The Da Vinci Code

CHAPTER 74
"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 plane 
were hypnotic, and his head still throbbed where he'd been hit by the monk. Teabing was still in the 
back of the plane, and Langdon decided to take advantage of the moment alone with Sophie to tell 
her something that had been on his mind. "I think I know part of the reason why your grandfather 
conspired 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?"

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Langdon felt uncertain how to proceed. "The rift between you. The reason you haven't spoken to 
him in ten years. I think maybe he was hoping I could somehow make that right by explaining what 
drove 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 secret 
society. And whatever you saw upset you enough that you haven't spoken to him since. I know a 
fair 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 days 
early."
"You want to tell me about it?"
"I'd rather not." She turned suddenly back to Langdon, her eyes welling with emotion. "I don't 
know 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 white 
gossamer gowns... with golden shoes. They held golden orbs. The men wore black tunics and black 
shoes."
Langdon strained to hide his emotion, and yet he could not believe what he was hearing. Sophie 
Neveu 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 Hieros 

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Gamos," he said softly. "It dates back more than two thousand years. Egyptian priests and 
priestesses 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 to 
understand 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 had 
nothing to do with eroticism. It was a spiritual act. Historically, intercourse was the act through 
which male and female experienced God. The ancients believed that the male was spiritually 
incomplete until he had carnal knowledge of the sacred feminine. Physical union with the female 
remained the sole means through which man could become spiritually complete and ultimately 
achieve gnosis—knowledge of the divine. Since the days of Isis, sex rites had been considered 
man's only bridge from earth to heaven. "By communing with woman," Langdon said, "man could 
achieve 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. Physiologically 
speaking, the male climax was accompanied by a split second entirely devoid of thought. A brief 
mental vacuum. A moment of clarity during which God could be glimpsed. Meditation gurus 
achieved 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 was 
entirely opposite from ours today. Sex begot new life—the ultimate miracle—and miracles could 
be performed only by a god. The ability of the woman to produce life from her womb made her 
sacred. A god. Intercourse was the revered union of the two halves of the human spirit—male and 
female—through which the male could find spiritual wholeness and communion with God. What 
you saw was not about sex, it was about spirituality. The Hieros Gamos ritual is not a perversion. 

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It's a deeply sacrosanct ceremony."
His words seemed to strike a nerve. Sophie had been remarkably poised all evening, but now, for 
the first time, Langdon saw the aura of composure beginning to crack. Tears materialized in her 
eyes 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 at 
first. Langdon's Jewish students always looked flabbergasted when he first told them that the early 
Jewish tradition involved ritualistic sex. In the Temple, no less. Early Jews believed that the Holy 
of 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—with 
whom they made love and experienced the divine through physical union. The Jewish 
tetragrammaton YHWH—the sacred name of God—in fact derived from Jehovah, an androgynous 
physical 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 commune 
directly with God posed a serious threat to the Catholic power base. It left the Church out of the 
loop, 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 religions 
did 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 it 
surprising we feel conflicted about sex?" he asked his students. "Our ancient heritage and our very 
physiologies tell us sex is natural—a cherished route to spiritual fulfillment—and yet modern 
religion 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 societies 
around the world—many of them quite influential—still practiced sex rites and kept the ancient 
traditions alive. Tom Cruise's character in the film Eyes Wide Shut discovered this the hard way 
when he sneaked into a private gathering of ultraelite Manhattanites only to find himself witnessing 
Hieros Gamos. Sadly, the filmmakers had gotten most of the specifics wrong, but the basic gist was 
there—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 saying 
that 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, these 
kids 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, and 
without being so naive as to think you're all chaste angels, I will give you this bit of advice about 
your sex lives."

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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 approach 
sex as a mystical, spiritual act. Challenge yourself to find that spark of divinity that man can only 
achieve 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 the 
void, trying to process what Langdon had just told her. She felt a new regret well within her. Ten