Secrets of the Code Glossary: A - B

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Adonai One of the names for God in Hebrew. The original name of God—formed by the Hebrew letters YHWH—was so sacred that it was believed it should never be pronounced out loud. Over time, Adonai became one of the replacements, and the vowel notations for Adonai were added to YHWH to remind people to say Adonai instead. This combination of consonants and vowels created the English transliteration, Jehovah. The book of Genesis begins calling God by the name Elohim (interesting itself, because it is a Hebrew word with an ending that implies it is a plural). Later in Genesis, and then in other books of the Torah, Adonai is introduced. There is some argument that Elohim represents the concept of God before man arises and that Adonai is the right name for the God of the postcreation world. Some scholars who have made their life’s work the forensic effort to analyze how the Bible was written believe that Elohim is an older word for God than Adonai, and identify certain documents from the scriptures as belonging to the E (for Elohim) editor, others as being the work of the J (Jehovah) editor.

Adoration of the Magi Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece the Adoration of the Magi was commissioned during his early career, while he was working in Florence. Dated 1481, the Adoration is a work in progress. Portions of the panel are still an “underdrawing”—the sketch over which the artist applies the paint. This seems to indicate that Leonardo abandoned the work before having a chance to finish it. However, in 2001 the “art diagnostician” Maurizio Seracini used ultrasound scans which revealed that “none of the paint we see on the Adoration was put there by Leonardo.” It was put there, Seracini speculates, by a far inferior artist who deliberately effaced certain compositional elements and added others.

Dan Brown hints darkly in The Da Vinci Code that the anonymous painter who added the brushwork to Leonardo’s underdrawing was deliberately trying to hide some sort of message in the original. Seracini’s New York Times Magazine article of April 21, 2002, is mentioned by Robert Langdon in The Da Vinci Code.

Albino Silas, the dutiful Opus Dei supernumerary in The Da Vinci Code, is an albino. Albinos are either deficient or entirely lacking in pigment in their hair, eyes, and skin. People with albinism generally suffer from severe vision deficits; many are legally blind. Silas seems to have no such impairment; indeed, Bishop Aringarosa insists that albinism makes Silas unique, even holy: “Do you not understand how special this makes you? Were you not aware that Noah himself was an Albino?” The national organization that defends the rights of albinos in the United States goes by the acronym NOAH.

Altar Altar means “high” in Latin. The altar originated in pre-Christian religious practices as a platform for sacrificial offerings. In early Christianity it was used to embody the Last Supper.

Amon While Amon is seen in The Da Vinci Code as “the Egyptian god of fertility,” he has a far bigger portfolio, including a period as the supreme deity. Since Egypt in its early history was far from united politically, there were actually many ruling houses that would later lay claim to the throne. When they did, they brought in their own sets of gods. In later centuries, the stories of these gods were modified and interwoven. Amon (or Amen or Amun) was mentioned in early texts immediately after the pair of gods Nau and Nen, equivalents of the watery abyss from which all things sprang. This association puts Amon and his consort Amaunet among the handful of gods that self-created or, alternatively, was made by Thoth as one of the eight original gods of creation. Until around the Twelfth Dynasty, Amon was a local Theban god, but then the princes of Thebes conquered their rivals and made their city a new capital of Upper Egypt. It was probably then that he began to be called “King of the Gods.”

The word amon means “what is hidden.” This alludes to the unseen spirit. Amon was also known as a keeper of justice, a protector of the poor, and was known as the god of the wind and fertility. He was portrayed as a human, typically with two tall feathers in a red headdress. He also might be found as a man with the head of a frog, as a man with the head of a uraeus (cobra), as an ape, and as a lion crouching upon a pedestal.

Anagrams, which are words or phrases created by transposing the letters of another word or phrase, are important to The Da Vinci Code. For example, what Saunière scrawls on the Plexiglas protecting the Mona Lisa—“So Dark the Con of Man”—is an anagram for Leonardo’s painting Madonna of the Rocks. Saunière uses several anagrams to lead Sophie’s search, including an anagram made up of numbers—the jumbled Fibonacci sequence.

Androgyny A combination of the Greek root words andr (male) and gyn (female), the word signifies indeterminate gender. Toward the end of The Da Vinci Code, while flying across the English Channel, Langdon engages Sophie in a conversation about the ritual she viewed decades before that traumatized her and drove her apart from her grandfather. “ ‘Masks?’ he asked, keeping his voice calm. “Androgynous masks?’ ‘Yes. Everyone. Identical masks. White on the women. Black on the men.’ ” Androgyny is considered by many authorities on archetypes and myths to be a concept suggesting unity of the divided nature of the human species and psyche, gods and goddesses.

Apostles The roots of the word apostle go back to the Greek for “one who is sent out.” They were to spread the news of the Christian message. The fact that Jesus encountered Mary Magdalene first upon his resurrection (according to several gospel accounts) and specifically asked her to go tell the others the Good News, confirms her role as the “Apostle to the Apostles,” a title she has been known by in history. Some scholars theorize that the twelve apostles correspond to the twelve tribes of Israel.

Apple Cut open an apple horizontally and it generally reveals five carpels, forming the richly symbolic pentagram. In The Da Vinci Code, a line from the poem that leads Sophie and Robert to Newton’s tomb reads: “In London lies a knight a Pope interred/ His labor’s fruit a Holy wrath incurred.” It was a falling apple that reputedly taught Newton about gravity. The apple is a richly symbolic fruit, from a tree in the same genus as the rose, another plant with extensive symbological importance in the Christian tradition. The apple is, of course, a symbol of temptation and evil. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil; legend identifies this fruit as an apple (although the scriptures do not). The apple turns up in many other religious paradises, including the Greek gardens of the Hesperides and the sacred groves of the Celts. Hera, the wife of the Greek god Zeus, received an apple as an engagement gift.

Pommes bleues (blue apples) play an interesting role in a controversial bit of Catholic Church history which is a source for much of The Da Vinci Code: one of the encoded parchments claimed to have been found in Rennes-le-Château ends with a reference to pommes bleues.

Near the end of The Da Vinci Code, Teabing finally understands the solution to Jacques Saunière’s last puzzle, the poem that provides the word that opens the second cryptex. The orb that “ought be” on the tomb of the famous physicist isn’t a star or a planet, but an apple. “Bewildered, Teabing looked back at the keystone and saw it. The dials were no longer at random. They spelled a five-letter word: APPLE.” Dumbstruck, the defeated Teabing recalls the final line of Saunière’s poem, and understands why he has been led to Newton’s tomb: “His labor’s fruit! The Rosy flesh with a seeded womb!”

Arius Arius is the most familiar figure associated with a powerfully contested heresy, Arianism. At the center of Arianism was a debate about the nature of Christ: was he of the same substance as the Father, or was he inferior to Him, a created being that came into existence at His behest, and therefore unable to share His divinity? Arius argued that Christ was not of the same substance as the Father. After years of theological dispute, he presented a creed of his belief at the Council of Nicea. His heresy was rejected, and opposition to Arianism was enshrined in the Nicene Creed. Arianism however, continued to flare up; in fact, thirty years into Constantine’s reign, two new church councils were held to decide the same issue. Both failed to put an end to it. In The Da Vinci Code the Visigoths, a medieval Arian tribe, are mentioned as the progenitors of the Merovingian dynasty. The village of Rennes-le-Château was historically a stronghold of the Visigoths.

Atbash cipher The Atbash cipher is used by Robert Langdon, Sophie Neveu, and Leigh Teabing to open Saunière’s first cryptex in Chapter 72 of The Da Vinci Code, revealing a further mystery—the second cryptex containing the “map” to the Holy Grail.

Atbash is an early and extremely simple cipher that originated with Hebrew scribes who were transcribing the books of the Old Testament. In the cipher, the alphabet’s sequence is reversed, so that the last letter of the alphabet stands in for the first, the second letter replaces the second to last, and so on. In English, the cipher would make a equivalent to z (and vice versa), b equivalent to y, c to x, and so on. Thus, wz ermxr xlwv is an Atbash-ciphered rendering of “da Vinci code.” The name Atbash is derived from the first two letters of the Hebrew alphabet (aleph, beth, or a and b in English) and their equivalents in the cipher (tav, shin, or t and s in English). Atbash, and other ciphers that use similar methods, are known as substitutions.

Langdon daydreams about the most famous example of the Atbash cipher while waiting for the cryptex code to be deciphered by Sophie: the reference to “sheshach” in Jeremiah 25:26 and 51:41. The word sheshach caused considerable difficulty for biblical scholars, but application of the Atbash cipher revealed the hidden meaning: Babel, equated by many scholars with Babylon, the capital city of the Babylonian empire, and home to many captive Jews after that empire sacked Jerusalem in BC 600.

Baphomet An idol said to have the head of a goat; in some descriptions the pentagram symbol is said to appear on its head. Although often said to be the idol of the Knights Templar, this attribution is a result of confessions obtained under torture by the Inquisition, and thus somewhat suspect. Many Knights Templar members “confessed” (truly or otherwise) to worshipping this idol, most frequently described as having “the head of a goat and the body of an ass.” Some contemporary followers of paganism retain a belief in Baphomet, feeling it was the god of the witches and came from Pan, the god of nature.

Boaz and Jachin Boaz and Jachin are the names of two pillars supporting the ancient Temple of Solomon. In The Da Vinci Code, Langdon and Sophie notice copies of these pillars in the Rosslyn Chapel. Sophie feels that she has seen the pillars before. Langdon notes that the pillars are the “most duplicated architectural structures in history,” and are twins of the two pillars set inside every Masonic temple on earth. The names are derived from biblical accounts of Solomon’s construction of his Temple. Solomon wrote to Hiram of Tyre, asking him to send someone “with skill in engraving, in working gold, silver, bronze, and iron, and in making blue, purple and red cloth.” Among this artisan’s contributions are two elaborately decorated pillars. The pillar on the right side was named Jachin (“to establish” or “stability”), and the pillar on the left, Boaz (“strength” or “in him there is strength”). Legend has it Boaz was the name of one of Solomon’s ancestors; the origin of Jachin is not as clear. Boaz and Jachin became important symbols in the practice of Masonry. Masons trace their ancient origins to a symbolic representation of the might of the divine and frequently adapt the symbol of the fleur-de-lis in their buildings—in this case as bronze capitals at the top of both columns. Others identify the pillars with the great pillars that were thought to hold up the ancient world—one at Gibraltar, one at Cueta. Some see them as representative of many ancient dualities, light and dark, feminine and masculine, active and negative, and elementally, fire and water.

Bois de Boulogne Langdon and Sophie speed through the Bois de Boulogne on their way to 24 rue Haxo, the address left by Sophie’s grandfather on a mysterious laser-cut key. Langdon tries to gather his thoughts to tell Sophie about the Priory of Sion, but is distracted by bizarre nocturnal inhabitants of the park—sex workers and prostitutes of every stripe.

The Bois de Boulogne is a large (more than two thousand acres), lushly forested park in Paris, containing many recreational areas including horse courses, bike and walking trails, and charming gardens. At night the forest becomes a notorious red-light district. Bois de Boulogne is just a small remnant of a considerably larger forest, the Forêt de Rouvray, woods that extended miles to the north of the current park at the time of the invasion of Gaul in the first century. King Childeric II (a seventh-century Merovingian monarch) bequeathed the land to the Abbey of Saint-Denis, which planned to build monasteries and abbeys in the forest. During the Hundred Years War, the forest—already quite unsafe—became the haunt of robbers before being pillaged by the Parisians. Under Louis XI, the estate was reforested and two roads were opened.

Brown mentions that certain Parisians referred to this area as “the Garden of Earthly Delights,” an allusion to a triptych by Hieronymus Bosch known for its bawdy content and mysterious symbolism. The triptych itself depicts Eden before the fall on the left panel, the Garden of Earthly Delights on the larger, central panel, and a portrait of hell on the right panel. Even though each of the panels represents a theologically different place, there is a common element running through the triptych. All three realms, from the inviolate to the damned, are scenes of disquieting surrealism.
Hell is depicted as a realm of bizarre creatures and flamboyantly unusual punishments, where human bodies with animal heads devour sinners. A huge body serves as a cave for the punishment of the damned, and strange symbols (e.g., a pair of ears mounted by a knife) abound. However, the surrealism extends into both the Garden of Earthly Delights in the central panel and the Garden of Eden in the left panel. These mythical places seem free of the bizarre, tortuous imagery of hell, but the surrealism is still there: naked men and women cavort inside fantastic, living structures in the garden, and even the inviolate Eden is infested with strange chimerical animals.

Bosch (1450–1516), a Flemish master painter, is nearly an exact contemporary of Leonardo da Vinci. He’s also known for having a deep interest in alchemy and secret societies. Most of his paintings were loaded with symbols and coded messages of all types, as well as far more exotic references to sexuality and the sacred feminine than anything in the work of Leonardo. Like Leonardo, it is hard to discern if Bosch was a devout believer, a radical freethinker, or a heretical cultist. Some art historians and biographers believe Bosch was involved with the Adamites, a secret society that may have incorporated hieros gamos–type activities into their practices.
While argument rages over the meaning of Bosch’s symbols, one thing is clear. For Bosch, there is a deep ambiguity and a lurking danger in the places we consider paradise; and this makes the Bois de Boulogne an apt namesake for the painting and a place worthy of mention in The Da Vinci Code.

Botticelli In Dan Brown’s book, the Italian painter is mentioned as a Priory of Sion member according to the Dossiers Secrets. Botticelli is perhaps most noted for his Birth of Venus, with its obvious connection to the sacred feminine. The painter was persecuted by Florentine inquisitors and fundamentalists led by Savanarola, and eventually gave in to them. This, plus his artistic rivalry with Leonardo, makes it hard to see him as a member of the same ultrasecret society, even though it is true his works, including The Birth of Venus, introduce a strong element of eros into Renaissance painting.

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