I started reading Dan Browns "The Da Vinci Code" yesterday. I read and read and read an could not stop, what an amazing book. It describes the horrible Opus Dei which is a Catholic cult-like organization with over 80.000 members worldwide. They whip themselves and wear cilice, cilice a spiked chain worn around the upper thigh for two hours each day. They have the Popes blessing, which canonisized the founder of Opus Dei in 1992. There is an Opus Dei Awareness Network which has very interesting facts about the Opus Dei written by former members who have had painful experiences. The Da Vinci Code is a fiction but based on facts which makes it very believable and fun to read. Millions of small facts which all make sense. The PHI (1.618033988749895... ) appears in the proportions of the human body, plants, the solar system, DNA, music, art, architecture etc. According to Brown every 8 years the planet Venus fulfills a pentagon on the sky and the Greek Olympics were held every 4 years according to that event. The olympic symbol was created first as a pentagon, but was changed to 5 circles instead :) I dont know if the Olympic part is true but I would very much like to find out. Dan Brown spent a lot of time and effort on his research and his main aims were to get people talking and seeing these things in a different light. But his writing has made the Catholic Church upset and scared. A very very angry catholic journalist actually says the whole book is bullshit and Brown is just making the whole thing up. I would have been surprised if the extreme right winged catholics would not have criticised the book but Brown also says that some nuns and catholic priests were very happy with it. There is a very big difference between being catholic and fanatic catholic. This book is unputdownable and I have spent the whole morning reading about Opus Dei, both their own homepage and the awareness page, and Leonardo Da Vinci and his paintings and ideas. It is always refreshing to get different opinions on things that are considered by some people the "holy" truth.