
The people of God were to have no part in such cults (e.g. Genesis 38:21), was apparently commonplace among Israel's neighbouring tribes, and was profoundly unacceptable to God. Scripture indicates that sex-worship of this type occurred in Old Testament times (e.g. Religions based on ritual sex are very old. (Chapter 74)Ī featured scene in Chapter 74 describes what Brown calls a "deeply sacrosanct ceremony" where participants, dressed in black and white robes and wearing masks, stand in a circle and chant while watching a masked man and woman copulate on a low altar in the center of the circle. Intercourse was the revered union of the two halves of the human spirit - male and female - through which the male could find spritual wholeness and communion with God.

The ability of the woman to produce life from her womb made her sacred. Since the days of Isis, sex rites had been considered man's only bridge from Earth to Heaven. Physical union with the female remained the sole means through which man could become spiritually complete and ultimately achieve gnosis - knowledge of the divine.

In The Da Vinci Code there is no higher form of spirituality than the ancient gnostic fertility cults:

