"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 planewere hypnotic, and his head still throbbed where he'd been hit by the monk. Teabing was still in theback of the plane, and Langdon decided to take advantage of the moment alone with Sophie to tellher something that had been on his mind. "I think I know part of the reason why your grandfatherconspired 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?"Langdon felt uncertain how to proceed. "The rift between you. The reason you haven't spoken tohim in ten years. I think maybe he was hoping I could somehow make that right by explaining whatdrove 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 secretsociety. And whatever you saw upset you enough that you haven't spoken to him since. I know afair 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 daysearly.""You want to tell me about it?""I'd rather not." She turned suddenly back to Langdon, her eyes welling with emotion. "I don'tknow 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 whitegossamer gowns... with golden shoes. They held golden orbs. The men wore black tunics and blackshoes."Langdon strained to hide his emotion, and yet he could not believe what he was hearing. SophieNeveu 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 HierosGamos," he said softly. "It dates back more than two thousand years. Egyptian priests andpriestesses 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 tounderstand 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 hadnothing to do with eroticism. It was a spiritual act. Historically, intercourse was the act throughwhich male and female experienced God. The ancients believed that the male was spirituallyincomplete until he had carnal knowledge of the sacred feminine. Physical union with the femaleremained the sole means through which man could become spiritually complete and ultimatelyachieve gnosis—knowledge of the divine. Since the days of Isis, sex rites had been consideredman's only bridge from earth to heaven. "By communing with woman," Langdon said, "man couldachieve 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. Physiologicallyspeaking, the male climax was accompanied by a split second entirely devoid of thought. A briefmental vacuum. A moment of clarity during which God could be glimpsed. Meditation gurusachieved 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 wasentirely opposite from ours today. Sex begot new life—the ultimate miracle—and miracles couldbe performed only by a god. The ability of the woman to produce life from her womb made hersacred. A god. Intercourse was the revered union of the two halves of the human spirit—male andfemale—through which the male could find spiritual wholeness and communion with God. Whatyou saw was not about sex, it was about spirituality. The Hieros Gamos ritual is not a perversion.
It's a deeply sacrosanct ceremony."His words seemed to strike a nerve. Sophie had been remarkably poised all evening, but now, forthe first time, Langdon saw the aura of composure beginning to crack. Tears materialized in hereyes 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 atfirst. Langdon's Jewish students always looked flabbergasted when he first told them that the earlyJewish tradition involved ritualistic sex. In the Temple, no less. Early Jews believed that the Holyof 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—withwhom they made love and experienced the divine through physical union. The Jewishtetragrammaton............