He was born an ordinary boy in Piedmont. He left the world with nine underground cathedrals, a thriving community of 600 people, and an entirely new philosophy of human potential.
Oberto Airaudi was born on 26 March 1950 in Baldissero Canavese — a village in the same Valchiusella valley where Damanhur now stands. The mountain landscape that would become the canvas of his life's work surrounded him from birth.
From childhood, Airaudi reported experiences that set him apart. At a young age, he described what he called "extended perceptions" — moments of expanded awareness in which the boundaries between himself and the world around him seemed to dissolve. He was not frightened by these experiences. He was curious. They seemed to confirm, to him, that consciousness was far larger than its everyday expression.
As a young man, he pursued a voracious course of self-directed study. He read extensively in physics, medicine, parapsychology, and the sacred arts of multiple traditions. He was not interested in choosing one tradition — he wanted to understand the common ground beneath all of them, and to develop a framework for human spiritual development that was empirical rather than dogmatic.
By the age of 22, he had begun articulating what would become the philosophical foundations of Damanhur. At 25, he was ready to begin building.
"I did not have a spiritual calling in the conventional sense. I had a research question: what is a human being capable of? I spent my life trying to answer it."
— Falco TarassacoFalco Tarassaco
OBERTO AIRAUDI · 1950–2013
Born in the valley he would spend his life transforming. The name Falco (falcon) was his community name. Tarassaco (dandelion) was added later — a plant that grows everywhere, is impossible to destroy, and turns its face always toward the light.
In his early walks through Valchiusella — the valley he had known since childhood — Falco described an experience of recognition that went beyond ordinary memory. He perceived, through what he described as direct sensory experience, the presence of four synchronic lines converging beneath the valley floor. He saw the outlines of what would become the Temples long before a single stone was moved. And he understood, with a certainty he would spend decades translating into practice, that the right response was not to write a book or found a school, but to build.
"The earth was speaking. I simply learned to listen." This is how Falco described the beginning. Not a vision in the mystical sense — not a burning bush or a voice from the sky — but a quality of perception he had been cultivating since childhood, now focused by the particular genius of this valley's location at the intersection of synchronic lines.
What he perceived was not a completed design but an invitation: the valley was ready for something specific, and he was the person who could sense what that something was. The Temples he would build were, from the beginning, understood as a gift — not for the community he would found, but for humanity over the next 700 years.
Falco's approach combined two things rarely combined: deep spiritual perception and rigorous practical intelligence. He was not a mystic who retreated from the world. He was a builder who understood that the world of matter was itself sacred — that art, architecture, and community structure were forms of spiritual technology.
The Temples' design was not driven by aesthetic preference. Every choice — the orientation of each hall, the colors of each mosaic, the metals used in each Selfic structure — was derived from Falco's understanding of the synchronic lines and of human consciousness. The Temples were instruments, built to do something specific: amplify the potential of human beings who entered them.
"The Temples are not mine. I did not invent them. I read them. They were already there, in the hill, waiting for the hands and the intention that would bring them into form."
— Falco Tarassaco, on the Temples of HumankindFrom a gathering of 24 people in 1975 to a recognized model of sustainable civilization five decades later — this is the timeline of what Falco built, and what continued after him.
Falco's philosophy resists easy summary — it is extensive, detailed, and developed over four decades of active research. But its core pillars are clear and consistent across all his work.
Perhaps his most distinctive contribution to spiritual psychology: Falco taught that each human being has not one soul but three to five, in ongoing dialogue with each other. This inner plurality — which he described as personally experienced rather than theoretically derived — accounts for the richness and sometimes contradiction of human inner life. Personal development, in Damanhurian philosophy, involves bringing these souls into productive collaboration rather than forcing them into a false unity.
The 18 synchronic lines that circle the Earth carry specific qualities of evolutionary energy. Human beings can learn to perceive and work with these energies, accelerating their own development. The Temples are designed to make this work as accessible as possible — architectural instruments calibrated to the specific energies of the Valchiusella node.
Falco consistently rejected the notion that art was decorative. For him, art was functional — it changed the consciousness of those who encountered it. The mosaics of the Temples are not art in the museum sense: they are instruments, designed to produce specific effects in the psyches of those who attend to them with intention. This is why he considered the Temples his primary legacy — not a book, not a teaching, but an experiential technology.
Falco argued that the solitary spiritual path was a historical artifact — a concession to conditions that no longer applied. In the current phase of human evolution, he taught, spiritual development required community: the friction, the care, the challenge, and the support that only sustained relationship with others could provide. Damanhur was not a support structure for individual seekers — it was itself the practice.
"The Temples are not a monument to what we have built. They are a question mark held underground — asking humanity, for the next 700 years: what are you capable of, if you choose to care about it?"
— On the Temples of Humankind"A community that does not challenge its members is not a spiritual community — it is a comfort arrangement. The measure of a community's health is not how peaceful it feels, but how much it asks of the people who choose to belong to it."
— On community life"Every human being is born carrying the compressed potential of a consciousness far larger than they will ever express in one lifetime. The question is not whether that potential exists — it does, in everyone. The question is whether you will dedicate your life to unfolding it."
— On human potential"The sacred is not rare. It is the condition of everything, noticed only occasionally. The purpose of building sacred spaces is not to concentrate the sacred — it is to concentrate our attention on what is always already present everywhere."
— On sacred architectureFalco described the community's governance structures as his most practical legacy — he designed them specifically so that Damanhur would not need him. The proof that the design worked is the community's continuing health and growth since 2013.
Still expanding. New chambers are planned. The Temples are described as a 700-year project — barely begun.
Visit →600 people in four nuclei across Valchiusella. New citizens are welcomed through a clear, transparent process.
Learn more →Falco's curriculum, continually developed by his students. Open to visitors and community members alike.
Courses →Extensive written works, available through the Academy. A living philosophy, still being applied and developed.
Explore →"The Temples are my gift to humanity over the next 700 years. I will not see most of what they do. That was always the point."
— Falco Tarassaco, 2010The underground temples he built are open to visitors every day. The philosophy he developed is taught at the Academy. The community he founded is still alive and growing.
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