Is The Constellation Orion The Lost Symbol?

Informed speculation suggests the lost symbol in Dan Brown's new novel of the same title will be the constellation Orion, represented by an X on a talisman which is called the Solomon Key. The Solomon Key may have been lifted by Brown from a 16th century handbook on witchcraft so as to boil up some real heresy come mid-September.

If speculation serves, however, the most intriguing revelation which The Lost Symbol might contain will have less to do with the storyline of the sequel to The Da Vinci Code and more to do with the agenda which may be driving Dan Brown to write his novels. Brown’s new novel may reveal even more than that: The Lost Symbol might confirm the suspicion that the publishing sensation is getting help from a coven of ghostwriters who share his views on a non-existent God.

And this would mean that these novels by Brown never have been meant as entertainment or art for art’s sake ... but rather propaganda.

According to the word on the street, Freemasonry as it is evident in the layout of streets and in the Egyptian-styled monuments of Washington, D.C. will dominate the new novel, reports say. Any heresy there? That depends. A star map designating the constellations of Pleiades and Orion may contain the lost symbol, that is, the Bethlehem star, and all of these may lead the protagonist Langdon to make several stunning conclusions: that Jesus flies in a UFO, and, that he, like the rest of mankind, is the creation of an alien race.

Creationism and the virgin birth may be the targets of this offering from Brown and his publisher Doubleday. Any damage on those fronts would cause the heresy that Jesus was more a lusty man than God to be a mere triviality by comparison. Just in time for Christmas.

We’ll have to wait and see. But one very interesting source, a South African author and real-life symbolist, who is convinced that he has identified the lost (constellation) symbol and discerned The Lost Symbol’s likely emphasis: a circular “talisman” or key made of parchment attributed to King Solomon, which references the constellation Orion, which would be the lost symbol.

On that talisman key, according to Wayne Herschel, is a flattened cross, a symbol which is derived from Orion’s hour-glass shaped arrangement of stars. What makes the symbol so controversial, Herschel suggests, is that the talisman or key on which the symbol appears comes from the Clavicula Salomonis, a grimoire or handbook of witchcraft from the 16th century, which has somehow been credited to the heir to the throne of King David, namely Solomon.  

Will Brown suggest to us that the Solomon key is what the Magi used to make their way precisely from Persia to Bethlehem where Jesus was born in a stable or grotto? Will the three wise men turn out to be aliens, perhaps the Elohim, a plural form in Hebrew for the word God, with which Genesis scholars have wrestled for years? Have aliens tampered with the Bible to insert themselves into the text ... to make their claims that they are our creators a little more plausible?

If the answer of all of these questions becomes yes, then we will have to ask, How did Dan Brown do his research for this one? An off-hand remark by Brown in response to a reporter’s question about The Lost Symbol suggests any number of very interest things: “It has been a strange and wonderful journey,” he said.