Excerpt from the Secret Of Secrets
By Dan Brown
As the ferry churned closer, Katherine began to see details in the statue’s verdigris copper-the broken chains of bondage around her sandaled feet, the delicate folds in her robes of justice, the tablet in her left hand bearing the nation’s birth date, the steadfast gaze and reassuring countenance. . .and there, atop her head, the ancient symbol that Langdon had brought Katherine here to see.
The radiant crown.
The spiked halo adorning America’s Statue of Liberty was the same ornament that had crowned enlightened minds for millennia. The seven spikes, each over nine feet long, were said to symbolize the rays of enlightenment that would radiate outward from this young country and illuminate all seven continents.
It’s the precise opposite, Katherine believed, seeing them as rays of enlightenment that flowed inward. . representing the stream of cultures, languages, and ideas from the seven continents, all coursing into the melting pot that was the mind of America. This nation, after all, had been created as a kind of receiver, pulling in disparate souls from around the world, all of them flowing inward toward a shared experience.
Looking ahead to when this is not just a message from a forgotten past, but part of the fabric that has made this country over the years. RJB
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