Key to the Sacred Pattern - Softcover

Henry Lincoln is a highly-respected historian and broadcaster. His previous books include the worldwide bestselling The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.

Since 1972, Lincoln has made a career out of exposing the secret of a small village in the Pyrenees. The secret seems to have changed since Lincoln, a television writer, first began his investigation. Originally, it was about a lost treasure. In the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail (1982), the secret was that Jesus survived the Crucifixion and escaped with Mary Magdalene to France, where they had children. Now the secret has something to do with what Lincoln calls "structured landscapes": equidistant geographical points that, when plotted on paper, form pentacles. Although he's not exactly sure what this means, he proposes that it proves the ancients had much more sophisticated measurement abilities than previously thought. If this were the whole book, readers, especially those not schooled in geometry, would lose interest fast. Fortunately, most of Lincoln's story is about how he came to uncover the mysteries of Rennes-le-Chateau and some of the adventures and misadventures he's had along the way. Fans of the popular Holy Blood, Holy Grail will probably devour this, but others may think the real mystery is, How does Lincoln keep twisting the topic into new books? Ilene Cooper