Last year Scottish composer Stuart Mitchell discovered musical codes embodied in the 213 stones in the ceiling of the Midlothian chapel at Rosslyn. Described as "sounding like a nursery rhyme," the notation was designed to be performed by medeival players.

Mitchell has dubbed the music "The Rosslyn Canon of Proportions." He has kept the music itself a secret, while admitting the cubes contain "a lot of symbolism and decoys to throw people off."

Brian Allan, co-director of Scotland’s Paranormal Encounters Group (PEG), has been researching Rosslyn Chapel with his wife Ann since 1992. He has his own opinion about the music: It's diabolical!

“I’ve no doubt [Mitchell] is a very knowledgeable man who knows what he’s talking about but some of the cubes were missing,” he said. “I think the true secret is not the musical score. I think what the cubes represent is something called the Devil’s chord, which is in fact an augmented fourth.”

The Devil’s chord — a low frequency sound in the range of 80 to 110 hertz — was forbidden to be played by the Catholic Church in the middle ages. It was believed that people exposed to the chord for prolonged periods of time would start to achieve altered states of consciousness.

Allan, who is also Scottish director of the Strange Phenomena Investigation (SPI) group, believes the chord was incorporated in the chapel’s design by its architect William Sinclair as a snub towards the Vatican. Sinclair was believed to have been a member of the Knights Templar, a monastic military order outlawed under the reign of Pope Clement V in the 14th century and made famous by Dan Brown’s bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code.

“He may have felt an antipathy to the Church which he couldn’t express openly — hence he might have done this in a manner that wouldn’t have been detected," said Allan. "What he was showing with the cubes was this beautiful music being carried up to Heaven but carrying with it the Devil’s chord.”

Stuart Beattie, of the Rosslyn Chapel Trust, said the enigmas of the chapel would continue to attract researchers. "We neither agree with nor discount any of these interesting theories. We merely add them to Rosslyn’s history.”

The screen version of The Da Vinci Code is expected to be released in May. It stars Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou. Several scenes were shot at Rosslyn Chapel.

Source: London Sunday Herald

This article is cross-posted on BurningTaper.com

Rosslyn Chapel | Paranormal | Da Vinci Code