The world is full of wonders that man always tries to find out. Since ancient times, man already felt the need to know the what, the why, and the how of what he could observe around him. To quench his thirst for answers, man created stories and paid tribute to the wonders of the earth, to gods and goddesses. When man’s knowledge progressed and began to understand more, his eagerness heightened and the more he had questions. He crossed the mountains, sailed the oceans, went under the seas, soared the skies and even tried to explore the universe using telescopes. Man did not want to be ignorant.
It is already 21st century. Man still has a lot of questions. He already invented a number of machines to make his life more comfortable. He already knows a lot of what the world has to offer and already has a peek of the outer space. Yet, he continues to seek strange things from the normal. He still wonders. He observes his surroundings, asks a question, creates a hypothetical answer to his question and finds out the truth. This is the most probable reason why man is interested in conspiracy theories.
Conspiracy Theory claims that there is an event or series of events, resulting from secret manipulations by two or more individuals or perhaps an organization. And this event or series of events are not the result of a single doer or of a natural occurrence. Most of the time, the theory challenges an official or dominant understanding of events. According to Michael Albert, “Conspiracy theory has the appeal of a mystery—it is dramatic, compelling, vivid, and human.”
Since 1960’s, conspiracy theory has been a popular subject of fiction writers. Their works is known as Conspiracy Fiction. The common theme of such works is that characters are discovering a conspiracy, which is hard to tell if true. Their mission is to find the truth and they have to decide whether to expose the conspiracy to the public or not. Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco in 1988 featured a story in which the staff of a publishing firm, intending to create a series of popular occult books, invented their own occult’s conspiracy. The staff lost control as the conspiracy began to be believed. Other conspiracy fiction books were: The Word and The Miracle by Irving Wallace; and The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell.
Not everyone knows the beginning of Christianity or origins of religion in general. Religion is a mystery. Therefore, writers find this a factor for them to choose religious facts, myths, and legends as part of their works.
In Brown’s second novel, Angels & Demons, he introduced the readers to Illuminati. In the story, Illuminati planted antimatter in the Vatican City. The antimatter would explode in 24 hours, during a conclave. Brown first heard about Illuminati on his visit to Vatican in 1998. In Brown’s Witness Statement, he wrote “According to the tour guide, one of the Vatican’s most feared ancient enemies was a secret brotherhood known as the Illuminati—the enlightened ones—a cult of early scientists who had vowed revenge against the Vatican for crimes against scientists like Galileo and Copernicus.”
On the other hand, The Da Vinci Code has the following themes: the sacred feminine; goddess worship; the Holy Grail; symbology; paganism; the history of the Bible and its accuracy, including the Gnostic Gospels; Templar history; the suppression of information by the church; the genealogy of Jesus; religious zealotry; and nature’s grand design as evidence of the existence of God. This novel also suggested that the origin of Christianity was manipulated by the first leaders of early Church. The Council of Nicea disregarded the nature of Christ as a human and made him divine. Also, Mary Magdalene was Jesus Christ’s wife and mother of his child, not just Christ’s follower. This has been concealed by the Church for 2000 years, according to the novel.
Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum, in fact, mentioned the Jesus-Mary Magdalene idea in passing. In 1946, there was a fictionalized historical account of Christ’s life entitled King Jesus: A Novel by Robert Graves. It was extremely controversial when it was published. In 1996, the novel The Children of the Grail by Peter Berling used the bloodline of Jesus and Mary Magdalene as the central part of the plot.
Aside from fiction books, there were also non-fiction books that became controversial for incorporating religious myths and legends, introducing them as facts. One book was entitled Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln. It was first published in 1982 and became an international best seller upon its release. The book claimed that there was evidence Jesus married Mary Magdalene and their descendants migrated to southern France. Another book was The Late, Great Planet Earth published in 1970. It was written by Hal Lindsey and the book sold over 15 million copies. Lindsey stated that “the events of history, specifically the Cold War, fulfilled Biblical prophecy.” This book also claimed that Jesus Christ would return in 1988.
