Why is the Sacred Woods a Temple?

According to Damanhurian philosophy, anything can become a temple when the use and function of the place is conceived of and experienced as a bridge to dimensions that are different from ours.

In Damanhur, the path to making the woods sacred has come about as a natural consequence of considering all of life as an expression of the divine nature that permeates this world of forms.

From this condition, the subsequent step to becoming a Temple goes back to just over four years ago, when its function of bridge between this and other dimensions was established by Falco Tarassaco, shortly before his departure from this plane of reality. In fact, Falco chose the Sacred Woods Temple as a privileged place to open contact from the Beyond to our dimension, using a very beautiful and evocative term to define the woods: the “cradle.”

A place where life is born and reborn, in the magical interweaving that connects material existence to the subtle one. In this delicate and precious ecosystem, trees play a fundamental role as “bridge” beings, belonging to what we call a “Mother World” in Damanhur, that is, one of the sources of life for our human soul.

In many cultures, trees have been considered the most suitable manifestation of divinity and life: the Tree of Knowledge, the Tree of the Kabbalah, and the Tree of Immortality are some examples. A tree unites heaven and earth with its vertical nature and recalls the third law of Magic, “As above, so below.” It is the expression of life itself that regenerates in every season, in an eternal cycle of birth and rebirth.

The tradition of the sacred woods is particularly strong in India, where – thanks to this – large and small woodland extensions have survived. They are respected as they are each considered part of the house of Shiva, Vishnu or other minor divinities. An example of a tree revered as a carrier of a spiritual role is the banyan, which in the Hindu tradition represents the tree of the world. Today, a beautiful path among the banyans is one of the ways to access Matrimandir, the great sphere that hosts meditations in the ecovillage of Auroville, India, a large spiritual community founded by Sri Aurobindo and Mère, connected to Damanhur through relationships of exchange and friendship.

European history is also deeply rooted in the Druid culture, a culture that interprets the woods as the main place of cultural and religious development for human beings. According to the Druid vision, the woods are not just the home of some Gods, but above all the place where it is possible to contact all of them through the trees, which are antennas extending toward a higher dimension. In Africa, the historic prevalence of animism makes it so that the woods are home to forces, and it carries out functions of comfort and support for human beings who receive nourishment and protection from this home, even after death. The woods are a door to different dimensions, and history is full of stories about the relationship between humans and woods, which are varied but always consistent in representing the home for a harmonious relationship between humans and the world of the “beyond.”

In the human imagination, life develops around trees, as it is in the case of the movie Avatar made by James Cameron in 2009, where the gigantic “mother plant” inhabited by the Na’vi people is a source of life for the entire planet, and it becomes the battlefield between the natives and the Earth invaders. The artistic and narrative intuition of Avatar was noticed by the founder of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), Massimo Introvigne, who compared Damanhur to the Na’vi people, indicating the many similarities between the natural culture of the protagonists in the film and that of Damanhurians.

The certainty that the plant world contains great wisdom and intelligence was the motivation that – since the origins of Damanhur – has prompted the founders to build the first Music of the Plants devices, through which we can enter into contact with the essence of plants more deeply and significantly.