You're quiet," Langdon said, gazing across the Hawker's cabin at Sophie.
Just tired," she replied. "And the poem. I don't know."Langdon was feeling the same way. The hum of the engines and the gentle rocking of the planewere hypnotic, and his head still throbbed where he'd been hit by the monk. Teabing was still in theback of the plane, and Langdon decided to take advantage of the moment alone with Sophie to tellher something that had been on his mind. "I think I know part of the reason why your grandfatherconspired to put us together. I think there's something he wanted me to explain to you.""The history of the Holy Grail and Mary Magdalene isn't enough?"Langdon felt uncertain how to proceed. "The rift between you. The reason you haven't spoken tohim in ten years. I think maybe he was hoping I could somehow make that right by explaining whatdrove you apart."Sophie squirmed in her seat. "I haven't told you what drove us apart."Langdon eyed her carefully. "You witnessed a sex rite. Didn't you?"Sophie recoiled. "How do you know that?""Sophie, you told me you witnessed something that convinced you your grandfather was in a secretsociety. And whatever you saw upset you enough that you haven't spoken to him since. I know afair amount about secret societies. It doesn't take the brains of Da Vinci to guess what you saw."Sophie stared.
Was it in the spring?" Langdon asked. "Sometime around the equinox? Mid-March?"Sophie looked out the window. "I was on spring break from university. I came home a few daysearly.""You want to tell me about it?""I'd rather not." She turned suddenly back to Langdon, her eyes welling with emotion. "I don'tknow what I saw.""Were both men and women present?"After a beat, she nodded.
Dressed in white and black?"She wiped her eyes and then nodded, seeming to open up a little. "The women were in whitegossamer gowns... with golden shoes. They held golden orbs. The men wore black tunics and blackshoes."Langdon strained to hide his emotion, and yet he could not believe what he was hearing. SophieNeveu had unwittingly witnessed a two-thousand-year-old sacred ceremony. "Masks?" he asked,keeping his voice calm. "Androgynous masks?""Yes. Everyone. Identical masks. White on the women. Black on the men."Langdon had read descriptions of this ceremony and understood its mystic roots. "It's called HierosGamos," he said softly. "It dates back more than two thousand years. Egyptian priests andpriestesses performed it regularly to celebrate the reproductive power of the female," He paused,leaning toward her. "And if you witnessed Hieros Gamos without being properly prepared tounderstand its meaning, I imagine it would be pretty shocking."Sophie said nothing.
Hieros Gamos is Greek," he continued. "It means sacred marriage.""The ritual I saw was no marriage.""Marriage as in union, Sophie.""You mean as in sex.""No.""No?" she said, her olive eyes testing him.
Langdon backpedaled. "Well... yes, in a manner of speaking, but not as we understand it today."He explained that although what she saw probably looked like a sex ritual, Hieros Gamos hadnothing to do with eroticism. It was a spiritual act. Historically, intercourse was the act throughwhich male and female experienced God. The ancients believed that the male was spirituallyincomplete until he had carnal knowledge of the sacred feminine. Physical union with the femaleremained the sole means through which man could become spiritually complete and ultimatelyachieve gnosis—knowledge of the divine. Since the days of Isis, sex rites had been consideredman's only bridge from earth to heaven. "By communing with woman," Langdon said, "man couldachieve a climactic instant when his mind went totally blank and he could see God."Sophie looked skeptical. "Orgasm as prayer?"Langdon gave a noncommittal shrug, although Sophie was essentially correct. Physiologicallyspeaking, the male climax was accompanied by a split second entirely devoid of thought. A briefmental vacuum. A moment of clarity during which God could be glimpsed. Meditation gurusachieved similar states of thoughtlessness without sex and often described Nirvana as a never-ending spiritual orgasm.
Sophie," Langdon said quietly, "it's important to remember that the ancients' view of sex wasentirely opposite from ours today. Sex begot new life—the ultimate miracle—and miracles couldbe performed only by a god. The ability of the woman to produce life from her womb made hersacred. A god. Intercourse was the revered union of the two halves of the human spirit—male andfemale—through which the male could find spiritual wholeness and communion with God. Whatyou saw was not about sex, it was about spirituality. The Hieros Gamos ritual is not a perversion.
It's a deeply sacrosanct ceremony."His words seemed to strike a nerve. Sophie had been remarkably poised all evening, but now, forthe first time, Langdon saw the aura of composure beginning to crack. Tears materialized in hereyes again, and she dabbed them away with her sleeve.
He gave her a moment. Admittedly, the concept of sex as a pathway to God was mind-boggling atfirst. Langdon's Jewish students always looked flabbergasted when he first told them that the earlyJewish tradition involved ritualistic sex. In the Temple, no less. Early Jews believed that the Holyof Holies in Solomon's Temple housed not only God but also His powerful female equal, Shekinah.
Men seeking spiritual wholeness came to the Temple to visit priestesses—or hierodules—withwhom they made love and experienced the divine through physical union. The Jewishtetragrammaton YHWH—the sacred name of God—in fact derived from Jehovah, an androgynousphysical union between the masculine Jah and the pre-Hebraic name for Eve, Havah.
For the early Church," Langdon explained in a soft voice, "mankind's use of sex to communedirectly with God posed a serious threat to the Catholic power base. It left the Church out of theloop, undermining their self-proclaimed status as the sole conduit to God. For obvious reasons,they worked hard to demonize sex and recast it as a disgusting and sinful act. Other major religionsdid the same."Sophie was silent, but Langdon sensed she was starting to understand her grandfather better.
Ironically, Langdon had made this same point in a class lecture earlier this semester. "Is itsurprising we feel conflicted about sex?" he asked his students. "Our ancient heritage and our veryphysiologies tell us sex is natural—a cherished route to spiritual fulfillment—and yet modernreligion decries it as shameful, teaching us to fear our sexual desire as the hand of the devil."Langdon decided not to shock his students with the fact that more than a dozen secret societiesaround the world—many of them quite influential—still practiced sex rites and kept the ancienttraditions alive. Tom Cruise's character in the film Eyes Wide Shut discovered this the hard waywhen he sneaked into a private gathering of ultraelite Manhattanites only to find himself witnessingHieros Gamos. Sadly, the filmmakers had gotten most of the specifics wrong, but the basic gist wasthere—a secret society communing to celebrate the magic of sexual union.
Professor Langdon?" A male student in back raised his hand, sounding hopeful. "Are you sayingthat instead of going to chapel, we should have more sex?"Langdon chuckled, not about to take the bait. From what he'd heard about Harvard parties, thesekids were having more than enough sex. "Gentlemen," he said, knowing he was on tender ground,"might I offer a suggestion for all of you. Without being so bold as to condone premarital sex, andwithout being so naive as to think you're all chaste angels, I will give you this bit of advice aboutyour sex lives."All the men in the audience leaned forward, listening intently.
The next time you find yourself with a woman, look in your heart and see if you cannot approachsex as a mystical, spiritual act. Challenge yourself to find that spark of divinity that man can onlyachieve through union with the sacred feminine."The women smiled knowingly, nodding.
The men exchanged dubious giggles and off-color jokes.
Langdon sighed. College men were still boys.
Sophie's forehead felt cold as she pressed it against the plane's window and stared blankly into thevoid, trying to process what Langdon had just told her. She felt a new regret well within her. Tenyears. She pictured the stacks of unopened letters her grandfather had sent her. I will tell Roberteverything. Without turning from the window, Sophie began to speak. Quietly. Fearfully.
As she began to recount what had happened that night, she felt herself drifting back... alighting inthe woods outside her grandfather's Normandy chateau... searching the deserted house inconfusion... hearing the voices below her... and then finding the hidden door. She inched down thestone staircase, one step at a time, into that basement grotto. She could taste the earthy air. Cooland light. It was March. In the shadows of her hiding place on the staircase, she watched as thestrangers swayed and chanted by flickering orange candles.
I'm dreaming, Sophie told herself. This is a dream. What else could this be
The women and men were staggered, black, white, black, white. The women's beautiful gossamergowns billowed as they raised in their right hands golden orbs and called out in unison, "I was withyou in the beginning, in the dawn of all that is holy, I bore you from the womb before the start ofday."The women lowered their orbs, and everyone rocked back and forth as if in a trance. They wererevering something in the center of the circle.
What are they looking at
The voices accelerated now. Louder. Faster.
The woman whom you behold is love!" The women called, raising their orbs again.
The men responded, "She has her dwelling in eternity!"The chanting grew steady again. Accelerating. Thundering now. Faster. The participants steppedinward and knelt.
In that instant, Sophie could finally see what they were all watching.
On a low, ornate altar in the center of the circle lay a man. He was naked, positioned on his back,and wearing a black mask. Sophie instantly recognized his body and the birthmark on his shoulder.
She almost cried out. Grand-père! This image alone would have shocked Sophie beyond belief,and yet there was more.
Straddling her grandfather was a naked woman wearing a white mask, her luxuriant silver hairflowing out behind it. Her body was plump, far from perfect, and she was gyrating in rhythm to thechanting—making love to Sophie's grandfather.
Sophie wanted to turn and run, but she couldn't. The stone walls of the grotto imprisoned her as thechanting rose to a fever pitch. The circle of participants seemed almost to be singing now, the noiserising in crescendo to a frenzy. With a sudden roar, the entire room seemed to erupt in climax.
Sophie could not breathe. She suddenly realized she was quietly sobbing. She turned and staggeredsilently up the stairs, out of the house, and drove trembling back to Paris.
Hieros Camos
