By late October, the posse had drifted off into their own separate lives again. The summer of the clues was over. The book was at last published, but it was a kind of anticlimax to the incredible range of the clues and codes, and the activity and interaction that went into solving them. For a certain group of people, the meaning of the experience was all about the journey. Arriving at the destination seemed not so critical in the end.
William Wirt’s Skull, Albrecht Dürer’s Magic Square
The Doubleday Clues and The Lost Symbol
by Mark E. Koltko-Rivera
We know Dan Brown likes red herrings—he even named a character in The Da Vinci Code after this plot device (Bishop Aringarosa’s surname means “red herring” in Italian). In all the Robert Langdon tales, the Harvard symbologist is forever going down one road of reasoning only to reach a dead end. But along the way, Langdon has many points to make. Even when something turns out to be for naught in terms of the plot, we, the readers, have learned something new. Just before TLS was published, a series of official clues emerged about the then strictly guarded secret content of the new book. Mark E. Koltko-Rivera was among the first to start blogging about the possible meaning of these clues. We asked him to look back at the clues and give us a postmortem on what he found most intriguing.
Exactly twelve weeks before the publication date of The Lost Symbol, the book’s publisher, Doubleday, began to send out clues about the content of Dan Brown’s long-awaited novel. The clues went out by Twitter, with many clues being reproduced on the Dan Brown Fan page on Facebook. (A few clues just went out on Facebook.) The clues involved a wide-ranging array of puzzles: ciphered messages, anagrams, rebuses, photographs, geographical coordinates, works of art, references to historical personages from the Renaissance to the present day, and more.
Three days after Doubleday began sending out these clues, I established an Internet site (now called “Discovering The Lost Symbol: The Blog”) where I offered answers and interpretations of the clues. I reported solutions to the puzzles; I gave historical background about the people, places, and events alluded to in the solutions; and I explained what importance any of this might have for the forthcoming novel.
In short, I had a blast. As a Freemason myself, it was fun to explain the links that many of the clues had to Freemasonry (or to myths about Freemasonry). It was intellectually stimulating to go over so much material involving so many different topics (ancient cryptography; modern double agents; Renaissance art; the American Founding Fathers; the Babington plot against Queen Elizabeth I; the temple at Chichén Itzá, and much more). I felt that I had a real handle on where the novel might go, in a tale involving dastardly double crosses and conspiracies stretching from before the American Revolution up to our own day.
And then the novel was released on September 15, 2009.
On the one hand, I was very happy to read the story that Dan Brown actually wrote. On the other hand, I was stunned to find out that most of the clues issued by Doubleday bore very little relation to anything in the novel. The Illuminati? Hardly mentioned. Double crosses dating back to the Revolution? Nothing. Ancient buildings with alignments to the stars, the sun, and the seasons? Zipperoo. American Revolution or modern-day double agents? Nary a one.
On the other hand, a small number of the clues were anything but red herrings. Freemasonry and its cryptographic systems were indeed central to the novel, as even the very first of the clues suggested. Albrecht Dürer, that master of the German Renaissance, mentioned in the solution of two of the Doubleday clues, makes an appearance through a specific mysterious detail in one of his masterpieces, Melencolia I, the magic square. For the most part, though, there was a real disconnect between the clues and the novel. Why? We may never know. However, the sheer brilliance of some of the clues, and their range through history and a variety of intellectual disciplines, can be appreciated in their own right. Below, I describe just two of my favorite Doubleday clues, and some of my thoughts about them.
William Wirt and His Skull
The sixth Doubleday clue, posted to Twitter at 3:36 p.m. PDT on Wednesday, June 24:
Who stole William Wirt’s skull?
The clue refers to a real person with an unusual history—somewhat peculiar during his life, and downright bizarre after his death.
Today, William Wirt (1772–1834) is mostly remembered for the work he did in helping to prosecute (unsuccessfully) Aaron Burr for treason in 1807. Largely for his distinguished work in that effort, he was appointed attorney general for the United States. He served from 1817 to 1829. However, I thought that Wirt was likely of interest to Dan Brown because of what he did after his retirement at the age of fifty-seven. To fully appreciate Wirt’s place in The Lost Symbol, we have to consider one of the stranger aspects of American history: the anti-Masonic period. It is a story of deceit, political conspiracy, and possibly murder, with effects spanning generations—in other words, the perfect backstory for a Dan Brown novel.
In the 1820s, in upstate New York, a practicing stonemason who was not a Freemason, William Morgan, somehow blustered his way into some Masonic Lodge meetings, where he quickly learned Masonic ritual. With Morgan able to pass himself off as a Mason, his services came in demand at lodges in western New York for his ability to perform Masonic ritual with a resonant voice and an impressive delivery. On the basis of his supposed but faked membership in the Masonic fraternity, Morgan was admitted to a Masonic “high-degree” organization, the Holy Royal Arch (part of the York Rite of Freemasonry). For reasons unknown, Morgan became disaffected from Masonry, and he decided to publish publicly the rituals of the first three degrees of Freemasonry (which had been exposed to the public on several occasions before), as well as the degrees of the Holy Royal Arch (which had not previously been published for the public).
In September 1826, Morgan was kidnapped by several New York Masons who were offended by Morgan’s plans to publish Masonic ritual. What happened next has been a mystery for almost two centuries. Some say that Morgan was murdered, drowned in the Niagara River, with his body dumped into Niagara Falls. Others say that he was released alive into Canada and told never to return. Some rumors have it that he made his way to the Caribbean and died there many years later. The only thing certain is that Morgan was never seen again.
Following Morgan’s disappearance, several Masons were tried for his abduction, only to be acquitted or punished with very light sentences. The public was outraged, both by Morgan’s supposed murder by Masons, and by what appeared to be Masonic collusion to avoid punishing his supposed murderers. This public outrage came to be led by religious leaders, some of whom were still in fear of the imagined power of the Illuminati. Although the Illuminati were never more than a small group that had been suppressed in Europe since 1784, several authors had written quasiparanoid accusations blaming the Illuminati for the French Revolution, and accusing the Illuminati of trying to take over American government through the Freemasons. In turn, the public and religious outrage was harnessed by political forces who were working against the policies of Andrew Jackson, a Freemason, who had been elected U.S. president in 1828.
These forces—public fury, religious outrage, and political maneuvering—combined to create the first “third party” in American politics: the Anti-Masonic Party (also called the American Party), which declared its intent to be the destruction of all “secret” societies. Here is where William Wirt entered the picture.
In 1830, Wirt accepted the nomination for U.S. president on the sponsorship of the Anti-Masonic Party. Some might not consider Wirt to have been a likely candidate, given that he had been a Freemason. (Indeed, during his candidacy, he delivered a speech defending Freemasonry.) In the 1832 U.S. presidential election, the Anti-Masonic Party carried only Vermont, Wirt receiving a total of 7 electoral votes, and about 33,000 popular votes. Jackson handily won reelection. Wirt himself died just two years later, of co
mplications due to a cold, and was interred in the vaults of the U.S. Congressional Cemetery.
Now the story takes its turn for the bizarre.
Sometime in the 1970s, well over a century after Wirt’s interment, it appears that someone went into his crypt, disturbed the bones of some of the bodies that had been left there, and took Wirt’s skull. (Even more creepy: either then or at another time, someone left the body of an unidentified child in this crypt.) The theft was not discovered for many years, until after an anonymous caller in 2003 offered to return the skull, which, he said, had been in the possession of a collector who had since died. Ultimately, the skull was put in the possession of a Washington, D.C., City Council member for return to the Wirt crypt, where it now resides.
Here we have a prominent nineteenth-century political figure, someone who had known some of the American Founding Fathers in his youth, who abandoned the Masonic Order and ran for president on the Anti-Masonic Party ticket, and who then had his skull stolen right out from his crypt. Why wouldn’t Dan Brown write about this?
Despite such a logical set of reasons for Dan Brown to be interested in him, Wirt rated only a passing mention in The Lost Symbol. But that is one of the pleasures of Dan Brown’s books: even the most fleeting detail usually has a fascinating story behind it.
Albrecht Dürer
The ninth Doubleday clue, posted to Twitter at 2:15 p.m. PDT on Thursday, June 25:
Albrecht Dürer, whose father was a goldsmith, was trained as a metalworker at a young age.
The clue refers to one of the great artists of the Renaissance in northern Europe, the German Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528). Although Dürer is known primarily for his prints made from woodcuts and, especially, his engravings on metal, the clue mentions his early training as a metalworker. The content reads like a sentence out of an art history text, nothing really provocative.
Of course, in Dan Brown’s novels, many a famed artist is a member of some centuries-spanning conspiracy. As it happens, Dürer actually has long been rumored to have been some sort of Freemason from the era before Freemasonry became public during the formation of the first Grand Lodge, in London in 1717.
The basis of this rumor is the fact that some of Dürer’s pieces contain depictions of objects that have either real or reputed symbolic significance to Freemasons. The most prominent example of this is Melencolia I, a copper engraving dating from 1514.
In this piece, an adult-size female angel sits in thought, holding, for no obvious reason, a set of compasses such as might be used by a stonemason, carpenter, or architect. (Of course, the compasses are known to be an important symbol in Freemasonry.)
Although the bottom of the etching shows the tools of a carpenter (a reference to Jesus, the carpenter’s son?), the most prominent finished products appear to be stone, including a sphere and a large polyhedral prism. These are both portrayed as exquisitely finished pieces of work, smooth pieces of worked and polished stone that call to mind the smooth or polished ashlar that represents, in Masonic symbolism, the individual Mason after he has worked to perfect his character. (I have seen actual stones exemplifying the rough ashlar—unworked stone, and the smooth ashlar—smoothly polished stone, in every Masonic Lodge I have ever visited. Dan Brown mentions the role of the ashlar in chapter 85 of TLS as a metaphor for “transformation,” an important theme within TLS.)
Above the adult angel’s wing is an hourglass, calling to mind the hourglass mentioned in a lecture accompanying one of the three basic Masonic degrees, or rituals of initiation. This symbolizes the brevity of life, the realization of which should encourage us to use our time well while we have it. One also sees a pair of scales, calling to mind Justice, one of the four cardinal virtues, which also occur as symbols in one of the Masonic-degree lectures (the others being Temperance, Fortitude, and Prudence). Prominent in the piece is a ladder. Jacob’s ladder (see Genesis 28:10–22) is a symbol used in the lecture of the first degree of Freemasonry. A ladder with symbolic significance also appears in the degrees of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (whose real-life headquarters figure so prominently in The Lost Symbol).
Of course, one of the major objections to considering Dürer as some sort of secret Freemason is the fact that he died in 1528, almost two full centuries before the formation of the premier Grand Lodge of England in 1717. The earliest record of Masonic initiation in England occurs in 1641 (the initiation of Robert Moray into a traveling Scottish military lodge), although historian David Stevenson has shown that Freemason lodges were formed in Scotland as early as 1599. However, Scotland in 1599 was a long way in both time and space from Germany in 1528. How could Dürer plausibly have been a Freemason, or a member of some sort of proto-Masonic group?
Maybe the same way that Bosch was.
The late amateur historian of Freemasonry, John J. Robinson, presents a convincing case for the idea that Dürer’s contemporary, the Flemish artist Hieronymous Bosch (about 1450–1516), hid Masonic symbolism in at least one of his paintings, The Wayfarer. (See chapter 11, pages 118–19 of Robinson’s 1993 book, A Pilgrim’s Path: Freemasonry and the Religious Right.) In Bosch’s painting, Robinson finds references to Masonic initiatory ritual, as well as other Masonic symbols. I find Robinson’s argument quite intriguing.
If Bosch, as a Flemish painter in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, somehow had access to Masonic initiatory symbols, then perhaps Dürer did as well in the Germany of that period, or during his extensive travels. The peculiar evidence in Bosch’s The Wayfarer and Dürer’s Melencolia I makes at least a plausible case for these artists being some kind of Masonic initiates.
As it happens, an element of Dürer’s Melencolia I makes an important appearance in The Lost Symbol. The magic square in the engraving is the first instance of such an item in European art. Although not a specifically Masonic symbol, magic squares have been an element of ritual magic for centuries, as documented by Dürer’s contemporary, Agrippa, in his famous Three Books of Occult Philosophy. The magic square in Melencolia I is the key to solving an important transposition cipher in The Lost Symbol (chapters 66, 68, and 70). Although Dürer’s engraving is said by Robert Langdon to represent “mankind’s failed attempt to transform human intellect into godlike power,” nothing is said in the novel about Dürer’s possible Masonic membership, or the possible Masonic nature of the symbolism in his enigmatic masterpiece.
There is one other element of Melencolia I that may relate to The Lost Symbol. Within the polyhedral prism in this engraving that may symbolize the perfect ashlar, or perfected Mason, the best reproductions allow one to see variations in the “color” of the polished stone, forming the shape of an object that has resonance to William Wirt, to the prologue of The Lost Symbol, and to the symbols of mortality within Masonic ritual: a skull.
There were hundreds of clues, some quite fiendish, many quite clever, but very few, as it turned out, with any clear connection to the content of The Lost Symbol. Of course, the clues may contain the answer to one of the greatest secrets, not within Dan Brown’s novel, but about it: why did he take six years to write The Lost Symbol? Perhaps he didn’t. Perhaps he only spent two or three years writing the novel—
—and the rest of the time writing the clues.
Kryptos: The Unsolved Enigma
by Elonka Dunin
Well before Jim Sanborn’s enigmatic sculpture of Kryptos outside CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, had attained its current level of notoriety among the general public, Elonka Dunin had emerged as the acknowledged expert on it. Before the dust jacket of The Lost Symbol hinted at Kryptos as an upcoming topic of Dan Brown’s interest, Dunin had already gathered an impressive number of facts about the sculpture and the worldwide decryption effort on her Web site, elonka.com, a popular code-breakers’ oasis. She is also author of The Mammoth Book of Secret Codes and Cryptograms.
Dan Brown himself ha
s admired Dunin’s work and paid her the stellar compliment of writing her into The Lost Symbol as Nola Kaye, the senior OS analyst who solves the sixteen-character Masonic cipher for CIA Director Inoue Sato and, at the end of TLS, comes face-to-face with the so-far unbreakable code written into the Kryptos sculpture. Dan Brown even gave Dunin a hint about his choice of names, sending her an e-mail two weeks before the release of The Lost Symbol. The e-mail contained only a cryptic message, which, deciphered, came out to NOLA KAYE SAVES DAY.
Here, our very own Nola Kaye, Elonka Dunin, tells our readers about the years of work real-life cryptographers have put into analyzing Kryptos and why only three of the four layers of its codes have been broken. She also comments on Dan Brown’s fictional use of Kryptos in TLS.
The novel The Lost Symbol, as did The Da Vinci Code, starts with a “Fact” page:
Fact: In 1991, a document was locked in the safe of the director of the CIA. The document is still there today. Its cryptic text includes references to an ancient portal and an unknown location underground. The document also contains the phrase “It’s buried out there somewhere.”
Is this indeed a fact? Well, in true Dan Brown fashion, sort of . . .
The document that is being referred to is (or at least was) in a sealed envelope, given on November 5, 1990, by artist Jim Sanborn to then CIA director William Webster. The occasion was the dedication of the Kryptos sculpture, an encrypted artwork installed in the courtyard of CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, just west of Washington.
Sanborn’s artwork at the CIA comprises several pieces, the best known of which is a tall twelve-by-twenty-foot sculpture in the central courtyard, with four large copper plates that appear to be scrolling in an S shape out of a petrified tree trunk. On one side of the sculpture, two of the plates contain an enciphering table known as a Vigenère tableau. The other two plates have several hundred characters of ciphertext (codes). The envelope that Sanborn handed over during the ceremony supposedly contained the answers to the ciphers, though Sanborn has since been somewhat cagey as to whether he really put the full answer into the envelope or not. The current location of the envelope is unclear. When Webster was asked in 1999, he said he had “zero memory” of the answer, other than that it was “philosophical and obscure.”
Secrets of The Lost Symbol Page 32
