Damanhur

An intentional community and syncretic spiritual movement founded in 1975 in the Valchiusella valley of Piedmont, Italy, by Oberto Airaudi, later known within the community as Falco Tarassaco. Its teaching blends elements of Western esotericism, ceremonial magic, ecological philosophy and a belief in reincarnation and human contact with plant and animal consciousness. Its best known achievement is the Temples of Humankind, an elaborate complex of chambers and passages hand carved and decorated over decades inside the mountain on which the community sits, built in secret for years before Italian authorities discovered and initially threatened to demolish it, a dispute later resolved in the community's favor. Damanhur has organized itself as a federation of smaller communities with its own written constitution, an internal currency called the credito, and elected governance, and it continues to draw new residents and researchers of intentional-community living from outside Italy.