Table Of ContentPALGRAVE STUDIES IN NEW RELIGIONS
AND ALTERNATIVE SPIRITUALITIES
Damanhur
An Esoteric Community
Open to the World
Edited by
Stefania Palmisano
Nicola Pannofino
Palgrave Studies in New Religions and
Alternative Spiritualities
Series Editors
James R. Lewis
School of Philosophy
Wuhan University
Wuhan, China
Henrik Bogdan
University of Gothenburg
Gothenburg, Sweden
Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities is an
interdisciplinary monograph and edited collection series sponsored by the
International Society for the Study of New Religions. The series is devoted
to research on New Religious Movements. In addition to the usual groups
studied under the New Religions label, the series publishes books on such
phenomena as the New Age, communal & utopian groups, Spiritualism,
New Thought, Holistic Medicine, Western esotericism, Contemporary
Paganism, astrology, UFO groups, and new movements within traditional
religions. The Society considers submissions from researchers in any
discipline.
Editorial Board
Bernard Doherty (Charles Sturt University, Australia)
Fan Lizhu (Fudan University, China)
J. Gordon Melton (Baylor University, USA)
Erin Prophet (University of Florida, USA)
James T. Richardson (University of Nevada, USA)
Donald Westbrook (San Jose State University, USA)
Manon Hedenborg White (Södertörn University, Sweden)
Stefania Palmisano • Nicola Pannofino
Editors
Damanhur
An Esoteric Community Open to the World
Editors
Stefania Palmisano Nicola Pannofino
Department of Culture Department of Culture
Politics and Society Politics and Society
University of Turin, CLE University of Turin
Torino, Torino, Italy Torino, Torino, Italy
Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities
ISBN 978-3-031-10136-6 ISBN 978-3-031-10137-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10137-3
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A
cknowledgements
We would like to thank all the Damanhurians who welcomed us into the
Community during the many visits, interviews and conversations we had
with them during the preparation of this book. With their helpfulness they
guided us through the complex and fascinating world of Damanhur.
We are also grateful to our colleagues who have contributed to the
preparation and writing of this volume, and to Palgrave Macmillan for the
attention they have paid to us throughout its production.
Thanks also to Massimiliano Manzo of the Travel Media House in
Turin for the documentary on Damanhur for the World Souls series.
v
c
ontents
1 Introduction 1
Stefania Palmisano and Nicola Pannofino
Part I History and Organization 19
2 A Technocity Utopia 21
Luigi Berzano
3 The Community by Numbers 45
Anna Lo Presti and Monica Gilli
4 Ubi Societas, Ibi Ius: The Legal System 75
Monia Ciravegna
5 The Complex Politics of a Spiritually Oriented
Intentional Community 97
Luca Ozzano
6 A Bridge Between Inside and Outside: The Economy 115
Nicola Pannofino
7 The School: A “Unique” Education? 135
Massimo Introvigne
vii
viii CONTENTS
Part II Culture and Spirituality 151
8 Esotericism and Matter: Damanhur’s Post- Falco
Spirituality 153
Stefania Palmisano
9 The Tourism Supply System 177
Monica Gilli
10 Heritagisation of Temples of Humankind 201
Giovanna Rech
11 Leaving the City of Light: Two Deconversion Paths 225
Mario Cardano and Marco Castagnetto
12 Women, Gender, Androgynous and Hierarchies in
Damanhur 255
Elena Zapponi
13 Oberto Airaudi and the Community: Before-During-After 277
Maria Immacolata Macioti
Appendix: Damanhur, Synchronic Lines and Networks of
Communities 299
Coboldo Melo
Index 303
n c
otes on ontributors
Luigi Berzano is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of
Turin, Italy, co-editor of the Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion and
director of the series Spiritualità senza Dio? (Edizioni Mimesis). He has
written Lifestyles and Subcultures: History and a New Perspective (with
C. Genova, 2017) and The Fourth Secularisation: Autonomy of Individual
Lifestyles (2019).
Mario Cardano is Professor of Qualitative Methods for Social Research
in the Department of Cultures, Politics and Society at University of Turin,
Italy. On the topic of NMR, he has written articles and books, including
Lo specchio, la rosa e il loto. Uno studio sulla sacralizzazione della natura
(Seam, 1997) and, with Nicola Pannofino, Piccole apostasie. Il congedo dai
nuovi movimenti religiosi (il Mulino, 2015).
Marco Castagnetto is a PhD fellow at the Link Campus University,
Rome, and the University of Turin, Italy. His interests span from New
Religious Movement (NRM) to neo-paganism, Hindu philosophies and
Western esotericism studies. He authored Il loto e la spada. Il pensiero di
Aurobindo Ghose e la sua ricezione in Occidente (FrancoAngeli, 2020).
Monia Ciravegna graduated in Law summa cum laude from the
University of Turin, Italy, in July 2008. Since 2009, she has collaborated
with the Law and Religion and Canon Law Professor at the University of
Turin. In September 2016 she obtained her PhD from the Doctoral
School in Human and Social Sciences in Turin, with a final dissertation
titled “The Autonomy of Religious Denominations in State Systems”. In
ix
x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
2019 she was a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Law at the
University of Turin, with the project “The Regulation of the Religious
Phenomenon in the Globalization of Law”. Actually, she is post-doctoral
researcher in the Department of Law at the University of Turin, with the
project “Religious Symbols and Marketing: From Sacred Iconography in
Advertising to the Overlap Between Religion and the Green Economy”.
She is the author of the book Damanhur: studio giuridico di una comunità
spirituale (Libellula Ed., 2020).
Monica Gilli is a sociologist working in the Department of Culture,
Politics and Society at the University of Turin, Italy. Her research interests
are tourism as a factor of local development and urban regeneration, heri-
tage tourism, the relationship between tourism and identity construction
and spiritual tourism. Among her publications on spirituality, there are
Gilli, M., Palmisano, S. (2021). Spiritual Seekers in Esoteric Tourism
Contexts. The Damanhur Community in Italy, Journal of Tourism and
Cultural Change, 19 (5): 696–708; Palmisano, S. Gilli, M. & Lo Presti,
A. (2021). Spiritual but Not Religious. A Survey on University Students
in Turin, Sociologia e ricerca sociale, XLII, 125: 65–83; Gilli, M., & Ferrari,
S. (2016). Marginal Places and Tourism: The Role of Buddhist Centers in
Italy. Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change, 14 (2): 422–438.
Massimo Introvigne is founder and managing director of the Center for
Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), based in Torino, Italy, and the
author of some 70 books on the sociology of religions, new religious
movements and religious pluralism, including The Plymouth Brethren
(2018) and Inside The Church of Almighty God (2020), both published by
Oxford University Press. In 2011, he served as the Representative of the
OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) for com-
bating racism, xenophobia and religious discrimination. From 2012 to
2015, he was the president of the Observatory of Religious Liberty cre-
ated by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Maria Immacolata Macioti worked as Full Professor of Cultural Process
at the University of Rome La Sapienza, Italy. She focused her studies on
urban sociology and migration. She was coordinating the quarterly maga-
zine La critica sociologica. She was the director of the Department of
Refugee and War victims for Anrp. Her books were published by Liguori
(Naples), Guerini (Milan), Laterza (Roma-Bari), McGraw-Hill and Aracne
(Rome). For Guida Editori she wrote L’Armenia, gli armeni cent’anni
