The Dan Brown Enigma

by Graham A Thomas

  The secrecy surrounding the novel had been so complete that virtually no leaks appeared on any internet sites about the real nature of the novel’s plot. Instead, Brown and Doubleday managed to get people focused on subjects ‘that at best were only on the fringes of the novel. It was an incredible undertaking that guaranteed a huge amount of media and public attention on launch day.’[251]

  More than five million copies had been printed, which was a massive gamble. Packing crates of The Lost Symbol had been wrapped in protective and legal seals to ensure that no one opened them before the allotted release time. E-books and audio books were also readied at the same time and under a strict veil of secrecy. ‘It was all to safeguard a marketing campaign which some believe could come close to achieving sales on a par with Rowling’s last Harry Potter book, which sold 3.5m copies in its first eight days.’[252]

  On publication day the mayhem began. In the UK, Tesco, the UK supermarket giant was selling 19 copies a minute of The Lost Symbol while Asda had sold 18,000 copies by 4pm, taking it from just another publishing activity to an event of phenomenal proportions. Then a price war started with Asda and Tesco dropping the price of the hardback edition to £5 per copy. Waterstone’s followed up by slashing the price of the book in half and other booksellers did the same. Tim Godfray, chief executive of the Booksellers Association, said that a huge price war always comes after the release of a massive-selling title, The Guardian reported. The result of this price war is that ‘the trade as a whole makes very little money on its most valued assets.’[253]

  In an article by Richard Booth, writing in The Guardian, it was stated that the first announced title of the book was The Solomon Key, and the biblical story of the building of King Solomon’s Temple in 1000 BC is central to Freemasonry’s ritual ceremonies and mythical origins.

  While some of Freemasons may be unhappy with Brown’s novel, it did not generate the widespread condemnation that The Da Vinci Code did. Indeed, the Freemasons’ reaction was largely one of nervousness ‘that I might focus on the macabre side of their rituals,’ Brown said. ‘There is some very potent philosophical material and some amazing science that I am hoping will spark debate.’[254]

  Debate was exactly what happened across the internet, with some people seeing the Freemasons as the antagonists. ‘This is not the case,’ said Cox. ‘Brown makes a good case for Freemasonry being a tolerant and enlightened movement with some interesting and forward-thinking ideas.’[255]

  Does he? Since the publication of The Lost Symbol, the Masons have had to respond to some of the book’s claims by creating a website to address them. ‘For three centuries, almost immediately after its modern formation in 1717 in London, the fraternity of Freemasonry has been the subject of wild accusations and disinformation,’ the website states. It goes on to say that the site has been created ‘in cooperation with the Masonic Service Association of North America, and the George Washington Masonic Memorial as an ongoing project to address the subjects concerning Freemasonry that are found in Brown’s The Lost Symbol, as well as to explain its references to the history, practices, ceremonies, philosophy and symbolism of Masonry.’[256]

  Brown’s great gift is his ability to blend fact and fiction, and he has gone on record to say that the science, societies and organisations in his books are real. In both The Da Vinci Code and The Lost Symbol he has put in a Fact page at the beginning. ‘While groups like the 18th-century Bavarian Illuminati and the modern Catholic organisation Opus Dei have indeed existed in fact, they bear little resemblance to Brown’s fictional universe,’ the Masonic website states. ‘Unfortunately, readers are not always aware of the difference between fact and fiction.’

  The Masonic Society’s web pages devoted to Brown’s novel state that he has treated Freemasonry in ‘an overwhelmingly positive’ light. However, ‘he does engage in some dramatic licence for the sake of his plot.’ The ritual of drinking from a skull is one of those areas. The skull has appeared in Masonic rituals over the centuries but it is not unique to Freemasonry. It represents mortality and can be found in many other organisations, ‘The Latin term, memento mori, means “remember, you will die” and is often accompanied by a depiction of a skull as a reminder of the end of physical life. Such specific images have appeared as early as Pompeii in the first century AD.’

  The Masons’ web pages say that the ceremony in the beginning of the book, where the initiate drinks blood red wine from a hollow skull, is an adaptation from a ‘sensationalised exposé, Scotch Rite Masonry Illustrated, published in 1887 by the Reverend John Blanchard. Blanchard’s description of the 33rd degree has been repeated by many anti-Masonic authors over the years, even though it is not accurate.’

  Brown also includes a pyramid that Langdon carries around with him as he searches for clues that will free his friend Peter Solomon. While the pyramid is central to the book, it is not a Masonic symbol, according to the website. ‘The pyramid does not appear in the symbolism of regular, accepted Freemasonry or its appendant groups, the Scottish Rite or the York Rite. This is a longstanding myth,’ it states. ‘Neither is the “unfinished pyramid” topped by the “all-seeing eye” – found in the Great Seal of the United States as seen on the reverse of the dollar bill – a Masonic symbol.’

  The website goes on to say that the all-seeing eye inside a triangle first appeared in the 1500s in the Catholic Renaissance art, where the eye represented God and the triangle represented the trinity. The symbol is not exclusive to one organisation but has been used by many over the centuries to represent God.

  One thing that is very Masonic, however, is secrecy. ‘It is one of the most misunderstood aspects of the fraternity,’ the website states. ‘Freemasonry teaches its philosophy to its members through symbolism, and secrecy is actually a symbol of honour.’

  The website explains this by saying that the original medieval stonemasons kept their skills and practices secret so that their livelihood would be protected and no Tom, Dick or Harry could set themselves up as a stonemason without being a member of the fraternity. This was to ensure only qualified men were employed. ‘Likewise, passwords and secret signs were developed so members of the guild in different parts of the country could recognise each other, even if they had never met.’

  Today’s Freemasonry has kept this tradition of secrecy. According to the website, ‘If a person can’t be trusted to keep a simple secret like a password or a handshake, his word isn’t really trustworthy. He is not an honourable person.’

  Besides testing to see if someone is a Freemason or if they are trustworthy, the Masons have other secrets concerning the ceremonies and rituals of initiation into the brotherhood. ‘Others are more personal and different for each Freemason,’ the website suggests. ‘Like all initiatic experiences in the world, the real secrets of Freemasonry are the effects its teachings and ceremonies have on the individual, and how he applies them to his life.’[257]

  The initiate’s journey, like all such journeys, had begun at the first degree. On that night, in a ritual similar to this one, the Worshipful Master had blindfolded him with a velvet hoodwink and pressed a ceremonial dagger to his bare chest, demanding: ‘Do you seriously declare on your honour, uninfluenced by mercenary or any other unworthy motive, that you freely and voluntarily offer yourself as a candidate for the mysteries and privileges of this brotherhood?’

  ‘I do,’ the initiate had lied.

  ‘Then let this be a sting to your consciousness,’ the master had warned him, ‘as well as instant death should you ever betray the secrets to be imparted to you.’

  At the time, the initiate had felt no fear. They will never know my true purpose here.

  THE LOST SYMBOL

  In the book Brown alleges that many high-ranking government officials are Freemasons and the website tells us that 14 US presidents have been Masons, Gerald Ford being the most recent. ‘Ronald Reagan was made an honorary 33rd degree Scottish Rite Mason, which has no real Masonic standing,’ the website states.
‘Bill Clinton was a member of the Masonic youth group, the Order of DeMolay, as a teenager, but never became a Mason; neither George H.W. Bush, nor George W. Bush are Freemasons; Barack Obama is not a Freemason.’

  Brown hopes that readers will use his novel as a stepping stone for finding out about some of the ideas and themes he’s included in the book. ‘My hope is that readers will be so fascinated with the plot line that they can’t possibly stop and they read the entire novel,’ Brown said. ‘Then they go back and say, “In this scene, could this possibly be true? Could this ritual look like this?” and then go and do their own research.’ [258]

  As with his other books Brown reveals information – mostly symbols and codes that might hitherto only have been known to scholars – to the masses in an entertaining way. One of those pieces of information is the circumpunct, more commonly known as a circle with a dot in the middle. Brown says it is quite possibly the oldest symbol we have today and it is the most universal symbol. ‘Everything from the singularity to the all-seeing eye has come from there.’

  ‘In the idiom of symbology, there was one symbol that reigned supreme above all others. The oldest and most universal, this symbol fused all the ancient traditions in a single solitary image that represented the illumination of the Egyptian sun god, the triumph of alchemical gold, the wisdom of the Philosopher’s Stone, the purity of the Rosicrucian Rose, the moment of Creation, the All, the dominance of the astrological sun, and even the omniscient all-seeing eye that hovered atop the unfinished pyramid. The circumpunct. The symbol of the Source. The origin of all things.’

  THE LOST SYMBOL

  Already there are a lot of conspiracy theorist-style internet pages dedicated to providing their own unique take on the circumpunct. The reality is that it can be used to symbolise many different things, from a road sign denoting a city centre in Europe to the alchemists’ symbol for gold. The most common use is as a symbol of the sun and most scholars and historians connect this to ancient Egypt, when it was used to represent Ra, the Sun God.

  However, in the book the tattooed villain, Mal’akh, is not hunting for the lost symbol but the lost word, which he believes will give him immortality. Brown neatly ties the circumpunct to the Freemasons when Langdon explains that the ancient Egyptians who built the pyramids were the ancestors of the modern stonemasons and within Masonic symbolism the pyramid and other Egyptian themes are very common.

  In the book, the circumpunct’s meanings are sometimes varied and often they are spiritual in nature. A circle with a point, for example, is now a common symbol for the sun, just as it is an ancient symbol for gold, considered to be the perfect metal, because a sphere is perfectly shaped and this perfect shape stands for unity and wholeness.

  Is this true or is this another one of the facts that Brown has misinterpreted as he did with the Priory of Sion? The point or dot within the circle is known in the Hindu religion as a ‘bindu’, which is said to ‘signify the spark of male life, the point at which creation begins within the cosmic womb and one becomes many.’ [259]

  Something else that Brown brought to light in The Lost Symbol is noetic science, the starting point for the novel’s big idea. Noetic science is the study of how thought can affect matter. There is an old expression ‘mind over matter’ and this is the literal study of that idea. But it also covers a wider area, such as the study of how mind energy and consciousness relate to life.

  ‘I’d studied some particle physics and knew that there was this world of noetic science that was kind of out there,’ Brown said, referring to his research on Angels & Demons. ‘I knew I wanted to come back to it. And in the 10 years between Angels & Demons and now, that field has exploded, and I became very, very interested with it. So that really is this idea of a science that’s tied to these ancient mysteries, the old and the new I love to tie together, and the codes, they really just – they serve a plot line.’[260]

  This science is one of the book’s central themes and Brown claims that it is on the cusp of becoming a worldwide phenomenon, but the reality is different. Though he claims the science is real, the research being done in this field through the Institute of Noetic Sciences is considerably different from that in the book. The Institute is pursuing research into areas such as extended human capacity through meditation, psi studies, global medicine, placebo affects and bio-fields.

  The Lost Symbol took Brown almost six years to write. One reason was the chaos surrounding The Da Vinci Code distracted him but, Brown said, ‘The real reason The Lost Symbol took so long is that the subject matter behind it – the science behind it, the philosophy behind it – is so complicated and really so mind-blowing that I needed a lot of time to process it and understand it to a point where I could use it in a thriller.’

  Like his character Robert Langdon, Brown remained a sceptic while he was writing the book. ‘It took me a long time to get to the point where I could look at the science and look at the philosophy and really begin to believe it,’ he said. ‘I had a lot of people saying, “You go after someone and you attack them.” That’s not true. Whatever I found in the Masons I was going to write about and it just happened to find a group of people I was really impressed by.’

  When it came to gaining access to the secret world of the Freemasons, the notoriety he had gained with The Da Vinci Code proved a double-edged sword. On the one hand his fame opened doors to places that he would never have had access to before, but it also hampered some of his research into specific places. For example, when he went to the Masonic House of The Temple to research the location, he did so as anonymously as possible, in a baseball hat and sunglasses. [261]

  A lot of action in the book takes place in the House of the Temple and Brown needed the details to be accurate. ‘Researching a room like the room in the House of the Temple might be three separate trips,’ he said. ‘I may go in as a tourist and [think], “Can I set a scene here? What’s here?” Then I decide I can set a scene here and go back.’ Brown had a Masonic guide the second time he went to the House of the Temple and on this trip he ‘took a lot of notes, a lot of pictures and then I would write the section and go back a third time and, say, I focused on the altar or whatever it was that interested me and take more notes.’

  In an interview with Steve Bertrand of Barnes & Noble, Brown explained how he hoped the Freemasons would react to his novel. ‘My hope is that they love it and see it for what it is: a reverential look at their organisation mixed with the one thing they may not like is that a lot of their rituals are laid bare and you see a lot of things about their organisation.’

  Brown said in that interview that it was the spiritual underpinnings of the Freemasons in the early period of America that provided them with political power. He claimed that many of the Founding Fathers were deists rather than theists. ‘The difference being that deism believes in a God that does not intervene in world affairs,’ Brown explained. ‘Theism believes in a God that does intervene. If you pray to God he will fix things for you or arrange things for you.’

  At the core of the Masonic philosophy is the notion that everyone is responsible for their own actions – that no God takes responsibility – and that ultimately we must treat our fellow man with the same respect and dignity we would expect to be treated ourselves. ‘We as human beings have to do that and that really was a message I wanted to get across in the novel.’[262]

  American Freemasonry has its origins in Europe and according to Brown, Washington D.C. is the capital of Freemasonry in the US. But Washington itself is not a modern city. ‘It has underground tunnels, it has cathedrals it has crypts and obelisks and a lot of the grand architecture of Rome,’ Brown said. Indeed, he tells us it was founded to be the new Rome. He finds it fascinating that Washington with its modern power base is ‘framed in this classical architecture, classical art and a lot of classic ideals.’[263]

  Brown believes that Washington has everything that London, Paris and Rome have in the way of art, architecture and so on. ‘Washington has
… a great shadow world that we don’t see,’ he said. ‘And one of the luxuries of having written The Da Vinci Code is that I had access to all sorts of specialists in Washington who were very, very generous to open up the doors of some of these monuments and museums and great structures and give me behind-the-scenes tours. That was very exciting.’

  For Brown the philosophy of the Freemasons is fascinating. ‘Here you have a global organisation that is spiritual and will bring Moslems, Jews, Christians and even people confused about religion together and agree that we all believe in some big thing out there but we’re not going to put a label on it, and let’s worship together.’

  According to Cox, Freemasonry can be described as a secretive organisation but it is not a secret society. ‘Membership is easy to research, and most members are not shy about letting you know that they are within the craft.’ He states that since its inception and its ‘heyday in the 1700s Freemasonry has attracted men of a certain social standing.’ [264]

  Today it is more welcoming but Brown describes the membership of Freemasonry as being important folk who tend to be thinkers and well connected people. ‘The Masons are an organisation for both of those people thinkers and well-connected thinkers.’[265] But it is still a very traditional society and does not have any women members. The rituals it clings to are also traditional and arcane.

  According to Brown there are Masonic lodges in most American towns. ‘We drive by them and we think, “Well, that’s a bunch of men who dress up in what – I’m not sure what it is,”’ he said. ‘What they do is fascinating and that is the topic of the book.’