The song “The Book of Love” by Corjan de Raaf was inspired by Kathleen McGowan’s bestselling novel of the same name and her earlier work, “The Expected One”, an international sensation that has sold millions of books and has been published in fifty languages.

The song captures the bitter irony and associated emotions of Mary Magdalene, the woman who fell in love with Jesus, the one man who will die on the cross. In a few lines of text, the songwriter sketches how Mary Magdalene’s unconditional love for the man and his ideas survived time through her imagery and the secret book Jesus allegedly left her. The “Libra Rosso” is a secret book, whose history and contents are discussed in detail in both of McGowan’s books. They made a deep and lasting impression on the songwriter.

There is much material that was hidden or suppressed, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi writings, hidden in the 4th century AD when various manuscripts were destroyed as they were no longer conform with the imagery the Church wanted to depict of who Christ and his movement were.

“In over 20 years of song writing, I never felt so close to a subject as this,” de Raaf commented. “Normally I write about things that happen directly around me. Relationships, events, personal observations, those things. Kathleen’s musing storytelling and the historical context that she describes related to me so closely that I felt comfortable capturing the atmosphere of the book in a song as if it was my own. I wouldn’t want to call myself a religious man but I do strongly believe in our roots and our early traditions. However, believing doesn’t mean that you can’t question and it is that which Kathleen does in a terrific way, without ever compromising the fragile subject we are dealing with here. This fantastic love story had and has to be told and sung. I am grateful Kathleen allowed me to use her title so we could really relate our two works.”

With his song, Corjan de Raaf establishes a crossover between his career as a recording artist and his work as a researcher and publicist on the mystery of Rennes-le-Château, the enigma around the French priest Bérenger Saunière who became rich and powerful almost overnight after he had made a mysterious discovery. De Raaf’s website RLC Research is one of the biggest and most authoritative English sites on the subject.

Kathleen McGowan and De Raaf first talked during an interview for Radio Rennessence in February 2009 and subsequently met up in Bruges, where the author was attending the Holy Blood Procession.

Corjan’s career as a recording artist started in September 2005 when he was the first artist to launch a single on a USB Stick. His USB Single Dief (Thief) occupied the first place of the Dutch Legal Download Top 100 for 5 weeks. This year De Raaf finished his first full length album “Scenes”. It contains 13 Dutch language songs and an English version of the song that started it all: Thief.

The Book of Love

a rose gives you its beauty
but hurts you with its thorns
the symbol of unity
can be too painful to hold

like the story of the woman
who loved this one man
who died for his devotion
for the others in the land

love can conquer anything
but I’m sure
that she also felt the pain

when blood was washed away
the love remained
every time she called your name
it started in her heart
this miracle
and the book that lived on
after you’d gone

Magdalene brought love

it cannot be extinguished
it cannot be ignored
it cannot be denied now
of the woman and the lord

the symbols in the churches
the parchments and the stones
the clues in all the searches
will lead you straight towards

the love she carried with her
the sweet music
for those with the ears to hear

when blood was washed away
the love remained
every time she called your name
it started in her heart
this miracle
and it stayed there after all
we waited for so long
to learn the truth
it’s been hiding behind legends of you

in your book
the book of love

The song is available in all the major online stores.