The Da Vinci Code, The Secret, The Grail Conspiracies: A Comparison

The Grail Conspiracies

and

The Da Vinci Code

Chances are, you've read Dan Brown's thriller, The Da Vinci Code,
and like most of us, found it a fun read, fast-moving, and thought-
provoking. Dan Brown has a unique gift for integrating history and
background into the plot, and, no question about it, The Da Vinci Code
has reawakened interest in the story of the Holy Grail.

One of the questions I'm asked, as author of The Grail Conspiracies,
is whether The Da Vinci Code "inspired" me. In other words, did I I
dash off a book to jump on that bandwagon?

I'm beginning to be asked the same question about my other related
book, Joining Miracles: Navigating the Seas of Latent Possibility,
and how it relates to The Secret, the book and video by Rhonda Byrne.

So let's deal with those questions up front before I get into the body of
this article.

The answer to both questions is the same: I began The Grail
Conspiracies and Joinng Miracles long before The Da Vinci Code
and The Secret came to market. (Indeed, it seems I began long before
Dan Brown and Rhonda Byrne even got the inspiration. From what I've
read in the media, Dan Brown began on DVC around 2001, and
Rhonda Byrne on The Secret around 2004.)

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In this short piece, I'd like to share some additional background on that
thriller, The Grail Conspiracies, and on some of the key ideas
presented there. I'll also be referring to my Joining Miracles:
Navigating the Seas of Latent Possibility, as Grail and Joining were
developed simultaneously, are linked in a way you'll see when you read
The Grail Conspiracies.

Traditionally, the Holy Grail is the cup of the Last Supper, perhaps also
the vessel used by Joseph of Arimathea to collect the blood of Jesus as
it fell from the Cross. By legend, that contact with the divine imbued the
cup with mystical powers that were there to be tapped by whoever held
it. (But, as we'll see, that traditional version of the Grail story is only one
of several.)

The Da Vinci Code and Holy Blood, Holy Grail

I read The Da Vinci Code when it came out in 2003, more than a
decade after I had begun researching the deeper implications of the
Grail. In the course of that research, I'd had the chance to visit various
sites in Europe with Grail connections in the course of researching and
developing The Grail Conspiracies. I enjoyed reading Dan Brown's
take, I understood why he used certain accounts as his basis, but felt
then and believe even more strongly now that The Da Vinci Code
missed the point of the real Grail truth — the impact of other dimensions
of a deeper reality than we normally experience.

Did The Da Vinci Code get the Grail story right? Is the Holy Grail in fact
what Dan Brown suggests? Is the Holy Grail what other books, including
the earlier book, Holy Blood, Holy Grail , propose as the true grail?
Was the "grail" (as The Da Vinci Code and Holy Blood, Holy Grail
propose) nothing more than a coded reference to the womb of Mary
Magdalene, carrying the unborn child of Jesus to form one of the royal
bloodlines of Europe? Is the story of the Grail in fact part of a cover
story created by a conspiracy stretching back to the time of Jesus?

Have we been misled by a false story created and carried on for most of
2,000 years by a secret cabal? Have we been the victims of what would
be an inside joke on us all, for all these years?

The Holy Grail and the Knights Templar

In 1990, when I was taking an extended break from my work as a
management consultant and lawyer, I explored many of the same
strands that Dan Brown later followed in researching The Da Vinci
Code. I went to La Rochelle, the main Atlantic seaport of the legendary
Knights Templar --- the mysterious order of warrior-monks who were, by
legend, guardians of the Grail. I walked through the Templars'
Commanderie (headquarters), steps from the port they built a thousand
years ago. (Interestingly ---synchronicitously? --- the video camera I
was using stopped working while I was inside the Templar Commanderie
in La Rochelle, but begain working fine as soon as I left.)

I learned that in October, 1307, the King of France, in alliance with
others, ordered the arrest of all Knights Templar and seizure of their
property. The strike came on Friday, October 13, 1307, and the
Templars --- at the time the strongest fighting force the world had ever
known --- mysteriously surrendered without resistance. But the
Templars apparently had warning of what was to come, and sent
caravans loaded with their treasures to be loaded onto ships at that
port of La Rochelle. Where did those ships go? Was what we think of as
the Holy Grail among those Templar treasures? (Later, with the
approval of a Pope who was strongly under the influence of the French
King, the Templar knights were tried as heretics.)

Even then, as I was just starting on what would become the spiritual
thriller, The Grail Conspiracies, I sensed that there was another
hidden truth of the potential of other dimensions within the story of the
Grail, and that the Knights Templar did in fact have a role in that deeper
Grail --- a Grail that had been protected not only by the Templars and
others, but protected by a thousand-year disinformation campaign
designed to mislead those who came with bad intentions.

What is the Grail? Who is it to serve?

These, of course, are the two classic questions of the Grail stories and
legends that have shaped our culture over the centuries.

What indeed IS the Holy Grail?

Is the Grail, as most of the legends say, the cup or chalice used by
Jesus at the Last Supper? By legend, that contact imbued the cup with
divine powers.

Or is the Grail --- as two recent best-selling books, The Da Vinci Code,
and Holy Blood, Holy Grail --- claim, not a cup, after all, but rather the
bloodline of Jesus, as passed down through Mary Magdalene? In this
version, "Grail" was a code-word used by conspirators over the past
2,000 as a tool for deluding and distracting the attention of those who
were not initiated into that conspiracy.

Or is there a third answer to that question, "What is the Grail?"
Perhaps the "Grail" WAS indeed a code word for a secret known only to
a few. But, as you'll discover in the spiritual-political thriller The Grail
Conspiracies, that secret was not a bloodline, nor a hidden lineage.

What WAS that secret encoded within the Grail legends? Perhaps it
was, as hinted by Jesus and other spiritual teachers through the ages,
the message that we, all humans, have sleeping within us "mystical" or
"miracle" powers to shape --- or "unfold?" --- reality in ways that most of
us cannot yet perceive.

What is that deeper Grail?

If you look beneath most versions of the Grail legend (other than the
one relied on in The Da Vinci Code) we find that the Grail seekers
were, ultimately, on a “. . . quest for mystical union with the otherness
that lies buried in the depths of each individual psyche " . . . a divine
spark that is part of the Absolute." (Quote from Mind and Magic,
Francis X. King)

It is this aspect of the Grail quest --- as tapping into that inner spark that
links with the Divine ---that I think Dan Brown and The Da Vinci Code
missed, as did other books, such as Holy Blood, Holy Grail. They got it
partly right: there was a cover-up of the truth, with the story of the quest
for a physical Grail cup used to direct attention away from the deeper
"Grail," which is much more than just an artifact. The story of the Grail
as just the physical cup is, I became convinced, an early and very
successful instance of "disinformation" --- putting out one story to
cover a deeper truth. While the stories seemed to be about the quest
for a physical cup, in fact they were accounts of a deeper quest for a
mystical power within the individual.

Thus while The Da Vinci Code and others got it partly right --- that
there was disinformation around the Grail stories --- my studies have
convinced me that they missed the deeper truth: that the true Grail
relates to a dormant human power latent within us. That is the deeper
secret of the Holy Grail. The Grail quest, like the search of the
Alchemists, is, on a deeper level, a quest for the secret of how to tap
that mysterious, mystical miracle power that is within us all, waiting to be
awakened.

In short, as one of the characters in The Grail Conspiracies puts it,
"What I'm proposing is that the true, deeper Grail quest was for the
same thing as the true quest of the Alchemists: to find the secrets of
tapping the higher potentials of the human mind."

The Grail Conspiracies is by no means just another telling of the
traditional Grail story. For one thing, it is set in contemporary times. For
another, it takes a very different look at what that dormant miracle
power within us might be, and how we might access it.

The Grail Conspiracies is on one level, a thriller, a spiritual thriller. But
it is a mystery story as well --- suggesting the deeper possibilities, the
possibility that we are all potential miracle workers, that we were born
with a sleeping mystical power, and that we have the ability to use that
dormant power within to play an active role in unfolding the events of
our lives. (For a different take on that deeper secret of the dormant
human powers, see the companion book toThe Grail Conspiracies,
entitled Joining Miracles: Navigating the Seas of Latent Possibility.)

The Grail Conspiracies and Joining Miracles

At the start, and for the first couple of years of tinkering, I thought I was
writing just one book, a spiritual thriller, The Grail Conspiracies. But it
didn't come together; it felt like forcing a big foot into a small shoe.

The Aha! hit one evening while visiting an aunt, and when I got home I
immediately began separating the two. Yet they were still very much
related. My solution: As you'll see, parts of what is now Joining
MIracles remain in The Grail Conspiracies as "dividers" setting off
each day. That's why in this website I refer to them as "companion
books."

Joining Miracles and The Secret

Joining Miracles is a spiritual fable of our limitless human potentials.

It's not giving away the secret --- oops! pardon the expression! Better
start over: Without spoiling the plot, suffice it to say that The Grail
Conspiracies is about uncovering what the "true" Grail really is.

The Grail, in my view, is not the bloodline of Jesus (as suggested by
The Da Vinci Code and Holy Blood, Holy Grail. Nor do I think that the
real Grail is the cup (or at least just the cup of the Last Supper).

Without giving away too much, my research over a good many years
and in a variety of disciplines has led me to believe that there is
disinformation around the real Grail, and that there has been a
deliberate conspiracy to keep us from recognizing what that deeper
Grail is.

I've read that the teachers and advocates of The Secret say that,
among several explanations, quantum physics, particularly "measurable
energy frequencies or vibrations," along with "The Law of Attraction"
are, so to speak, the secret of The Secret.

If so, then in that sense, Joining Miracles and The Secret have some
points of similarity. I think that the interplay of human consciousness
and what we term quantum physics is at the core of our wider human
capabilities.

But when you read Joining Miracles: Navigating the Seas of Latent
Possibility you'll find a significantly broader tapping of the possibilities
of the hidden aspects beyond what we perceive as "reality." You'll find
ways of focusing your consciousness and using other aspects of what
we term quantum physics, to affect the reality as it is presented to you.

The Grail Conspiracies and Deeper Secret

Incidentally, in late 2006, The Grail Conspiracies was briefly test-
marketed under the title Deeper Secret, the "market" told us that The
Grail Conspiracies was the better title! The two books are essentially
the same.

Michael McGaulley

Author, The Grail Conspiracies

Champlain House Media, 2007,
ISBN:        0-9768406-0-X
ISBN-13:   9-780976 840602

Author, Joining Miracles: Navigating the Seas of Latent Possibility

Champlain House Media, 2007
ISBN:        0-9768406-1-8
ISBN-13:   9-780976 840619