The key to understanding the character of Peter is the Gospel of Matthew 16:17-19, in which Jesus renames Simon Peter. Christ promises to build upon the rock His church, and grants Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Peter (petros) in Greek thus becomes the foundation or rock (petra) of Roman Catholicism. The multiple associations to the Papacy and St. Peter’s Basilica and Square in Rome are obvious and all central to Angels & Demons. The Solomon surname recalls the Son of David, the wise king, the builder of the temple (1 Kings). Solomon is also a central figure for the Knights Templar and Masonic legends and appears in many of the occult texts of Europe, including the Key of Solomon. Nor should one forget that The Lost Symbol was originally conceived as The Solomon Key.
Peter is a 58-year-old “philanthropist, historian, scientist,” a graduate of Yale, who traces his family back to the Royal Society of London, the offspring of “The Invisible College.” The multi-millionaire Secretary of the Smithsonian Institute and Supreme Worshipful Master of the Scottish Rite Southern Branch of the Freemasons, Peter has suffered great losses. He has witnessed, and is to some extent responsible for, the death of his mother, and he assumes for the death of his son, Zachary. Peter is like a father to Robert Langdon, who had heard him lecture at Princeton and then at Philips Exeter. Peter offers several of his own mini-lectures in the novel, including one on Deists and the Founding Fathers. He also exhorts the students to read the Bible.
Peter has been entrusted with a secret package passed down through generations of Solomons and Freemasons, which he gives to Langdon for safekeeping. He will also become the figurative and literal guide for the initiate Robert Langdon to Masonic teachings. In imitation of the first degree Masonic initiation ritual, Peter will blindfold and lead Langdon to the Washington Monument, where he unveils the message of “Praise be to God.” There buried in the cornerstone is the Masonic Bible, the Lost Word. Peter does not deny, but accepts the legend of the Ancient Mysteries that hold a “key,” a “password,” the “verbum significatium” (408). He is simultaneously the figure of Abraham, ready to sacrifice his son, and a long-suffering Job, who has lost mother, wife, and son. He is a mutilated and tortured father figure of biblical proportions, but he is also without his right hand. He suffers mental and physical indignities at the hands of Mal’akh, but like Abraham, Peter is saved from sacrificing his son with the Akedah knife.
Sacrifice of Isaac, painting by Laurent de La Hyre (1650)
Oh, and Peter’s telephone number actually works: 202-329-5746. The number is listed in the text, and true Dan Brown fans will certainly recognize that it doesn’t contain the usual 555 prefix for fictional telephone numbers. Call and see if you can find Peter at home!
Katherine Solomon is Langdon’s female companion in his search. Katherine in the Christian tradition signifies “purity,” but has its origins in the Greek, where it is related to the word “catharsis,” an emotional cleansing. She is a fifty-year-old scientist, researcher, and author of Noetic Science: Modern Gateway to Ancient Wisdom. Her book does not exist, but it calls to mind two titles: The Secret Gateway: Modern Theosophy and the Ancient Wisdom Tradition and Ancient Wisdom and Modern Science. Katherine may have real-life counterparts: Lynne McTaggart, actually cited in the novel for her work on The Intention Experiment, and Marilyn Schlitz of the Institute of Noetic Sciences in California. Katherine is more than Langdon’s companion; she is also the one who unveils the golden pyramid by unwrapping the sealed package her brother had given Robert. This in turn launches the quest to decipher the clues on the Masonic Pyramid.
Katherine’s and Peter’s mother, Isabel, appears only briefly, but is the grandmother killed by Zachary in a patricide gone astray. The name means “God’s vow or promise.” Isabel fires the shotgun that mutilates the intruder, who is actually her grandson. She is accidentally murdered by him, and were there a good English word to describe the killing of one’s grandmother, Brown would surely have used it. Nonetheless this has all the elements of a Greek tragedy in the making.
THE KEY OF SOLOMON
www.esotericarchives.com/solomon/ksol.htm