Decrypting the... "Da Vinci Code"

There are some who—albeit totally ignorant of the Holy Bible—have come to acknowledge this “Da Vinci Code” book as a truthful document, which supposedly “exposes” the Christian faith. However, the facts outlined below, as taken from the newspaper’s “Epsilon” article by Christina Pantzou, will prove just how icorrect they are, in these as well as many more things!

On researching the sources of the book “The Da Vinci Code,” the researchers finally stumbled onto the Conservative right-wing person of Pierre Plantard, who seems to be the one who provided the “sources” that Dan Brown presents as “historical documents.”

The book in question is perhaps the most intriguing “conspiracy theory” book of our times. It is an international best-seller, with millions of readers from all over the world. The imaginative and the real, myth and history, all randomly combined in a narrative that puts the adventures of Indiana Jones to shame. However, an ensuing, second examination (with the assistance of specialists) revealed that it is actually a medley of esoteric references, unreliable sources, recycled, old conspiracies, undocumented metaphors and—the most dangerous of all—extreme, right-wing references cloaked with literary brushwork.

Snow White eating the poisoned apple: an allegory that referred to the fall of Eve in the Garden of Eden? Mary Magdalene sitting next to Jesus in Da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper? Walt Disney—an occultist who, from his very first movies has been sending us strange messages? The glass pyramid of the Louvre was constructed on the instruction of Francois Beran—also called “The Sphinx,” because he was initiated into terrible secrets? In his world-wide best-seller, 38 year old Dan Brown, an English teacher in New Hampshire and a graduate in the history of art, is toying with our need for miracles and mysteries by speaking of anagrams, coded messages, hidden secret signs… right before our very eyes.

His essay is nothing more than an adult version of Harry Potter, basically focusing on the quest for the Holy Grail and the descendants of the union (!!!) between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, sprinkled with “profound” metaphors that are nothing more than a recycling of old familiar arguments found in Religious fantasy literature, according to the comment by Michel Kessnel, Dean of the University of Lyons: “Knights of the Temple, Zion, Holy Grail, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Vatican’s secrets, the occultism of Da Vinci. The wife and children of Jesus… The only thing missing is Jesus’ twin brother!...”

This is nothing more than a cleverly thought-out text, which could have easily been taken as just another fantastic story, a story that Ron Howard has now prepared and transferred onto the big screen, insisting that it is the next Hollywood blockbuster; however a story it is not claimed to be as the author insisted on the historical veracity of his sources within the introduction of his book. Despite the tens of books in circulation which have debunked his assertions, he has miraculously convinced his readers to such a degree, that, last summer, thousands of tourists swarmed in droves to see the places where the “events” in his book took place, eager to “see” for themselves all those secret signs at last. How were they to know that the only person responsible for all of this was a right-wing extremist Frenchman? Apparently, Pierre Plantard was the man who concocted the sources that Dan Brown presented as “historical references”, as revealed by the journalist Marie France Esteguan in the “Nouvel Observateur.”

The life and the history of Plantard begins in 1940, in occupied Paris. He wrote enthusiastic letters to Petain, urging him to “stop the war that the Jews provoked,” stressing that he “had at his disposal about one hundred men, all dedicated to our cause;” he published anti-Semitic magazines such as “Vaincre” (which he re-circulated in the 1980s); with the assistance of the German occupational forces, he took over buildings that Jews lived in; he headed several small nationalist groups and secret societies—along the lines of knightly brotherhoods—whose purpose was the “ethnic cleansing” of his country, and he began to sign with the name “Pierre de France.”

According to Dan Brown, the glass pyramid of the Louvre Museum is an unusual building, consisting of 666 glass panes (the number of the beast, according to conspiracy theorists), that was commissioned by Francois Mitterand who—according to the author—moved in occult circles.

In 1956, he registered in Haute-Savoie the Article of Association of a newly-founded organization: he called it the Priory of Sion and declared himself its head, with the title of Grand Magister. A few years later, together with another eccentric personality—the Marquis Philippe de Chérisey—they “manufactured” a series of documents that supposedly revealed the whereabouts of the Holy Grail, the existence of a line of descendants from the marriage of Jesus to Mary Magdalene and their incorporation in the Merovingian Dynasty (which apparently was Plantard’s lineage also!), the founding of the Priory of Sion in 1099 by Godfrey—supposedly for the purpose of protecting the secret of the Holy Grail—and a list of the Grand Masters of the organization, amongst whom were included Da Vinci, Botticelli, Newton, V. Hugo, Jacque Cousteau… In the mid-sixties, Plantard and Chérisey somehow managed to deposit these documents in the National Library of Paris.

These are the renowned “secret files” which Dan Brown invokes in the introduction of his book as being the unshakable historical evidence of everything that he has recorded. The journalist Marie France Esteguan concludes, “What a pity! The much-praised secret brotherhood of the ‘Priory of Sion’ is nothing more than an average, mid-20th century, bourgeois society, founded by an extreme-right personality who poses as a descendant of Jesus, and a member of that superior race of ‘Illuminati’ who hold the fortunes of the world in their hands!”

It is apparent from the above that both Mr. Brown’s book as well as Mr. Howard’s movie are clear attacks on Christ, the Holy Bible, and the Church at large. The lies and deceits are many and both the book as well as the movie should be avoided by all.