Dear Dave,
I'm afraid I haven't read The Da Vinci Code but the significance
it attributes to the Holy Grail seems to me something a Baha'i could
accept. The broader picture, as you call it, a Baha'i could accept, I
think.
The broader picture concerns the campaign to devalue the sacred feminine principle, beginning with the early Church and continuing to this day. The insistence of traditional Western religion on the exaltation of the male and the belittling of the female is the root cause of many of the problems inherent in our society. Of course, this effort is not limited to the Christian church. There are no female clergy in the Jewish, Muslim or Catholic religions, and this tradition goes back for centuries. The way many of us struggle with the issue of equality today is an indicator of how complete our indoctrination has been.
That the suppression has been damaging to us culturally is obvious, and has never been secret. The romances of the troubadours, about the wounded king who could only be healed by reuniting with his mystical queen is a coded _expression_ of the goddess' underground life. The recovery of the missing balance is the theme of alchemy, the Tarot, and many other esoteric sciences. It is also a recurring theme of Gnosticism.
I must say, however, that this is not the kind of book I read
these days. It is a while since I read anything on Alchemy, the Tarot
and the other esoteric sciences, or Gnosticism. I do though find the
notion of some kind of balance between masculine and feminine very
attractive and suspect this kind of stuff allows it to penetrate the
psyche at a level that might be just what I need.
William
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