Amanda DeSalme- Sacred Feminine

-Leonardo Da Vinci's "The Last Supper"

Over the summer I read "the Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown. I found it interesting to learn about the symbols in Leonardo Da Vinci's work and the possible religious meaning behind them. In the novel, Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu try to solve the mystery of curator Sauniere's death by following the symbols he left behind leading them to the works of Da Vinci. Sauniere was a part of the secret society Priory of Sion, also known as the Knights of Templar, who are guardians of the Holy Grail. According to this novel, Jesus Christ was married to Mary Magdalene, who bore his child after he was crucified. I do not know about the historical accuracy of any of this, but it is interesting to speculate on the different possibilities of what went on in those times. In Da Vinci's painting of the last supper, to Jesus' right is actually a female, said to be Mary Magdalene, instead of one of the 12 disciples. According to this novel, Mary is the Holy Grail, also called the chalice. A common symbol for the chalice, or "sacred feminine" is a V, whereas a symbol of a male would be inverted ^.

I also read the novel "Skinny Legs and All" by Tom Robbins over the summer, and found a connection to "the Da Vinci Code" as it talked about the "sacred feminine." In this novel however, they are referring to the ancient Babylonian goddess Ishtar, the equivalent of Sumerian Astarte, and sometimes also connected to Aphrodite. In the novel there is a dancer who works at the restaurant that the story revolves around. (the restaurant, named "Isaac and Ishmael's" to celebrate the companionship of 2 men with different religions, was opened jointly by an Arab and a Jew). The dancer is coaxed into dancing the "Dance of the Seven Veils," which was originally danced by Salome (whose name is related to "Shalom"/peace) in the New Testament of the bible. It is a very erotic dance where the seven veils that are covering the dancer's body are removed one by one until she is dancing completely naked. When the dancer performed this dance in the novel, the main character, an artist named Ellen Cherry, had a sort of religious experience while watching the dance where truths were revealed to her, as if veils were being taken away.

Before I read these two novels, I never realized how common the theme of sacred femininity was before Western cultures paternalized everything. Nakedness was also very spiritual, whereas today it seems to be tied to "sin."
What really opened my eyes though, was that there are so many different names for essentially the same goddess. (Ishtar, Astarte, Aphrodite, Venus). It makes me wonder how connected all of the religions of the world are. Maybe every religion is really describing the same thing and giving it different names.

Anyways, I highly recommend these 2 novels, and they talk quite a bit about religious art. They might open your eyes to whole new religious ideas through the beauty of the the work of art that is the novels themselves.