New Age Twaddle. Dr. Barton

Following my encounter with Dr. Langdon at the Londer Symbology Conference, Let me say a few words about what actually happened there beyond my stepping on Dr. Langdon's foot with a high heel. First of all, Dr. Langdon knows I'm a symbologist now. He had to sit through my paper on the Victorian Romantic appropriation of Medieval symbolism, and I got a lot of serious questions. Dr. Langdon, however, asked me how I could say that the Romantics 'appropriated' certain symbols, when those symbols had been in use for centuries.
I explained to him that the Romantics very often made up history. Levi's 'Baphomet' and the Pentagram are perfect examples. Von Hammer had made Baphomet into a 'gnostic god'; Levi went one further and identified a radom gargoyle in Paris as 'Baphomet'. Instead of doing serious historical research, they built their own fiction on top of other people's fiction. This is just what Dr. Langdon does, I'm afraid. I spend weeks on end in libraries all over the world, reading up on symbolism, chasing clues. I have spent hours in dusty archives, even completely ruining my clothes sometimes (I've learned that old jeans and an olive-green t-shirt is the best outfit to wear in some libraries). When I read a book, I make sure it is by a proper academic, not by some conspiracy theorist. I wish Dr. Langdon would too. I also wish he'd been able to sit at my table in the bar after the Conference, but you can't have everything.