Da Vinci Code: Finding the Feminine

I read too many magazines and too few books. The other day, as I was beginning to OD on the glossies, I remembered that a friend had recommended The Da Vinci Code as a fun diversion, filled with strange puzzles and historical fictions that made you ponder what really happened. I picked up a paperback of it and found it to be a perfect summer pot boiler. But beyond that, I was impressed with Dan Brown's thesis, that the "sacred feminine" has been lost in modern, macho society. I knew a lot of the history of how Christianity sought to eliminate or coopt competing religions through violence or syncretism, but I haven't read any detailed discussions of goddess worship. I know some societies in Europe and Mexico did have strong matriarchal religions, but I'm thrilled that a best-selling author is championing them! Check out this passage:

"The Catholic Inquisition published the book that arguably could be called the most blood-soaked publication in human history. Malleus Maleficarum--or The Witches' Hammer--indoctrinated the world to 'the dangers of free thinking women' and instructed the clergy how to locate, torture and destroy them. Those deemed 'witches' by the Church included all female scholars, priestesses, gypsies, mystics, nature lovers, herb gatherers, and any women 'suspiciously attuned to the natural world.' Midwives also were killed for their heretical practice of using medical knowledge to ease the pain of childbirth--a suffering, the Church claimed, that was God's rightful punishment for Eve's partaking of the Apple of knowledge, thus giving birth to the idea of Original Sin. During three hundred years of witch hunts, the Church burned at the stake an astounding five million women.

[...] Women, once celebrated as an essential half of spiritual enlightenment, had been banished from the temples of the world [...] The once hallowed act of Hieros Gamos--the natural sexual union between man and woman through which each became spiritually whole--had been recast as a shameful act. Holy men who had once required sexual union with their female counterparts to commune with God now feared their natural sexual urges as the work of the devil, collaborating with his favorite accomplice... woman."

The best part:

"The days of the goddess were over. The pendulum had swung. Mother Earth had become a man's world, and the gods of destruction and war were taking their toll. The male ego had spent two millennia running unchecked by its female counterpart. The Priory of Sion believed that it was this obliteration of the sacred feminine in modern life that had caused what the Hopi Native Americans called koyanisquatsi--'life out of balance'--an unstable situation marked by testosterone-fueled wars, a plethora of mysoginistic societies, and a growing direspect for Mother Earth."

Here's an essay on the Da Vinci Code "as a parable of American modernity" by U. of Michigan professor and blogger Juan Cole. While I can't read the rest of his blog (can't handle political discussions, all I can do is vote and send money), he makes some good points about how Brown seems to be advocating moderation, not a feminist extremism:

"The other pole in the Brown narrative is the priory around the female descendants of Jesus through Mary Magdalene. This pole is about paganism, feminism, individualism, scientific rationality and sexual freedom. This pole, likewise, can become corrupt and antinomian." I had to look up "antinomian"--it's a cool word, means a belief that "faith alone, not adherence to moral law, is necessary for salvation" (Webster's).

Not that I've fact-checked it (and I am a historical idiot), but the amount of detail and the appearance of accuracy is also reassuring to find in Brown's book, especially for an editor. With all the scandals around fake memoirs and plagiarized chick lit of late, it's nice to see that someone has done a heck of a lot of homework. Sue Grafton is another quick read who always does plenty of research, as is Tony Hillerman.

One point about the whole Catholic patriarchy controversy: My mother became an episcopal priest a few years ago, and in divinity school she discovered the bulk of her peers were women or gays, people who had previously been excluded from the Church. In the end, Brown does not make an indictment of the Church, but rather of its past and of its obsessions gone awry. I'll have to get my mom's opinion of some of the statements about women in Christianity--she's actually done some scholarship on it, unlike me. Brown has certainly not pinned down the only plausible theory about Catholicism's celibacy mandate; there is some interesting Mexican study of that (the film El Crimen del Padre Amaro is a great modern Mexican take on it).

There are no easy answers, but Brown's romp through art and architecture is elevating--better than dissecting celebrity hairstyles!.