At least once every year, we in Nepal enjoy the season of the divine Durga. We examine our religion and our beliefs as an essential part of our self-inventory, take stock, repent ways of living that do not honour us or our highest calling.

So to take some time to sit with a book that makes us think about religion and what it means to each of us is probably an annual luxury we can afford. And if that book happens to be a grippingly well-played mystery ?la Sherlock Holmes, all the better.

The plot of the Da Vinci Code is that of the age-old quest for the Holy Grail but not the one most Christians consider fact: the chalice used in the Last Supper was indeed a simple cup. In this book, the Grail ends up being the search for Mary Magdalene's tomb in which there are interred secret documents whose contents will wreck Christianity. These documents contain the 'true' gospel-one whose foundation is the feminised divine known in goddess worship. If revealed to the world, these recovered 'truths' will pave the way for us to return to a more enlightened spirituality centred on the divine feminine.

For us here in Nepal, it comes as no surprise when the author, Dan Brown, points the plot towards uncovering the divine feminine (Maya, Debi, Kali) that has been hidden from Christianity by mere mortal men, specifically, the Vatican Church in Rome through an internal organisation called the Opus Dei. They are both in cahoots and in opposition with another society called the Priory of Sion whose members included the heretic Leonardo Da Vinci and other historical figures such as Sir Isaac Newton and Victor Hugo.

This book will appeal to any conspiracy theorist, unfolding just as a religious X-File would. Major clues to the 'truth' about Christianity's beginnings are hidden in Da Vinci's paintings and elsewhere, and the author assures us in the prologue to the novel that the organisations involved in keeping the secret are real and still functioning today. (It is true that Opus Dei has just completed their new national headquarters for $ 47 million in New York City). So when the novel reveals some of the clues of the conspiracy, as in Da Vinci's famous painting The Last Supper, we are all ears.

Da Vinci is said to have put clues in the painting to show that Mary Magdalene was beside Jesus Christ at the Last Supper (in the very feminine figure of John the Baptist) and that the seating arrangement forms the letter 'M' for Mary). The painting may further insinuate the plot to kill off the feminine principle, as represented by a threatening dagger, ready to finish off Mary at the next opportunity.

What is uncovered and documented along the way is that early Christian leaders, wanting to downplay the role of females, have vilified Mary as a prostitute, burned women at the stake, and in short, erased any role of women and the divine feminine from Christianity. The shocking part for the reader of The Da Vinci Code is that this struggle is perhaps still taking place today (how many women were considered for the position of Pope?).

The Vatican has already made a formal statement saying that the book is rubbish, which for such a global power to comment on a New York Times #1 Bestseller is almost unprecedented and for Church leaders across the globe there has not been as much consternation since the Hollywood movie The Last Temptation of Christ was released. That story by Nikos Kazantzakis taken to film by Martin Scorsese in 1988 had Christian rioters at the ticket counters blocking the entrance for all theatregoers, just for implying that Jesus Christ had a physical relationship with Mary.

Personally, as a theatregoer who was hit on the head with a picket sign during the opening of The Last Temptation of Christ in Hollywood, I found The Da Vinci Code to be a good read even when compared to great suspense and mystery writers like John Le Carr?, Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Dan Brown happened to choose the right topic at the right time (when many Christians are questioning their faith) and when many others around the globe are wondering what has gone wrong with the Church of Rome. So overlooking his inferior skill as a writer seems like a fair trade-off.

In addition, for many of us here in the Hindu/Buddhist part of the world (and if we believe the conspiracy), the book may be an insight into why Christianity seems to lack that 'woman's touch' we all know to be a vital element of our own faiths. After all, whether we are religious or not, we know the axiom that behind every strong man there is a strong woman to be firmly rooted in the truth, if not in our own lives.

Jiggy Gaton is a cartoonist for Nepali Times and a frequent contributor