Page 11 of The Lost Symbol

Everyone exchanged odd looks.

“Hold on,” someone said. “You mean . . . like astrology?”

“Exactly. Although a different astrology than we know today.”

A hand went up. “You mean our Founding Fathers believed in astrology?”

Langdon grinned. “Big-time. What would you say if I told you the city of Washington, D.C., has more astrological signs in its architecture than any other city in the world—zodiacs, star charts, cornerstones laid at precise astrological dates and times? More than half of the framers of our Constitution were Masons, men who strongly believed that the stars and fate were intertwined, men who paid close attention to the layout of the heavens as they structured their new world.”

“But that whole thing about the Capitol cornerstone being laid while Caput Draconis was in Virgo—who cares? Can’t that just be coincidence?”

“An impressive coincidence considering that the cornerstones of the three structures that make up Federal Triangle—the Capitol, the White House, the Washington Monument—were all laid in different years but were carefully timed to occur under this exact same astrological condition.”

Langdon’s gaze was met by a room full of wide eyes. A number of heads dipped down as students began taking notes.

A hand in back went up. “Why did they do that?”

Langdon chuckled. “The answer to that is an entire semester’s worth of material. If you’re curious, you should take my mysticism course. Frankly, I don’t think you guys are emotionally prepared to hear the answer.”

“What?” the person shouted. “Try us!”

Langdon made a show of considering it and then shook his head, toying with them. “Sorry, I can’t do that. Some of you are only freshmen. I’m afraid it might blow your minds.”

“Tell us!” everyone shouted.

Langdon shrugged. “Perhaps you should join the Masons or Eastern Star and learn about it from the source.”

“We can’t get in,” a young man argued. “The Masons are like a supersecret society!”

“Supersecret? Really?” Langdon remembered the large Masonic ring that his friend Peter Solomon wore proudly on his right hand. “Then why do Masons wear obvious Masonic rings, tie clips, or pins? Why are Masonic buildings clearly marked? Why are their meeting times in the newspaper?” Langdon smiled at all the puzzled faces. “My friends, the Masons are not a secret society . . . they are a society with secrets.”

“Same thing,” someone muttered.

“Is it?” Langdon challenged. “Would you consider Coca-Cola a secret society?”

“Of course not,” the student said.

“Well, what if you knocked on the door of corporate headquarters and asked for the recipe for Classic Coke?”

“They’d never tell you.”

“Exactly. In order to learn Coca-Cola’s deepest secret, you would need to join the company, work for many years, prove you were trustworthy, and eventually rise to the upper echelons of the company, where that information might be shared with you. Then you would be sworn to secrecy.”

“So you’re saying Freemasonry is like a corporation?” “Only insofar as they have a strict hierarchy and they take secrecy very seriously.”

“My uncle is a Mason,” a young woman piped up. “And my aunt hates it because he won’t talk about it with her. She says Masonry is some kind of strange religion.”

“A common misperception.”

“It’s not a religion?”

“Give it the litmus test,” Langdon said. “Who here has taken Professor Witherspoon’s comparative religion course?”

Several hands went up.

“Good. So tell me, what are the three prerequisites for an ideology to be considered a religion?”

“ABC,” one woman offered. “Assure, Believe, Convert.”