It’s true I’ve been reading Holy Blood, Holy Grail, cited in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code by character Leigh Teabing (a lifelong student of Grail legends) as a book whose authors “made some dubious leaps of faith in their analysis, but their fundamental premise is sound, and to their credit, they finally brought the idea of Christ’s bloodline into the mainstream” (254).
It’s interesting. Fascinating even. But it’s been bugging me for several reasons. First of all, Leigh Teabing insists in The Da Vinci Code that Grail scholars have either a) come to believe the Grail represents a woman or b) ignore this fact because it shakes the foundations of history and faith. What? Listen, I consider myself a fairly well-versed Arthurian scholar, and I never heard that. That was the first thing that made me pause. If anything, I think it’s more accurate to say that Christianity was grafted on to Grail legends, because similar objects appear in ancient Celtic stories collected in such works as The Mabinogion. After all I’ve read, all of sudden here’s something I’ve never heard? Well, of course, I am not an expert, so I determined to read Holy Blood, Holy Grail to find out what this theory is all about.
The second thing that bothered me about the book was the list of eminent men involved in the Priory of Sion. How oddly coincidental would it be if all those great names, however interested in esoterica some of them might have been, had all been members of a secret society that managed to stay hidden until uncovered by researchers in the 20th century?
Continue reading “Et In Arcadia Ego”