The Grail lies Beneath the Rose Line in Turin, Italy
Secrets of the Code Glossary: G - H

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Gnosis Gnosis is a Greek term meaning, in English, a combination of “knowledge,” “insight,” and “wisdom.” Gnosis is understood as being a divinely inspired, intuitive, and intimate knowledge as opposed to intellectual knowledge of a specific area or discipline. Gnosis, as an experience, is generally the ultimate aim of a spiritual discipline that seeks union with God, the infinite, or the absolute—the reality beyond perception, or, for that matter, religious doctrine. Gnosis is almost always described as a personal revelation or exploration.

Some of the groups now identified as Gnostics may have believed that one way to achieve gnosis was through the ritual of hieros gamos, a celebration of the sacred marriage. As Langdon explains it to Sophie during their flight across the English Channel, “Physical union remained the sole means through which man could become spiritually complete and ultimately achieve gnosis—knowledge of the divine.”

The scholar and historian Elaine Pagels in her book The Origin of Satan has this to say about the meaning of the word: “The secret of gnosis is that when one comes to know oneself at the deepest level, one comes to know god as the source of one’s being.” The experience of gnosis and other mystical communications with the divine have been seen as a threat by established religious institutions—institutions that prefer to see themselves as the sole conduit to the divine.

The Gnostic Gospels The popularized name given the documents found in Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1947. The best known texts include:

The Gospel of Mary is invoked by Sir Leigh Teabing as one link in a chain of arguments meant to persuade Sophie that the grail is more than just a holy cup: The gospel, Teabing says, proves Jesus founded his church on Mary, and not on Peter.

The conclusions that Teabing draws from the Gospel of Mary—if this is his primary source—seem somewhat misleading. Contrary to what he says, Jesus never gives Mary Magdalene specific instructions on how to carry on his church after he is gone, at least not in this gospel. The more traditional view of the gospel is that although Mary did have a “special relationship” with Jesus, and the other apostles were jealous of it at times, there is no indication that Jesus chose Mary to carry on his church, or that he gave her any special instructions about how to do it.

The Gospel of Philip also makes an appearance during Leigh Teabing’s discourse on the nature of the Holy Grail. Teabing uses it as his source for the claim that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married, based on the translation that mentions Mary as Jesus’s “companion” and that the phrase “he kissed her on the m . . . [text missing]” proved they had a great deal of intimacy. As seen in earlier chapters of this book, there are several scholars and commentators who agree with this interpretation, although others see the kiss as more metaphoric than romantic.

The Gospel of Thomas contains many parallels with the orthodox gospels of the New Testament, including directly parallel sayings and proverbs. Yet they have remarkably enigmatic twists on the familiar canonical texts. Thomas says, for instance, “If two make peace with each other in this one house, they will say to the mountain, ‘Move away,’ and it will move away.” Another mysterious example is, “Simon Peter said to them, ‘Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life.’ Jesus [then] said, ‘I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.’” This Gospel of Thomas also emphasizes self-knowledge, self-exploration, and self-actualization in passages that are slightly reminiscent of Buddhist analects.

The Gospel of Sophia of Jesus Christ is highly mystical, this text concerns the creation of gods, angels, and the universe with an emphasis on infinite and mystical truth. Some scholars believe it may reflect a conversation between Jesus Christ and his disciples after the resurrection; others argue against it. The fulcrum of that debate relates to the date it might have been written. If it was written as far back as the first century it could reflect the true sayings of Jesus. If after that, this assemblage of sayings and proverbs might simply come from post-Jesus philosophers and Gnostics.

Elaine Pagels, the Princeton scholar whose book Gnostic Gospels introduced much of this subject matter to the American public more than twenty years ago, now says she no longer refers to these documents as Gnostic Gospels, owing to negative connotations associated with Gnosticism today. Pagels, as well as other scholars, including James Robinson and Bart Ehrman, emphasize that the Nag Hammadi finds do offer specific, documentable facts about early Christian history, as much as they suggest the diversity of thought about religion and philosophy that prevailed in the first few centuries of the Common Era. The suppression of these “alternative scriptures” represented the triumph of what we now know mainstream church doctrine to be over a rich variety of other ways of thinking.

Gnosticism Gnosticism is a term used to describe various sects and religious groups, mainly Christian but also Jewish and Egyptian, that hold gnosis at the core of their beliefs and practices. Gnosticism as a religious force probably predates Christianity. James Robinson, an expert on the Nag Hammadi Library, states, “Gnostics were more ecumenical and syncretic with regard to religious traditions than were orthodox Christians, so long as they found in them a stance congenial to their own.”

Gnosticism comes into focus early in the Christian era as a major rival to the influence of apostolic Christianity. Gnosticism’s personal communion with the divine, its often loose church structure, its secret explication of a higher, hidden knowledge that faith could not reveal: all of these traits made Gnostic streams of worship highly problematic for the coalescing Catholic orthodoxy. The result was a steadily increasing stream of denunciation and accusations of heresy so effective that Gnosticism became marginalized as a movement by fifth century AD.

A few of the major strands within Gnosticism are that the direct, intimate, and absolute knowledge of the divine and of truth itself (gnosis) is necessary for spiritual fulfillment; the belief in a union with, or a discovery of, a “higher self” that is identified with or identical to the divine; and that the world was created by a lesser god, a demiurge, who is responsible for the evil inherent in it. The only escape from the evils of material existence was contemplation, self-knowledge, and gnosis with the uncorrupted spiritual. The belief system continues forward to this day; there is a Gnosis Society, for example.

Godefroi de Bouillon French king, leader of the first Crusade, and founder of the Priory of Sion in Jerusalem in 1099. According to the genealogies allegedly collected as part of the Dossiers Secrets, de Bouillon was a descendent of the Merovingian kings. As Langdon further explains to Sophie while they pass through the Bois de Boulogne in a taxi, “King Godefroi was allegedly the possessor of a powerful secret that had been in his family since the time of Christ.” To protect it he formed a secret brotherhood, the Priory of Sion, that had a military wing to it as well—the Knights Templar. After a detailed exposition of the ins and outs of this history, Langdon reveals that de Bouillon dispatched the Knights Templar to find corroborating evidence of his “powerful secret” beneath the ruins of the former Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem—and that they did find something very compelling there. The implication is that the secret is the information about the Sangreal, better known as the Holy Grail, and that the Templars found the Grail—documents, records, relics, the bones of Mary Magdalene, etc.—and then brought these items back to France.

Gregory IX Born in 1145 as Count Ugolino of Segni, Gregory IX spent his time as pontiff presiding over a turbulent conflict between the church and the secular Holy Roman emperor, Frederick II of Hohenstaufen. Gregory IX was well known for his fierce opposition to all heresies and partook in the last years of the Albigensian Crusade which nearly wiped out the Cathars, who were centered in the area of France known as the Languedoc.

Hammer of Witches The Malleus Maleficarium was written by Pope Gregoruy IX as a torture manual for dealing with those who were believed to witches by the churc

Hanssen, Robert Former FBI agent turned Russian spy. For almost twenty-two years during the Cold War period, Hanssen sold crucial intelligence information to the Russians. Hanssen was a member of Opus Dei and turned out to be not only an embarrassment to the country but to that organization. He engaged in some unusual sexual practices that came to light during his trial, including photographing himself and his wife having sex to show to his friends. In May of 2002, Hanssen was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole, the judge saying, as quoted by Dan Brown, “Hardly the pastime of a devout Catholic.”

Hieros gamos The hieros gamos appears in The Da Vinci Code as an ancient sexual rite that Sophie remembers traumatically witnessing her grandfather practicing in secret. Deep in a chamber below his home, Saunière and a female member of the Priory of Sion are having sex while the other members, masked and robed, chant prayers to the sacred union. Sophie watches, unseen, then flees the house and cuts off all contact with her grandfather for some time.

He was likely to have been involved in the rite of hieros gamos, sometimes referred to as theogamy or hierogamy, a term loosely meaning “sacred marriage” or “divine marriage.” This marriage, in the words of scholar David H. Garrison, is “the holy marriage, the union of goddess and god that provides the paradigm for all human unions.” This holy marriage was reenacted, in various levels of realism, throughout the early religious history of mankind; remnants of the practice still remain with us today—as depicted in the recent movie Eyes Wide Shut. Some Eastern belief systems have analogs, such as Tantric sex rites.

Holy Grail There are as many theories about how and where the Grail story originated as there are Grails: critics and writers have identified Celtic and western European pre-Christian myths, Byzantine mythologies and Eastern orthodox Christian traditions, a code for the secret bloodline of Christ, ancient Persian cult practices, nature worship ceremonies of the pre-Christian Middle East, alchemical symbology, and more, ad infinitum.

The modern version of the Holy Grail story was launched in the last quarter of the twelfth to the first quarter of the thirteenth century by a number of writers in an amazing variety of languages including French, English, German, Spanish, and Welsh. The earliest Grail romance still extant is the Perceval of Chrétien de Troyes.

The Grail as object is described differently by different authors. It has been depicted as a stone, an object made of gold with precious stones, a reliquary, and a cup. The quest for the Grail also has variations: in one, where the guardian of the Grail is known as the Fisher King, finding it would mean a return to health and prosperity for the kingdom. The quest is also rendered more personally: it means for many a spiritual inner journey toward enlightenment and communion with God.

Whatever its history and meaning as relic or idea, every character in The Da Vinci Code is involved in its quest, and Brown’s version of the legend goes where it has never gone before. “The greatest cover-up in human history,” exclaims Teabing. “Not only was Jesus Christ married, but he was a father. My dear, Mary Magdalene was the Holy Vessel. She was the chalice that bore the royal bloodline of Jesus Christ.”

Hugo, Victor Mentioned in The Da Vinci Code as one of many notable authors and artists whose key works secretly passed along the banished notion of the Holy Grail, the sacred feminine, and Jesus and Mary Magdalene as husband and wife. Langdon cites Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame (along with Mozart’s Magic Flute) as a work that was “filled with Masonic symbolism and Grail secrets.” Hugo is often cited as having been a Priory of Sion member.

Hyssop “Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean,” Silas the Albino quotes from Psalms as he prays while dabbing blood from his back as the result of self-flagellation. John 19:29, describing Jesus’s last moments on the cross, writes, “Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar; and they filled a sponge with vinegar, and put upon it hyssop, and put it to his mouth.” Hyssop has culinary uses as well as medicinal ones: it is technically a vegetable and shows up in salads presented at restaurants. The biblical herb also is used in the making of the liqueur Chartreuse.

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