In Pursuit of Mysteries

Damanhur in the News

Damanhur is in the news again, which brought them to my mind today. They seem to be discovered or rediscovered every few years in the English speaking world and then promptly forgotten again (until the next time). This time it is the Daily Mail newspaper in the UK with an article on the group.

Damanhur or the “Federation of Damanhur” is a spiritual organization dating from the 1970s in northern Italy. They are based about 30 miles outside of Turin in a rural community that they have established. Spiritually, they are kind of a New Agey mishmash of various beliefs inspired by the visions of Oberto Airaudi, their founder. Because of my interest in Western Esoteric beliefs (it is the area in which I did my Master’s degree) and also because it is a current organization, I’ve found the group interesting and keep an eye on what is going on with them, at least in public, from time to time.

I’m not going to get into their beliefs, which are not entirely easy to summarize but are largely focused on the spiritual evolution of humanity. The main reason that people have heard of them is because of how the group has expressed those beliefs symbolically and artistically. Airaudi organized friends and followers, throughout the late 70s and 80s, to secretly carve a temple complex underneath a rocky hill on land the group owned. The didn’t tell anyone that they were doing this work, especially the Italian government. When it was discovered in 1991 in a very Catholic nation, people freaked out a bit about this weird cult and its secret temple. For a while, the government was threatening to demolish it (because, officially, it was done without permits). Eventually, people calmed down a bit and the temple (really a complex of them by the definition of the Damanhurians), called “The Temples of Humankind,” was officially permitted. Later, they opened it to the public in a controlled manner. At the time of the discovery construction was stopped but the group was allowed to continue to work on the artwork in the existing spaces. The complex is only 10% of the projected final size and it is still huge.

You can see a two dimensional map of the complex below:

This is also a three dimensional representation of the space occupied by the temples drawn from the Damanhur interactive guide:

The temple is quite beautiful in a way and full of detailed artwork following a variety of themes. After carving out the rooms and connecting passages in the rock by hand, all of the artwork was created from scratch by the members and then placed in the rooms over time. One sees a combination of moasics, glasswork, carving, and a variety of other arts. From the images that I’ve seen, the place really is quite beautiful. You can see an image below of the Hall of Earth, which is a very large room:

Below is an image from the Hall of Mirrors:

Remember, all of this is underground and was built with hand tools or created in their workshops and carried through a small tunnel before assembly.

The Damanhurians state on their website:

The Temples of Humankind symbolically represent the inner rooms of every human being. Walking through its halls and corridors corresponds to a profound inner journey. The Temples weave their way inside the mountain for more than 8,500 cubic meters on five different levels, linked by hundreds of meters of corridors. The Temples are sited at the meeting point of Eurasian and African continental plates whose movement has brought to the surface an ancient mineral, over 300 million years old. This mineral known as Milonite carries the physical energy of the Earth. The Temples were constructed inside a seam of this particular mineral which precisely follows the flow of the ‘Synchronic Lines’ of the Earth. The Synchronic Lines are great rivers of energy that surround our planet and link it to the Universe, transporting ideas, thought and dreams. The Temples of Humankind rise up on a shinning knot; the point at which four of these Lines meet.

As I said, a bit New Agey in that their beliefs don’t derive from any one specific tradition but a bit borrowed from many many traditions plus the inspiration of their leader.

A very large flash-based interactive and explanatory model of the temple complex is available. They also have another entire web site dedicated to the temple complex as well that is similar.

Their main web site is available in an English version for those inclined to view it.

I’ve read Jeff Merrified’s “Damanhur: The Community They Tried to Brand a Cult”, which has many pictures. He has done a number of other books as well, such as “Damanhur: The Story of the Extraordinary Italian Artistic And Spiritual Community”. These books discuss both the spiritual beliefs of the organization and their work as a communitarian and spiritual organization (they run a number of businesses and have centers elsewhere now). Oberto Airaudi has a book that he has written available in English now called, “The Book of Synchronicity”. This is some sort of divinatory text along the lines of the “I Ching” or other divination manuals but oriented around the Damanhurian spiritual beliefs.

There is also a book dedicated just to the Temples of Humankind, “Damanhur: Temples of Humankind”. This is probably the book to get if someone is interested in just the fascinating history of the secret construction of the Temples of Humankind, the art within the chambers, and the ideas that tie all of it together into their spiritual vision.

Fire Rituals

I posted the other day about visiting Buddha Dendo in the mountains in northern California. On the site there is a new building, a goma-do. This is for the performance of the fire ritual, the goma, that is part of esoteric Buddhism in Japan. You will find it in both Shingon and Tendai Buddhism and also within the Shugendo practices that have connections to both Shingon and Tendai. Most people outside of Japan are not familiar with the Japanese goma ritual. I know of a few people that have witnessed it here in the United States that are not practitioners but most people who see it have to go to a Shingon or Tendai temple (a rare thing here) in order to witness it. (Though I am aware of one instance of a Japanese priest performing the goma at Burning Man as witnessed by a Buddhist friend of mine.)

The goma is ultimately derived from the Vedic homa fire ritual. As many people are aware, but commonly don’t reflect on, Buddhism was originally an Indian religion that developed from the matrix of religious cults (in the proper sense) and philosophies present in India at the time of the Buddha. The Buddha’s teachings were a sharp break with earlier traditions but its practices and the philosophical framework in which it worked were not created from nothing and were influenced by the cultural matrix. While controversial to say for some who hold to a kind of fundamentalism, it is also likely that later Tantric Buddhism was heavily influenced by the non-Buddhist Tantra present in India in later centuries. Traditional or later non-traditional elements of Indian religion were often reinterpreted, especially on an inner level, from a Buddhist point of view.

You can also see a version of the fire ritual within Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism as well. (I found an abstract of what looks to be an interesting article comparing Tibetan and Indian fire rituals.)

As Dr. Richard Payne notes in his book, “The Tantric ritual of Japan: feeding the gods, the Shingon fire ritual“:

It is well recognized that there is a historical continuity between the goma of present day Japanese Tantric Buddhism and the fire sacrifices known to predate even the earliest Vedas. Elements of the Vedic rituals have been found to be identical with the elements of the Goma.

Later, Dr. Payne goes on to write:

One of the characteristics of Tantric Buddhist goma is the importance placed on the inner goma. The inner goma is a visualization which emphasizes the unity of the deity, the fire and the practitioners (the mouth of the deity, the mouth of the altar hearth and the practitioner’s own mouth are visualized as one), and the unity of the three mysteries of body, speech and mind.

You can see a very brief example of a Hindu fire ritual on Youtube below:

You can compare it with the very brief bit shown of a Shingon goma ritual here as well:

(People tend not to film these as they are fairly private but the above seems to come officially from a temple on Koyasan.)

The goma ritual is much longer (around 45 minutes or so oftentimes) so this is really just a brief snippet. Unfortunately, you don’t see the pouring of the oils in the Japanese ritual clip as you do in the Hindu one but it is present if you witness the ritual.

In Japan, there are public performances at various times a year with large crowds. I did find one example of this on Youtube as well:

This all seemed worth saying something about since it is far outside the experience of most people outside of Indian and Japanese culture (or Tibetan, for that matter).

Firefox 3 Beta 1 is out!

I know that by the time you see this, you’ve probably already heard but the first beta of Firefox 3 is now available. QA just finished signing off and bits have been distributed out to handle downloads. A huge sigh of relief is out and a new milestone has been passed.

You can get the beta through the article above on DevNews. The release notes for the beta are also available for those so inclined to read them.

This is pretty exciting. People have been putting a lot of work into Firefox 3 for quite a while now. I know that on the QA team, we’ve been running ourselves ragged on getting issues nailed down, features tested, and generally making sure that it will be a solid beta experience for people.

It’s been a long day for QA today between getting this out the door and putting an update in the beta channel for Firefox 2.0.0.10 release candidate testing as well. (This after doing a Thunderbird update just this last week.) Busy times for everyone.

I encourage you to check out the Firefox 3 beta* and to submit issues found to Bugzilla to make the subsequent beta that much better.

* Note: I must include the warning that this is a beta and it can do weird or unexpected things. We encourage people to not replace their normal Firefox browser for day to day use. This is for testing purposes only, folks!