his own naked abdomen as a canvas, Sauniere had drawn a simple symbol on his flesh - five straight lines that intersected to form a five-pointed star.
The pentacle.
The bloody star, centered on Sauniere's navel, gave his corpse a distinctly ghoulish aura. The photo Langdon had seen was chilling enough, but now, witnessing the scene in person, Langdon felt a deepening uneasiness.
He did this to himself.
"Mr. Langdon?" Fache's dark eyes settled on him again.
"It's a pentacle," Langdon offered, his voice feeling hollow in the huge space. "One of the oldest symbols on earth. Used over four thousand years before Christ."
"And what does it mean?"
Langdon always hesitated when he got this question. Telling someone what a symbol" meant" was like telling them how a song should make them feel - it was different for all people. A white Ku Klux Klan headpiece conjured images of hatred and racism in the United States, and yet the same costume carried a meaning of religious faith in Spain.
"Symbols carry different meanings in different settings," Langdon said. "Primarily, the pentacle is a pagan religious symbol."
Fache nodded. "Devil worship." "No," Langdon corrected, immediately realizing his choice of vocabulary should have been clearer. Nowadays, the term pagan had become almost synonymous with devil worship - a gross misconception. The word's roots actually reached back to the Latin paganus, meaning country-dwellers. "Pagans" were literally unindoctrinated country-folk who clung to the old, rural religions of Nature worship. In fact, so strong was the Church's fear of those who lived in the rural villes that the once innocuous word for" villager" - villain - came to mean a wicked soul.
"The pentacle," Langdon clarified," is a pre-Christian symbol that relates to Nature worship. The ancients envisioned their world in two halves - masculine and feminine. Their gods and goddesses worked to keep a balance of power. Yin and yang. When male and female were balanced, there was harmony in the world. When they were unbalanced, there was chaos." Langdon motioned to Sauniere's stomach. "This pentacle is representative of the female half of all things - a concept religious historians call the 'sacred feminine' or the 'divine goddess. ' Sauniere, of all people, would know this."
"Sauniere drew a goddess symbol on his stomach?"
Langdon had to admit, it seemed odd. "In its most specific interpretation, the pentacle symbolizes Venus - the goddess of female sexual love and beauty."
Fache eyed the naked man, and grunted.
"Early religion was based on the divine order of Nature. The goddess Venus and the planet Venus were one and the same. The goddess had a place in the nighttime sky and was known by many names - Venus, the Eastern Star, Ishtar, Astarte - all of them powerful female concepts with ties to Nature and Mother Earth."
Fache looked more troubled now, as if he somehow preferred the idea of devil worship.
Langdon decided not to share the pentacle's most astonishing property - the graphic origin of its ties to Venus. As a young astronomy student, Langdon had been stunned to learn the planet Venus traced a perfect pentacle across the ecliptic sky every four years. So astonished were the ancients to observe this phenomenon, that Venus and her pentacle became symbols of perfection, beauty, and the cyclic qualities of sexual love. As a tribute to the magic of Venus, the Greeks used her four-year cycle to organize their Olympiads. Nowadays, few people realized that the four-year schedule of modern Olympic Games still followed the cycles of Venus. Even fewer people knew that the five-pointed star had almost become the official Olympic seal but was modified at the last moment - its five points exchanged for five intersecting rings to better reflect the games' spirit of inclusion and harmony.
"Mr. Langdon," Fache said abruptly. "Obviously, the pentacle must also relate to the devil. Your American horror movies make that point clearly."
Langdon frowned. Thank you, Hollywood.The five-pointed star was now a virtual cliche in Satanic serial killer movies, usually scrawled on the wall of some Satanist's apartment along with other alleged demonic symbology. Langdon was always frustrated when he saw the symbol in this context; the pentacle's true origins were actually quite godly.
"I assure you," Langdon said," despite what you see in the movies, the pentacle's demonic interpretation is historically inaccurate. The original feminine meaning is correct, but the symbolism of the pentacle has been distorted over the millennia. In this case, through bloodshed." "I'm not sure I follow." Langdon glanced at Fache's crucifix, uncertain how to phrase his next point. "The Church, sir.