Secrets of the Code Glossary: S - Z

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Sacred feminine The sacred feminine is an important thematic element of The Da Vinci Code, providing the linchpin for the various Grail seekers in the novel. Saunière’s Priory worships it, Langdon studies it, and the fanatical followers of Opus Dei are trying to make sure that the sacred feminine tradition in Christianity stays suppressed, as it was by the early Roman church leaders, from Peter to Constantine. According to the novel, Jesus was a believer in the notion of the sacred feminine, as inherited from Egyptian, Greek, and other eastern Mediterranean traditions. The whole battle over Mary Magdalene’s role among the apostles and in church history afterward is viewed in the novel as part of the “great cover-up” of Christianity’s origins in the world of gods and goddesses.

The first mention of the sacred feminine in The Da Vinci Code is when Robert Langdon arrives at the scene of Jacques Saunière’s murder. Interrogated by Captain Fache, Langdon tries to explain the iconography that Saunière used to “decorate” his death scene.

Sangreal/Sangraal Sangreal is the name identified by Langdon as the common historical name for the documents and relics that constitute what we today know as the Holy Grail. Teabing later explains that the word became split throughout its use in legend and theology, producing San Greal: Holy Grail. But if the division were made in a different place—sang real—then the words would read royal blood instead. Holy Blood, Holy Grail authors Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln claim that the Grail is called the Sangreal or the Sangraal. The split in these words could also produce San Greal or San Graal (Holy Grail) or sang real or sang raal (royal blood). However, Sir Thomas Malory, author of Le Mort d’Arthur and the first cited user of the word in English, deploys Sangreal and sang royal (which is derived from middle English real or rial) in two separate senses: Sangreal as the Holy Grail, and sang royal as holy blood, perhaps undermining Teabing and Langdon’s etymology.

The Oxford English Dictionary claims that the etymology of dual meanings, first introduced in the seventeenth century, is spurious.

Saunière, Bérenger Parish priest of Rennes-le-Château installed there in 1885, and the historical touchstone for The Da Vinci Code’s Jacques Saunière. During a routine restoration of the village church, Saunière (1852–1917) supposedly discovered four parchments with coded messages stuffed into a column supporting the church altar. The messages, when deciphered, made oblique references to seemingly unconnected people and things: painters Poussin and Teniers, the Merovingian King Dagobert, Sion, “blue apples.” Intrigued, he presented the documents to his superiors, who instructed him to travel to Paris to present the parchments to other church dignitaries, including the Abbé Bieil, director of the Saint-Sulpice seminary.

Little is known about what happened during Saunière’s visit to Paris (many dispute he ever went at all), but upon his return to Rennes-le-Château, it is said he began spending exorbitant amounts of money on restoration projects and a large new house for himself. His changes ranged from the mundane to the bizarre. He effaced the inscription on the tombstone of Marie, Marquise d’Hautpol de Blanchefort (it had been designed by the Abbé Bigou for her grave, and the inscription was a perfect anagram of one of the coded messages that Saunière found in the altar). He constructed a tower, called the Tour Magdala, after Mary Magdalene. He built an opulent country house, the Villa Bethania, which he never occupied. He renovated and redecorated the church as well, but his new artistic touches were somewhat unorthodox: a statue of a demon upholds the holy water basin; “This place is terrible” is chiseled over the church door; and the Stations of the Cross painted on the walls of the church are filled with incongruous and disquieting details.

Rennes-le-Château was a provincial town, and Saunière’s salary as parish priest was quite modest. Where did Saunière get the money for his renovations and construction? Why did he spend it in the way he did? He took the answers to these questions with him to the grave, and at that point, even wilder speculation begins.
Saunière’s wealth, so the tale goes, could have been attributed to the discovery of ancient Visigothic treasure; to payoffs from a secret society with something to hide in the area; to the secret location of the Holy Grail; to the famed Money Pit of Oak Island, Nova Scotia. Links have been drawn among Saunière, the Priory of Sion, the Masons, and the Knights Templar. Astronomers and geometers have catalogued an incredible number of figures—triangles, pentagrams, pentagons—through and around Rennes-le-Château, all with some sort of esoteric significance. There are connections drawn between Rennes-le-Château, Stonehenge, and countless megalithic sites throughout Europe and Britain, and claims that the village hides some sort of mathematical doorway to another dimension.

The parchments that sparked this intrigue have never been recovered, although one person—Pierre Plantard, the late grand master of the Priory of Sion—claimed to have placed them in a safe deposit box in London for safekeeping. Saunière and his mysteries have been fodder for a great deal of historical speculation and spellbinding stories offered by authors such as Henry Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln (individually as well as collectively in books such as Holy Blood, Holy Grail), Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince, and Tim Wallace-Murphy.
Clearly something strange is in the air of Rennes-le-Château, but is it an actual conspiracy or the conspiracy theories themselves? Does there come a point where conspiracy theories wind up burying whatever knowledge of actual events we could have achieved? Bérenger Saunière isn’t telling.

Senechaux French plural of the (also English) word seneschal, meaning an official or administrator to whom important duties are entrusted, normally associated with ecclesiastical or feudal societies or groups. In The Da Vinci Code, the senechaux are three officials in the Priory of Sion who report to Jacques Saunière, the grand master of the Priory. They appear to be a trusted “inner circle.” The senechaux are murdered, one by one, by Silas, the agent of Opus Dei. Each of the three senechaux, along with Saunière, are guardians of the secret location of the Holy Grail. They are also trained to deceive interrogators with a coordinated lie about the location of the Grail, ensuring that even if their identities are revealed and they are questioned, the Grail will remain safely hidden. Sister Sandrine calls them, one by one, when she realizes that Silas has arrived at Saint Sulpice to uncover the keystone, but is shocked when each of her calls indicates that the senechaux are dead. The concept of the senechaux in The Da Vinci Code is taken from the questionable list provided by Plantard and listed on websites.

Shekinah Shekinah is a Hebrew word meaning “God’s presence,” and many hold that it is the feminine aspect and attributes of that presence. The closest Christian concept would be that of the Holy Spirit. Shekinah was believed to be the physical manifestation of God’s presence in the Tabernacle and later in Solomon’s Temple. When the Lord led Israel out of Egypt, he went before them “in a pillar of a cloud”—shekinah.

Sheshach In The Da Vinci Code, Sophie uses her knowledge of the Atbash cipher, a substitution code in which the first letter of the alphabet is replaced with the last, the second is replaced with the next-to-last, etc. The Hebrew letters for what was transliterated as “Scheshach” yield a word that can be rendered as “Babel” when adding in the vowels that Hebrew lacks.

Smart Car Langdon and Sophie, following their escape from the Louvre, jump in Sophie’s Smart Car and speed away. This is a micro, compact car originally developed in 1994 as a joint venture between the Swiss watch company Swatch and Mercedes-Benz. A Swatch watch was the design inspiration for the car, which in its basic configuration sells for around $20,000 and is available throughout Europe and many other parts of the world.

Solomon’s Temple David, the first king of Israel, wanted to build a temple for the King of kings, his God. In a dream, God told David that the temple could not be built by him because he was a man of war and had spilled too much blood. The temple would be built by his son, Solomon, who would enjoy peace during his reign so that the temple might be built.

Although he did not build the temple, King David planned it and gathered much of the materials. After David’s death, Solomon issued orders for construction of the first temple. He called upon the Phoenicians, who were expert builders, to assist, and the temple was in fact modeled on Phoenician temples of the time. Construction of Solomon’s Temple on Mount Moriah in what is now Jerusalem was an enormous task, involving tens of thousands of people and requiring seven years, being completed in BC 953.

The Solomonic temple differed from other temples in the ancient world by virtue of having no idol. This reflected the belief that idols were not needed for God to be present; the temple was built because of the people’s needs, not God’s.
Subsequent history of the temple involves a regular cycle of destruction. The original temple was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar in BC 586. Seventy years later, the second temple was built on the same site, and expanded in BC 19 by King Herod, only to be destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.

Enter The Da Vinci Code. Langdon tells Sophie the Knights Templar’s primary mission in the Holy Land was not to protect pilgrims, but to set up lodging in the Temple so they could “retrieve the [secret] documents from beneath the ruins.” He goes on to say no one knows for sure what they found, but it was “something that made them wealthy and powerful beyond anyone’s imagination.”

Today the site is the location of al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam.

Sophia From the Greek word for wisdom. Associated with the virgin goddesses such as Athena, and for the allegorization of wisdom in the Holy Spirit and Mary Magdalene.

Sub rosa Literally, “under the rose.” The origin of this phrase is likely to have come from Roman times when, in formal dining, tables were set in a U configuration, with the guest of honor and his host at the side opposite the opening. Over the center of the U hung a rose. It was a reminder that a rose had been given by Eros to Harpocrates, the god of silence, to keep him from talking about the indiscretions of Eros’s mother, Venus. Anything said sub rosa (under the rose) was to remain a secret.

Symbology Symbols were described by the late anthropologist Leslie White as “the arbitrary assignation of meaning to form,” and one of the few things that truly distinguished humans from other creatures. Symbols are abstractions. The Bible and of course The Da Vinci Code are filled with symbology: from the Vitruvian Man whose pose Saunière adopts in death, to the cross, to the apple—tangible objects are made to stand in for intangible and sometimes complex concepts.
Symbols are a shorthand means of communicating. Just as the rose over the Roman table was a symbol of Eros’s gift to Harpocrates and thus the need for secrets to be kept secret, symbols such as the cross provide a compact way of reminding people of a complex reality.

In The Da Vinci Code, Langdon was at work on a paper about the symbols of the sacred feminine. At the end of the book, while at Rosslyn, he stands with Saunière’s widow, Marie, pondering the papyrus that bears the inscription:

The Holy Grail ’neath ancient Roslin waits.
The blade and chalice guarding o’er Her gates.

Marie traces a triangle, point up, on his palm. An ancient symbol for the blade, and the masculine. Then she traces a triangle point down. An ancient symbol for the chalice and the feminine. She takes him to the church, where he finally sees in the Star of David the combination of blade and chalice—male and female, Solomon’s Seal—marking the Holy of Holies, the place where both Yahweh and Shekinah were thought to dwell.

Tarot cards The origin of Tarot cards is a subject of some debate. Some scholars trace their earliest appearance to a very specific time and place: northern Italy in the early fifteenth century. The first practical use of the deck seems to have been a game that was somewhat like our modern bridge. Since alchemical, astrological, and hermetic philosophies were part and parcel of medieval intellectual life, the illustrators of the first decks may have used them to code hidden meanings in the iconography of the cards. The many different interpretations and correspondences that tarot cards have inspired suggests that Tarot is more than just bridge.

Occultists, fans of esoterica, and even modern bestseller writers believe instead that the cards have a much longer history (dating back to ancient Israel or ancient Egypt) and a far deeper meaning. Kabbalah, the Jewish form of mysticism, is said to have a connection. Robert Langdon avers that originally the tarot “had been devised as a secret means to pass along ideologies banned by the Church” and that the pentacle suit of the tarot deck is the indicator “for feminine divinity.” Critics debunk these types of theories, believing that the tarot was invented for “innocent gaming purposes.” “The notion of diamonds representing the pentacles is a deliberate misrepresentation,” contends Sandra Miesel, who wrote a long article harshly critical of the “so-called facts” in The Da Vinci Code.

There seems to be no hard evidence tying the origin of the decks to ancient traditions. History seems to tell us that the tarot cards do not appear as a systematized occult system until late-eighteenth-century France. Tradition can triumph over history, of course, and it is not hard to begin speculating all over again about “coincidences” such as the arrangement of the major arcana: the High Priestess (Female Pope) card is normally given the number two, and card number five, the Pope, is its logical opposite; just as the Empress and the Emperor (two and four respectively) counterbalance one another.

Teniers, David the Younger Dutch painter, son of David the Elder, also a painter. Born in 1610, he painted historical, mythological, and allegorical subjects, including a series of paintings depicting St. Anthony. Langdon mentions him early on in The Da Vinci Code as a subject, along with the painter Poussin, of several textbooks written by Jacques Saunière.

These textbooks, it seems, are some of Langdon’s favorites; they deal specifically with hidden codes in the works of both painters. This is a direct reference by Dan Brown to coded messages found by Saunière’s historical namesake: Bérenger Saunière, parish priest of Rennes-le-Château. One of the coded messages that Bérenger Saunière found buried in the altar of the Rennes-le-Château parish church reads thus:

SHEPHERDESS NO TEMPTATION THAT POUSSIN TENIERS HOLD THE KEY; PEACE 681 BY THE CROSS AND THIS HORSE OF GOD I COMPLETE [DESTROY] THIS DAEMON OF THE GUARDIAN AT NOON BLUE APPLES

Bérenger Saunière is said to have traveled to Paris after finding the coded documents, and during his trip supposedly purchased reproductions of a work by Teniers, a portrait of Pope Célestin V, and Poussin’s The Shepherds of Arcadia.

Tertullian The first great writer of Latin Christianity whose extensive works covered the whole theological field of the time: paganism and Judaism, polemics, polity, discipline, morals, and the whole reorganization of human life under his interpretation of Christian doctrine. He was also a determined advocate of strict discipline and an austere lifestyle—believing that women should put away precious ornaments as they help lure men into sin, and that being unmarried and celibate were the highest state of being.

Todger “Teabing’s eyes twinkled. ‘Oxford Theatre Club. They still talk of my Julius Caesar. I’m certain nobody has ever performed the first scene of Act Three with more dedication . . . my toga tore open when I fell, and I had to lie on the stage for half an hour with my todger hanging out.’” Todger (aka tadger), is 1950s British slang for penis.

Tribe of Benjamin One of the twelve tribes of Israel, descended from Jacob’s son Benjamin, part of whose inheritance, according to the Bible, is the city of Jerusalem. The tribe plays a part in Teabing’s lecture to Sophie regarding the true nature of the Holy Grail. Mary Magdalene, he tells her, was of the tribe of Benjamin, and therefore her union with Jesus—a descendent of the royal house of David and the tribe of Judah—was of immense political importance. The Bible reports in the book of Judges that the tribe of Benjamin was attacked by the other tribes of Israel because of the protection they afforded certain criminals and “sons of Belial.” The decimated tribe survived, but the Dossiers Secrets maintain that a portion of the tribe relocated to eastern Europe, first in the Greek province of Arcadia, and then up the Danube and the Rhine. Holy Blood, Holy Grail suggests that the tribe could be the forebears of the Franks, and, hence, the Merovingians.


Vatican Library Bishop Aringarosa visits Castel Gandolfo, and passes the Biblioteca Astronomica, the library of the Vatican Observatory. While hints of an organized library date back to the fourth century, the Vatican Library as it is known today dates from the reign of Pope Nicholas V, who ascended to the throne in 1447. Nicholas expanded the library from a few hundred works to over fifteen hundred, which made it the largest library in Europe at the time. At present, it houses over a million books and 150,000 manuscripts which contain such works as the oldest known Greek texts of the Old and New Testaments, and early surviving examples of works by Dante, Virgil, and Homer, among others.

Venus Pentagram One of the most intriguing theories explaining the origin of the pentagram is astronomical: the planet Venus traces a pentagram in the night sky. How? When the movements of the planet are charted against the stars, it appears to move against them in a regular pattern. The ancients imagined that the stars that they saw wheeling through the sky were “fixed” on a sphere with Earth at its center. They used these fixed stars as a reference point to measure the movement of the planets, which moved independently of the fixed stars—appearing in different areas of the sphere at different times. If an observer records the position of Venus against the fixed stars on the same day for six years, and connects these positions in order across the sphere, a pentagram is produced (Venus returns to her original position on the sixth year, beginning the cycle again). This observation has not stood the test of later astronomical science: it is true that tracing the planet from the Near East would trace something of a pentagram, albeit a rather imaginative one. It would not look the same in other parts of the world and, as we now know, the laws of planetary motion have long dispelled the notion that the Earth is at the center of the universe.

Vitruvian Man A famed drawing by Leonardo of a man, front view and side, standing in a square within a circle. The first clue to the mysteries in The Da Vinci Code is Saunière having sprawled out his dying, naked body in emulation of this famous iconic Leonardo image. Vitruvian Man is named after Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, the Roman writer, architect, and engineer active in the first century BC. He was in charge of the aqueducts of Rome and wrote The Ten Books of Architecture, perhaps the first work on architecture ever written. Vitruvius’s study of human proportions was in his third book, and he left this guide for artists and architects to follow:

The measurements of the human body are as follows that is that 4 fingers make 1 palm, and 4 palms make 1 foot, 6 palms make 1 cubit; 4 cubits make a man’s height. And 4 cubits make one pace and 24 palms make a man. The length of a man’s outspread arms is equal to his height. From the roots of his hair to the bottom of his chin is the tenth of a man’s height; from the bottom of the chin to the top of the head is one eighth of his height; from the top of the breast to the roots of the hair will be the seventh part of the whole man. From the nipples to the top of the head will be the fourth part of man. The greatest width of the shoulders contains in itself the fourth part of man. From the elbow to the tip of the hand will be the fifth part of a man; and from the elbow to the angle of the armpit will be the eighth part of man. The whole hand will be the tenth part of the man. The distance from the bottom of the chin to the nose and from the roots of the hair to the eyebrows is, in each case the same, and like the ear, a third of the face.

Leonardo’s contribution was to solve this ancient algorithm known as “squaring the circle,” a geometric problem whereby a pair of compasses and a ruler are used in an attempt to construct a circle and square of equal area. Theoretically, a perfectly proportioned human would fit within the figure and while Vitruvius’s efforts apparently remained crude, Leonardo’s rendering is perfect and a work of mathematical as well as artistic genius.

Yahweh The personal name of God in the Old Testament. From the Hebrew letters Yod, Heh, Vav, and Heh (the tetragrammaton—see Adonai). Speaking God’s name in prayer is forbidden among Jews, who substitute Adonai. This restriction results from an interpretation of the Third Commandment that says it is forbidden to “take the name of God in vain.” In writing, LORD or G-d replaces Yahweh.

The rendering of the ancient Hebrew as Yahweh reflects the difficulty of deciding how a language not spoken for more than two thousand years and lacking any vowels might have said the letters Yod, Heh, Vav, and Heh, and then transliterating that into modern English (or any other language). According to the argument in The Da Vinci Code, YHWH was actually a Hebrew acronym that combined archaic male and female names for God, and “Haveh,” the Hebrew version of “Eve,” is intermingled into the Yahweh.

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