Dan Brown's next book

[irishgrl]

From what Ive been able to gather, its called The Solomon Key, and it includes elements of the relationship between Mormonism and Freemasonry. Here is an article from the BYU NewsNet (dated May 06):
Of Masons and Mormons: "The Solomon Key" offers controversial sequel
By Kimberly McLean - 19 May 2006
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Despite the uproar mucked up with "The Da Vinci Code," Dan Brown has no intention of retiring to a life of peaceful authoring.

Instead, Brown's sequel, "The Solomon Key," is scheduled to be released in early 2007.

While specific plot details of "The Solomon Key" have not been fully disclosed, Brown has issued statements saying the thriller mystery will now focus on another group, one full of ancient symbols and secret rites, the oldest fraternity in the world: the Freemasons.

With Brown possibly examining the mysteries of the Masons and their connection to Mormons, codebreaker fanatics anticipate another gripping ride.

"It will be interesting to see what Dan Brown has to say or 'uncover' about Masons and Mormons," said Alex Baugh, BYU associate professor of church history. "I just hope he presents his information in an accurate manner that will not slander the church or demean its sacredness."


here is an excellent source for investigating the connection between Freemasonry and Mormonism:
http://www.utlm.org/onlineresources/masonicsymbolsandtheldstemple.htm



I plan on getting this book...anyone else?

[markolas]

I plan on getting this book...anyone else?

I don't really understand why there was such an uproar. I mean, aren't these books presented as *fiction*? Has the line between fantasty and reality in the media become so thin that people just can't tell the difference anymore?

At any rate...stuff like this doesn't interest me at all (and I don't read fiction), so I don't see myself reading either of these books. :shrug:

[irishgrl]

I don't really understand why there was such an uproar. I mean, aren't these books presented as *fiction*? Has the line between fantasty and reality in the media become so thin that people just can't tell the difference anymore?

At any rate...stuff like this doesn't interest me at all (and I don't read fiction), so I don't see myself reading either of these books. :shrug:


they are "presented" as fiction, but many a Truth is buried within.

[jannieC]

I'm not a fan of his writing, but I may check this one out. My sister's husband is a Mason and my step-daughter (from ex-husband) is being raised Mormon.

There is a book that is considered controversial called <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0929385225/102-1903880-5767363?v=glance&n=283155">Behold a Pale Horse</a>. We own a copy of it. It touches on both of these concepts.

[DrummerDeanna]

I read Angels and Demons -then I picked up DaVinci Code and was completely annoyed because it was pretty much the exact same book :laugh:

So his writing is way to formulaic for me - but for a breezy read I may get this in spite of myself.

[GODDESS6]

love dan brown, i will read this~ i just read "wives & sisters" it was about mormanism & it was a great read~

OT: i just found out the half of my family we don't really see that much is morman~

[irishgrl]

love dan brown, i will read this~ i just read "wives & sisters" it was about mormanism & it was a great read~

OT: i just found out the half of my family we don't really see that much is morman~
is it their choice or yours? I know Mormons keep to themselves pretty much...

[GODDESS6]

is it their choice or yours? I know Mormons keep to themselves pretty much...

their choice as in the religion? or that we don't see them that much?~ actually theirs on both accounts~ my mom just moved back to our hometown from vegas & i was just asking her questions about her life & such~ most of my family was/is catholic, except for my dear granny's sister who is mormom & they don't speak~ weird...anyways i asked my mom if it was becuz of their different religions & she said yes~ & then told me after doing some family research of her own, that like 50 % of my family is devoutly mormon~ i had no idea at all & thought it was weird cuz i had just read the book i said in my last post about mormonism & it just floored me~BTW "wives & sister" is a great quick read mostly fiction except for the mormon aspect in it~

owww i just hought of this too, i have a cousin & we are exactly 3 days apart, me being the older one, but i mean 3 days to the minute & my mom said that she & her family are mormon, now i spent tons of time w/ her as a child & you know she never brought it up or tried to like make me want to join her church & such, she has kept to her herself about it, i had forgotten that she was mormon~ i do remember going to church w/ them once when i was real small & their services were very long, like 3 hrs or something, it was an all-day affair type thing~

[gldstwmn]

I read Angels and Demons -then I picked up DaVinci Code and was completely annoyed because it was pretty much the exact same book :laugh:

So his writing is way to formulaic for me - but for a breezy read I may get this in spite of myself.

It's too bad you read Angels And Demons first because DaVinci is the better book, IMO. :lol:

[DrummerDeanna]

It's too bad you read Angels And Demons first because DaVinci is the better book, IMO. :lol:

See I have a theory about that - I think whichever book you read first that's the better book - but basically they're the same book :laugh:

I did like the DaVinci code ok - but it was just all too reminiscent for me...and I STILL haven't seen the movie...

[gldstwmn]

See I have a theory about that - I think whichever book you read first that's the better book - but basically they're the same book :laugh:

I did like the DaVinci code ok - but it was just all too reminiscent for me...and I STILL haven't seen the movie...

I haven't seen the movie yet either. I will probably read his next book though. I've always been kind of fascinated by the Freemasons. So as long as it's not the Freemasons going to Rome and the Louvre it will okay.

[irishgrl]

I haven't seen the movie yet either. I will probably read his next book though. I've always been kind of fascinated by the Freemasons. So as long as it's not the Freemasons going to Rome and the Louvre it will okay.
Da Vinci code was my first Dan Brown book too. THEN I read Angels and Demons and that one about the supercomputer that gathers data--oh yeah: digital fortress. ALL of his books are meticulously researched, so I expect this new one (which takes place in Langley, VA, I believe) to be a continuation of his compelling writing style.

While I was at his site, I played around a bit and cracked one of the online codes and was introduced to something some of you may know about, the statue at the CIA headquarters "Kryptos" that is still unsolved (3 out of 4 sections are solved but the last bit, 98 characters long is NOT) I find all of that secret society, cryptology, clandestine operations stuff fascinating !!

Plus, while I was researching source material for another book Im reading (What Every American needs to know about Who's really running the World)
I learned about ECHELON, a data gathering supercomputer network between the US and the UK (including Australia and New Zealand) that agrees to share info gleaned about the other party....pretty interesting stuff....there really is no personal privacy any more...

[DrummerDeanna]

I haven't seen the movie yet either. I will probably read his next book though. I've always been kind of fascinated by the Freemasons. So as long as it's not the Freemasons going to Rome and the Louvre it will okay.

That's why I will probably read the next book - I am also fascinated by the freemasons - and I'm fascinated basically by what Dan Brown writes about..

So while I'm sure there will be some heinous murder, Langdon will called out of bed and will then meet a beautiful woman (who happens to be related to or linked to the deceased) who will help him on his journey...I will still read for the information within :p

[JazmenFlowers]

I'll probably get it...since I love how he writes.

[michelle2677]

^^ Geez you crack me up on those sigs. :lol:

[irishgrl]

just cuz I was trolling for info earlier, I thot I'd post this article by a woman clearly UNHAPPY with Dan's Da Vinci Code She brought up points I hadnt thought about before...


July 10, 2006

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Marrying off the Goddess?

Comments on The Da Vinci Code

by Geraldine Charles


Goddess is greater by far than any human bride of Christ. It is insulting and -- I can think of no better word than hubristic -- to reduce her to the status of brood mare.



I rather enjoyed The Da Vinci Code -- well, as much as, say, Jurassic Park and somewhat more than any of Dan Brown's oddly similar earlier books. I enjoyed The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, too, and certainly the latter encouraged me to make enquiries of my own and -- more importantly -- to think for myself. But I like to read trashy novels when I'm tired, and wouldn't normally have paid The Da Vinci Code much more attention than I would any of the other charity-shop fodder that clutters my room.

What worries me about Dan Brown's book isn't that it is nothing special -- written to a well-worn formula with lots of cliff-hangers and infuriating twists and turns in the plot, it did leave me feeling somewhat more cynically manipulated than usual. But that's all. I won't bother to summarise or describe the narrative as almost everyone has read it by now and hey -- if by some miracle you managed to miss the book -- the movie is out now!

The similarities to HBHG are immediately obvious, but I was surprised to hear that Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, two of its authors, were bothering to sue DVC's publishers in a green-eyed but obviously unwinnable lawsuit. Surprised, that is, until I heard that Dan Brown and the authors of HBHG share a publisher. Sure enough, the motorway services soon had newly minted copies of the latter on its shelves, and some bookshops went so far as to explain the connection with DVC for the sake of anyone who has been living off-planet for the last few months. Well, as Dan Brown has shown, we all love a good conspiracy, and I'll bet many publishers would burn their M25-hugging SUVs for the kind of publicity this gave them. As Sarah Crown wrote in a Guardian blog:

"The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail has shot up the Amazon bestseller charts from number 173 yesterday lunchtime to number 10 at the time of writing. I suspect marketing management on the grandest scale."*

No, what does bother me is the reaction of people -- Goddess people - to the book and the ideas expressed therein. I have no idea whether Dan Brown truly subscribes to these ideas or is simply making his bank manager a very happy bunny, but I frequently find myself reminding others that this is a novel -- fiction -- and therefore required to uphold no academic standards whatever. Judging from some of the excited conversations I've overheard in Goddess circles, people are taking it as Gospel -- Gnostic Gospel. And there, of course, lies the problem -- that of the co-optation of Goddess into a set of ideas that will serve only to uphold the status quo of patriarchal religion. Using Her in a tawdry money-making conspiracy is insulting, but treating our Goddess simply as a vessel for passing on the "holy blood" is quite another matter.

I'm interested in the story or myth of Mary Magdalene and happy to have her fascinating character reclaimed from the simplistic "prostitute" ideas grafted onto it by the church and surrounding culture -- but worry at the same time that Goddess people appear to have such a lot invested in whisking her, like another sassy Pretty Woman, from the status of whore to wife. What's so terrible about prostitutes, anyway, particularly the sacred ones who may well have been around in Palestine in the year dot?

A quick scan of the internet for critiques of DVC immediately produces a rash of outraged Christians, who again seem to have forgotten the simple point that the book is fiction, and who make a variety of claims regarding "factual" errors in the novel, usually by quoting the obviously "factual" bible in their own support. Now, this is all great fun for someone like me, who simply doesn't believe there is any real evidence for the existence of an historical Jesus -- the wonder-worker who has been variously described over the last thirty years or so as astronaut, parthenogenetic female and, most entertainingly, magic mushroom. Why not, then, a simple family man? Well, Gnosticism itself is why not. The biggest contradiction in the ideas put forward by Brown et al is that any first century Gnostics who happened to be browsing the internet would be baffled by today's wranglings, for to them Jesus and Mary were mythological figures deliberately used in teaching Gnostic beginners the basics. It is in such Gnostic teachings that the real danger lies -- for at its heart Gnosticism values spirit above all and believes the material world -- the creation of our Mother -- to be fundamentally corrupt.

There has been a great deal of interest in the idea of "Sophia" as the missing Christian Goddess, and the sentiment underlying this has placed Mary Magdalene into the same mould -- interestingly, because Sophia herself, in Gnostic myth, is described as a whore in more of their parables. Sophia is to Gnostics -- besides being the only female present - the lowest emanation of deity (as, interestingly, is Christ, because he took on a material body, this being the main reason why many Christians so hate Gnosticism, of course -- despite the fact that Christianity is actually thoroughly infected with Gnostic dualistic ideas.) The whore, redeemed or otherwise, is a powerful image; when we replace her with a dutiful wife, we diminish ourselves and our culture. Risk is the new sin, after all, and so a little more wonderful wildness is gone; the safety of institutionalized religion shored up for a little longer. Gnostics may argue that I've oversimplified, but ultimately Sophia is subject to their God, who is seen as male.

Goddess is greater by far than any human bride of Christ. It is insulting and -- I can think of no better word than hubristic -- to reduce her to the status of brood mare. I'm also annoyed that I can't think of words for robbing a female -- deity or person -- of power without coming up with "castrating" or "rendering impotent" -- which underlines my point, so little power have women had under patriarchy that there hasn't even been a need for a satisfactory word for the act of taking it away from them.

Come to that, do we want a sacred bloodline back in the saddle? My own blood freezes at the thought of a re-established theocracy in Western Europe, where so many lives were lost to inquisition, witch hunt and pogrom, not to mention squabbling aristocrats, revolutions and the horror of two world wars. Who needs an authority that we cannot challenge because to do so would constitute blasphemy or heresy? Where would our sovereignty lie then? If you think a restored Merovingian dynasty couldn't be much worse than the cynical sound-byte politicians of today, take a look at Afghanistan under the Taliban. Goddess Temple? Don't make me laugh, you'd be lucky to be allowed out to feed the chickens.

Right now, various religions are arguing which of them is the fastest-growing in the world today, with Islam and fundamentalist Christianity in pole position. But paganism can also justifiably make this claim, particularly in North America and the West; although due to almost complete decentralization would probably never get it together to offer any proof. This growth hasn't gone unnoticed, though, and is (probably rightly) considered a real threat by all the patriarchal religions. No real conspiracy, just a zeitgeist is all that's needed to marry Goddess off to God (after all, the patriarchal Greeks did this very successfully with the ancient deities of the lands they invaded). How useful it would be to rob our Goddess of her growing power, to marry her safely off to Jesus, an 'er indoors to point out to backsliding churchgoers -- there, now you have your Goddess, so everything's OK, all is as before. Thank you, kind sir. Precisely my point.

Taking these ideas to their logical conclusions may seem a little excitable, but nothing compared to the hysteria engendered by the publicity surrounding the book and film. If I were Dan Brown, I'd be on the high road to megalomania, few pulp authors have affected popular culture to this extent, however much publicity is thrown their way.

The holy grail of Goddess, She who is mystery and mother, creator and immanent presence, must not become a symbol as degraded as was the swastika -- an ancient sign of good fortune, of the sun's path and of humanity's status as children of our Mother. If we're in any doubt as to the hold that such symbols can have on our collective unconscious, remember how the Nazis misused myth in their drive for power, talking of bloodlines, of the grail. Sound familiar? Himmler, it is reported, wished the SS to be a new Round Table of knights dedicated to racial -- bloodline -- purity. With Kinder, Kirche, Küche**, of course, for the womenfolk. KKK, anyone?

** Children, church, kitchen.
Geraldine Charles

References

*(Sarah Crown, GU blogs, 28 February 2006) http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/culturevulture/archives/2006/02/28/originality_sins.html

Dan Brown, 2002, The Da Vinci Code, Doubleday Books

Richard Leigh, Michael Baigent, Henry Lincoln. 1982, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, Jonathan Cape Ltd

Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, 2001, Jesus and the Goddess, Thorsons

The Gnosis Archive: http://www.webcom.com/gnosis/

[skcin]

I'll read it for sure. I loved DaVinci, it was a fun book. :nod:

What is the deal with Masons anyway? I clicked a couple of those links, but they don't really give any info, mainly talks about symbols. What do/don't they believe in, etc. Anyone know offhand?