It’s Saturday
morning and the
plants are singing...
Inside a flower-festooned chamber 40 minutes’ drive north
of Turin, a white cyclamen – electrodes clipped to its leaves
to relay its electrical conductivity through a synthesiser – is
trilling away.
Admittedly, the warbling is less Adele, more a tinny
series of bleeps sounding not unlike a Casio keyboard being
thrown down the stairs. But, if you were to ask the plant’s
backing singer – a middle-aged chanteuse called Monkey – or
her fellow experimenters, they’ll tell you their plants really
can hold a tune. According to the members of the Italian
commune of Damanhur, the shrubs learn they are moving
the synthesiser and start to harmonise when music is played.
Mozart makes them go wild, apparently, heavy metal makes
themwither. And, when one of their stems is squeezed, the
‘
music’ mysteriously stops…
You may laugh – you may think them slightly mad – but
the Federation of Damanhur has been going strong for 38
years. Spread over 500 hectares in the verdant beauty of the
Italian Alps, the commune has its own currency (the credito),
constitution and Sistine Chapel-like underground temples.
Its thousand-odd citizens, who are all assigned animal
names (their founder is an ex-insurance man now called
Falcon), aim to live a spiritual life in peace, harmony and
self-sufficiency.
Your correspondent’s mission? To infiltrate this crazy
cabal and find out if someone who feels as spiritual as
a heathen jellyfish can burrow deep into the mystical
chambers, participate in rituals and hopefully awaken a
hitherto non-existent esoteric side. There’s also one bolder
ambition. Rumours abound that there's a time machine
hidden here. Have they really unlocked the quantum
conundrums that baffled HGWells, Stephen Hawking and
Back to the Future
’
s Marty McFly? I was about to find out.
Located in the northern Italian municipality of Baldissero
Canavese, the commune is dotted with ladybird-and-poppy-
frescoed houses, each shared by ‘nucleo-communities’
of 12 to 20 people. My accommodation is in a €25-a-night
dorm (private rooms are available in an ‘eco-house’ on a
Damanhurian farm), which I shared with a Spanish yoga
teacher and a German Zen expert. The payphone in reception
and signs advertising Wi-Fi assuage my fears that this might
be a cult, and Damanhur
grande formaggios '
Stambecco'
(
Ibex) and 'Formica' (Ant) take me for an introductory stroll.
Around 6,000 tourists pass through the doors here each
year, many of them spiritually seeking types. Imagine
Asterix the Gaul copping off with Florence Welch and you’d
half-grasp the New Age bonkers-ness. It’s got a Grecian-style
‘
Open Temple’ with Corinthian columns, amphitheatre and
ancient god statues. Brightly coloured stones are arranged
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