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Actually I like the stories written by Dan Brown. The character of Prof. Robert Landon would be a great teacher I would have sought out. I am a studied linguist myself and I am very much interested in Symbolism, higher or esoteric knowledge and what can be referred to as Illumination as created by Hume, Kant, Hegel, Lessing, Leibniz, Newton, Fichte ... Especially the 18th century has created a truely new level of human understanding of ourselves and the universe. This public movement started probably with what is called the Renaissance.
This blog is dedicated mostly to the story and the topics in the book "The Lost Symbol". In this book published in 2009 Robert Langdon is confronted with his third task to solve some existential riddles or tasks related to ancient or estoeric wisdom or characters who want to use this kind of knowledge or related powers and skills for personal or ideological influence to more or less control humanity.
There is also a lot to learn or unearth in these books of Dan Brown which reveals a lot of interesting topics of Psychology in the direction of Jung, Frankl and others who dealt or deal with Archetypes and basic human struggles of choosing the right path facing good and evil impulses and visions.
Interestingly the character of Robert Langdon represents a special kind of good which does not ask you to follow its path, but yours. It suggests traits of character rather than demanding them. But in these kinds of analysis or reflection I will get in later posts.
In the book "The Lost Symbol" there are a lot of stories and topics related to the tradition and alive community who call themselves Freemasons. This became more and more interesting to me. I am studying wisdom traditions since I am 14. Starting with the Gospels, dipping into Lao Tse, studying Rudolf Steiner, Shankaracharya tradition in Hinduism, Tibetan Buddhism in Kagyu tradition and others for about 40 years now. Freemasonry is also a topic I study.
This blog will not be about unpublished secrets or instructions on magic, which I could not provide anyway. I just want to look into the presented knowledge and ideas in the book. One idea or hint in Dan Brown books pops up again and again. And that is the idea that there so many secrets hidden in plain sight. You just need the context and the interest in finding them and bring them to light. This approach will be my approach of looking at what is presented in the text "The Lost Symbol".
One can read a book in so many different ways. On one hand this book is an engaging thriller which keeps me and so many other readers in page turning fast. But when reading fast its so easy to miss out on interesting concepts and information which might be relative for once thinking or live. Therefore I just want to take this platform to create and share some short reflections or deeper evaluations regarding the ideas presented there.
If you have questions or suggestions for what to look on feel free to post your suggestion or question for me. I will definitely look at them, but I am not able to guarantee that I will engage in your contribution. Thank you.