"The Da Vinci Code"

I've been threatening to read this book for some time now, and this special illustrated edition tipped the scale.

This is not a close reading, so I only caught a couple of hokey bits. One being Boston Magazine listing Langdon 'as one of that city's top ten most intriguing people', the other being Dan Brown's description of Sophie - 'a haunting certainty to her gait'.

Fun things learned:

• Pentacle - its graphic origin of its ties to Venus. The planet traces a perfect pentacle across the ecliptic sky every eight years, modern Olympics follow the half-cycles of Venus.
• Mystery of Sheshach - the city name turned out to be Babel in Atbash Cipher.
  
• koyanisquatsi - 'life out of balance' in Hopi.
• sfumato style of painting (foggy)
• English - la lingua pura
• The ratio of female & male bees in any beehive is PHI (1.618).
  
• The painting in Little Mermaid Ariel's underwater home was La Tour's 'The Penitent Magdalene'. {Ha. It was Donald Duck first taught me the relationship between a pentagram & the Golden/Divine Proportion.}
• French kings appointed royal anagrammatists for advice.
• Egyptian Ankh {Eglantyne's friend}, Crux Gemmata (13 jewels)
  

Paris trivia:

• Saint-Sulpice - architectural footprint matching that of Notre Dame to within inches. Marquis de Sade, Baudelaire were baptized there, Hugo married there.
• La Pyramide Inversee and parquet floor of the Grand Gallery in the Louvre
• Arc Du Carrousel - orgiastic rituals were held there.