Friday, May 26, 2006

Da Vinci Code

The DaVinci Code Movie

(One pagan’s perspective)

Spoiler Alert: If you plan to see this movie don’t read this post until AFTER you see it.

Let me preface this by saying I had not read the book and only had a vague idea of the content from media buzz. I did enjoy the movie and what I have to say below may sound harsh, but I would still recommend seeing the movie.

I expected to see some great truth revealed. After all, churches must be boycotting it for some reason. I thought the movie would blow my mind, based on all the media hype, but it didn’t. When will I ever learn that there is nothing new under the sun.

When I took a world religions class in college in the ‘70’s we covered the lineage of Christ. I was a Christian at the time. My teacher was a radical feminist that told us about the Urantia book which speaks of the wife and children of Jesus. We discussed the sexuality of Jesus (he was male after all). The common notion that Jesus was celibate seems a bit much, don’t you think?

The whole Christian myth rests on pretty thin ice to me and always has.

I’ve studied symbolism all my life. I knew at some point in the movie they would have to define ‘sub Rosa’. I barely know Latin and I knew that. Since much of the premise is based on being ‘under the rose’ it made the plot easy to figure out. That is the literal meaning. The subtext meaning is ‘in secret’. Since secret meetings were held in a room with a rose over the doorway, they were meeting ‘under the rose’ so anything that was said in the meeting was not supposed to be repeated anywhere.

I guess the disappointing part is that as soon as the lead female character was introduced I knew she’d end up being the last scion.

The most interesting part to me was about 30 seconds long when they showed the grandfather having sex with someone in a pagan goddess ritual.

Perhaps this movie is a real shocker to anyone that bought into the Judeo-Christian mythos hook, line and sinker but I don’t think the pagans will be all that surprised. We already know the ‘church’ suppresses the Goddess side at every turn.

I just can’t believe how this book and movie has created such a stir.

The best I can hope for is for people to view paganism in a new light and to question the authority of the church and its machinations in their lives and hopefully to become free thinkers.

Even as I write this I spot a red rose outside the restaurant window nodding in the breeze.

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