Gideon Polya, “Sacred & Profane. REAL Da Vinci Code Exposed”, MWC News, 25 June 2006 partly cached by Google).
Sacred & Profane. REAL Da Vinci Code Exposed
THE DA VINCI CODE has been introduced to a mass audience by Dan Brown’s best-selling but ultimately implausible “airport novel”, the subsequent “plagiarism trial” and now the movie starring Tom Hanks. However Hollywood-style mass culture frequently seems to get it wrong or miss the obvious point – and the Da Vinci Code is no exception as I will explain.
It is patently clear that Corporate Mainstream Media often want us to miss the obvious point – thus they have promoted “Islamophobic terror hysteria” over appalling Muslim-origin non-state terrorism (7,000 Western civilian deaths over 40 years) but soft-pedalled on something like 10 million cigarette smoking-related deaths in the US alone over the same period and 0.4 million such deaths each year in the US alone (5 million globally). This “Islamophobic terror hysteria” has enabled the War on Terror which has so far been associated with 2.3 million avoidable deaths in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories (50% female, 60% infants, comprehensively ignored by lying Mainstream media and due to gross Coalition violation of the Geneva Conventions) and constitutes in reality a War on Women and Children. “The Da Vinci Code” book and movie propose a “dreadful secret” of Jesus Christ being married and having children. The REAL Da Vinci Code relates to sacred and profane symbolism in Mediterranean and European culture.
ARTISTS are familiar with the Golden Rectangle, a geometric construction in which the ratio of the Long Side to the Short Side is 1.618 (this number being known as Phi). The Golden Rectangle can be sectioned by a line called the Golden Section (also known as the Golden Ratio, Golden Mean or Divine Proportion) that divides the Golden Rectangle into a Large Square and a residual Small Rectangle - which simply turns out to be another Golden Rectangle and which can then be similarly subdivided into a square and another Golden Rectangle. Reiteration of this Golden Sectioning yields a Spiral Pattern (for a good illustration see ).
The mathematical series underlying the Golden Rectangle and its implicit Spiral is called the Fibonacci Series: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89 … The numbers of this series (named after the 13th century Italian mathematician popularly known as Fibonacci) are interesting in that (a) successive elements are the sum of the previous two (e.g. 0 + 1 = 1, 1+ 1 = 2, 1+ 2 = 3, 2 + 3 = 5, 3 + 5 = 8, etc) and (b) the ratio of higher to lower successive elements progressively approximates to 1.618 i.e. to Phi (8/5 = 1.6, 13/8 = 1.625, 21/13 = 1.615, 89/55 = 1.618181818 …). Phi (like Pi, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter) is an “irrational number” and extends as follows: 1.61803 39887 49894 84820 45868 34365 63811 77203 09179 80576 …
Phi has unusual properties. Thus (a) 1/Phi = 1/1.618 = 0.618 and accordingly 1/0.618 = 1.618, (b) Phi = 1 + 1/Phi, and (c) Phi = (1 + square root 5)/2. Phi is the ratio found not only in the Golden Rectangle but is also a key ratio in the 5 arms of the Pentagram (regarded by Pythagoreans as a symbol of Health and invoked in Western occultism and Satanism) and in the Pentagon. The Pentagon in turn is intrinsic to the Dodecahedron (a Platonic solid having 12 Pentagonal faces) and the Icosahedron, both solid bodies having mystical and Cabbalistic properties that inspired Kepler in his solution of the elliptical orbit of the Earth around the Sun.
The Golden Rectangle was beloved of the Greeks (inspiring the Parthenon, for example) and was known to the Ancient Egyptians (e.g. the ratio of the altitude of a face of the Great Pyramid to half the side of the base is Phi). The Golden Ratio was widely employed by Renaissance and subsequent artists to the present (some of the numerous exponents including Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Goya, Delacroix and Modigliani). The Spiral implicit in the Fibonacci Series occurs in Nature (e.g. in patterns of seeds and petals) because it enables ordered expansion, but the Nautilus shell spiral is not actually a Golden Section Spiral .
Fibonacci described a “population explosion” arising from putting 2 newborn baby rabbits together and assuming a sexual maturation period of 1 month, a gestation period of 1 month and twin births – the number of pairs of mature rabbits in successive months is the Fibonacci Series of 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 ect.
You can derive a Pentagon and the implicit Golden Ratio and Golden Rectangle very simply using a Ruler and a Compass . However I would like to describe another way of generating a Golden Rectangle that will provide you with a GREAT SURPRISE and will work if all you have is a stick to draw patterns in sand (it will be more precise if you have a pencil, graph paper, a compass and a ruler):
(1) draw a square and insert an exactly fitting circle #1; (2) draw another identical square below it and an exactly fitting circle #2, with the 2 squares sharing a side; (3) draw in the diagonals of each square; you can see that you have a rectangle with 1 side 2 times the length of the other; (4) now imagine, in Portrait mode, sliding the 2 squares into each other – ultimately the 2 squares and circles exactly superimpose and you have the original pattern found in step (1); (5) now try sliding the 2 squares together so that the circles don’t go as far as in (4) and just touch the diagonals of the opposite squares - a FISH symbol (a type of “Vesica Pisces”) will appear due to the intersection of the 2 circles; and NOW (6) (the CRUCIAL STEP), try sliding the bottom square just a TINY bit higher so that its circle just crosses the diagonals of the opposite square (and vice versa) and suddenly you will see two 4-petalled FLOWERS appear on either side of the middle of the resultant rectangle. When the flower pattern is fully formed and SYMMETRICAL the Rectangle you have will be a Golden Rectangle and the furthest extension of each Square will exactly correspond to the Golden Section (Golden Ratio, Golden Mean, the Divine Proportion).
The Golden Rectangle and attendant exactly fitting Circle construction described above is best illustrated by The Virgin of the Rocks (aka Madonna of the Rocks) by Leonardo da Vinci (versions of this painting are held in the National Gallery, London and the Louvre, Paris, respectively). These paintings have roughly the correct dimensions, one of the exactly fitting circles is explicit, the Golden Section Spiral is evident and the Virgin Mary’s hand indicates the position of the Golden Section
The FISH is a type of Vesica Pisces and an Early Christian symbol of both Jesus Christ the Savior and the Saved. However if you rotate your Golden Rectangle so that is now in Landscape Mode the FISH now becomes an extremely profane (i.e. non-sacred) image, specifically of the external organ of generation in the female i.e. the vulva - as well as the sacred Gothic arch of Christian churches. Christianity did not arise in a cultural vacuum and was influenced by the sacred-profane dichotomies of the polytheistic pre-Christian Greek, Roman and Egyptian religions that permitted Gods having human desires and proclivities. Indeed the pure monotheism of the Jews can be seen to have been compromised by Early Christian accommodation to the dominant polytheism within the Roman Empire. Thus while Judaism and Islam retained uncompromising monotheism, Christianity is peculiar among the Abrahamic religions in having intrinsically polytheistic elements, namely the Holy Trinity and the Blessed Virgin.
The 4-leafed or 4-petalled FLOWER image (the Golden Flowers) that so suddenly pops out of the Golden Rectangle geometry is not only surprising and beautiful - it is also indicative of the mathematically- and aesthetically-precise positioning for the Divine Proportion and of a sacred-profane dichotomy in the Christian tradition. Four is fundamentally “good” in its symbolism - 4 elements of earth, air, fire and water; 4 humours; 4 Christian Gospels (now we have the recently discovered fifth Gospel according to Judas); Father, Son, Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary (Grace); Faith, Hope, Charity and Happiness; and, of course, the Sign of the Cross and Salvation. Accordingly, the Irish Shamrock (the 4-leafed clover variant of the normally 3-leafed Trifolium repens) is considered “lucky” because of its rarity and these lucky “4” associations.
More specifically, a European plant Paris quadrifolia (Truelove) has the narrow, “crossed bows” appearance of the Golden Flowers of the Golden Rectangle. Truelove is “holy” in the sense of the Holy Trinity plus the Virgin Mary but is also profane in the sense of being associated with “luck in love” and as an aphrodisiac (dangerous since Truelove is very poisonous). Indeed in the raunchy “Miller’s Tale” of Chaucer’s Medieval “Canterbury Tales” , the love-struck clerk Absolon advances his “noble, knightly love” to the carpenter John’s adulterous wife Alisoun (naughty with student Nicholas) with love-promoting Truelove under his tongue (“Under his tonge a trewe-love he beer”). Perhaps the 4-leafed aquatic fern Marsilia quadrifolia (water clover) had related significance for the Ancient Egyptians.
The REAL Da Vinci Code reveals a profound sacred-profane dichotomy in Christian culture that is scrupulously ignored by lying, racist Mainstream media currently hell-bent on dishonestly “selling” a War for Oil (or War for Global Hegemony) as fundamentally arising from differences between Abrahamic religions (rather than from military-industrial complex and corporate greed and pathological narcissism). The Mainstream culture that scrupulously ignores the all too human, profane constructions of the Da Vinci Code also ignores the horrendous human cost of what is in reality a War on Women and Children.