by Miron Huhulea

Created on: December 07, 2009

Dan Brown: Hack Writer Promoting a Secret Society Agenda?

Dan Brown's The da Vinci Code draws heavily on the version of the Grail legend put forward in Henry Lincoln's, Michael Baigent's and Richard Leigh's Holy Blood, Holy Grail (1982). This book made a huge impact in the academic world at the time of its publication, especially on those studying the Grail legend, esoteric Christianity, and secret societies such as the Freemasons and Templars. So influential was Holy Blood, Holy Grail, that its central idea was heavily infused into another hugely important work for the lay person, Michael Howard's Secret Societies (originally The Occult Conspiracy, UK 1989).

It was from Holy Blood, Holy Grail that Dan Brown lifted the idea of the Priory of Sion, the secret society around which he based the book (Sophie Neveau's grandfather was its grandmaster at the time he was killed), a secret society which, as the earlier work claims, goes all the way back to Mark, a disciple of Jesus. Mark was a "heretic Christian" who attempted to fuse esoteric Christianity with the teachings of the pagan mystery schools. Mark converted Ormus in the first century and Ormus founded the Priory of Sion, so the story goes. (Howard 36-37)

And what was the Priory of Sion's purpose? To restore the Merovingian dynasty in France, a real Frankish dynasty allegedly descended from the offspring of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Just like in The da Vinci Code, Mary Magdalene is supposed to have fled to southern France after Jesus' death, where she gave birth to his child, a daughter. In some versions of gnostic or "heretical" Christianity, Jesus himself is supposed not to have died on the cross, and he and Mary fled to France together, where they lived out their days peacefully as an ordinary married couple.

The Priory of Sion, in turn, is alleged to have spawned the Order of the Rosy Cross, or Rosicrucianism, about which no record exists before the early 1600's. An anonymous legendary history written in 1610 places the order's roots at the beginning of the 14th century. This is the generally accepted story of its origins, but some have attempted to place its origins much further back, in the 15th century BCE, in Egypt. Whatever the origins of the Rosicrucians, two things are certain about them: 1. They are a powerful secret society that has endured to this day (yes, they are still around); and 2. They have always been involved in politics, as a sample of their membership indicates: the Italian poet Dante,

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