel, the religion of Jesus and the first Israelites. This type of religion is said to be conducive to a more balanced and peaceful society, while a male-only religion is said to be conducive to militarism and violence [citation needed]. Both paradigms are exemplified in the Priory of Sion (male and female membership and leadership, "good") and the Opus Dei (male-only leaders, "bad"), respectively -- the latter, as the mad attack dog of the Catholic Church, seeking to destroy the former. Self-tormenting Silas thus represents Opus Dei and the Catholic Church when true to their "destructive" principles. According to the novel, man needs woman for wholeness and, in fact, for experiencing the divine by means of sex (see the Hieros Gamos ritual)--for example, as the novel points out, in man's orgasm, there is a short period of time when the man's mind is completely empty, when he makes contact with God.


(Compiled by DesPardes Staff)

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