Angels and Demons by Dan Brown.
Title: Angels and Demons
Author: Dan Brown.
Genre: Fiction, crime, mystery, thriller, conspiracy, mythology, history, religion.
Country: U.S.
Language: English
Publication Date: 2000.
Summary: World-renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to a Swiss research facility to analyze a cryptic symbol seared into the chest of a murdered physicist. What he discovers is unimaginable: a deadly vendetta against the Catholic Church by a centuries-old underground organization-the Illuminati. Desperate to save the Vatican from a powerful time bomb, Langdon joins forces in Rome with the beautiful and mysterious scientist and Vittoria Vetra. Together they embark on a frantic hunt through sealed crypts, dangerous catacombs, deserted cathedrals, and the most secretive vault on earth... the long-forgotten Illuminati lair.
My rating: 5.5/10.
My review:
♥ God's people, he thought. Two thousand years of waiting for their Messiah, and they're still persistent as hell.
♥ "The most dangerous enemy is that which no one fears."
♥ His ancestors had formed a small but deadly army to defend themselves. The army became famous across the land as protectors-skilled executioners who wandered the countryside slaughtering any of the enemy they could find. They were renowned not only for their brutal killings, but also for celebrating their slayings by plunging themselves into drug-induced stupors. Their drug of choice was a potent intoxicant they called hashish.
As their notoriety spread, these lethal men became known by a single word-Hassassin-literally "the followers of hashish." The name Hassassin became synonymous with death in almost every language on earth. The word was still used today, even in modern English... but like the craft of killing, the word had evolved.
It was now pronounced assassin.
♥ ARS ELECTRONICA AWARD
For Cultural Innovation in the Digital Age
Awarded to Tim Berners Lee and CERN
for the invention of the
WORLDWIDE WEB
.."The Web," Kohler said, coughing again and wiping his mouth, "began here as a network of inhouse computer sites. It enabled scientists from different departments to share daily findings with one another. Of course, the entire world is under the impression the Web is U.S. technology."
.."Why not set the record straight?"
.."A petty misconception over a petty technology. CERN is far greater than a global connection of computers. Our scientists produce miracles almost daily."
♥ "Mr. Landgdon, all questions were once spiritual. Since the beginning of time, spirituality and religion have been called on to fill in the gaps that science did not understand. The rising and setting of the sun was once attributed to Helios and a flaming chariot. Earthquakes and tidal waves were the wrath of Poseidon. Science has now proven those gods to be false idols. Soon all Gods will be proven to be false idols. Science has not provided answers to almost every question man can ask. There are only a few questions left, and they are the esoteric ones. Where do we come from? What are we doing here? What is the meaning of life and the universe?"
Langdon was amazed. "And these are questions CERN is trying to answer?"
"Correction. These are questions we are answering."
♥ His stomach had never been particularly stalwart. It was a weakness he'd discovered as an art student when the teacher informed the class that Leonardo da Vinci had gained his expertise in the human form by exhuming corpses and dissecting their musculature.
♥ "Since the beginning of history," Langdon explained, "a deep rift has existed between science and religion. Outspoken scientists like Copernicus-"
"Were murdered," Kohler interjected. "Murdered by the church for revealing scientific truths. Religion has always persecuted science."
"Yes. But in the 1500s, a group of men in Rome fought back against the church. Some of Italy's most enlightened men-physicists, mathematicians, astronomers-began meeting secretly to share their concerns about the church's inaccurate teachings. They feared that the church's monopoly on 'truth' threatened academic enlightenment around the world. They founded the world's first scientific think tank, calling themselves 'the enlightened ones.'"
"The Illuminati."
"Yes. ..Europe's most learned minds... dedicated to the quest for scientific truth. ..Of course, the Illuminati were hunted ruthlessly by the Catholic Church. Only through rites of extreme secrecy did the scientists remain safe. Word spread through the academic underground, and the Illuminati brotherhood grew to include academics from all over Europe. The scientists met regularly in Rome at an ultrasecret lair they called the Church of Illumination. ..Many of the Illuminati wanted to combat the church's tyranny with acts of violence, but their most revered member persuaded them against it. He was a pacifist, as well as one of history's most famous scientists. ..His name was Galileo Gelilei.
"..Yes. Galileo was an Illuminatus. And he was also a devout Catholic. He tried to soften the church's position on science by proclaiming that science did not undermine the existence of God, but rather reinforced it. He wrote once that when he looked through his telescope at the spinning planets, he could hear God's voice in the music of the spheres. He held that science and religion were not enemies, but rather allies-two different languages telling the same story, a story of symmetry and balance... heaven and hell, night and day, hot and cold, God and Satan. Both science and religion rejoiced in God's symmetry... the endless contest of light and dark. ..Unfortunately, the unification of science and religion was not what the church wanted.
"..Galileo's arrest threw the Illuminati into upheaval. Mistakes were made, and the church discovered the identities of four members, whom they captured and interrogated. But the four scientists revealed nothing... even under torture. ..They were branded alive. On the chest. With the symbol of the cross. ..Then the scientists were brutally murdered, their dead bodies dropped in the streets of Rome as a warning to others thinking of joining the Illuminati. With the church closing in, the remaining Illuminati fled Italy. ..The Illuminati went deep underground, where they began mixing with other refugee groups fleeing the Catholic purges-mystics, alchemists, occultists, Muslims, Jews. Over the years, the Illuminati began absorbing new members. A new Illuminati emerged. A darker Illuminati. A deeply anti-Christian Illuminati. They grew very powerful, employing mysterious rites, deadly secrecy, vowing someday to rise again and take revenge on the Catholic Church. Their power grew to the point where the church considered them the single most dangerous anti-Christian force on earth. The Vatican denounced the brotherhood as Shaitan. ..It's Islamic. It means 'adversary'... God's adversary. The church chose Islam for the name because it was a language they considered dirty. ..Shaitan is the root of an English word... Satan. ..Mr. Kohler, I do not know how this marking appeared on this man's chest... or why... but you are looking at the long-lost symbol of the world's oldest and most powerful satanic cult. ..The Illuminati were satanic. But not in the modern sense."
Langdon quickly explained how most people pictured satanic cults as devil-worshiping fiends, and yet Satanists historically were educated men who stood as adversaries to the church. Shaitan. The rumors of satanic black-magic animal sacrifices and the pentagram ritual were nothing but lies spread by the church as a smear campaign against their adversaries. Over time, opponents of the church, wanting to emulate the Illuminati, began believing the lies and acting them out. Thus, modern Satanism was born.
.."The Illuminati were survivors," he explained. "When they fled Rome, they traveled across Europe looking for a safe place to regroup. They were taken in by another secret society... a brotherhood of wealthy Bavarian stone craftsmen called the Freemasons. ..The Masons fells victim to their own benevolence. After harboring the fleeing scientists in the 1700s, the Masons unknowingly became a front of the Illuminati. The Illuminati grew within their ranks, gradually taking over positions of power within the lodges. They quietly reestablished their scientific brotherhood deep within the Masons-a kind of secret society within a secret society. Then the Illuminati used the worldwide connection of Masonic lodges to spread their influence..
.."Obliteration of Catholicism was the Illuminati's central covenant. The brotherhood held that the superstitious dogma spewed forth by the church was mankind's greatest enemy. They feared that if religion continued to promote pious myth as absolute fact, scientific progress would halt, and mankind would be doomed to an ignorant future of senseless holy wars. ..The Illuminati grew more powerful in Europe and set their sights on America, a fledgling government many of whose leaders were Masons-George Washington, Ben Franklin-honest, God-fearing men who were unaware of the Illuminati stronghold on the Masons. The Illuminati took advantage of the infiltration and helped found banks, universities, and industry to finance their ultimate quest." Langdon paused. " The creation of a single unified world state-a kind of secular New World Order..
.."A New World Order," Langdon repeated, "based on scientific enlightenment. They called it their Luciferian Doctrine. The church claimed Lucifer was a reference to the devil, but the brotherhood insisted Lucifer was intended in its literal Latin meaning-bringer of light. Or Illuminator. There has been no evidence of their existence for over half a century, and most scholars agree the Illuminati have been defunct for many years."
♥ One of the bookends was etched with a quote:
TRUE SCIENCE DISCOVERS GOD
WAITING BEHIND EVERY DOOR.
-POPE PIUS XII
"Leonardo was a Catholic priest," Kohler said.
Langdon turned. "A priest? I thought you said he was a physicist."
"He was both. Men of science and religion are not unprecedented in history. Leonardo was one of them. He considered physics 'God's natural law.' He claimed God's handwriting was visible in the natural order all around us. Through science he hoped to prove God's existence to the doubting masses. He considered himself a theo-physicist."
♥ "This accelerator is a circle. It appears straight, but that is an optical illusion. The circumference of this tunnel is so large that the curve is imperceptible-like that of the earth. ..The LHC is the largest machine in the world. ..It is over eight kilometers in diameter... and twenty-seven kilometers long. ..Bored in a perfect circle. It extends all the ways into France before curving back here to this spot. Fully accelerated particles will circle the tube more than ten thousand times in a single second before they collide."
.."You're telling me that CERN dug out millions of tons of earth just to smash tiny particles?"
.."Sometimes to find truth, one must move mountains."
♥ "The laws of physics are the canvas God laid down on which to paint his masterpiece."
♥ Even as a child, Victoria had disliked the man. Although she eventually came to respect his potent intellect, his city demeanor always seemed inhuman, the exact antithesis of her father's warmth. Kohler pursued science for its immaculate logic... her father for its spiritual wonder. And yet oddly there had always seemed to be an unspoken respect between the two men. Genius, someone had once explained to her, accepts genius unconditionally.
♥ "When the Catholic Church first proposed the Big Bang Theory in 1927, the-"
"I'm sorry?" Langdon interrupted, before he could stop himself. "You say the Big Bang was a Catholic idea?"
Vittoria looked surprised by his question. "Of course. Proposed by a Catholic monk, Georges Lemaître, in 1927."
"But, I thought..." he hesitated. "Wasn't the Big Bang proposed by Harvard astronomer Edwin Hubble?"
Kohler glowered. "Again, American scientific arrogance. Hubble published in 1929, two years after Lemaître."
.."Mr. Kohler is right," Vittoria said, "the idea belonged to Lemaître. Hubble only confirmed it by gathering the hard evidence that proved the Big Bang was scientifically probable. ..When Lemaître first proposed the Big Bang Theory," Vittoria continued, "scientists claimed it was utterly ridiculous. Matter, science said, could not be created out of nothing. So, when Hubble shocked the world by scientifically proving the Big Bang was accurate, the church claimed victory, heralding this as proof that the Bible was scientifically accurate. The divine truth. ..Of course scientists did not appreciate having their discoveries used by the church to promote religion, so they immediately mathematicized the Big Bang Theory, removed all religious overtones, and claimed it as their own. Unfortunately for science, however, their equations, even today, have one serious deficiency that the church like to point out. ..Yes, the singularity," Vittoria said. "The exact moment of creation. Time zero.
"..My father created a universe... from nothing at all. ..Better said, he recreated the Big Bang. ..It was done on a much smaller scale, of course. ..The process was remarkably simple. He accelerated two ultrathin participle beams in opposite directions around the accelerator tube. The two beams collided head-on at enormous speeds, driving into one another and compressing all their energy into a single pinpoint. He achieved extreme energy densities. ..The result was nothing short of wondrous. ..Without warning, inside the accelerator tube, at this point of highly focused energy, particles of matter began appearing out of nowhere. ..Matter. ..Blossoming out of nothing. An incredible display of subatomic fireworks. A miniature universe springing to life. He proved not only that matter can be created from nothing, but that the Big Bang and Genesis can be explained simply by accepting the presence of an enormous source of energy. ..God, Buddha, The Force, Yahweh, the singularity, the unicity point-call it what you like-the result is the same. Science and religion support the same truth-pure energy is the father of creation.
.."The universe containts two kinds of matter. Scientific fact." Vittoria turned to Langdon. "Mr. Langdon, what does the Bible say about the Creation? What did God create?"
.."Um, God created... light and dark, heaven and hell-"
"Exactly," Vittoria said. "He created everything in opposites. Symmetry. Perfect balance. ..Director, science claims the same thing as religion, that the Big Bang created everything in the universe with an opposite."
"Including matter itself."
♥ "Antimatter has some astonishing characteristics, Mr. Langdon, which make it quite dangerous. A ten milligram sample-the volume of a grain of sand-is hypothesized to hold as much energy as about two hundred metric tons of conventional rocket fuel. ..A thousand times more powerful than nuclear energy.."
..Vittoria pressed the button.
Instantly, Langdon was blinded. A brilliant point of light shone in the canister and then exploded outward in a shock wave of light that radiated in all directions, erupting against the window before him with thunderous force. He stumbled back as the detonation rocked the vault. The light burned bright for a moment, searing, and then, after an instant, it rushed back inward, absorbing in on itself, and collapsing into a tiny speck that disappeared to nothing. Langdon blinked in pain, slowly recovering his eyesight. He squinted into the smoldering chamber. The canister on the floor had entirely disappeared. Vaporized. Not a trace.
He stared in wonder. "G... God."
Vittoria nodded sadly. "That's precisely what my father said."
♥ Vittoria knew there was logic somewhere in Kohler's argument, but she also knew that logic, by definition, was bereft of moral responsibility. ..Vittoria was amazed at Kohler's ability to weigh moral issues with scientific detachment. His intellect seemed to be the product of an icy divorce from his inner spirit.
♥ Do I believe in God? "I want to believe," he heard himself say. .."Having faith requires leaps of faith, cerebral acceptance of miracles-immaculate conceptions and divine interventions. And then there are the codes of conduct. The Bible, the Koran, Buddhist scripture... they all carry similar requirements-and similar penalties. They claim that if I don't live by a specific code I will go to hell. I can't imagine a God who would rule that way."
.."Mr. Langdon, I did not ask if you believe what man says about God. I asked if you believed in God. There is a difference. Holy scripture is stories... legends and history of man's quest to understand his own need for meaning. I am not asking you to pass judgement on literature. I am asking if you believe in God. When you lie out under the stars, do you sense the divine? Do you feel in your gut that you are staring up at the work of God's hand?"
♥ "Religion is like language or dress. We gravitate towards the practices with which we were raised. In the end though, we are all proclaiming the same thing. That life has meaning. That we are grateful for the power than created us."
.."So you're saying that whether you are a Christian or a Muslim simply depends on where you were born?"
"Isn't it obvious? Look at the diffusion of religion around the globe."
"So faith is random?"
"Hardly. Faith is universal. Our specific methods for understanding it are arbitrary. Some of us pray to Jesus, some of us go to Mecca, some of us study subatomic particles. In the end we are all just searching for truth, that which is greater than ourselves."
.."And God?" he asked. "Do you believe in God?"
Vittoria was silent for a long time. "Science tells me God must exist. My mind tells me I will never understand God. And my heart tells me I am not meant to."
♥ "Money as in currency. ..I became fascinated with the [Illuminati] when I first learned that U.S. currency is covered with Illuminati's symbology. ..Look at the back. See the Great Seal on the left? ..The pyramid. Do you know what pyramids have to do with U.S. history? ..Exactly. ..Absolutely nothing. ..The pyramid is an occult symbol representing a convergence upward, toward the ultimate source of Illumination. See what's above it? ..It's called the trinacria. ..It's emblazoned on Masonic lodges around the world. ..[The symbol]'s Illuminati. They called it their 'shining delta.' A call for enlightened change. The eye signifies the Illuminati's ability to infiltrate and watch all things. The shining triangle represents enlightenment. And the triangle is also the Greek letter delta, which is the mathematical symbol for-"
"Change. Transition. ..So you're saying the U.S. Great Seal is a call for enlightened, all-seeing change?"
"Some would call it a New World Order. ..Novus Ordo Seclorum. ..It means New Secular Order. ..Nonreligious. The phrase not only clearly states the Illuminati objective, but it also blatantly contradicts the phrase beside it. In God We Trust."
.."But how could all this symbology end up on the most powerful currency in the world?"
"Most academics believe it was through Vice President Henry Wallace. He was an upper echelon Mason and certainly had ties to the Illuminati. Whether it was as a member or innocently under their influence, nobody knows. But it was Wallace who sold the design of the Great Seal to the president. ..The president was Franklin D. Roosevelt. Wallace simply told him Novus Ordo Seclorum meant New Deal."
Vittoria seemed skeptical. "And Roosevelt didn't have anyone else look at the symbol before telling the Treasury to print it?"
"No need. He and Wallace were like brothers. ..Check your history books. ..Franklin D. Roosevelt was a well-known Mason."
♥ The pilot looked like he was festooned for a Shakespearean melodrama. His puffy tunic was vertically striped in brilliant blue and gold. He wore matching pantaloons and spats. On his feet were black flats that looked like slippers. On top of it all, he wore a black felt beret.
"Traditions Swiss Guard uniforms," Langdon explained. "Designed by Michelangelo himself. ..I admit, not one of Michelangelo's better efforts."
..Landgon had read many times about the rigorous requirements for becoming one of the elite Swiss Guard. Recruited from one of Switzerland's four Catholic cantons, applicants had to be Swiss males between nineteen and thirty years old, at least 5 feet 6 inches, trained by the Swiss Army, and unmarried. This imperial corps was envied by world governments as the most allegiant and deadly security force in the world.
♥ Langdon had never seen St. Peter's from the air. The marble façade blazed like fire in the afternoon sun. Adorned with 140 statues of saints, martyrs, and angels, the Herculean edifice stretched two football fields wide and a staggering six long. The cavernous interior of the basilica had room for over 60,000 worshipers... over one hundred times the population of Vatican City, the smallest country in the world.
Incredibly, though, not even a citadel of this magnitude could dwarf the piazza before it. A sprawling expanse of granite, St. Peter's Square was a staggering open space in the congestion of Rome, like a classical Central Park. In front of the basilica, bordering the vast oval common, 284 columns swept outward in four concentric arcs of diminishing size... an architectural trompe l'oeil used to heighten the piazza's sense of grandeur.
♥ The light in the chapel was usually sublime-long rays of tinted sin slicing through the darkness like rays from heaven-but not today. As was the custom, all of the chapel's windows had been covered in black velvet in the name of secrecy. This ensured that no one on the inside could send signals or communicate in any way with the outside world. The result was a profound darkness lit only by candles... a shimmering radiance that seemed to purify everyone it touched, making them all ghostly... like saints.
..Cardinals over eighty years of age were too old to be eligible for election and did not attend conclave.. Following tradition, the cardinals gathered here two hours before conclave to catch up with friends and engage in last-minute discussion. At 7 P.M., the late Pope's chamberlain would arrive, give opening prayer, and then leave. Then the Swiss Guard would seal the doors and lock all the cardinals inside. It was then that the oldest and most secretive political ritual in the world would begin. The cardinals would not be released until they decided who among them would be the next Pope.
Conclave. Even the name was secretive. "Con clave" literally meant "locked with a key." ..Conclave was a vacuum, not to be influenced by anything in the outside world. This would ensure that the cardinals kept Solum Dum prae oculis... only God before their eyes.
..Although technically any cardinal under eighty years old could become Pope, only a very few had the respect necessary to command two-thirds majority in the ferociously partisan balloting procedure. They were known as the preferiti.
..As was the custom, four names had been chosen as preferiti, each of them fulfilling the unspoken requisites for becoming Pope:
Multilingual in Italian, Spanish, and English.
No skeletons in his closet.
Between sixty-five and eighty years old.
..The door to the Sistine Chapel had been sealed, as was the custom, with two heavy chains on the outside. Four Swiss Guards stood watch in the hallway beyond. Mortati knew the only way the doors could be opened now, prior to electing a Pope, was if someone inside fell deathly ill..
..Now, at last, the final cardinal had arrived at the altar and was kneeling before him.
"I call as my witness," the cardinal declared, exactly as those before him, "Christ the Lord, who will be my judge that my vote is given to the one who before God I think should be elected."
The cardinal stood up. He held his ballot high over his head for everyone to see. Then he lowered the ballot to the altar, where a plate sat atop a large chalice. He placed the ballot on the plate. Next he picked up the plate and used it to drop the ballot into the chalice. Use of the plate was to ensure no one secretly dropped multiple ballots.
After he submitted his ballot, he replaced the plate over the chalice, bowed to the cross, and returned to his seat.
..Leaving the plate on top of the chalice, Mortati shook the ballots to mix them. Then he removed the plate and extracted a ballot at random. He unfolded it. The ballot was exactly two inches wide. He read along for everyone to hear.
"Eligo in summum pontificem..." he declared, reading the text that was embossed at the top of the every ballot. I elect as Supreme Pontiff... Then he announced the nominee's name that had been written beneath it. After he read the name, he raised a threaded needle and pierced the ballot through the word Eligo, carefully sliding the ballot onto the thread. Then he made mote of the vote in a logbook.
..When the last of the ballots had been tallied, Mortati declared the vote "failed."
He took the thread carrying all the ballots and tied the ends together to create a ring. Then he laid the ring of ballots on a silver tray. He added the proper chemicals and carried the tray to a small chimney behind him. Here he lit the ballots. As the ballots burned, the chemicals he'd added created black smoke. The smoke flowed up a pipe to a hole in the roof where it rose above the chapel for all to see.
♥ The Great Castration, Langdon thought.
It was one of the most horrific tragedies in Renaissance art. In 1857, Pope Pius IX decided that the accurate representation of the male form might incite lust inside the Vatican. SO he got a chisel and mallet and hacked off the genitalia of every single male statue inside Vatican City. He defaced works by Michelangelo, Bramante, and Bernini. Plaster fig leaves were used to patch the damage. Hundreds of sculptures had been emasculated. Langdon had often wondered if there was a huge crate of stone penises someplace.
♥ Remember! she told herself. Remember the solution to this test!
Remembrance was a Buddhist philosopher's trick. Rather than asking her mind to search for a solution to a potentially impossible challenge, Vittoria asked her mind simply to remember it. The presupposition that one once knew the answer created the mindset that the answer must exist... thus eliminating the crippling conception of hopelessness.
♥ It was no secret that infiltration was the Illuminati trademark of power. They had infiltrated the Masons, major banking networks, government bodies. In fact, Churchill had once told reporters that if English spies had infiltrated the Nazis to the degree the Illuminati had infiltrated English Parliament, the war would have been over in one month.
♥ "La purga," Langdon heard himself say. "Sixteen sixty-eight. The church branded four Illuminati scientists with the symbol of the cross. To purge their sins. ..After the brandings, the scientists were murdered, and their bodies were dropped in public locations around Rome as a warning to other scientists not to join the Illuminati."
♥ "The Vatican is a fortress because the Catholic Church holds half of its equity inside its walls-rare paintings, sculpture, devalued jewels, priceless books... then there is the gold bullion and the real estate deeds inside the Vatican Bank vaults. Inside estimates put the raw value of Vatican City at 48.5 billion dollars.
♥ A Pope usually worked fourteen-hour days, seven days a week, and died of exhaustion in an average of 6.3 years. The inside joke was that accepting the papacy was a cardinal's "fastest route to heaven."
♥ He gazed past the altar up to Michelangelo's renowned fresco, The Last Judgement. The painting did nothing to soothe his anxiety. It was a horrifying, fifty-foot tall depiction of Jesus Christ separating mankind into the righteous and sinners, casting the sinners into hell. There was flayed flesh, burning bodies, and even one of Michelangelo's rivals sitting in hell wearing ass's ears. Guy de Maupassant had once written that the painting looked like something painted for a carnival wrestling booth by an ignorant coal heaver.
♥ "His Holiness once told me that a Pope is a man torn between two worlds... the real world and the divine. He warned that any church that ignored reality would not survive to enjoy the divine."
♥ Faith does not protect you. Medicine and airbags... those are things that protect you. God does not protect you. Intelligence protects you. Enlightenment. Put your faith in something with tangible results. How long has it been since someone walked on water? Modern miracles belong to science... computers, vaccines, space stations... even the divine miracle of creation. Matter from nothing... in a lab. Who needs God? No! Science is God.
♥ The Secret Vatican Archives are located at the far end of the Borgia Courtyard directly up a hill from the Gate of Santa Ana. They contain over 20,000 volumes and are rumored to hold such treasures as Leonardo da Vinci's missing diaries and even unpublished books of the Holy Bible.
..As Langdon's eyes took in the sacred chamber, his first reaction was one of embarrassment. He realized what a callow romantic he was. The images he had held for so many years of this room could not have been more inaccurate. He had imagined dusty bookshelves piled high with tattered volumes, priests cataloging by the light of candles and stained-glass windows, monks poring over scrolls...
Not even close.
At first glance the room appeared to be a darkened airline hangar in which someone had built a dozen free-standing racquetball courts. Langdon knew of course what the glass-walled enclosures were. He was not surprised to see them; humidity and heat eroded ancient vellums and parchments, and proper preservation required hermetic vaults like these-airtight cubicles that kept out humidity and natural acids in the air.
♥ "Galileo's Illuminati needed to protect themselves from the Vatican, so they founded an ultrasecret Illuminati meeting place here in Rome. They called it the Church of Illumination. ..They were scientists who revered enlightenment. Their meeting place was simply where they could congregate and discuss topics forbidden by the Vatican. Although we know the secret lair existed, to this day nobody has ever located it. ..In fact, they never revealed the location of their hideaway to anyone outside the brotherhood. This secrecy concealed them, but it also posed a problem when it came to recruiting new members.
.."Word of Galileo's brotherhood started to spread in the 1630s, and scientists from around the world made secret pilgrimages to Rome hoping to join the Illuminati... eager for a chance to look through Galileo's telescope and hear the master's ideas. Unfortunately, though, because of the Illuminati's secrecy, scientists arriving in Rome never knew where to go for the meetings or to whom they could safely speak. The Illuminati wanted new blood, but they could not afford to risk their secrecy by making their whereabouts known.
"..A catch-22, as we would say. ..They were scientists. They examined the problem and found a solution. A brilliant one, actually. The Illuminati created a kind of ingenious map directing scientists to their sanctuary. ..It was not the kind of map that fit on paper. It was enormous. A blazed trail of sorts across the city. ..The map consisted of a series of carefully concealed symbolic markers placed in public locations around the city. One marker led to the next... and the next... a trail... eventually leading to the Illuminati lair. ..The Illuminati called their string of markers 'The Path of Illumination,' and anyone who wanted to join the brotherhood had to follow it all the way to the end. A kind of test. ..The path was hidden. A puzzle, constructed in such a way that only certain people would have the ability to reach the markers and figure out where the Illuminati church was hidden. The Illuminati intended it as a kind of initiation, functioning not only as a security measure but also as a screening process to ensure that only the brightest scientists arrived at their door.
"....The Illuminati designed them in such a way that clerics would never suspect what they were. They used a method known in symbology as dissimulation. ..They created markers that faded into the backdrop of ancient Rome. They couldn't use ambigrams or scientific symbology because it would be far too conspicuous, so they called on an Illuminati artist-the same anonymous prodigy who had created their ambigrammatic symbol 'Illuminati'-and they commissioned him to carve four sculptures. ..Yes, sculptures with two strict guidelines. First, the sculptures had to look like the rest of the artwork in Rome... artwork that the Vatican would never suspect belonged to the Illuminati. ..And the second guideline was that the four sculptures had to have very specific themes. Each piece needed to be a subtle tribute to one of the four elements of science. ..Early alchemists believed the entire universe was made up of only four substances: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water."
The early cross, Langdon knew, was the most common symbol of the four elements-four arms representing Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. Beyond that, though, there existed literally dozens of symbolic occurrences of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water throughout history-the Pythagorean cycles of life, the Chinese Hong-Fan, the Jungian male and female rudiments, the quadrants of the Zodiac, even the Muslims revered the four ancient elements... although in Islam they were known as "squares, clouds, lightning, and waves." For Langdon, though, it was a more modern usage that always gave him chills-the Masons' four mystic grades of Absolute Initiation: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water.
.."The pieces blended into the sea of religious artwork all over Rome. By donating the artwork anonymously to specific churches and then using their political influence, the brotherhood facilitated placement of these four pieces in carefully chosen churches in Rome. Each piece of course was a marker... subtly pointing to the next church... where the next marker awaited. It functioned as a trail of clues disguised as religious art. ..The Illuminati called these four churches by a very special name. The Altars of Science."
♥ As was Vatican tradition, following the Pope's death the camerlengo had personally confirmed expiration by placing his fingers on the Pope's carotid artery, listening for breath, and then calling the Pope's name three times. By law there was n autopsy. Then he had sealed the Pope's bedroom, destroyed the papal firsherman's ring, shattered the die used to make lead seals, and arranged for the funeral. That done, he began preparations for the conclave.
Conclave, he thought. The final hurdle. It was one of the oldest traditions in Christendom. Nowadays, because the outcome of conclave was usually known before it began, the process was criticized as obsolete-more of a burlesque than an election. The camerlengo knew, however, this was only a lack of understanding. Conclave was not an election. It was an ancient, mystic transference of power. The tradition was timeless... the secrecy, the folded slips of paper, the burning of the ballots, the mixing of ancient chemicals, the smoke signals.
♥ "Are you familiar with a book by Galileo called Diálogo? ..In the early 1630s, Galileo had wanted to publish a book endorsing the Copernican heliocentric model of the solar system, but the Vatican would not permit the book's release unless Galileo included equally persuasive evidence for the church's geocentric model-a model Galileo knew to be dead wrong. Galileo had no choice but to acquiesce to the church's demands and publish a book giving equal time to both the accurate and inaccurate models. ..despite Galileo's compromise, Diálogo was still seen as heretical, and the Vatican placed him under house arrest. ..And yet Galileo was persistent. While under house arrest, he secretly wrote a lesser-known manuscript that scholars often confuse with Diálogo. That book is called Discorsi. ..Discorsi had not been Galileo's only work while under house arrest. Historians believed he had also written an obscure booklet called Diagramma. ..Diagramma was Galileo's most secretive work-supposedly some sort of treatise on scientific facts he held to be true but was not allowed to share. Like some of Galileo's previous manuscripts, Diagramma was smuggled out of Rome by a friend and quietly published in Holland. The booklet became wildly popular in the European scientific underground. Then the Vatican caught wind of it and went on a book-burning campaign. ..Diagramma is how Galileo got the word out. ..Archivists have been looking for a copy of Diagramma for years. But between the Vatican burnings and the booklet's low permanence rating, the booklet had disappeared off the face of the earth. ..Diagramma was printed on sedge papyrus. It's like tissue paper. Life span of no more than a century. ..Confiscated from the Netherlands by the Vatican shortly after Galileo's death. I've been petitioning to see it for years."
♥ Langdon let out a low whistle, now realizing why Galileo had his own vault. "The Galileo Affair," he marveled, peering through the glass at the dark outlines of the stacks. "The longest and most expensive legal proceeding in Vatican history. Fourteen years and six hundred million lire. It's all here."
♥ ..incredibly NASA's current model of planetary orbits, observed through high-powered telescopes, was supposedly almost identical to Galileo's original predictions.
♥ "John Milton?" The influential English poet who wrote Paradise Lost was a contemporary of Galileo's and a savant who conspiracy buffs put at the top of their list of Illuminati suspects. Milton's alleged affiliation with Galileo's Illuminati was one legend Langdon suspected was true. Not only had Milton made a well-documented 1638 pilgrimage to Rome to "commune with enlightened men," but he had held meetings with Galileo during the scientist's house arrest, meetings portrayed in many Renaissance paintings, including Annibale Gatti's famous Galileo and Milton, which hung even now the IMSS Museum in Florence.
♥ From Santi's earthly tomb with demon's hole,
'Cross Rome the mystic elements unfold.
The path of light is laid, the sacred test,
Let angels guide you on your lofty quest.
♥ Langdon chuckled to himself. He was amazed how few people knew Santi, the last name of one of the most famous Renaissance artists ever to live. His first name was world renowned... the child prodigy who at the age of twenty-five was already doing commissions for Pope Julius II, and when he died at only thirty-eight, left behind the greatest collection of frescoes the world had ever seen. Santi was a behemoth in the art world..
♥ "Actually, there's probably no more earthly place in Rome than the Pantheon. It got its name from the original religion practiced there-Pantheism-the worship of all gods, specifically the pagan gods of Mother Earth."
As a student of architecture, Langdon had been amazed to learn that the dimensions of the Pantheon's main chamber were a tribute to Gaea-the goddess of the Earth. The proportions were so exact that a giant spherical globe could fit perfectly inside the building with less than a millimeter to spare.
♥ "Breathe through your eyes," she said.
"I'm sorry?"
"It relaxes the muscles. It's called pranayama."
♥ As Langdon moved toward the first recess, he passed the tomb of one of Italy's Catholic kings. The sarcophagus, like many in Rome, was askew with the wall, positioned awkwardly. A group of visitors seemed confused by this. Langdon did nor stop to explain. Formal Christian tombs were often misaligned with the architecture so they could lie facing east. It was an ancient superstition that Langdon's Symbology 212 class had discussed just last month.
"That's totally incongruous!" a female student in the front had blurted when Langdon explained the reason for east-facing tombs. "Why would Christians want their tombs to face the rising sun? Wer're talking about Christianity... not sun worship!"
.."Who is this man kneeling before God?"
"Um... some saint?"
"Brilliant. And how do you know he's a saint?"
"He's got a halo?"
"Excellent, and does that golden halo remind you of anything?"
Hitzrot broke into a smile. "Yeah! Those Egyptian things we studied last term. Those... um... sun disks!"
"..Halos, like much of Christian symbology, were borrowed from the ancient Egyptian religion of sun worship. Christianity is filled with examples of sun worship. ..What do you celebrate on December twenty-fifth?"
"Christmas. The birth of Jesus Christ."
"And yet according to the Bible, Christ was born in March, so what are we doing celebrating in late December? ..December twenty-fifth, my friends, is the ancient pagan holiday of sol invictus-Unconquered Sun-coinciding with the winter solstice. It's that wonderful time of year when the sun returns, and the days start getting longer. ..Conquering religions often adopt existing holidays to make conversion less shocking. It's called transmutation. It helps people acclimatize to the new faith. Worshipers keep the same holy dates, pray in the same sacred locations, use a similar symbology... and they simply substitute a different god. ..Christianity did not borrow only from sun worship. The ritual of Christian canonization is taken from the ancient 'god-making' rite of Euhemerus. The practice of 'god-eating'-that is, Holy Communion-was borrowed from the Aztecs. Even the concept of Christ dying for our sins is arguably not exclusively Christian; the self-sacrifice of a young man to absolve the sins of his people appears in the earliest tradition of the Quetzalcoatl. ..Very little in any organized faith is truly original. Religions are not born from scratch. They grow from one another. Modern religion is a collage... an assimilated historical record of man's quest to understand the divine."
"..So our image of God is original, right?"
.."When the early Christian converts abandoned their former deities-pagan gods, Roman gods, Greek, sun, Mithraic, whatever-they asked the church what their new Christian God looked like. Wisely, the church chose the most feared, powerful... and familiar face in all of recorded history. ..Does Zeus look familiar?"
♥ In an effort to serve her father's quest for simplicity of truth... she had become a conspirator of chaos.
♥ She was overwhelmed by the unexpected images of personal revenge that had dominated her thoughts all day. Even as a sworn lover of all life... she wanted this executioner dead. No amount of good karma could make her turn the other cheek today. Alarmed and electrified, she sensed something coursing through her Italian blood that she had never felt before... the whispers of Sicilian ancestors defending family honor with brutal justice. Vendetta, Vittoria thought, and for the first time in her life understood.
♥ "..buco diàvolo refers to an undercroft. ..a specific kind of crypt. I believe a demon's hole is an ancient term for a massive burial cavity located in a chapel... underneath another tomb.
"An ossuary annex?"
..Ossuary annexes were a cheap ecclesiastic fix to an awkward dilemma. When churches honored their most distinguished members with ornate tombs inside the sanctuary, surviving family members often demanded the family be buried together... thus ensuring they too would have a coveted burial spot inside the church. However, if the church did not have space or funds to create tombs for an entire family, they sometimes dug an ossuary annex-a hole in the floor near the tomb where they buried the less worthy family members. The hole was then covered with the Renaissance equivalent of a manhole cover. Although convenient, the ossuary annex went out of style quickly because of the stench that often waded up into the cathedral. Demon's hole..
♥ "You ever heard of a guy called Winston Churchill? ..BBC did a historical a while back on Churchill's life. Staunch Catholic by the way. Did you know that in the 1920 Churchill published a statement condemning the Illuminati and warning Brits of a worldwide conspiracy against morality? ..London Herald. February 8, 1920. ..He wasn't alone. ..Looks like Woodrow Wilson gave three radio broadcasts in 1921 warning of growing Illuminati control over the U.S. banking system. ..He said, 'There is a power so organized, so subtle, so complete, so pervasive, that none had better speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.' ..BBC, March 5, 1998. Parliament Committee Chair, Chris Mullin, required all members of British Parliament who were Masons to declare their affiliation. ..concern that secret factions within the Masons exerted considerable control over political systems. ..Caused quite a bustle. The Masons in parliament were furious. Had a right to be. The vast majority turned out to be innocent men who joined the Masons for networking any charity work. They had no clue about the brotherhood's past affiliations."
♥ Langdon pointed to the imposing Porta del Popolo-the high stone archway at the far end of the piazza. The vaulted structure had been overlooking the piazza for centuries. Dead center of the archway's highest point was a symbolic engraving.
.."A shining star over a triangular pile of stones?"
Langdon shook his head. "A source of Illumination over a pyramid."
..Overhead, [in Santa Maria del Popolo], the domed cupola shone with a field of illuminated stars and the seven astronomical planets. Below that the twelve signs of the zodiac-pagan, earthly symbols rooted in astronomy. The zodiac was also tied directly to Earth, Air, Fire, Water... the quadrants representing power, intellect, ardor, emotion. Earth is for power, Langdon recalled.
Father down the wall, Langdon saw tributes to the Earth's four temporal seasons-primavera, estate, autunno, invérno. But far more incredible than any of this were the two huge structures dominating the room. ..On either side of the chapel, in perfect symmetry, were two ten-foot-high marble pyramids. ..Dead center of each pyramid, embedded in their interior façades, were gold medallions... medallions like few Langdon had ever seen... perfect ellipses. The burnished disks glimmered in the setting sun as it sifted through the cupola. Galileo's ellipses? Pyramids? A cupola of stars? The room had more Illuminati significance than any room Langdon could have fabricated.
♥ "A marble block embedded in the square. At the base of the monolith. But the block is not a rectangle. It's an ellipse. ..Relief," Langdon said, "is the other half of sculpture!" Sculpture is the art of shaping figures in the round and also in relief. "Bas-relief!"
♥ In the center of [St. Peter's Square] rose Caligula's 350-ton Egyptian obelisk. It stretched eighty-one feet skyward to the pyramidal apex onto which was affixed a hollow iron cross. Sufficiently high to catch the last of the evening sun, the cross shone as if magic... purportedly containing relics of the cross on which Christ was crucified.
Two fountains flanked the obelisk in perfect symmetry. Art historians knew the fountains marked the exact geometric focal points of Bernini's elliptical piazza, but it was an architectural oddity Langdon had never really considered until today. It seemed Rome was suddenly filled with ellipses, pyramids, and startling geometry.
♥ Langdon read the title. ATTIVI VATICANI. Vatican assets? He scanned the list of contents. Real estate... currency... Vatican Bank... antiquities... The list went on.
"Paperwork of all Vatican assets," the guard said. .."My commander said that whatever Bernini created under Vatican patronage would be listed here as an asset."
Langdon nodded, realizing the commander's instincts just might pay off. In Bernini's day, everything an artist created while under the patronage of the Pope became, by law, property of the Vatican. It was mote like feudalism than patronage, but top artists lived well and seldom complained. "Including works placed in churches outside Vatican City?"
The soldier gave him an odd look. "Of course. All Catholic churches in Rome are property of the Vatican."
♥ It was the famous sunken sanctuary beneath the main altar-the sumptuous underground chamber that held the Vatican's most sacred relics. As they drew even with the gate surrounding the hollow, Vittoria gazed down at the golden coffer surrounded by scores of glowing oil lamps.
"St. Peter's bones?" she asked, knowing full well that they were. Everyone who came to St. Peter's knew what was in the golden casket.
"Actually, no," the camerlengo said. "A common misconception. That's not a reliquary. The box holds palliums-woven sashes that the Pope gives to newly elected cardinals. ..The guidebooks label this as St. Peter's tomb, but his true grave is two stories beneath us, buried in the earth. The Vatican excavated it in the forties. Nobody is allowed down there."
.."Shouldn't the Vatican tell people?"
"We all benefit from a sense of contact with divinity... even if it is only imagined."
♥ Langdon fanned through the pages... over eight hundred in all. Bernini had been a busy man.
As a young student of art, Langdon had wondered how single artists could create so much work in their lifetimes. Later he learned, much to his disappointment, that famous artists actually created very little of their own work. They ran studios where they trained young artists to carry out their designs. Sculptors like Bernini created miniatures in clay and hired others to enlarge them into marble. Langdon knew that if Bernini had been required to personally complete all of his commissions, he would still be working today.
♥ And it was not as if Popes had never been murdered. Countless rumors of treachery abounded, although with no autopsy, none was ever confirmed. Until recently. Academics not long ago had gotten permission to X-ray the tomb of Pope Celestine V, who had allegedly died at the hands of his overeager successor, Boniface VIII. The researchers had hoped the X-ray might reveal some small hint of foul play-a broken bone perhaps. Incredibly, the X-ray had revealed a ten-inch nail driven into the Pope's skull.
♥ They were nearing the Niche of the Palliums-the sunken area in the center of the basilica. It was lit by ninety-nine oil lamps.. ..There were exactly ninety-nine lamps burning at all times. It was tradition. The clergy vigilantly refilled the lamps with sacred oils such that no lamp every burned out. It was said they would burn until the end of time.
.."These lamps are close to the papal alter, so they take a special, ambiental mixture-ethanol, sugar, butane, and perfume. ..Don't spill any. Smells like heaven, but burns like hell."
♥ "We are spinning out of control. The rift between us grows deeper and deeper, and as religion is left behind, people find themselves in a spiritual void. We cry out for meaning. And believe me, we do cry out. We see UFOs, engage in channeling, spirit contact, out-of-body experiences, mindquests-all these eccentric ideas have a scientific veneer, but they are unashamedly irrational. They are the desperate cry of the modern soul, lonely and tormented, crippled by its own enlightenment and its inability to accept meaning in anything removed from technology. ..Who is this God science? Who is the God who offers his people power but no moral framework to tell you how to use that power? What kind of God gives a child fire but does not warn the child of its dangers? The language of science comes with no signposts about good and bad. Science textbooks tell us how to create a nuclear reaction, and yet they contain no chapter asking us if it is a good or a bad idea.
"To science, I say this. The church is tired. We are exhausted from trying to be your signposts. Our resources are drying up from our campaign to be the voice of balance as you plow blindly on in your quest for smaller chips and larger profits. We ask not why you will not govern yourselves, but how can you? Your world moves so fast that if you stop even for an instant to consider the implications of your actions, someone more efficient will whip past you in a blur. So you move on. You proliferate weapons of mass destruction, but it is the Pope who travels the world beseeching leaders to use restraints. You encourage people to interact on phones, video screens, and computers, but it is the church who opens its doors and reminds us to commune in person as we were meant to do. ..Whether or not you believe in God," the camerlengo said, his voice deepening with deliberation, "you must believe this. When we as a species abandon our trust in the power greater than us, we abandon our sense of accountability. Faith... all faiths... are admonitions that there is something we cannot understand, something to which we are accountable... With faith we are accountable to each other, to ourselves, and to a higher truth. Religion is flawed, but only because man is flawed. If the outside world could see this church as I do... looking beyond the ritual of these walls... they would see a modern miracle... a brotherhood of imperfect, simply souls wanting only to be a voice of compassion in a world spinning out of control."
♥ Langdon probed the blackness for any other sign of light, but the casket rim was flush against the floor. Goddamn Italian perfectionists, he cursed, now imperiled by the same artistic excellence he taught his students to revere... impeccable edges, faultless parallels, and of course, use only of the most seamless and resilient Carrara marble.
Precision can be suffocating.
.."Sarcophagus," he stated aloud, with as much academic sterility as he could muster. But even erudition seemed to be his enemy today. Sarcophagus is from the Greek "sarx" meaning "flesh," and "phagein" meaning "to eat." I'm trapped in a box literally designed to "eat flesh."
♥ The American was brave, that he had proven. But he was also untrained. That he had also proven. Valor without expertise was suicide. There were rules of survival. Ancient rules. And the American was breaking all of them.
You had the advantage-the element of surprise. You squandered it. ..This is not one of your Hollywood movies... there will be no long discussions at gunpoint before the final shoot-out. This is the end. Now.
♥ Il preferito. The man who would be Pope. Lying dead before him.
Somehow, even now, prostrate in the shadows on the semisubmerged ledge, Cardinal Baggia retained an air of quiet dignity. The water lapped softly across his chest, seeming almost remorseful... as if asking forgiveness for being the man's ultimate killer... as if trying to cleanse the scalded wound that bore its name.
♥ The lone dove is the pagan symbol for the Angel for Peace.
♥ The entire city seemed to fade away as he looked out at the monstrous stone structure across the river in front of him. The building was as famous as any in Rome. It stood on the banks of the Tiber River diagonally adjacent to the Vatican. The building's geometry was stark-a circular castle, within a square fortress, and then, outside its walls, surrounding the entire structure, a park in the shape of a pentagram.
The ancient stone ramparts before him were dramatically lit by soft floodlights. High stop the castle stood the mammoth bronze angel. The angle pointed his sword downward at the exact center of the castle. And as if that were not enough, leading solely and directly to the castle's main entrance stood the famous Bridge of Angels... a dramatic approachway adorned by twelve towering angels carved by non other than Bernini himself. ..Castel Sant' Angelo. Castle of the Angel.
..Langdon knew through the centuries the building had been used by the Vatican as a tomb, as fortress, a papal hideout, a prison for enemies of the church, and a museum. ..Although the castle was property of the Vatican, it was used only sporadically, and Bernini had made numerous renovations to it over the years. The building was now rumored to be honeycombed with secret entries, passageways, and hidden chambers. Langdon had little doubt that the angel and surrounding pentagonal park were Bernini's doing as well. ..Langdon had read about this castle's traforo, a giant spiral ramp that circled up inside the fort, used by commanders on horseback to ride from top to the bottom rapidly.
♥ Il Passetto-The Little Passage-was a slender, three-quarter-mile tunnel built between Castle St. Angelo and the Vatican. It had been used by various Popes to escape to safety during sieges of the Vatican... as well as by a few less pious Popes to secretly visit mistresses or oversee the torture of their enemies. Nowadays both ends of the tunnel were supposedly sealed with impenetrable locks whose keys were kept on some Vatican vault.
♥ "Houdini knew yoga."
♥ In architect-speak, this rare kind of door was called a senza chiave-a one-way portal, used for security, and only operable from one side..
♥ Langdon stared at the brand on the screens. Although it was the imprint of the square brand he had held earlier, the symbol now made sense. Perfect sense. The marking's awesome power hit Langdon like a train.
Orientation. Langdon had forgotten the first rule of symbology. When is a square not a square? He had also forgotten that iron brands, just like rubber stamps, never looked like their imprints. They were in reverse. Langdon had been looking at the brand's negative!
As the chaos grew, an old Illuminati quote echoed with new meaning: "A flawless diamond, born of the ancient elements with such perfection that all those who saw it could only stare in wonder."
...Earth, Air, Fire, Water.
The Illuminati Diamond.
♥ Langdon understood; had read enough about Vatican architecture to know what lay beneath that grate. It was the most sacred place in all of Christendom. Terra Santa. Holy Ground. Some called it the Necropolis. Some called it the Catacombs. According to accounts from the select few clergy who had descended over the years, the Necropolis was a dark maze of subterranean crypts that could swallow a visitor whole if he lost his way.
..Necropolis literally means City of the Dead.
..The colossal subterranean hollow was filled with crumbling mausoleums, like small houses on the floor of a cave. The air smelled lifeless. An awkward frid of narrow walkways wound between the decaying memorials, most of which were fractured brick with marble platings. Like columns of dust, countless pillars of unexcavated earth rose up, supporting a dirt sky, which hung low over the penumbral hamlet.
..Langdon had heard Vatican scholars claim that St. Peter's tomb was near the top of Vatican Hill, and he had always wondered how they knew. Now he understood. The damn hill is still here!
Langdon felt like he was running through the pages of history. Somewhere ahead was St. Peter's tomb-the Christian relic. It was hard to imagine that the original grave had been marked only with a modest shrine. Not anymore. As Peter's eminence spread, new shrines were built on top of the old, and now, the homage stretched 440 feet overhead to the top of Michelangelo's dome, the apex positioned directly over the original tomb within a fraction of an inch.
♥ "Upon this rock I will build my church. That was the message. The meaning is clear."
Langdon was still unable to comprehend the camerlengo's conviction that he had spoken to God, much less that he had deciphered the message. Upon this rock I will build my church? They were the words spoken by Jesus when he chose Peter as his first apostle. ..A rock? The cornerstone in the foundation? The stairway before them didn't lead to the foundation, it led to the Necropolis! "The quote is a metaphor, Father! There is no actual rock!"
.."There is a rock, my son." He pointed into the hole. "Pietro é la pietra."
..Pietro é la pietra. Peter is the rock.
Peter's faith in God was so steadfast that Jesus called Peter "the rock"-the unwavering disciple on whose shoulders Jesus would build his church. On this very location, Langdon realized-Vatican Hill-Peter had been crucified and buried. The early Christians built a small shrine over his tomb. As Christianity spread, the shrine got bigger, layer upon layer, culminating in this colossal basilica. The entire Catholic faith had been built, quite literally, upon St. Peter. The rock.
♥ "As you probably know, Vittoria, human beings normally use a very small percentage of their brain power. However, if you put them in emotionally charged situations-like physical trauma, extreme joy or fear, deep meditation-all of a sudden their neurons start firing like crazy, resulting in massively enhanced mental clarity."
"So what?" Vittoria said. "Just because you think clearly doesn't mean you talk to God."
"Aha!" Vetra exclaimed. "And yet remarkable solutions to seemingly impossible problems often occur in these moments of clarity. It's what gurus call higher consciousness. Biologists call it altered states. Psychologists call it super-sentience." He paused. "And Christians call it answered prayer." Smiling broadly, he added, "Sometimes, divine revelation simply means adjusting your brain to hear way your heart already knows."
♥ "Look out!" Glick yelled from behind them. "Snake holes!"
Langdon saw it in time. A series of small holes riddled the path before them.
.."Snack holes, actually," Langdon corrected. "Trust me, you don't want to know." The holes, he had just realized, were libation tubes. The early Christians had believed in the resurrection of the flesh, and they'd used the holes to literally "feed the dead" by pouring milk and honey into crypts beneath the floor.
♥ Jesus, God reminded him, had saved them all... saved them from their own apathy. With two deeds, Jesus had opened their eyes. Horror and Hope. The crucifixion and the resurrection. He had changed the world.
♥ We have never created a weapon we have not used!