Damanhur

Damanhur's Spiritual System

According to the beliefs of Damanhur's citizens, only one God exists, but it is impossible to contact him directly. God is accessible only through a group of lesser deities, the intermediate deities. Nine primeval deities are self-generated; all the other intermediate deities were created by humans but, as with Jungian archetypes, now have an existence of their own. Not to be confused with the intermediate deities are beings called entities, which include angels, nature spirits, and demons. According to Damanhur's cosmological scheme, which derives heavily from Theosophy, the first human is described as a primeval deity, who was the victim of a fall and lapsed into the present union with the body. Many deities and entities voluntarily followed the humans into their exile and now help humans who try to return to their original, “subtler” state.

Damanhur's cosmology includes the early generation of three Mother worlds—the world of human beings and animals, the world of plants, and the world of nature spirits—that are not able to communicate [Page 380]among one another but that generate Echo worlds, through which the Mother worlds become able to communicate. Each human, spiritual, or animal “race” has an astral tank (a repository of all knowledge accumulated by the race during the whole course of its history, a concept similar to the akashic memory of the Theosophical tradition). Human beings may get in touch, through particular techniques, with the human race mind (the astral tank of humanity), but they may find very useful information also in the race minds of animals. To be in touch with the animal race mind, each human being may enter into a special magical relation with an animal by assuming its name. In fact, all the citizens of Damanhur are identified not by their family names but by the name of an animal. The founder used to be called Hawk, but for many years has been referred to simply as Oberto. One finds names such as Elephant, Kangaroo, and so on. Today, citizens are often identified by two names, usually an animal name first and a plant name second. These names are freely chosen by whoever wants to use them. Noncitizens may also decide to pick up an animal name. Normally the names are reserved for adults. However, some children (age 7 or older) have insisted that they would like to receive their own animal names, and some of these requests have been granted.

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