"I do not and i am still searching." "I wrote this novel as part of my own spiritual quest." "I never imagined a novel could become so controversial." "I'm aware there are those out there, more aware now that i've read the press in new hampshire" "who disagree with me, who say awful things about me, who make little pictures." "And i know that a lot of these people have published long lists of my shortcomings, my errors, my inadequacies." "Sadly, i think many of these critics seem to have missed the entire point of the novel." "That being this." "One simple undebatable truth." "Prior to 2,000 years ago, we lived in a world of gods and goddesses." "Today we live in a world solely of gods." "Women in most cultures have been stripped of their spiritual power and our male dominated philosophies of absolutism have a long history of violence and bloodshed which continues to this day." "What i've finally come to accept is that science and religion are partners." "They're simply two different languages attempting to tell the same story." "Both are manifestations of man's quest to understand the divine." "While science dwells on the answers, religion savors questions." "When i started researching the da vinci code, i really was skeptical and i expected on some level to disprove all of this history that's unearthed in the books." "And after three trips to paris and a lot of interviews, i became a believer." "The da vinci code has brought together a lot of ideas from alternative history books." "I think the first thing to remember about dan brown's the da vinci code is that it's a novel." "You know, it's a page turner." "Allegedly or possibly it has you on the edge of your seat." "You want to know what happens to these people and whether they find the thing and how amazing it all is." "But of course, we're terribly grateful to it really because our book, 'the templar revelation' which came out 7 years ago now is mentioned as an authority in the book by name, by title which is great because our book was taken off on the back of it" "and our book is not a novel." "Our book represents a lot of very hard research into some very profound subjects." "Unfortunately, dan brown doesn't seem to understand some of the research, our research which he repeats in the book." "But in a way, that's okay because he's handed it over to us." "People see the title of our book in his book and buy us or look us up so that's great." "What dan brown's done very cleverly is bring together some of those ideas and put them into a contemporary thriller." "So the one thing we can be sure about is that the story that we're familiar with if we brought up as questions is wrong." "So even if to bunk all the other alternatives, what's left is still not, is still not you can't say it's true, it's definitely wrong." "That's the reason all these alternative ideas are around." "Because we all start from the position that what we've been told all this time is demonstrably wrong." "Let's try and find out what the truth is." "Dan brown's da vinci code is a publishing phenomenon." "Over 10 million copies sold and rising steadily." "This book can truly be called a worldwide best seller." "Never has a book raised so many contentious issues though." "On the one hand championed by so many people and on the other hand vilified by others who think this is blasphemy, heresy." "So what is the truth behind all this?" "What is the mystery of the da vinci code?" "Is there really a da vinci code?" "My name is simon cox and i'm author of 'cracking the da vinci code'." "I want to take you on a journey deep inside the novel." "I want to unravel some of the mysteries and show you some of the historical facts behind the fiction." "In the critical early chapters of the da vinci code, the louvre museum in paris features prominently as a scene of much of the action." "It has been the murder site of jacques sauniere, the meeting place for robert langdon and sophie neveu, and due to the suspicions of the police chief bezu fache, the starting point of the pursuit that eventually leads" "to london and then scotland." "We certainly believe that there is real evidence beyond fiction for several coverups." "One concerned with john the baptist and his real status." "And one concerned with ditto with mary magdalene and her real status which actually affects the way the church has treated all women for 2,000 years." "Well, the nature usually of orthodoxy is that its capacity for change is limited." "Because it has painted itself into a corner." "It has locked itself up in a box from which it is very very difficult to come out." "So you can see for instance in some relatively minor ways, the present pope for instance tries to loosen up certain things." "He has allowed the fact that mary magdalene is very important." "He has called mary magdalene the apostle of the apostles." "He has disavowed the position of earlier popes that mary magdalene was a prostitute and just a repentant sinner." "That was her principal function and things of that sort." "But the limitations that orthodoxy has come to impose upon itself only allowing to change so much." "And after that, it can't really do it withoutjust cutting its own throat." "In the da vinci code, the body of jacques sauniere, curator of the louvre is found in the grand gallery." "It is arranged in the image of leonardo's famous vitruvian man." "Most modern visitors of the grand gallery hasten past the myriad collection of great masterpieces lining the walls of this extraordinary space in order to get to the wondrous mona lisa at the far end." "It is within the grand gallery that sophie and robert are led to information on the back of leonardo's renowned madonna of the rocks where they find the key to the safety deposit box at the zurich depository bank." "The madonna of the rocks is the name given to two versions of a religions painting by leonardo da vinci that portray the virgin mary sitting with the infant jesus and john the baptist." "They are accompanied by an angel believed to be the archangel uriel." "The composition is triangular with the virgin mary at its apex." "The earlier and more perplexing of the two versions was commissioned for the church of san francesco grand in milan." "This painting features a rocky grotto with a seated virgin mary at its center." "Beside her sit two infants, jesus and john the baptist." "While uriel kneels to her left slightly behind one of the babies." "The child believed to be jesus sits cross-legged and slightly away from mary." "His right hand is raised in the gesture of blessing aimed at the other child." "And above this, mary's downcast hand hovers over his head." "Beside this child, uriel points at the other child sitting to mary's right." "This infant thought to be john the baptist has his hands clasped together as if in prayer while mary's right hand embraces his shoulder." "Looking at the painting objectively, it would be more probable that the child praying is jesus and not john the baptist as he sits closer to the virgin mary as in fact being cuddled and protected by her." "It would then make sense for the other child who sits further away from the virgin to be john the baptist who is under the protection of the archangel with whom he is associated." "This is the theory advanced by clive prince and lynn picknett in their book, 'the templar revelation'." "It's very amusing to us that if you go into the grand art galleries where they have leonardos on display and people stand in front of them or sit in front of them reverentially as if, you know," "if there were candles they would light them, too." "You know, they see them as holy works and perhaps they were in a way, but certainly not holy christian works in the usual sense of the word." "There's a lot of savage, anti-christian work there." "A lot of savage satire... including the madonna of the rocks which there is a version in paris and in london." "Some extremely vulgar, but extremely savage satire on the alleged virginity of mary the mother." "In the second version of the painting which now hangs in the national gallery in london, the figures are slightly larger and have been given halos." "The archangel uriel no longer points to the infant to the virgin mary's right who now holds the cross of john the baptist." "This cross appears to have been added at a later date by another painter and may not reflect leonardo da vinci's intention." "This revision in the second painting may have been made to remove the ambiguity about the two infants." "The earlier version seems to reflect the templar tradition of venerating john the baptist over jesus." "It is not surprising that the co-fraternity who commissioned this painting rejected the earlier version as it did not adequately depict their ideal of the holy family sheltering in a cave in egypt during their flight from herod." "In dan brown's novel, sophie neveu is led to the first version of the madonna of the rocks hanging in the louvre by an anagram left by her grandfather." "And it is behind this painting that she finds the key to the safety deposit box." "Leonardo was no christian." "In fact he hated... judging by his paintings alone, if you look at them objectively, he actually hated the holy family." "For example, whenever he painted himself in his paintings and he was very keen to do this, he involved himself in his works." "He painted himself with his back to the holy family." "For example, in the adoration of the magi, there's a young man in the bottom right hand corner turned away like this." "Quite vehemently." "And artists, historians generally accept that is leonardo himself." "And in the last supper, st." "Jude, who by the way is patron saint of lost causes so that's quite amusing, is at the end of the table with his back to the central figure of jesus." "In the adoration of the magi, there's something very very interesting going on which is key to all the secret, the real da vinci code." "Everyone loves a conspiracy which is why dan brown included a reference to leonardo's unfinished masterpiece, adoration of the magi." "Within the novel, brown recounts the story of how a florence-based art diagnostician named maurizio ceracini had discovered that under layers of grime and over painting was a very composition of leonardo." "The uffizi gallery in florence was so embarrassed by his findings that they banished the painting to a nearby warehouse." "Ceracini has become famous for his use of medical technology to reveal the secrets of the old masters." "He has examined works by botticelli, caravaggio and raphael as well as many other master painters." "His examination of the adoration of the magi stirred a raging debate in the art world." "Ceracini came to some remarkable and controversial conclusions." "In his words, "none of the paint that we see on the adoration today was put there by leonardo."" "Ceracini believes that a much later hand clumsily applied the layers of brown and orange paint that now adorn the canvas." "He points out that many of the painted features are totally devoid of the finesse and quality of leonardo's hand, especially in the depiction of human anatomy." "Supporting this theory is the discovery of a wholly different scene beneath the existing work." "Ceracini suggests that leonardo wanted to portray a world that was being reconstructed from ruins, a reflection of the master's feelings at the beginning of the renaissance." "Which is a whole lot more shocking than anything that dan brown put in his book." "In the adoration of the magi, you'll notice if you really look, that the front part, the foreground of the painting, the people adoring the madonna and the child are all hideous, they look like the walking dead." "They've got sunken eyes and sunken cheeks and they're clawing at the holy family which is very strange." "Especially when you realize that there's another bunch of worshippers, a second group beyond and above those." "Beyond the virgin mary." "And they appear to be worshipping the roots of a tree or the tree itself." "And these people, these worshippers are young and healthy and good looking." "And one of them standing next to the tree is doing that which we came to understand refers in leonardo's works to john the baptist." "And it's interesting because this tree is a carub tree which in church tradition is a symbol of john the baptist." "So what you have is leonardo himself turned away from the virgin and child, the worshippers of the virgin and child looking like nothing on earth, looking like something from hell, and the worshippers of symbols connecting with john the baptist" "being young and healthy." "And so one is apt to think leonardo had something about john the baptist which he certainly did." "Judging from his other paintings." "Leonardo da vinci is like michelangelo and all these great renaissance figures." "The people at that time were all subject already to the revival of alternative spirituality largely by real or cabalisticsourcesand" "therefore they often probably at least secretly held various positions and beliefs which were not consistent with regular church orthodoxy." "Whether a johannine tradition, a john the baptist tradition actually in some tangible forms or templar sources or things like that may have survived to the point that each leonardo da vinci is possible, but it's highly speculative." "Another interesting pair of paintings because of the continuity of ideas between them actually not painting, it's the famous cartoon that's in london's national gallery," "but that painting that wasn't completed." "It turned into another one which was completed which is the virgin and child with st." "Anne." "And in that painting, it's basically the same that was seen except infant john isn't there anymore." "He's been replaced by a lamb." "Now although jesus is often called the lamb of god, because it was john the baptist who according to the gospels, pointed out him out to behold the lamb of god, the symbol is often also used of john." "And clearly is in this painting." "Incidentally, it was also... the lamb of god to represent john was also something that the knights templar used." "And so clearly in this painting, the lamb is supposed to represent john the baptist." "And again, if you look at the way child jesus is playing with the lamb, he's... i mean the lamb isn't happy." "It's being roughed up." "We used to have this joke that it looks almost as if jesus is trying to pull the lamb's head off." "If you actually look at it, he's holding it by the ears and does appear to be." "He's got a leg wrapped around the lamb's neck again separating its head." "So you keep getting this separate head symbolism connected with john the baptist for obvious reasons as he died by beheading." "But this interaction between jesus and john actually suggesting a struggle, a rivalry." "The last supper is considered to be leonardo's greatest masterpiece." "Having recently undergone extensive restoration, this fresco is refectory of the santa maria della grazia, milan poses many intriguing questions." "The central figure shows christ at the last supper surrounded by his apostles." "This scene is the origin of the eucharist which forms a central observance of the christian church's holy communion." "Note however, that in leonardo's painting there is no central cup or chalice which would be required for this ritual." "Is leonardo hinting at a different meaning for the holy grail?" "According to picknett and prince in their book, the templar revelation', the figure to the right of christ, our left as we view the painting, is a woman." "In his book, dan brown has leigh teabing explain that this figure is none other than mary magdalene." "Within the last supper, leonardo has depicted the moment when the apostles hear from jesus that one of them will betray him." "The painter captured in the followers' faces different reactions to this terrible news." "Another feature of the painting that picknett and prince highlight is the so-called disembodied hand which can be seen holding a knife, but in the restored version of the fresco seem to belong to apostle peter." "The possible female figure is seen in close connection to peter who seems to extend a menacing hand across her throat." "This possibly echoes peter's antagonism towards magdalene as described in some of the gnostic gospels." "As mentioned in 'the templar revelation' and 'the da vinci code', the two central characters are wearing identical but opposite code clothing of blue and red." "And their bodies leaning away from each other form the letter 'm'." "On the other side of christ, is the figure of thomas who is making what has come to be known as the john gesture with his upraised finger." "Normally associated with john the baptist, it is unknown why leonardo assigned it to thomas." "Scholars and academics generally agree that the bearded figure with his back to jesus is a self-portrait of leonardo as the disciple thaddeus." "It seems that within this very traditional and familiar scene, leonardo has managed to embed symbolism, mystery and intrigue in equal measures." "Many of the characters painted by leonardo da vinci seem to have an ambiguous sexuality." "If we were to look at the character to the right of christ in the last supper, to the left as we look, the so-called figure of mary magdalene may well be seen as prince and picknett contest." "However, this character could just as easily be a male." "If we were to look at the characters and john the baptist in leonardo's last painting or the mona lisa, leonardo's most famous painting, we would see here there was also ambiguous sexuality." "If one were to take the hair away from these characters, for instance, sexual stereotypes play no part." "These characters are distinctly hermaphroditic." "And it's a possibility that leonardo tried to put across this very theme within his paintings." "The idea of the conjoining of the male and female." "This very gnostic thought is something that many scholars believe that leonardo was actually trying to get across." "It's quite interesting that one of the most famous paintings in the world is leonardo's last supper which is a wall painting." "I mean there's copies of it everywhere." "Bath mats and things like this." "But it's very very little known really even by the so-called experts who are far too close to it and far too far away from leonardo's esoteric roots to really see what it's about and why he painted it." "Well of course the first reason that he painted it was that he was commissioned to do so." "So he was doing it basically for a livelihood." "So that must be remembered." "But secondly, leonardo whenever he could, imbued his works with heretical messages for those with eyes to see basically." "He sailed very close to the wind considering what happened to people who did things like this and didn't get away with it." "But in his last supper famously now because of dan brown, says she through gritted teeth, is a woman sitting next to jesus and not the young st." "John." "It's kind of a blend because this character does have a little beard but that's as far as it goes." "It's a token beard." "And for all we know, magdalene did have a beard." "But she is leaning away." "She/he is leaning away from jesus like this and the shape that they make is a giant 'm' shape which we thought is this clue to who this person really is?" "Another clue perhaps is the fact that jesus is wearing sort of a red dress, a robe and a blue half cloak thrown over one shoulder." "And this character, we'll call her mary magdalene because everybody knows that's the conclusion that we come to, is wearing the opposite." "She's wearing a blue dress and a red cloak and they seem to be almost literally joined at the hip although she's leaning away." "And you wouldn't understand why if you just look at the new testament, but in lots of forbidden and heretical texts, it's spelled out that they were lovers." "Not married which is dan brown's claim, but lovers, it's a heavy emphasis on lovers." "Perhaps in a ritual, sacred sex sense, almost certainly, but were they also in an ordinary sense lovers?" "Who knows?" "But in the last supper, there's lots of other things which sort of show that people don't really look at it, don't really see." "For example, there's a hand with a dagger in it." "It's being thrust at one of the disciple's stomachs and i've heard actually an alleged world expert on leonardo saying it's the hand of a certain disciple." "But i mean if you  we have tried physically to get him into that sort of position and you'd have to be a contortionist." "And the big question is why would you have to be a contortionist if you're going to stick a dagger at somebody's stomach but to us the interesting thing is and it's just typical of the way people look at" "the great holy works of art." "Virtually nobody notices the hand with the dagger." "They just block it out because they don't expect it to be there." "Other things in the last supper." "Leonardo painted himself as st." "Jude, the second disciple along from jesus' left." "And he has his back to jesus." "Another thing that's interesting is that there is a disciple standing next to jesus doing that, the john gesture, the john the baptist gesture, closely in jesus' face." "Could this be a kind of remember john the baptist?" "Who knows?" "But certainly, in leonardo's works, that always always refers to john the baptist even if he is not physically present and of course he isn't in the last supper." "It's interesting, too, that the character who very very likely is mary magdelene has a hand cutting across her throat." "And the hand is st." "Peter's." "And it's interesting that according to the forbidden books, the lost gospels, some of which may have been circulating in leonardo's time in the underground movements and the secret societies and so on, they make much of the fact that st." "Peter and mary magdalene were literally at each other's throats." "That basically peter hated her." "He hated her power over jesus, he hated the fact that she was jesus' favorite, and not him which is interesting and he threatened her." "And in one of these books, mary magdalene says to jesus that 'i am afraid of peter because he threatens me and hates all my sex." "And so here in the painting, you have a clear... in this giant 'm' shape which she forms in part and peter is slightly also forming part of it, he is threatening her actually, visibly." "Visually in this painting." "The last thing that i would like to point out about it is that although this is this depicts the holy scene where jesus instigates the sacrament, the wine representing his blood and the bread representing his body and yet there is no great chalice in front of him." "There's very little wine, in fact, on the whole table." "Could leonardo who we know from our research absolutely hated the holy family, jesus and the holy family, could he be saying this man never shed his blood for you also although there is a lot of bread on the table," "very very little of it is broken." "Could he be saying that he never broke his body on the cross for you?" "That is a very radical position and i think really the only people who i know hold that kind of position are the mandeans who never were christians even though they may have adopted euphemisms of the christians of st." "John in order to please the crusaders and other christians, but they were never christians." "But i think within the more christianized varieties of the esoteric tradition, it's not so likely that they're going to come up and say that jesus has usurped the messianic role of john, but probably what they would say is, would be" "there have been several messengers of light throughout history." "There have been several messiahs notjust the only begotten son." "And one of them was john." "And then jesus was there in a different way." "And that not so much perhaps jesus himself, but his followers eclipsed the importance of john and said he was a forerunner who wasn't worthy to loosen the shoes of the one who came thereafter and so forth." "And made a minor figure out of him and that that is where the injustice and the wrongful position came in." "But such people would then probably also say that there will be others." "Maybe soon, maybe not soon, we don't know when, but that the coming of messianic messengers from above is an ongoing process in history." "And that of course in the orthodox mind takes the glory away from jesus." "Because he's supposed to be the only one." "It's actually an application of the monotheistic principle." "One god, one law, one way." "In the da vinci code, the characters robert langdon, sophie neveu and leigh teabing visit temple church in london." "Located between fleet street and the river thames, temple church is a 12th century structure which is still used today as a place of worship." "It was built by the knights templar on a site in london originally established for their order as a place of assembly by their first grand master hugh de payens." "The church consists of two separate sections." "The building is formed by an area known as the round church and the adjoining rectangular section known as the chancel." "The round church is based on the design of jerusalem's church of the holy sepulchre." "In keeping with the knights templar traditions, the round church was consecrated in 1185 on february 10 by heraclius, the patriarch of jerusalem." "It is also speculated that henry ii, the king of england was present at the ceremony." "It is in this round part of the church that some of the most interesting figures of the building are found." "As stated in the da vinci code, the church is known for the marble effigies of nine knights arranged on the central floor." "The characters in the novel have come to look for a knight a pope interred." "A clue which they hope will lead them to the location of the holy grail." "The knights templar are mentioned throughout the da vinci code in association with either the holy grail or their possible discovery of the so-called treasure of temple of jerusalem." "A religious military order was formed in 1118 when a knight of champagne, hugh de payens and his eight crusading companions bound to a vow taken before king baldwin of jerusalem to protect pilgrims traveling in the holy land." "They specifically asked to be headquartered on the temple mount which they renamed the templum domini." "They wound up spending more time excavating beneath the temple than they did escorting pilgrims." "The church rewarded their battle service by excusing normal ecclesiastical taxes which allowed the templars to expand their membership and become fantastically wealthy and powerful." "Besides enormous land holdings and a vast navy, they were europe's first international bankers." "The order also gained the reputation of being obsessed with secret rituals which allowed their enemies to trump up heretical charges when a move was finally made against them by france's king philip iv who envied their wealth and feared their military power." "The king was supported in this effort by pope clement v who had been convinced that the templars were bent on the destruction of the church." "On friday, october 13, 1307, a substantial number of the knights templar in france were arrested." "It is thought that the acts that follow those arrests including confessions forced via torture, rigged trials and executions led to the popular conviction that friday the 13th is unlucky." "A superstition many people still maintain." "Despite these official efforts to wipe the order and its official dissolution by the pope, it is thought that surviving members of the order escaped by sea with much of their fable treasure including early church artifacts and travelled to scotland." "Moving now into the chancellor's temple church, this is part of the building which replaced the earlier choir and was constructed when king henry iii expressed the wish to be buried there." "Despite his admiration for the temple, however, it was discovered after his death that his will had been altered which explains his burial in westminster abbey." "Temple church had seen many historic episodes enfold in its walls from the negotiations that led to the magna carta, the abolition of the knights templar and a refurbishment of christopher wren to a german bombing raid in 1941 which set the roof on fire necessitating extensive restoration" "which was completed in 1954." "It is the tomb of sir isaac newton that robert langdon and sophie neveu are drawn to." "There they find the final clue that leads them to a showdown with leigh teabing." "In dan brown's the da vinci code, robert langdon and sophie neveu come to rosslyn chapel looking for the holy grail and to try and discover the secrets behind it." "Rosslyn has actually been associated with the holy grail for a long time, not necessarily as a bloodline of christ, but as a place where the physical cup, cup of christ, is thought to have been brought and hidden." "There are many connections between rosslyn and the grail." "Edinburgh, the capital of scotland, is a city with a long history of many legends of its own." "It is a few miles south of here that robert langdon and sophie neveu travel to rosslyn towards the end of their quest to solve the riddles designed by her murdered grandfather." "Rosslyn chapel founded in 1446 by earl william sinclair is now protected by a steel structure which provides a platform for viewing the church." "It remains unfinished however." "Upon the death of its founder in 1484, his son added a roof but did not fully complete his father's vision." "If you wander into roslin glen, you can look up at the ruins of the castle." "This is a haunted place where knights had ridden by in full suits of armor while damsels cast their admiring glances down from the battlement." "And it still is a magical place." "If you walk around the inside of rosslyn chapel, you'll find there are knights there riding on horses." "There are unicorns and camels." "There are over 150 green men in rosslyn." "And if you actually follow them around, you see young children as green men through huge heads to skulls." "You actually have dead green men in rosslyn." "And these symbols have been around for hundreds of years." "They're thought to be pagan survivals that have been brought into christianity." "But they symbolize more than anything else the life and nature, the seasons, the seasons of a person's life as well." "And at rosslyn, you have a sense in the chapel of it being alive, every inch of the chapel is covered in leaves and flowers." "So you can actually imagine that you've walked from the glen, from its trees into the chapel." "And it was known as the chapel amidst the woods for many hundreds of years." "So it feels a little bit more alive than most places of worship." "Inside the chapel, the stone work is remarkable for its variety of animals, plants, angels and demons, all carved with enormous care and skill." "Every surface is richly decorated including the barrel vaulted ceiling 40 feet above visitors' heads." "The panels are carved with roses, lilies and 5-pointed stars." "Rosslyn chapel fell into disuse after the reformation and in 1592, the altars were destroyed in order to avoid a threatened excommunication." "In 1862, however, the church rededicated following restoration." "Now, thanks to ongoing preservation, we are able to appreciate the quality of work represented here." "Prince henry sinclair, grandfather of the founder william, is said to have visited north america on a voyage in 1398, about a hundred years before columbus presumed discovery." "Among the rich selections of carvings among the chapel is maize, a plant common in the new world, but unknown in europe at that time." "Over the decade after that, there have been a dozen books looking at rosslyn and have been coming up with all sorts of strange and mysterious kind of theories as to why the chapel was constructed in the first place," "what the carvings mean and what might be hidden beneath rosslyn." "The carver story is linked to a particular highly decorated pillar known as the apprentice pillar." "According to legend, while the master mason was traveling to rome for instruction on how to complete the work, a young apprentice created this amazing piece of carved stone." "Upon his return, the jealous master is said to have murdered the apprentice." "From its foundation, rosslyn and its evocative beauty have compelled visitors to speculate on the meaning of what they see around them and to contemplate on both our heavenly and earthly fates." "This is the end of the medieval age." "It's the beginning of the renaissance." "And what we actually have at rosslyn is the peak of the medieval age." "We have all of the symbolism and all of the characters." "It's almost like a condensed version of the middle ages." "Enthusiasts and scholars have long sought to decipher some meaning from the hundreds of carved cubes lining the ceiling arches." "There is even a prize for the first person to unravel the mystery." "There certainly are hundreds upon hundreds of cubes in the arches at the far end." "Each one of these cubes on each of its surfaces has a different design carved into it." "And there are a lot of different theories as to what these actually might be." "Some people think that they, if you could actually decode these symbols on these cubes, you'd almost have a map and you could actually find a place and that's where the treasure is." "Some people think that it's music." "There are different medieval instruments being held by angels at the end of a lot of these arches." "So maybe this is a score to some medieval song." "And if you played the song, then miraculously, the vaults would open up and the treasure would be brought out." "Nobody knows and it's highly unlikely that anyone will ever work it out." "As mark oxbrow discussed, the chapel is linked in popular myth with the order of the knights templar and mystery surrounds the possible contents of the vaults or other chambers beneath the structure." "In the last three years, authors have speculated that the rosslyn treasure may be the arc of the covenant, may be other pieces of the treasure from jerusalem, may be the knights templar treasure which was taken from france allegedly, on boats from la rochelle." "It may be the embalmed head of jesus." "It's been speculated that there are papyruses, other parchments which actually have the lost gospels of jesus christ." "There is a to z of theories as to what the treasure at rosslyn is." "Possible items among this room of hidden treasure are the arc of the covenant, the stone of destiny and the head of christ or templar wreath preserved for the clutches of french king philip iv." "Dan brown tells us that rosslyn chapel was built by the knights templar." "He tells us that there is a six-pointed star, the star of david or solomon's seal trodden into the floor worned out over ages." "Neither of these are facts." "There is no star worned out into the floor." "Actually i don't think there's any six-pointed stars in any part of rosslyn." "There are an awful lot of five-pointed stars." "The pentacle is an ongoing symbol throughout the whole chapel." "Also the connections with the knights templar are entirely false." "There was obviously a presence of knights templar around the roslin area." "Although as mark oxbrow states, it seems that the knights templar had nothing directly to do with the building of rosslyn chapel." "This is still in contention by many researchers and authors even today." "Just down the road from roslin is the village of asitwascalled, today known as temple." "And it is here that the local knights templar had a headquarters and base." "Indeed, legend states that the knights templar may well have actually taken part in the battle of bannockburn arriving on the side of the scots and possibly turning the tide of war." "Though again, researchers and authors dispute these claims." "Whatever, the knights templar appear to play an important role and a major part in the story of the area of roslin and rosslyn chapel." "Well, first of all, we... we can assume with a good deal of probability that quite a few people at that time who went to the holy land, were already at least to some degree dissatisfied with the existing orthodox paradigm of the christian religion." "In fact, some of them probably went on the crusade precisely because they wanted to discover something other." "They went there because they felt maybe if we go to the geographical location where all of this really happened, maybe we will discover the true christianity." "It was not, christianity was not a very exciting religion in the middle ages." "And so i think quite a few people who went there were ready for an alternative view." "And it would seem that probably some of the templars did receive a transmission of that sort." "In 1309, the knights templar were brought to trial at holyrood in edinburgh." "And among dozens of locals from the lothians and across southern scotland, they testified that the templars were bad christians." "That they didn't give money to the poor." "That they would do anything to get extra land for the order." "And if the templars had been good christians, then they would have never lost the holy land." "When the accusations then subsequently in the 1300's were made against the templars that they had" "secretly practiced certain heresies, among some of these accusations, we definitely find elements that could very well have been derived from mandean or related sources." "So i think it's very very likely that the templars absorbed certain teachings and perhaps certain ceremonial practices from the mandeans which they brought back to europe and which they kept in a circle obviously because it was dangerous to do otherwise and" "eventually they were found out." "And when there were additional reasons why the king of france and the pope wanted to do away with the templars, then these were used as an excuse." "See their heretics as well." "In the novel, brown makes much of the secret organization casting them in a benevolent and friendly light." "But do they really exist?" "The jury is still out on that one." "Many researchers have written many many hundreds of thousands of words on this shady organization." "But there's nothing concrete." "There's no real evidence that any of those people supposedly grand masters of priory of sion, people like victor hugo, leonardo da vinci himself, jean cocteau... there's no real evidence whatsoever that relates them to this organization." "Sir isaac newton was supposed to have been a head, a grand master, but again we have no evidence whatsoever." "It seems more likely that the priory of sion as we know it today, this modern shady organization was real but had an invented past." "His secret society which certainly exists." "He didn't make it up." "Sinclair as a name does appear in the priory of sion documents." "But these documents were only written in the 20th century and this is a fictional list of people." "Clearly, there's a lot of real names on that list of grand masters, but the sinclairs that they talk about, marie and so on and catherine, these people do not exist." "There is absolutely nothing about these people in the historical record." "So they've made them up." "For everything that i consider to be reputable material, the very name of the priory of sion was only invented by plantard and his handful of followers in the 1950s." "They didn't even use that term earlier." "I think it's a recent invention which tries to legitimize itself by making claims of being joined to other things in the past and being really a link in a chain of transmission which it obviously is not." "The priory of sion mystery is inextricably liked up with another mystery, another great french mystery which is that of the village of rennes le chateau." "And most people get to know about the priory of sion because of this mystery," "the mystery of this village in the south of france." "Where did the priest get his money from?" "What seems evident from the area of rennes le chateau and languedoc in general is that much was going on here." "We have the cathar heresy." "The cathars believing in a type of gnostic god, inner self, inner truth." "We also have the knights templar ending up in this region building many castles and fortifications." "We have the many churches dedicated to mary magdalene and john the baptist." "And it seems that this area may hold a memory, an echo of something far earlier, something much more important and it's to this area we must look, i think, for much more of an answer behind" "some of these conundrums." "The origin of the story underpinning the da vinci code can be traced back to a small village in the south of france." "The mystery of rennes le chateau has been outlined over the years in hundreds of books." "It's a story of intrigue, politics, power and a tantalizing secret." "But above all, it's a story of fabled hidden treasure." "There has been a settlement in the area of rennes le chateau for thousands of years." "The visigoths established a prosperous kingdom in the 5th century extending into modern spain until the franks led by clovis defeating them." "Importantly, according to the secret history maintained by the priory of sion, the descendants of jesus and mary magdalene living in southern france had intermarried around this time with franks descended from jews who migrated to the area from germany and before that, greece." "This union was the basis of the merovingian royal lineage." "Its emblems were the fish, a symbol of jesus, the lion of judah and the fleur-de-lis, a symbol of french royalty." "The last merovingian king was deposed in 750, but powerful descendants participated in the first crusade in order to recover family histories from the holy land." "They also created the priory of sion and its front organization, the knights templar." "The priory of sion have to an extent, well, lynn and i think, in fact they hijacked a genuine mystery because" "they claim that, the dossiers secrets claim that the priory of sion know all the answers to the rennes mystery that they were behind it." "It was them that gave sauniere his money." "And for that reason, a lot of literature on the rennes le chateau mystery has involved the priory of sion." "Centuries later, in 1781, parish priest antoine bigou was appointed the guardian of the church at rennes le chateau." "He was also entrusted with a great secret by marie blanchefort, surviving member of the local noble family which went back many generations." "It said that he hid the documents in a visigoth pillar that supported the church altar and also created two additional monuments with cryptic writing on them." "In the late 1800s, the church at rennes le chateau attained its greatest notoriety when parish priest francois berenger sauniere discovered hidden documents within." "He took the material to church authorities and suddenly became a wealthy and important man." "We think that although the mystery itself is genuine, there's a real question about where he got his money from and what kind of things sauniere was up to." "He seemed to be involved in some very... unorthodox activities." "But the priory of sion seem to have rather say hijacked that." "They found this mystery which wasn't terribly well known when they first started to bring it into the dossiers secret in the early 60s." "And by linking themselves so closely with it so almost all the literature that's come off to all the researchers who are always trying to work out you can't write about the rennes le chateau mystery without also writing about the priory of sion." "And there may actually be nothing to do with each other." "There's hijacking of one mystery by another." "The information that was fed to the authors, i think was largely sort of the matrix of french esotericism." "But doctored and slanted by pierre plantard in the direction of the priory of sion ." "So i think that is really where a lot of the material really goes awry." "It is believed that his discovery was possibly buried treasure from jerusalem or the wealth of long dead merovingian king dagobert." "It may also have been material linking the descendants of jesus and mary magdalene to the areas merovingian royalty and their living heirs." "The very stuff that caused the 20-year crusade against the cathars and may have played a role in the subsequent repression of the knights templar." "Father sauniere used his new wealth to restore the church at the rennes le chateau." "And unbeknownst to him, his name was happily used by author dan brown for his character jack sauniere, the grand master of the priory of sion whose early murder sets the da vinci code in glorious motion." "And there's lots of interesting questions come out of that." "Did the people behind the dossiers secrets, let's call them the priory of sion totally hijack something or do they know something about the mystery, were they involved in it, but they've added their own bits to it to lead people" "in the directions that they want to go?" "I think the only thing that we can be really sure about is that their version of what really happened back at the turn of the 20th century with sauniere and his money, their version doesn't stand up." "There are anomalies and errors in it, that you can actually prove." "Well, certainly there is an underlying modicum of truth in all of them, but that truth is considerably obscured by i think a great deal of speculative and inventive material." "And it takes i think a person of a certain intuitive, deeper intuitive perception to sort out this weed from the chaff." "The work on the church progressed." "The flagstone was broken and reportedly, a treasure was found inside." "Possibly hidden for local nobles during the french revolution." "There was also a manuscript which was encoded and makes reference to saint sulpice and the artist teniers which was an anagram of the epithet on the marquis de blanchefort's tombstone." "During further renovation, the altar was removed and hidden documents discovered." "They needed to be translated by specialists and after consulting the bishop of carcassonne, sauniere visited paris and the church of saint sulpice." "Saint suplice is the famous parisian church where the da vinci code's fearsome enforcer silas is directed to look for a keystone at the bottom of the obelisk." "The church of saint sulpice was originally built in the merovingian era within the boundaries of the abbey of saint germaindes pres as a parish church for the peasants living within its jurisdiction on the left bank of paris." "The church is dedicated to saint sulpice, the 6th century archbishop of bourge whose feast day is january 17." "The priory of sion documents known as the dossiers secrets claim that the church was actually built on the remains of an earlier pagan temple of isis and that a statue of isis was said to have been worshipped of the virgin mary at saint germains until" "it was destroyed in 1514." "The parish of saint germains grew in importance due to the abbey's own church of saint germainsdes pres which towers the peace of the true cross and the tunic of st." "Vincent." "Saint sulpice itself was continually rebuilt and enlarged to serve a growing local population which was also becoming wealthier." "Work on the current building intended to serve the seminary of saint sulpice and to rival notre dame of paris in both size and importance." "It began in 1646, but it immediately ran into financial difficulties." "Six architects struggled to complete it over a period of 134 years." "The church contains works of many fine artists." "The chapel of the holy angels was decorated by eugene delacroix who spent several years between 1855 and 1861 working on the commission." "It was the church of saint sulpice in paris that berenger sauniere turned to try and get the legendary parchments that he supposedly found in his church deciphered." "There is an interesting fact about saint sulpice." "Within the church is a gnomon." "This gnomon or obelisk-like instrument stands against one of the walls in the church." "And on certain days of the year the sun shines through an opposite window illuminating certain parts of the gnomon." "Beneath the gnomon stretching out in a long brass line along the church floor is something known as the rose line." "The gnomon or sundial in the church of saint sulpice almost exactly at the base of the obelisk that forms part of it is hiding place of the keystone that silas is seeking." "He smashes a floor tile over a hollow spot only to discover a biblical quote from job rather than the map he sought." "It was the pastor of saint sulpice, jean batisse  who was responsible for raising funds to build the gnomon in 1737." "The pastor wanted to establish the exact times of the equinoxes so that he could calculate the date on which easter would fall each year." "The gnomon consists of a brass line that runs north south set into the floor of the transept of the church." "A white marble obelisk with a brass line continuing up the center bears the sign of capricorn." "The sun strikes it at the winter solstice on december 21." "The obelisk bears a royal inscription at its base commemorating the purpose of the sun dial's construction." "Since the inscription contained the names of the king and his ministers, it was defaced during the french revolution and event which also saw their trials and executions." "In the chapel of st." "John the baptist, the sculptor lee simon hasportrayed the saint with his forefinger raised in what is known as he john gesture." "That's really something that dan brown doesn't pick up on in his book, not something that he built into his fictional scenario." "He goes down the line of the great secret that's being sought and being protected is the bloodline of jesus and mary magdalene, that they had children who settled in france and" "a secret society called the priory of sion has existed throughout the ages to protect the descendants of that bloodline for whatever reason." "The way itjumps over into the priory of sion and the whole children of mary magdalene matrix and so forth, then it's in an entirely different realm again." "I look at magdalene as jesus' true successor which sounds mad, everybody says no it's st." "Peter." "No, according to the gnostic gospels, it was her." "And also there is a big question mark over her ethnicity." "I've traced a possible root, nobody can be certain at this space and time, but i've traced her possible roots to either egypt or ethiopia in which case she was very likely a black woman." "Close to the village of rennes le chateau is a small seaside town of sainte marie sur mer." "Sainte marie sur mer celebrates the name, mary magdalene, but also saint marie sur mer in one of the churches there in the little crypt is a black madonna." "This black madonna is not of mary magdalene or mary mother of god." "This unique black madonna is a black madonna celebrating the life of saint sara." "Saint sara is not actually recognized by the catholic church as a saint." "But the local gypsies of the camargue region once a year in may celebrate the life and times of this unknown saint." "Saint sara so legend will have us tell came ashore in a boat with mary magdalene and various other characters fleeing the holy land after the death of christ." "Saint sara according to legend is either the hand maiden of mary magdalene or according to some, quite possibly the offspring of mary magdalene." "And possibly the offspring of mary magdalene and a union with her and the christ figure." "This black madonna is paraded once a year through the streets of sainte marie sur mer, taken to the ocean, bathed in the mediterranean and paraded back to the church." "Mary magdalene was also a very important figure in that alternative form of christianity." "Now whether a really specific and separate tradition ever descended from her as such, for this, we really have no evidence, but certainly i think along with thomas and probably philip and matthias, she stands as one of the" "principal figures of the alternative or gnostic form of christianity in earlier apostolic times." "My research has indicated that in fact she was very much dioecious of the half, but you wouldn't know this of course from the new testament." "But of course, matthew, mark, luke and john aren't the only gospels in existence." "Although ask virtually any christian now and they will say of course they are." "They are the only gospels, they are the gospels." "But there are we know at least five dozen other gospels." "The gnostic gospels, the forbidden books if you like." "When the church was put into its present form, when the new testament was put into its present form in the 4th century a.d., a lot of books that were around thatjust as much claimed to be considerably authentic as" "matthew, mark, luke and john were basically voted out of what became the new testament." "And matthew, mark, luke and john were put in." "These other books were instantly overnight forbidden and anybody who had one or knew of one was on notice, basically got rid of them or you yourself would end up on the flaming pile." "The public shall we say for a very long time has been misled primarily by the christian church into believing that from the very beginning, from the time of jesus and peter and so forth, there was one unified christian community or church." "And increasingly over the last couple of hundred years or maybe even more it has become evident that was not the case." "That there were sort of independent and semi-independent christian communities of various orientations spread all over as christianity grew in the middle east and they all had a reverence called jesus and his message in common." "But that there was no uniformity among them." "They were for the most part in friendly relations with each other but they were not a unified organization." "That's not the way that sort of thing worked at that time." "And then beginning in the third century, there came more and more people who wanted to impose their particular orthodox vision on the rest." "So it was a gradual takeover by a particular party beginning in the mostly beginning in the third century and then contuining thereafter." "The more important secret is to do with these heretic writings concerning john the baptist." "And it's actually something may have actually confused readers of the da vinci code." "One of our decodings of leonardo's paintings which is the virgin of the rocks, the virgin that's in the louvre in paris where we've decoded it into a very definite" "johannite interpretation." "Johannite being this heresy which is centered on john the baptist and him actually being superior, regarded as superior even to jesus." "In some ways, he's regarded as the true christ." "Other than the mandeans, it's really hard to tell how much or what component of the alternative tradition is john." "John the baptist tradition." "But there is certainly, probably some of it in there." "It was during the same visit that sauniere supposedly acquired the reproductions of two paintings." "The first, les bergers d'arcadie by nicolas poussin." "It is thought to portray a tomb in the countryside near rennes le chateau." "The second is david teniers the younger's the temptation of anthony whose feast day of january 17 seems to play an important and recurrent role in the story." "Whatever secret artifacts and knowledge the templars brought back from jerusalem were hidden in the area of rennes le chateau and fortified the beliefs of the local christian sect, the cathars who were eventually destroyed by people in french-backed crusade" "against their supposed heresy." "Of note, this is the only crusade the knights templar refused to support." "When you look at alternative history books on things like the knights templar, the holy grail or rennes le chateau, you find that second resourcing is really the name of the game." "A lot of these researches simply quote one another, they quote from one another's books, from one another's research and the whole thing goes around in circles." "One of the important issues which i think is not sufficiently considered by the writers in the popular reign at the present time is that in order to hold certain positions in spiritual matters, one needs not necessarily to have received such teachings" "from somebody else who received them from somebody else who received them from somebody else." "In other words, a horizontal historical transmission is not the only way to reach certain spiritual positions." "There is a vertical position in addition to that." "They may have received it as a result of their own inspiration." "So it's almost like there are two dimensions." "There is a horizontal dimension of history with its transmissions and traditions and various convolutions and then there is a vertical dimension which intersects that at any time where people have their own inspiration." "And therefore, if there are similarities between positions, that does not indicate necessarily a historical connection, it may mean a singular inspiration as well." "But since our culture is so secular and so materialistic even about spiritual things, it doesn't really consider the vertical dimension." "It is always looking for a horizontal dimension." "And it's a mistake." "They are both there." "They are like a cross when they come together." "So let's see, if leonardo had some... if leonardo indeed had some johannine predilictions and things of that sort, he could have come by these in a number of ways some of which could have been purely inspirational, some of it could have come from" "hermetic and cabalistic literature and things of that sort, any number of sources." "These ideas about the origins of christianity, suppression of the feminine, the idea that the church seemed to have been engaged in coverup of information that they've always known to be true, it's brought those ideas to a whole new audience." "Which is a good thing." "But naturally it's attracted a lot of criticism, a lot of hostility from the from orthodoxy, from those who defend the conventional teachings of christianity." "Are these two approaches or ideas, alternative christianity possibly going back to john the baptist to some degree and the rediscovery of the feminine, are they possibly related to each other?" "And if you ask me that question, i will say most definitely so because there is plenty of evidence implicit and explicit indicating that the alternative christianity contained a really powerful emphasis on the feminine, but of course," "not exclusively the feminine." "If we are looking for the new age, the goddess which is basically just a rebaptized jehovah, a ms." "Jehovah, you know, then we are not going to find that there, but we are going to find the feminine both at the metaphysical level going clear up to the divine and right down at the practical level" "being held in a much higher regard and in a position of equality and so forth and this was present in the... you can see it is present in the alternative tradition." "You look at the 12th and 13th century, the cathars had women and men in totally equal position among their prefecture." "It was something that was totally unknown in europe anywhere at that time." "Earlier on, the manicheans have women perfects as well." "Not as prominently as the cathars perhaps, but they were still there." "So it was always there." "When we see the attacks of irineos and these various heresiology church fathers against the gnostics, one of the big accusations is that they have women teachers and they have women leaders, women prophetesses and women serve communion and women even baptize," "oh, my god, you know." "So you can see at the very basic level that the alternative tradition had always a much greater respect for the feminine." "So when the alternative tradition was repressed, the feminine was also repressed." "The two were together." "Now when the alternative tradition is emerging again, the feminine is also reemerging." "So there is a very close connection." "We think it's very interesting that the ones that have come to light, that have been translated into english certainly tell a very different story from the new testament about jesus and his relationship with mary magdalene." "In the new testament, she's hardly mentioned by name." "Why should somebody like da vinci and all sorts of other people have this thing about her, believe that she was so important?" "And of course there is no real reason from the new testament, but if you look at some of these other books, for example, the gospel of philip, the gospel of thomas, the gospel of mary magdalene," "you begin to understand." "She is described as being jesus' apostle of the apostles." "Certainly the first heretics, quote heretics, the believers in these books described her like that." "She wasn'tjust the first century equivalent of a woman tugging along making the coffee for the men." "She was very important." "She was rich." "She was independent." "She had no concept of being the little woman." "She was feisty, she was outspoken." "She actually according to one of these forbidden books got jesus to change his teaching on a quite central matter which is quite astonishing." "She also severely put the noses out ofjoint of the male disciples, especially st." "Peter who hated her and he said in one of these books to jesus, lord let mary leave us for women are not worthy of life which is very interesting because this personal spat between mary who was jesus' second right-hand man" "if you like in quote and st." "Peter seem to prefigure what happened to their movements, you know, her's became a sort of goddess worshipping, intuitive, gnostic, fluid movement, not a church with a capital 'c'." "And of course he founded the misogynist church of rome." "So it was prefigured by their personal relationship which is to me particularly interesting, but also in these forbidden books and gnostic gospels," "jesus is, the disciples go to jesus and say, lord, why do you prefer her to us?" "Why are you always kissing her on the mouth?" "And you think, duh, why do you think?" "But it's spelt out there." "They had a relationship." "They weren't necessarily married and i don't believe they were, but certainly they had an intimate relationship." "No wonder, these books are not in the new testament, but i think that everybody should know about them." "And the da vinci code helps people understand there is more out there." "There's hidden stuff." "The thinking behind this seems to be that all these books that are offering an alternative version of the origins of christianity and the christian story and the way the christian church developed." "If we can debunk all of these alternatives they seem to think then what's left is the conventional teaching." "So what is the da vinci code?" "Well, on one level it's simply a novel." "Robert langdon comes along, solves the puzzle, gets the girl, saves the world, easy." "But on the other level, it's something deeper." "Much much deeper." "And dan brown has opened a seam of research and of thought that needed opening for a long time." "There is every bit of likelihood i think that jesus himself thought and practiced a whole number of doctrines and sacraments and things of that sort which were not allowed to become part of the orthodox chain." "So they just took a part." "The other part was left to the side for which reason orthodox christianity was lacking in wholeness for two thousand years." "I simply wrote a story that explores how and why the shift might have occurred, what it says about our past and more importantly, what it says about our future."