Federation of Damanhur
The Federation of Damanhur, often called simply Damanhur, is a commune, ecovillage, and spiritual community situated in the Piedmont region of northern Italy about 50 kilometres (31 mi) north of the city of Turin. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the Chiusella Valley, bordering on the Gran Paradiso National Park. The community has its own constitution and currency, the Credito.
 | |
| Formation | 1975 |
|---|---|
| Type | New Religious Movement |
| Headquarters | Vidracco, Piedmont, Italy. |
| Coordinates | 45.416915°N 7.747598°E |
Founder | Oberto Airaudi |
Damanhur is named after the Egyptian city of Damanhur which was the site of a temple dedicated to Horus.
It was founded in 1975 by Oberto Airaudi with around 24 followers, and by 2000 the number had grown to 800. The group holds a mix of New Age and neopagan beliefs.
Damanhur's supporters claim the growth and activity of the community has revitalized the local area.
The Federation of Damanhur has centers in Europe, America, and Japan.
Life at Damanhur
The constitution began with 3 bodies of Damanhur: The School of Meditation (ritual tradition) Social (social theory, social realization) and The Game of Life (experimentation and dynamics, life as a game, change). A fourth body was recently added, Technarcate (individual inner refinement).
Citizens participate in one of 4 levels, depending on their desired involvement: A, B, C, or D. Class A citizens share all resources and live on site full-time. Class B citizens contribute to financial goals and live on site a minimum of 3 days a week. Class C and D citizens live anywhere. (page 102, Merrifield, 2006) Class A & B citizens participate fully in The School of Meditation, Social, and the Game of Life. Class C citizens participate fully in The School of Meditation.
Citizens participate in one of several ways, depending on their personal nature. Ways include the Way of the Oracle, the Way of the Monk, the Way of the Knight, the Way of Health, the Way of the Word, the Way of Art & Work, and many others. Most citizens live in houses of 10-20 people each, federated together into the Federation of Damanhur.
Marriage works on a renewal basis, for a period of so many years before renewal. Conception is timed for auspicious birthdays of children.
From 1983 onwards, members have assumed animal names (Sparrow, Prawn, Mole, etc).[1]
Controversy
- According to the President of the National Psychological Abuses Observatory, Patrizia Santovecchi, among the characteristics of Damanhur there are those typical of sects, including the lack of possibility to go out freely due to blackmail, manipulation through the siege syndrome, for which outside the sect are all the enemies constituted by negative energies, and, moreover, the impossibility of criticism and the imposition of total obedience, the estrangement from family members, the complete depersonalization in the individual under various aspects, including for example the assignment of a new name within the community, the deprivation of any kind of decision-making capacity, the need to ask the guru what to do.[2]
- On Damanhur, there are negative reports from those who have been part of this community. Some former followers tell of alleged psychic and physical abuse suffered over the years.[3]
- Some have tried to examine with the tools of science some of the assertions of Damanhur's philosophy such as selfica and note that they are in no way proven scientifically nor are its supposed beneficial effects.[4]
- The former adherents tell[5]that the adepts of the community deny their own name and worship a deity called Horus. In the community there is a lot of use of magic and divination. His philosophy contains no references to forgiveness and justice, nor to human rights. Selective as foreseen by its constitution, it does not offer everyone the same opportunities; the meritocracy used to distinguish and separate the more hard-working people from those less does not offer margins of tolerance, thus generating a divisional system. The imposing mass of social and ritual commitments that the adept finds himself fulfilling daily remove him from his pre-existing social life, and lead him to abandon it little by little. People who work within the community, carrying out service tasks, are paid with its internal complementary currency, which effectively prevents them from creating savings, as this currency can only be spent within the community and in one or two shops in the valley. The work inside is paid but does not involve the payment of social security contributions, so a person who has spent an important number of years in it and then decides to leave will find himself without contributions. Severance indemnity is also denied. Magic pervades every aspect of the community, so much so that every product, food and non-food, sold in their shops is treated with magical rituals and devices with not well defined and tested energetic characteristics. A person who leaves the community is considered an element no longer in dialogue and therefore kept on the sidelines; the exclusion also involves parents, relatives or friends who are not part of it. On the experience of the dismissal from the community of Damanhur, see the volume, by Mario Cardano and Nicola Pannofino, Piccole apostasie. The farewell from the new religious movements , Bologna, il Mulino, 2015 (first part).
- A former member who left the sect after ten years spent working in the community, found himself without anything and without any contribution paid as he had been paid with the coin minted within the same community obviously not recognized by the Italian State.[6]
- A man abandoned his girlfriend and took 150,000 euros away from her and then donated to the Damanhur community.[6]
- In 2012 the community was accused of having plagiarized a man, father and husband, who allegedly abandoned his family to move to the community and had not given any news of himself for three years; the wife accused the sect of having plagiarized her husband to lure him into the community.[7]
Notes
- Utopian Dreams, Tobias Jones, 2007, Faber and Faber Ltd, p 29.
- "InfoTdGeova.it :: Analisi critica di un culto :: Leggi e sentenze". infotdgeova.it. Archived from the original on 4 March 2013. Retrieved 25 August 2016.
- "MondoRaro Foundation – L'Alchimista & FFAR (fight for animal rights) – Indipendent BlogZIne". mondoraro.org. Retrieved 25 August 2016.
- Prato, Franco Da. "www.caproespiatorio.net". caproespiatorio.net. Retrieved 25 August 2016.
- "Sette e santoni crescono, le istituzioni tacciono". l'Espresso (in Italian). 2015-01-07. Retrieved 2019-02-28.
- il Resto del Carlino. "L'ex moglie contro la setta "Si sono infilati nelle nostre vite"". il Resto del Carlino (in Italian). Retrieved 2019-02-28.
References
- Merrifield, Jeff (1998). Damanhur: The Real Dream. London: Thorsons. ISBN 0722534965. OCLC 647069892.
- Merrifield, Jeff (2006). Damanhur: The Story of the Extraordinary Italian Artistic Community. Santa Cruz: Hanford Mead Publishers. ISBN 1592750109. OCLC 63116828.
- Ananas, Esperide (2006). Damanhur: Temples of Humankind. New York: CoSM Press. ISBN 1556435770. OCLC 62172760.
- Robertson, Ross (April 2007). "Atlantis in the Mountains of Italy". What Is Enlightenment?. No. 36. pp. 94–110. Archived from the original on 2010-08-21.