The Da Vinci Code

This is my attempt at explaining the temper tantrum...

My hate of fiction is irrational, and I can admit that. I only read fiction to make fun of the whole genre in general. Mainly because I find that reality is stranger than fiction. Seriously, you could not in our wildest dreams, dream up some of the shit that goes on in the real world. It's a tragedy people sometimes can't see beyond fiction and get boged down by it. Especially when they are surrounded by reality (non-fiction).

As for the book, I couldn't seem to get any work done (for a semester), and It was time to try something un-conventional (in terms of my habits), and reading fiction was it, my roommate had The Da Vinci Code. That was it. The following two excerpts are worth reading, and a page out of a 450 page book won't ruin it.

The answer to a question no one is asking, except maybe women:

"Heiros Gamos is Greek," he continued. "It means sacred marriage."

"The ritual I saw was no marriage."

"Marriage as in union, Sophie."

"You mean as in sex."

"No."

"No?" she said, her olive eyes testing him.

Langson backpedaled. "Well... yes, in a manner of speaking, but not as we understand it today." He explained that although what she saw probably looked like a sex ritual, Heiros Gamos had nothing to do with eroticism. It was a spiritual act. Historically, intercourse was the act through which male and female experienced God. The ancients believed that the male was spiritually incomplete until he had carnal knowledge that of the sacred feminine. Physical union with the female remained the sole means through which man could become spiritually complete and ultimately achieve gnosis--knowledge of the divine. Since the days of Isis, sex rites had been considered man's only bridge from earth to heaven. "By communing with woman," Langdon said, "man could achieve a climactic instant when his mind went totally blank and he could see God."

Sophie looked skeptical. "Orgasm as prayer?"

Langdon gave a noncommittal shrug, although Sophie was essentially correct. Physiologically speaking, the male climax was accompanied by a split second entirely devoid of thought. A brief mental vacuum. A moment of clarity during which God could be glimpsed. Meditation gurus achieved similar states of thoughtlessness without sex and often described Nirvana as a never-ending spiritual orgasm.

"Sophie," Langdon said quietly, "it's important to remember that the ancients' view of sex was entirely opposite from ours today. Sex begot new life---the ultimate miracle--and miracles could be performed only by a god. The ability of the woman to produce life from her womb made her sacred. A god. Intercourse was the revered union of the two halves of the human spirit--male and female--through which the male could find spiritual wholeness and communion with God. What you was was not about sex, it was about spirituality. The Heiros Gamos ritual is not a perversion. It's a deeply sacrosanct ceremony."

And the most intelligent statement in the book (IMO):

"...every faith in the world is based on fabrication. That is the definition of faith--acceptance of that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove. Every religion describes God through metaphor, allegory, and exaggeration, from the early Egyptians through modern sunday school. Metaphors are a way to help our minds process the unprocessible. The problems arise when we begin to believe literally in our own metaphors."

I am waiting for the movie on the book, mainly because all the actors are really good, and because I want to say the movie is better than the book. Which I'm confident it will be, since the book said the story in an very trivial way, while the story is, in all it's fictional content, anything but. I wish I knew about Rosslyn Chapel when I was in the UK, I don't know when I'll be next time. Also, the French need to be made fun of, even if irrationally :), and a character in this book does not disappoint in that case.