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Does Dan Brown have a secret agenda ?


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It could be said that many authors must have secret agendas, ideas that are built into their books without this being obvious to the casual reader and there is nothing wrong with that. Many readers will spot these covert messages and take them into account when reading a book. Dan Brown makes no secret of the fact that there are concealed messages in his books, hidden in codes and puzzles to be worked out by the characters in the book and the reader. But are there other less obvious messages behind the stories he tells messages that may have a more profound meaning? It is certainly worth taking a look to see if this might be the case.

The Da Vinci Code (TDVC) was and is a mega blockbuster of a novel which took some ideas from previous sources and presented them to a massive audience worldwide. The book is built around the idea of the Goddess, Sacred Feminine and Mary Magdalene, Mary of Magdala, the close associate of Jesus. It proposes that Mary was not just the messenger of Christ as depicted in the Gospels or even the companion and confidant as Gnostic texts portray but also the wife of Jesus and mother of his child. This idea, which of course met with staunch opposition from some quarters, was clearly of interest to millions of readers and many must have then had to reconsider the established view of this hugely important figuare in our history over the last 2000 years. Was this Dan Brown's intention when he wrote the book?

He can hardly have been oblivious to the fact that his novel would cause a great controversy as some of his ideas come from other controversial books that he mentions in his text which propose what would have been considered heretic ideas in past times and he laces TDVC with information that is at best critical of some religious institutions if not downright condemning of them. It is not surprising that he makes one of his targets the devout Catholic group called Opus Dei who have beliefs that would be totally contrary to any idea of the worship of the Goddess or a role of the Sacred Feminine in spirituality which is one of Dan Brown's main themes.

TDVC focuses our attention on Mary of Magdala and her role in the life and mission of Jesus as depicted in the Gospels and other texts that have now resurfaced after well over a 1500 years and which indicate that her role may have been a much greater one than the religious establishments have tried to portray over the centuries. Like Mary, the mother of Jesus, Mary of Magdala was never given any 'divine' status by Christianity but they have obviously over many years been the focus for worship and veneration that was in pre-Christian times attributed to the Goddess. This absence of a feminine element in a religion, which Dan Brown calls the 'Sacred Feminine', is an obvious departure from previous spiritual beliefs in which the role of the Goddess was as important, and sometimes more important, as the God. Dan Brown in TDVC is clearly drawing our attention to this change in perspective and elevates Mary of Magdala to a much more important position by suggesting that she was the mother of the child of Christ.

The title of TDVC indicates that Dan Brown proposes that Leonardo da Vinci had knowledge or belief in the Sacred Feminine, the Goddess and the true role of Mary of Magdala in the life of Christ and that this was coded into the work of Leonardo and other artists. This is highlighted in the Leonardo work 'The Last Supper' where the figure on the right hand of Jesus is considered by many, and clearly Dan Brown, to be a woman - Mary of Magdala.

These sort of ideas are usually classed as a 'conspiracy theory', but is it? We have seen that many things that are classified as just a 'conspiracy theory', or just a fantasy, turn out to be true. It is clear that things that might upset the 'status quo' or established order are often, if not always, set aside as not worthy of consideration by those in authority. Funnily enough Jesus is a good example of that because what he was teaching was not what the Jerusalem establishment of his day wanted to hear. This could be because Jesus had followers, men and women, who believed in what he was saying and clearly supported him. According to the biblical records it was the women who stayed with Jesus to the end whilst the men denied him, three times we are told in the case of Peter. It is obvious from the bible and other texts that the person closest to Jesus was Mary of Magdala as his messenger, companion and confidant; whether his partner in the modern sense has yet to be established. It is Mary of Magdala who we hear rouses the despondent apostles and sends them to a mountain by the Sea of Galilee which Jesus has chosen as a meeting place and where he then gives his 'Great Commission' talking about the 'end of time'.

So Dan Brown is drawing attention to a very important character in the story of Jesus and TDVC is the means by which he is doing it.

His following book 'The Lost Symbol'(TLS) is all about Freemasonry. Why this topic for his next book? Why move from a most interesting issue of modern times with the most influential individual of the last 2000 years to a semi secret society of Masons who sometimes say that they are no more than a charitable dinner club? True they have some strange ceremonies but 'The Lost Symbol' falls down when we realise that these strange ceremonies are purported to be the excuse for a massive cover up operation to prevent them being revealed; ceremonies which many people have been quite aware of for a long time. So a bunch of blokes want to play games in a den, they call a 'lodge', with the exclusion of female company, and which they seem to think is related to the Temple of Solomon which is a structure for which there is no archaeological evidence at all and might be a complete fabrication of the people who wrote the Old Testament of the bible. It is true that this 'dinner club' may have been in the past and may now be a useful bit of social networking to the benefit of all concerned in the business and social arenas but why would Dan Brown bother to construct a book about the Masons who may do no harm and possibly a lot of good with their charitable activities?

That might come down to the next message that Dan Brown wants to put to us.

The Masons may now to some be just a dinner club at which people can meet and establish useful contacts but it has been suggested that the origins of Masonry are very old. Maybe few current members investigate its origins very much but this may go back to very early spiritual ideas and beliefs. Dan Brown in TLS does not go into the origins of Freemasonry very much but because the book is set in Washington DC he does comment on the way the Masons involved in the founding of America were trying to create a society that kept religion out of politics and depicted ancient Gods and Goddesses in their art. He introduces the subject of Noetics, the power of the mind, and the book has many messages in codes, puzzles and riddles, like TDVC, which have to be solved for the main characters to progress through the plot. A pyramid with capstone is an important part of this plot and a key character in the story puts forward the hypothesis that we are entering a time of revelation, a period of illumination, an apocalypse when secret things will be revealed and cause major changes. We are told about the cornerstones of Masonic tradition which were laid with great ceremony when the main buildings of Washington were started and about the Ancient Mysteries which we are told are hidden in the bible and often buried in these cornerstones. Much is made of the proposal that these secrets hidden in the bible have been included so that at some time they will be revealed and that will be the time of Apocalypse.

Central to the story is a symbol with very ancient origins which Dan Brown calls the 'circumpunct'. This is a circle with a round dot in the middle, at its centre, and has its origins we are told in Ancient Egypt where it was a sign for Ra the Sun God. We are also told this symbol has many other meanings including, gold, a solar sign, the Third Eye, the Divine Rose, and a sign of illumination. It is the sign for the Ancient Mysteries and used to unlock an important clue in the plot. It is also an important symbol at the end of the book. The title of the book - The Lost Symbol - tells us that a symbol is important and lost. Is this symbol the 'circumpunct' and if so why is it lost when it seems to have so many meanings in the past and today?

This could be because this symbol has another meaning which may well be known to Dan Brown but which he may have chosen not to mention directly. It could be a meaning that goes back to the very origins of Freemasonry and the reason that the main symbols of the craft are the compass and the square, the tools of geometry. It could be the reason that Dan Brown decided to follow up TDVC with a book centred around Freemasonry in the first place. It is a meaning which has close links to pyramids, or the Great Pyramid in Egypt, and a pyramid is very important in his novel. It is a meaning which has links to the main subject matter of his previous book TDVC, Jesus and Mary of Magdala. So what is the possible lost extra meaning in a symbol of a circle with a dot in the middle?

To understand this extra meaning in the 'circumpunct' one has to consider planet Earth as on orb, a spherical object, and this ball can be divided into two equal halves by a circular line that goes right round it making a circle where the centre of this circle is the centre of the Earth. This is called a Great Circle and the line that goes round the Earth will cross places that are on this line and the direction or bearing between these points are Great Circle bearings. The equator is of course a Great Circle as are meridian lines going from north to south poles if extended round the world since the centre of these circles is the centre of the Earth. Any two places on the planet can set up a Great Circle using the Earth's centre and any other places on this circle will be linked. So a good way to express a Great Circle as a symbol would be to draw a circle with say a compass and mark the centre with a dot to indicate that the centre of the circle is the centre of a sphere, the Earth. This is the symbol called by Dan Brown the Circumpunct. It is a very logical way to symbolically describe a Great Circle.

But what does this have to do with Dan Brown's novel The Lost Symbol? Maybe because the Great Circle meaning of this symbol has been lost but goes back many thousands of years. How so, might be the next question, how could people thousands of years ago have known about Great Circles around the Earth? How the ancients knew about Great Circles around our planet is not clear but the fact that they did know about them is now clear. How do we know that?

We now know that the ancients must have been aware of Great Circles because of the geographical locations of the sites that they considered sacred. These sites of the very ancient world, notably in the Holy Land and eastern Mediterranean, were not just a random choice of places but grouped along Great Circle bearing lines from a focal point far away. If we go back to the first records of the use of the 'circumpunct', the circle with a central dot, it is in Ancient Egypt where it was a sign for the sun god Ra. Now we know of no way that people thousands of years before our present era, when archaeology tells us these ancient sacred sites were founded, could have been aware of Great Circles around the Earth and would have been able to position their sacred sites along Great Circle bearing lines which is clearly the case from evidence on the ground. So somehow sites were set out to follow these lines either by an advanced earthly civilisation or with help from a non terrestrial source of some sort. From very early times these sites were considered sacred, places of worship, to the deities of the people of the time, and enter the sun god Ra who had a symbol in Ancient Egypt of the the 'circumpunct' a sign which can readily be interpreted as a symbol for Great Circles. It should also be noted that in writings that come out of Ancient Egypt where Isis was so important she says to Horus, her son, -'..sent for a little while thy mighty sire Osiris and the mightiest Goddess Isis that they may help the world for all things needed them... tis they who filled life with life. Tis they who caused the savagery of mutual slaughter of men to cease. Tis they who hallowed the precincts of the of the Gods their ancestors and spots for holy rites....'.(Thrice Greatest Hermes.. G R S Mead). From this we might conclude that certain locations were considered holy from very ancient times and these locations were set out in a geometric pattern based on Great Circle bearing lines from evidence now available.

Was Dan Brown aware that the 'circumpunct' had this additional possible meaning when he made it such an important part of his book The Lost Symbol ? We can only speculate on that but there is a connection to his previous book and the lives of Jesus and Mary of Magdala.

One of these Great Circle bearing lines starts at a location in the British Isles and passes through Europe to Turkey and then the northern part of the Holy Land at the Sea of Galilee. Where it passes through present day Turkey it locates 5 of the 7 churches named by Jesus at the start of the last book of the bible, the book of Revelations. Revelations tells us there is a 'secret meaning' in these churches ( chapter 1 verse 20). This bearing line then crosses the Mediterranean going to the Sea of Galilee at a location on the western shore called Mount Arbel and next to it was the town of Magdala, the home of Mary of Magdala or the place she was named after. It was Mary who directed the apostles to this area and a meeting place chosen by Jesus on a mountain where he gives his Great Commission and talks about the 'End of Time'.( Matthew 28)

Mary of Magdala seems to be not just the messenger of Jesus but also part of the message and geometrically linked to the churches of the book of Revelations and the concept of an 'End of Time' or a time cycle. The other 2 churches named at the start of Revelations form a Great Circle alignment from the Great Pyramid in Egypt.

So does Dan Brown have a secret agenda ? It is a valid suggestion from the details given above but it could just be a coincidence that he highlights in TDVC the role of Mary of Magdala in the life of Christ who from the bible and Gnostic texts is clearly portrayed as the companion, confidant and messenger of Jesus but maybe much more than that with her town marking an alignment of churches of Revelation. It could be a coincidence that Dan Brown chose the 'circumpunct' as the main symbol in his next book 'The Lost Symbol' and that this symbol through Great Circle bearings leads to the alignments of sacred sites in the Holy Land and then the alignments in the churches of Revelation. It could also be a coincidence that his book 'Angels and Demons' is about the alignment and locations of churches in Rome leading to a path of enlightenment and it is worth noting that the churches of Revelation are also called lamps, lamps that were obviously intended to show the way.

Full details of the above, the landscape geometry and bible references to locations etc will be published soon - the working title of the manuscript is ' Mary of Magdala and Jesus - Revelation Time '

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"There is a technical term for someone who confuses the opinions of a character in a book with those of the author. That term is idiot." -S.M. Stirling

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Yeah, you should be an author, if not already. :yes:

Hasina, that's really cute vid.

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"There is a technical term for someone who confuses the opinions of a character in a book with those of the author. That term is idiot." -S.M. Stirling

C*ap

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C*ap

Man writes fictional novel about a conspiracy and you smell... conspiracy? Is this like 'turtle cosmology' only with this it's conspiracies all the way down?

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Dan Brown writes very entertaining books. I have read them all and am never disappointed because they are always interesting.

Do I believe his precepts? No, not really, but always like to check up on his references.

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Man writes fictional novel about a conspiracy and you smell... conspiracy? Is this like 'turtle cosmology' only with this it's conspiracies all the way down?

Believer?

Dan Brown writes very entertaining books. I have read them all and am never disappointed because they are always interesting.

Do I believe his precepts? No, not really, but always like to check up on his references.

Exactly

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If he's got a secret agenda, I certainly hope it isn't to be entertaining - as he's written a number of turgid, overly long novels full of cyphers and cliches masquerading as characters.

Ohh look, it's the villainous priest who hides behind his faith versus the stolid and reliable polymath with a "quirky" personality.

Ohh look, it's a sinister secret society encoding their knowledge into paintings.

Ohh look, it's an ancient bloodline whose sole surviving member is totally in the dark as to their true nature.

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If he's got a secret agenda, I certainly hope it isn't to be entertaining - as he's written a number of turgid, overly long novels full of cyphers and cliches masquerading as characters.

Ohh look, it's the villainous priest who hides behind his faith versus the stolid and reliable polymath with a "quirky" personality.

Ohh look, it's a sinister secret society encoding their knowledge into paintings.

Ohh look, it's an ancient bloodline whose sole surviving member is totally in the dark as to their true nature.

80millioncopiesofTDVCsayurwrong !

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80millioncopiesofTDVCsayurwrong !

Someones personal opinion of a genre cannot be wrong. Also he does have the gist of it. Heck I liked some of his books. I can read fantasy/conspiracy and enjoy it for what it is. I tend to dismiss conspiracy in real life though. Are there conspiracies? Sure. Is everything a game changing apocalyptic rewrite everything we know conspiracy? Probably not. There are glaring falsehoods in Dan browns novels. So whilst it is interesting it shouldn't hold a lot of weight when considering real life. And to answer the op I feel he is simply a writer looking to sell books. Which is a perfectly OK thing to do as an author.

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Someones personal opinion of a genre cannot be wrong. Also he does have the gist of it. Heck I liked some of his books. I can read fantasy/conspiracy and enjoy it for what it is. I tend to dismiss conspiracy in real life though. Are there conspiracies? Sure. Is everything a game changing apocalyptic rewrite everything we know conspiracy? Probably not. There are glaring falsehoods in Dan browns novels. So whilst it is interesting it shouldn't hold a lot of weight when considering real life. And to answer the op I feel he is simply a writer looking to sell books. Which is a perfectly OK thing to do as an author.

80 million copies sold plus second and third reads indicate that TDVC is entertaining to vast numbers of people. Dan Brown is a very clever author and his books are very well researched. This makes some of his 'glaring falsehoods' look more like 'deliberate mistakes' ? e.g TDVC - Chapter 104 - ' The chapel's ( Rosslyn ) coordinates fall precisely on the north-south meridian that runs through Glastonbury...' . Oh no they don't. Glastonbury is way off the Rosslyn meridian. So why include this bit of information at all? a mistake? a mistake that no one spotted and don't forget Dan Brown uses the word 'precisely' . He then goes on to mention the 'Rose Line', King Arthur's Avalon and the Sacred Landscape Geometry of Britain. He was making a point about ancient landscape geometry and using a piece of false information to draw attention to it. Would suggest you do not underestimate Mr Dan Brown ... conspiracy ? no fact !

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Someones personal opinion of a genre cannot be wrong. Also he does have the gist of it. Heck I liked some of his books. I can read fantasy/conspiracy and enjoy it for what it is. I tend to dismiss conspiracy in real life though. Are there conspiracies? Sure. Is everything a game changing apocalyptic rewrite everything we know conspiracy? Probably not. There are glaring falsehoods in Dan browns novels. So whilst it is interesting it shouldn't hold a lot of weight when considering real life. And to answer the op I feel he is simply a writer looking to sell books. Which is a perfectly OK thing to do as an author.

If he's got a secret agenda, I certainly hope it isn't to be entertaining - as he's written a number of turgid, overly long novels full of cyphers and cliches masquerading as characters.

Ohh look, it's the villainous priest who hides behind his faith versus the stolid and reliable polymath with a "quirky" personality.

Ohh look, it's a sinister secret society encoding their knowledge into paintings.

Ohh look, it's an ancient bloodline whose sole surviving member is totally in the dark as to their true nature.

Although the comment about 80 million copies is true and Dan Brown does obviously entertain many millions I would agree that some of his writing does make one cringe!

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80 million copies sold plus second and third reads indicate that TDVC is entertaining to vast numbers of people.

And more people voted on American Idol then in the elections.

All that it proves that the vast majority of people are idiots.

Dan Brown is a very clever author and his books are very well researched.

I'll give you the later but not the former.

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Hasina, that's really cute vid.

It was a gif not a video

23.gif

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And more people voted on American Idol then in the elections.

All that it proves that the vast majority of people are idiots.

I'll give you the later but not the former.

*Thinks* I wonder if the 'American Idol' folk read many books ?

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