Quotes from THE LOST SYMBOL by DAN BROWN

The act of tattooing one's skin was a transformative declaration of power, an announcement to the world: I am in control of my own flesh. The intoxicating feeling of control derived from physical transformation had addicted millions to flesh-altering practices . . . cosmetic surgery, body piercing, bodybuilding, and steroids . . . even bulimia and transgendering. The human spirit craves mastery over its carnal shell.

To live in the world without becoming aware of the meaning of the world is like wandering about in a great library without touching the books.
The Secret Teachings of All Ages

The goal of tattooing was never beauty. The goal was change, from the scarified Nubian priests of 2000 B.C., to die tattooed acolytes of the Cybele cult of ancient Rome, to the moko scars of the modern Maori, humans have tattooed themselves as a way of offering up their bodies in partial sacrifice, enduring the physical pain of embellishment and emerging changed beings.
Despite the ominous admonitions of Leviticus 19:28. which forbade the marking of one's flesh, tattoos had become a rite of passage shared by millions of people in the modern age—everyone from clean-cut teenagers to hard-core drug users to suburban housewives.

Langdon smiled. "Sorry, but the word occult, despite conjuring images of devil worship, actually means 'hidden' or 'obscured.' In times of religious oppression, knowledge that was counterdoctrinal had to be kept hidden or 'occult,' and because the church felt threatened by this, they redefined anything 'occult' as evil, and the prejudice survived."

So tell me, what are the three prerequisites for an ideology to be considered a religion?
"ABC," one woman offered. "Assure. Believe, Convert."
"Correct," Langdon said. "Religions assure salvation; religions believe in a precise theology: and religions convert nonbelievers." He paused. "Masonry, however, is batting zero for three. Masons make no promises of salvation: they have no specific theology: and they do not seek to convert you. In fact, within Masonic lodges, discussions of religion are prohibited."
"So . . . Masonry is anti religious?"
"On the contrary. One of the prerequisites for becoming a Mason is that you must believe in a higher power. The difference between Masonic spirituality and organized religion is that the Masons do not impose a specific definition or name on a higher power. Rather than definitive theological identities like God, Allah. Buddha, or Jesus, the Masons use more general terms like Supreme Being or Great Architect of the Universe. This enables Masons of different faiths to gather together."

Langdon nodded and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Don't tell anyone, but on the pagan day of the sun god Ra, I kneel at the foot of an ancient instrument of torture and consume ritualistic symbols of blood and flesh."
The class looked horrified.
Langdon shrugged. "And if any of you care to join me, come to the Harvard chapel on Sunday, kneel beneath the crucifix, and take Holy Communion."

Langdon winked. "Open your minds, my friends. We all fear what we do not understand."

For centuries the "brightest minds" on earth had ignored the ancient sciences, mocking them as ignorant superstition. Arming themselves instead with filing skepticism and dazzling new technologies—tools that led them only further from the truth. Every-generation's breakthroughs are proven false by the next generation's technology'. And it had gone through the ages. The more man learned, the more he realized he did not know".

Human thought can literally transform the physical world.

We are the masters of our own universe.

Superstring theory was a brand-new cosmological model. Based on the most recent scientific observations, it suggested the multidimensional universe was made up not of three . . . but rather of ten dimensions, which all interacted like vibrating strings, similar to resonating violin strings.

"Katherine, we have been born into wonderful times. A change is coming. Human beings are poised on the threshold of a new age when they will begin turning their eyes back to nature and to die old ways . A back to the ideas in books like the Zohar and other ancient texts from around the world. Powerful truth has its own gravity and eventually pulls people back to it. There will come a day when modern science begins in earnest to study the wisdom of the ancients . . . that will be the day that mankind begins to find answers to the big questions that still elude him."

Mankind, it seemed, had once grasped the true nature of the universe . . . but had let go, and forgotten.

Trish would have said impossible, but the I-word was banned here. Katherine considered it a dangerous mind-set in a field that often transformed preconceived falsehoods into confirmed truths. Trish Dunne seriously doubted this key-phrase search would fall into that category.
I'm not surprised, Trish thought. Even the Institute of Noetic Sciences in California described the field in arcane and abstruse language, defining it as the study of mankind's "direct and immediate access to knowledge beyond what is available to our normal senses and the power of reason." The word noetic, Trish had learned, derived from the ancient Greek nous—translating roughly to "inner knowledge" or "intuitive consciousness."'

[Catherine's gray eyes focused in on her now. "Trish, might I ask about the ethical dilemma posed by your work?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean you created a piece of software that can easily be abused. Those who possess it have access to powerful information not available to everyone. You didn't feel any hesitation creating it?"
Trish didn't blink. "Absolutely not. My software is no different than say ... a flight simulator program. Some users will practice flying first-aid missions into underdeveloped countries. Some users will practice flying passenger jets into skyscrapers. Knowledge is a tool, and like all tools, its impact is in the hands of the user."

"Now," Katherine said, "if we Take Trillions of These sand grams and let them attract one another to form . . . say, die moon, then their combined gravity is enough To move entire oceans and drag The tides back and forth across our planet."
"So let's take a hypothetical," Katherine said, discarding the sand grain. "What if I told you that a thought. . . any tiny idea that forms m your mind . . . actually has mass? What if I told you that a thought is an actual thing, a measurable entity, with a measurable mass? A minuscule mass, of course, but moss nonetheless, what are the implications?"
"Hypothetically speaking, Well, the obvious implications are ... if a thought has mass, then a thought exerts gravity and can pull things toward it."

"As are many equally improbable beliefs." Langdon often reminded his students that most modem religions included stories that did not hold up to scientific scrutiny: everything from Moses parting the Red Sea ... to Joseph Smith using magic eyeglasses to translate the Book of Mormon from a series of gold plates lie found buried in upstate New York. Wide acceptance of an idea is not proof of its validity.

Langdon exhaled. Have you got a few weeks? "In short, die Ancient Mysteries refer to a body of secret knowledge that was amassed long ago. One intriguing aspect of this knowledge is that it allegedly enables its practitioners to access powerful abilities that lie dormant in the human mind. The enlightened Adepts who possessed this knowledge vowed to keep it veiled from the masses because it was considered far too potent and dangerous for the uninitiated."
"Dangerous in what way?"
"The information was kept hidden for the same reason we keep matches from children. In the correct hands, fire can provide illumination . . . but in the wrong hands, fire can be highly destructive."

Langdon was not sure how to respond. The Ancient Mysteries had always been the greatest paradox of his academic career. Virtually every mystical tradition on earth revolved around the idea that there existed arcane knowledge capable of imbuing humans with mystical, almost godlike, powers: tarot and / Citing gave men the ability to see the future: alchemy gave men immortality through the fabled Philosopher's Stone: Wicca permitted advanced practitioners to cast powerful spells. The list went on and on.

Langdon exhaled 3"He's made the same error many zealots make—confusing metaphor with a literal reality." Similarly, early alchemists had toiled in vain to transform lead into gold, never realizing that lead-to-gold was nothing but a metaphor for tapping into true human potential—that of taking a dull, ignorant mind and transforming it into a bright, enlightened one.

"Yes." Anderson works here. He blows. "The word apotheosis literally means ' transformation'—that of man becoming God. It's from the ancient Greek, apo— become," theos—'god'."

'"The questions we discuss are challenging ones: What happens to the human condition if the great mysteries of life are finally revealed' "'What happens when those beliefs that we accept on faith . . . are suddenly categorically proven as fact'? Or disproved as myth? One could argue that there exist certain questions that are best left unanswered."

Wealth is commonplace, but wisdom is rare.

Great minds are always feared by lesser minds

Breathable liquid.
Liquid breathing had been a reality since 1966. when Leland C. Clark successfully kept alive a mouse that had been submerged for several hours in an oxygenated perfluorocarbon. In 1989, TLV technology made a dramatic appearance in the movie The Abyss, although few viewers realized that they were watching real science. Total Liquid Ventilation had been born of modem medicine's attempts to help premature babies breathe by returning them to the liquid-filled state of the womb. Human lungs, having spent nine months in utero, were no strangers to a liquid-filled state. Perfluorocarbons had once been too viscous to be fully breathable, but modem breakthroughs had made breathable liquids almost the consistency of water

'"Thirty-four,'' she said. "Every direction adds up to thirty-four."
"Exactly," Langdon said. "But did you know that this magic square is famous because
Dürer accomplished the seemingly impossible?" He quickly showed Katherine that m
addition to making The rows, columns, and diagonals add up to thirty-four, Dürer had also found a way to make the four quadrants, the four center squares, and even the four comer squares add up to that number. "Most amazing, though, was Dürer 's ability to position the numbers 15 and 14 together in the bottom row as an indication of the year in which he accomplished this incredible feat!"

16 3 2 13
5 10 11 8
9 6 7 12
4 15 14 1


He suspected America's "thirteen" conspiracy theorists would have a field day if they knew there were exactly thirteen storage rooms buried beneath the U.S. Capitol. Some found it suspicious that the Great Seal of the United States had thirteen stars, thirteen arrows, thirteen pyramid steps, thirteen shield stripes, thirteen olive leaves, thirteen olives, thirteen letters in annuit coeptis, thirteen letters in e pluribus unum, and on and on.

"And your students/' Sato demanded, "don't find it unnerving that Masons meditate with skulls and scythes?"
"No more unnerving than Christians praying at the feet of a man nailed to a cross, or
Hindus chanting in front of a four-armed elephant named Ganesh. Misunderstanding a culture's symbols is a common root of prejudice."

VITRIOL

"An odd choice of word." Sato said as the candlelight cast a frightening skull-shaped silhouette across the letters.
"Actually, it's an acronym," Langdon said. "It's written on the rear wall of most chambers like this as a shorthand for the Masonic meditative mantra: Visita interiora terrae, rectificando invenies occultum lapidem."
Sato eyed him, looking almost impressed. "Meaning?"
"Visit the interior of the earth, and by rectifying, you will find the hidden stone."

Moreover, Langdon knew, this little pyramid—with its flat top—was not even a true pyramid. Without its tip, this was another symbol entirely. Known as an Unfinished Pyramid, it was a symbolic reminder that man's ascent to his full human potential was always a work in progress. Though few realized it, this symbol was the most widely published symbol on earth. Over twenty billion in print, adorning every one-dollar bill in circulation, the Unfinished Pyramid waited patiently for its shilling capstone, which hovered above it as a reminder of America's yet-unfulfilled destiny and the work yet to be done, both as a country and as individuals.

And it is indeed a talisman. When Peter had told Langdon the package contained a talisman, Langdon had laughed. Now he realized his friend was right. This tiny capstone was a talisman, but not the magic kind . . . the far older kind. Long before talisman had magical connotations, it had another meaning—"completion." From the Greek telesma, meaning "complete," a talisman was any object or idea that completed another and made it whole. The finishing element. A capstone, symbolically speaking, was the ultimate talisman, transforming the Unfinished Pyramid into a symbol of completed perfection.
Langdon now felt an eerie convergence that forced him to accept one very strange truth: with the exception of its size, the stone pyramid in Peter's Chamber of Reflection seemed to be transforming itself, bit by bit. into something vaguely resembling the Masonic Pyramid of legend.

"I can see your dilemma. Professor However, both the Ancient Mysteries and Masonic philosophy celebrate the potentiality of God within each of us. Symbolically speaking, one could claim that anything within reach of an enlightened man ... is within reach of God."

"Even the Bible concurs." Bellamy said. "If we accept, as Genesis tells us, that 'God created man in his own image/ then we also must accept what this implies—that mankind was not created inferior to God. In Luke 17:20 we are told, 'The kingdom of God is within you.' "
"I'm sorry, but I don't know any Christians who consider themselves God's equal."
"Of course not," Bellamy said, his tone hardening. "Because most Christians want it both ways, they want to be able to proudly declare they are believers in the Bible and yet simply ignore those parts they find too difficult or too inconvenient to believe."
"I mention the horned Moses/' Bellamy now said, "to illustrate how a single word, misunderstood, can rewrite history."

"Very well then, In a moment, I shall do exactly that." He dabbed his mouth again. "Let me remind you that there was an era when even the brightest minds perceived the earth as flat. For if the earth was round, then surely the oceans would spill off Imagine how they would have mocked you if you proclaimed. 'Not only is the world a sphere, but there is an invisible, mystical force that holds everything to its surface'!"
"There's a difference," Langdon said, "between the existence of gravity . . . and the ability to transform objects with a touch of your hand."

Langdon knew die dean was correct. The famous Hermetic aphorism—Know ye not that ye are gods?—was one of the pillars of the Ancient Mysteries. As above, so below . . . Man created in God's image . . . Apotheosis. This persistent message of man's own divinity—of his hidden potential—was the recurring theme in the ancient texts of countless traditions. Even the Holy Bible cried out in Psalms 82:6: Ye are gods'

"Professor," the old man said, "I realize that you, like many educated people, live trapped between worlds—one foot in the spiritual, one foot in the physical. Your heart yearns to believe . . . but your intellect refuses to permit it. As an academic, you would be wise to learn from the great minds of history." He paused and cleared his throat. "If I'm remembering correctly, one of the greatest minds ever to live proclaimed: That which is impenetrable to us really exists. Behind the secrets of nature remains something subtle, intangible, and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion.' "
"Who said that'1'" Langdon said. "Gandhi'?"
"No," Katherine interjected. "Albert Einstein."

Katherine Solomon had read every word Einstein had ever written and was struck by his profound respect for the mystical, as well as his predictions that the masses would one day feel the same. The. religion of the future, Einstein had predicted, will he. a cosmic religion. It will transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology.

"Oh. heavens, the Book of Revelation is a mess!" the dean said. "Nobody knows how to read that. I'm talking about clear minds writing in clear language—the predictions of Saint Augustine, Sir Francis Bacon, Newton. Einstein, the list goes on and on, all anticipating a transformative moment of enlightenment. Even Jesus himself said, 'Nothing is hidden that will not be made known, nor secret that will not come to light.'"
"It's a safe prediction to make," Langdon said. "Knowledge glows exponentially. The more we know, the greater our ability to learn, and the faster we expand our knowledge base."
"Yes," Katherine added. "We see this in science all the time. Each new technology we invent becomes a tool with which to invent new technologies . . . and it snowballs. That's why science has advanced more in the last five years than in the previous five thousand. Exponential growth. Mathematically, as time passes, the exponential curve of progress becomes almost vertical, and new development occurs incredibly fast."

'"The cross," Langdon said, "was not a Christian symbol until the fourth century. Long before that, it was used by the Egyptians to represent the intersection of two dimensions—the human and the celestial. As above, so below. It was a visual representation of the juncture where man and God become one."
"Of course," Langdon said. In the days of Pythagoras, six centuries before Christ, the tradition of numerology hailed the number 33 as the highest of all the Master Numbers. It was the most sacred figure, symbolizing Divine Truth. The tradition lived on within the Masons . . . and elsewhere. It was no coincidence that Christians were taught that Jesus was crucified at age thirty-three, despite no real historical evidence to that effect. Nor was it coincidence that Joseph was said to have been
thirty-three when he married the Virgin Mary, or that Jesus accomplished thirty-three miracles, or that God's name was mentioned thirty-three times in Genesis, or that, in Islam, all the dwellers of heaven were permanently thirty-three years old.

Echoes of the ancient Art still resonated in every corner of the globe, from the mystical Kabbalists of Judaism to the esoteric Sufis of Islam. Vestiges remained in the arcane rituals of Christianity, in its god-eating rites of Holy Communion, its hierarchies of saints, angels, and demons, its chanting and incantation, its holy calendar's astrological underpinnings, its consecrated robes, and in its promise of everlasting life. Even now, its priests dispelled evil spirits by swinging smoke-filled censers, ringing sacred bells, and sprinkling holy water. Christians still practiced the supernatural craft of exorcism—an early practice of their faith that required the ability not only to cast out demons but to summon them.
And yet they cannot see their past?

Nowhere was the church's mystical past more evident than at her epicenter. In Vatican City, at the heart of St. Peter's Square, stood the great Egyptian obelisk. Carved thirteen hundred years before Jesus took his first breath—this numinous monolith had no relevance there, no link to modern Christianity. And yet there it was. At the core of Christ's church. A stone beacon, screaming to be heard. A reminder to those few sages who remembered where it all began. This church, born of the womb of the Ancient Mysteries, still bore her rites and symbols.
One symbol above all.

Adorning her altars, vestments, spires, and Scripture was the singular image of Christianity—that of a precious, sacrificed human being. Christianity, more than any other faith, understood the transformative power of sacrifice. Even now, to honor the sacrifice made by Jesus, his followers proffered then own feeble gestures of personal sacrifice . . . fasting, Lenten renunciation, tithing.
All of those offerings are. impotent, of course. Without blood. . . there is no true sacrifice.

Even now, it seemed, the Ancient Mysteries were taunting him. "The secret hides within" was the core tenet of the mysteries, urging man kind to seek God not in the heavens above . . . but rather within himself. The secret hides within. It was the message of all the great mystical teachers.
The kingdom of God is within yon. said Jesus Christ. Know thyself said Pythagoras.
Know ye not that ye are gods, said Hermes Trismegistus. The list went on and on . .
All the mystical teachings of the ages had attempted to convey this one idea. The secret hides within. Even so, mankind continued looking to the heavens for the face of God

THE ORDER EIGHT FRANKLIN SQUARE
One of history's best-known magic squares is the order-eight square published in 1769 by American scientist Benjamin Franklin, and which became famous for its inclusion of never-before-seen "bent diagonal summations."' Franklin's obsession with this mystical art form most likely stemmed from his personal associations with the prominent alchemists and mystics of his day. as well as his own belief m astrology, which were the underpinnings for the predictions made in his Poor Richard's Almanack.

52 61 4 13 20 29 36 45
14 3 62 51 46 35 30 19
53 60 5 12 21 28 37 44
11 6 59 54 43 38 27 22
55 58 7 10 23 26 39 42
9 8 57 56 41 40 25 24
50 63 2 15 18 31 34 47
16 1 64 49 48 33 32 17


As a young girl, Katherine Solomon had often wondered if there was life after death. Does heaven exist? What happens when we die? As she grew older, her studies in science quickly erased any fanciful notions of heaven, hell, or the afterlife. The concept of "life after death," she came to accept, was a human construct ... a fairy tale designed to soften the horrifying truth that was our mortality.
Or so I believed Katherine recalled writing in her lab notes with a trembling hand: 'There seems to exist an invisible 'material' that exits the human body at the moment of death. It has quantifiable mass which is unimpeded by physical barriers. I must assume it moves in a dimension I cannot yet perceive."
From the expression of shock on her brother's face. Katherine knew he understood the implications. "Katherine . . ." he stammered, blinking his gray eyes as if to make sure he was not dreaming. "I think you just weighed the human soul."

Solomon smiled. "My friends, don't get me wrong, our forefathers were deeply religious men, but they were Deists—men who believed in God, but in a universal and open-minded way. The only religions ideal they put forth was religious freedom. He pulled the microphone from the podium and strode out to the edge of the stage. "America's forefathers had a vision of a spiritually enlightened Utopia, in which freedom of thought, education of the masses, and scientific advancement would replace the darkness of outdated religious superstition."
Solomon smiled. "Why not? Our mythologies have a long tradition of magic words that provide insight and godlike powers. To this day. children still shout 'abracadabra' in hopes of creating some thing out of nothing. Of course, we've all forgotten that this word is not a toy; it has roots in ancient Aramaic mysticism—Avrah KaDabra—meaning 'I create as I speak.' "

Solomon gave the boy a nod of approval. "Exactly. The Apocalypse is literally a reveal-ation. The Book of Reveal-ation in the Bible predicts an unveiling of great truth and unimaginable wisdom. The Apocalypse is not the end of the world, but rather it is the end of the world as we know it. The prophecy of the Apocalypse is just one of the Bible's beautiful messages that has been distorted." Solomon stepped to the front of the stage. "Believe me, the Apocalypse is coming . . . and it will be nothing like what we were taught."

Oxygenated perfluorocarbons.
This new technology—known as Total Liquid Ventilation (TLV)—was so counterintuitive that few believed it existed.

One . . . but as Many.
"God is plural!' Katherine whispered, "because the minds of man are plural."
Langdon's Thoughts were spiraling now . . . dreams, memories, hopes, fears, revelations . . . all swirling above him in the Rotunda dome. As his eyes began to close again, he found himself staring at three words in Latin, painted within the Apotheosis
E PLURIBUS UNUM.
"Out of manv, one, " he thought, slipping off into sleep.


On the first landing, Langdon came face-to-face with a bronze bust of Masonic luminary Albert Pike: along with the engraving of his most famous quote: WHAT WE HAVE DONE FOR OURSELVES ALONE DIES WITH US; WHAT WE HAVE DONE FOR OTHERS AND THE WORLD REMAINS AND IS IMMORTAL

The text read:
TIME IS A RIVER . . . AND BOOKS ARE BOATS. MANY VOLUMES START DOWN THAT STREAM, ONLY TO BE WRECKED AND LOST BEYOND RECALL IN ITS SANDS. ONLY A FEW, A VERY FEW, ENDURE THE TESTINGS OF TIME AND LIVE TO BLESS THE AGES FOLLOWING.
There is a reason these volumes survived -while others vanished As a scholar of faith, Dean Galloway had always found it astonishing that the ancient spiritual texts—the most studied books on earth—were, in fact, the least understood
Concealed within those pages, there hides a wondrous secret.
One day soon the light would dawn, and mankind would finally begin to grasp the simple, transformative truth of the ancient teachings . . . and take a quantum leap forward m understanding his own magnificent nature.

"Robert, you and I both know that the ancients would be horrified if they saw how their teachings have been perverted . . . how religion has established itself as a tollbooth to heaven . . . how warriors march into battle believing God favors their cause. We've lost the Word, and yet its true meaning is still within reach, right before our eyes. It exists in all the enduring texts, from the Bible to the Bhagavad Gita to the Koran and beyond. All of these texts are revered upon the altars of Freemasonry because Masons understand what the world seems to have forgotten .. that each of these texts, in its own way, is quietly whispering the exact same message Peter's voice welled with emotion. " 'Know ye not that ye are gods?'"

Peter lowered his voice to a whisper. "The Buddha said. 'You are God yourself.' Jesus taught that 'the kingdom of God is within you and even promised us, The works I do: you can do . . . and greater. Even the first antipope — Hippolytus of Rome—quoted the same message, first uttered by the gnostic teacher Monoimus: 'Abandon the search for God . . . instead, take yourself as the starting place/ ,:

"Exactly. Our physical bodies have evolved over the ages, but it was our minds that were created in the image of God. We've been reading the Bible too literally. We learn that God created us in his image, but it's not our physical bodies that resemble God, it's our minds.'"

"You want a real answer? Here it is. If I hand you a violin and say you have the capability to use it to make incredible music, I am not lying. You do have the capability, but you'll need enormous amounts of practice to manifest it. This is no different from learning to use your mind, Robert. Well-directed thought is a learned skill. To manifest an intention requires laserlike focus, full sensory visualization, and a profound belief. We have proven this in a lab. And just like playing a violin, there are people who exhibit greater natural ability than others. Look to history. Look to the stories of those enlightened minds who performed miraculous feats.”