Few writers have cared so much about the composition of the dustcover art as has Dan Brown. The secrets concealed and unveiled on the cover of The Da Vinci Code have in part led us right to The Lost Symbol. It is only fitting that here too the cover art rewards those with time to survey it closely. A few experts are still at work furiously trying to decipher the clues, and one can only wonder if the editions in the United Kingdom have similar or different or any clues at all. And what about the foreign language editions? It is one reason to purchase the novel in hardcover, for the paperback editions of The Da Vinci Code conceal no such treasures.
Some of the art and associations are obvious. The front cover depicts on a raised imprint the of seal of the 33rd Degree Scottish Rite, with the number 33 inscribed in a triangle implanted upon the double headed eagle under a regal crown. The phrase Ordo Ab Chao is in the scroll below. Below the seal is a photograph of the U.S. Capitol illuminated at night. Inside the letter O of The Da Vinci Code is a dot, thus making a circumpunct. On the spine is a photograph of the Washington monument, hidden inside the keyhole.
Numerous people have rushed to examine the dust-cover, and many of its riddles and codes can be found and have been solved. But I want to give credit to my student at Middlebury College, Karly Wentz, who first unlocked the following secrets for me:
If you rotate the front cover 90 degrees to the right, along the drawn circle are numbers. Outside the circle reads: 22-65-22-97-27. Inside the circle reads: 22-23-44-1-133-97-65-44.
I went to all of those chapters and took the first letter of each word from every chapter. The result was: POPES PANTHEON. [Karly credits Greg Taylor’s for the hint that Brown’s novel Digital Fortress had a similar number and letter combination.]
I found all of the letters A through J on the cover with the corresponding number. Putting the letters in order I got, A2 B1 C2 D7 E8 F2 G9 H5 I1 J5. After a while I realized that this is a New York City phone number! 212-782-9515. I called, and learned if I’m one of the first 33 to figure out this clue, send an e-mail with my information, and correctly write Langdon’s favorite symbol, I get a free signed copy of The Lost Symbol. [The number worked, but no longer connects to Jason Kaufman, Brown’s editor. Callers in October 2009 were greeted by a foreign voice repeating a chant-like utterance. Someone may recognize this, but it is unclear how it might relate to the novel, TRB.] The back cover also holds in miniscule print AS ABOVE and below SO BELOW (in the upper and lower arches).
Also on the back cover, if you rotate the book 90 degrees clockwise, there is a red-orange code written across the top and bottom of the page. Using the Freemason Cipher, the code translates to reveal, “ALL GREAT TRUTHS BEGIN AS BLASPHEMIES.” This is a quote by George Bernard Shaw from his play Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress. Shaw won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925. I couldn’t find a summary of the play, but the entire one-act piece was written in 1918, and is online [at Project Gutenberg]. In my opinion, this could allude to Brown’s next book having to do with the Bolshevik Revolution or Russian history.
The next code is a four-by-four grid on the bottom-left corner of the back cover, to the left of the last review. Using Albrecht Dürer’s “magic square” where each number on the grid represents the number of the square where the letter in the matching grid should go. For example, if you look below, ‘Y’ should go to the 16th square, ‘U’ should go to the third square, ‘O’ should go to the second square, etc. As you can see, the decoded grid says, “YOUR MIND IS THE KEY.”
I would only add to Karly’s interpretation that Russian is used in the anagram of Nola Kaye, and James Sanborn has done two additional sculptures involving the Russian alphabet. The Russian coat-of-arms shares the crowned double headed eagle with the 33rd Scottish Rite Scottish Masons! Knowing Dan Brown’s love for art and architecture, can all this be pointing to a novel that takes place in St. Petersburg with its extraordinary Hermitage Museum?
Does everything on the cover mean something? Even the ISBN number has not escaped attention. If you remove the initial 978 then the remaining numbers 0+3+8+5+5+0= 4+2+2=5 = 34. The number 34 is the sum of the numbers in Dürer’s magic square. I am certain this is just the beginning.
GREG TAYLOR CODES ON THE COVE
thecryptex.com/features/codes-on-the-lost-symbol-cover
THE LOST SYMBOL FRONT COVER
dailygrail.com/share/lostsymbolcovers/bookfront.jpg
ON THE ISBN NUMBER
roman-numerals.inrebus.com/2009/09/the-lost-symbol---decoding-the-isbn.html