The Hidden Message Within Church and
Renaissance Art by Tim Wallace-Murphy
Cracking the Symbol Code
A heretic in medieval times
was anyone who dissented from the established Church, and to be named a
heretic invited torture and execution. Such dissenters included the
Knights Templar, the Freemasons, the Cathars and scientists of the day.
Their mission was to safeguard the truth about Jesus Christ and his
ministry, which they believed was revealed in early scriptures that were
rejected and suppressed by ruthless oppressors in the name of the
Church.
Cracking the Symbol Code
explores how ingenious and complex secret codes for communicating with
others of like minds were concealed in symbols hidden in art, artefacts
and architecture of the medieval world to preserve the truth for future
generations. While symbolism has always been used by man in his
exploration of the world of the spirit, and Christian symbolism was
prevalent throughout medieval religious art and architecture, it is a
relatively recent discovery that there were deeper layers of meaning
disguised within the symbolism; “heretical” ideas that were kept hidden
from the prying eyes of a repressive hierarchy.
After twenty years
of research, author Tim Wallace-Murphy takes the reader on a guided tour across Europe to
medieval churches searching out the secret messages that were meant to
be discovered. Decoding this “hidden symbolism” is on two levels.
There are certain keys, but there will always be an intuitive element to
the understanding of the coded messages.
It may come as a surprise to
learn that there are two completely conflicting views of the ministry of
Jesus as recounted in the New Testament; the orthodox church view is
that He is the incarnation of God on Earth who came to redeem mankind
from sin. The heretical view is that He was a divinely inspired teacher
who came to reveal a Gnostic spiritual path to enlightenment. The
author’s description of the development of mainstream Christian
symbolism is a delineation of why and how heretical ideas were kept
secret. He also discloses some of the indicators that will alert astute
seekers to the presence of hidden symbolism before introducing the
layers of meaning conveying this truly arcane art form.
Many of the symbols
Wallace-Murphy discusses were left to us by the Knights Templar, members
of a religious order founded in Jerusalem in 1118 (during the crusades)
to defend the temple of Solomon and protect pilgrims. Their beliefs,
however, put them well outside the doctrinal teachings of the Catholic
Church, and included Manichaeism and Gnosticism.
Wallace-Murphy suggests that
the Templars saw themselves as guardians of sacred secrets that had to
be hidden from the lethal forces of the Inquisition. At the same time,
they needed to find ways to communicate and transmit their secrets via
secret symbols hidden in the Christian art of medieval and renaissance
Europe. The symbols he discusses include:
- The Black Madonna, who
represents Mary Magdalene, not Mary the mother of Jesus
- Images of the Milky Way
symbolize pilgrimages of initiation
- The images of the sun as a
representation of the St. Clair family -- a powerful Templar dynasty
- The Lily as a
representation not of Mary's purity, but an emblem of a secret family
line of the blood of Christ carried by Merovingian kings.
Europe’s heritage of sacred
art symbolism is accessible to all, which, as sacred symbolism needs to
be experienced rather than explained, should tempt readers to see for
themselves. Direct experience of the mystical effects of sacred
symbolism opens up not only the hidden world of medieval heretics, but
also the inner world of the viewer.
Tim Wallace-Murphy studied
medicine at University College, Dublin and is a licensed psychologist,
author, lecturer and historian. He has written three bestsellers:
The Mark of the Beast (with Trevor Ravenscroft),
Rex Deus, The
True Mystery of Rennes-Le-Chateaux and
Rosslyn: Guardian of the
Secrets of the Holy Grail. Rosslyn provided invaluable
source material to Dan Brown for The Da Vinci Code.
Below is Tim Wallace-Murphy's
Introduction to
Cracking the
Symbol Code: Revealing the Secret Heretical Messages within Church and
Renaissance Art.
The phenomenal sales of Dan
Brown’s thriller, The Da Vinci Code, and the success of Umberto
Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum are a demonstrable sign of the public’s
growing fascination with the idea that heretical thought has been
secretly encoded within religious art. Despite the fictional nature of
both The Da Vinci Code and Foucault’s Pendulum, the truth
about ‘Hidden Symbolism’ is far more fascinating than any fiction.
This work is an explanation
of the history and importance of symbolism in mankind’s long and
tortuous exploration of the fascinating world of the spirit” one that
focuses heavily on the development of Christian symbolism and then,
within that, delineates why and how ‘heretical’ ideas were kept hidden
from the prying eyes of a repressive hierarchy. It demonstrates some of
the indicators that will alert astute seekers to the presence of hidden
symbolism before introducing them to some of the many layers of meaning
conveyed by this truly arcane art form. Direct experience of the
mystical effects of sacred symbolism opens up not only the hidden world
of the medieval ‘heretics’ but also the inner world of the viewer
leading to transformative experiences that are hand-tailored to the
needs and understanding of the individual.
Any study of works such as
this should be followed, as soon as possible, by personal on-site visits
to view such symbols in situ, for sacred symbols need to be
experienced rather than explained. What a true symbol expresses is
ultimately intangible; it conveys a mystery that can only be felt and
cannot be adequately expressed in words. Such a symbol is the mysterious
meeting-point between the material and the spiritual, the conscious and
the unconscious that will act, at one and the same time, both as a
signpost and as a transformative catalyst on the quest for spiritual
enlightenment – the true objective of the search for the Holy Grail.
-Tim Wallace-Murphy
Introduction to
Cracking the Symbol Code: Revealing the Secret Heretical Messages within
Church and Renaissance Art. Watkins Publishers, 2005. Reprinted with
permission.
