Turin And Satanism | Spirit Daily Blog

Back in 1989, while driving through Europe to Marian shrines, I stopped in Torino (Turin), Italy, on my way past Milan and located the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, where the Holy Shroud was kept above and behind the altar in a second-floor chapel (Cappella della Sacra Sindone). Ut was late afternoon on a Sunday and there were very few people there—the Shroud was not as publicized as it is today—and I’ll never forget two things.

One was what happened as I walked toward the vault on an altar in that chapel. To my utter surprise, I felt a sudden, gentle, but powerful force bring me to my knees on the first step up to it. It was a power I had not quite encountered elsewhere, even in Jerusalem. So taken was I that despite bad knees I went below to a pew and knelt on a hard wood kneeler and prayed an entire Scriptural Rosary (fifteen decades) non-stop. The feeling was the true sense of the word “awesome.” How much we overused that word! I have had replicas of the Shroud around our home ever since, and on Good Friday take out a replica cloth I purchased at that chapel. I can still feel the anointing.

The Shroud has miraculously survived fire (including one that erupted a year or two after my visit) and all manner of political and military upheaval for two thousand years. Back then it was rarely exhibited (every twenty to forty years or so, unlike recent decades). It didn’t matter: the Power was as tangible as it was unforgettable.

The second thing I had noticed, when I first parked alongside the cathedral, was the large, dense, satanic graffiti scrawled blasphemously on the stone of a tall side wall. Torino was not the cleanest place I’ve ever been, and there was graffiti elsewhere, but this seemed targeted.

As it turns out, the Shroud is there in the midst of the great battle between Light and dark. Torino is not only home of the Shroud but also a major locus of satanism. In the context of spiritual combat, this of course makes perfect sense. Christ spent His time on earth naming and battling and casting out the devil. He famously encountered and transcended Satan in the desert.

Reviewing restaurants there, The New York Times had this as a header:

Explained the article: “Against the backdrop of the Alps, the northern Italian city of Turin has been known for many things: It was the birthplace of espresso, vermouth and Fiat and is considered one of Europe’s occult capitals, believed to sit at the nexus of black magic and white magic triangles.”

I didn’t realize, when I visited, just how intense the combat was.

“The nature of people in Turin is very private and reserved, and so you always have the feeling there’s some mystery behind everything you see and those you meet,” noted Sarah Cosulich, local director of an art museum. “There might be something hidden around every corner.”

The article goes on to quote locals on their favorite establishments for food and drink, never mentioned (perhaps unsurprisingly, but nonetheless gallingly) Torino’s most famous asset: the Shroud.

So it is in our world.

To follow Jesus means, to whatever extent we can, detach from it.

Lent is the ideal time for such detachment.

It is important to expose evil but always more important to pray on a kneeler, which brings one above darkness in any city.

“Turin, Italy, was once known as Europe’s occult capital,” repeats Atlas Obscura. “Sure enough, rumors about Freemasons, alchemists, ghosts, the devil, and such continue to hover over this charming city of mysteries.”

“Not far from the more famous Portone del Diavolo (Devil’s Door), on Via Lascaris is a series of drain-like slits nicknamed Occhi del Diavolo, or “the Eyes of the Devil.” They surround the entire perimeter of a building that stands there, always in pairs, as if to form some sort of protective magic circle, silently watching the neighborhood.”

Notes a website called Hostelsclub: “Turin has two souls: it joins London and San Francisco to create the triangle of Black Magic,but it also sits in the middle of the triangle of White Magic too, alongside Lyon and Prague. A supernatural disposition which goes way back, when Egyptian goddess Isis asked his son Fetonte to lay the foundations of a new city right where the Po river, personification of the sun, met the river Dora, symbol of the moon. A piece of land where ancient powers were joined are mixed together, cut in two by the 45th parallel.”

It quotes an artist named Georgio de Chirico was saying, “Turin is the most soulful, mysterious, unsettling city in the entire world.”

“We follow the flow of positive energy up to the Church of the Gran Madre, a unique religious building that is suprisingly without crosses, but with a Greek tympanum, owned by the local council,” says the article. “On the other hand, it is whispered that it houses inside the Holy Grail, the chalice used by Jesus during the Last Supper.”

“The White Magic triangle extends to Piazza Castello: Beyond the Palazzo Reale gate, Turin belongs to the dark. Two of the Greek myths Dios Curie informing the beginning of the reign of evil, Castor and Pollux are defending the boundaries separating sacred Turin and villainous Turin. According to the most bold theory, it is said that Castelo Plaza hides three alchemical caves in its lower soil.

I had no idea. This is a museum there:

At one former graveyard, now a square symbolizing dark magic, are pyramids with what some believe is a statue of Lucifer at the top of one. We won’t dignfy it by showing it.

Amazing, just as it was when He walked earth, so is the Lord, and His Might, amid the paganism, mediumship, magic, and satanic. Outside the city center is Ranzo Hill, “where it is said that the devil appeared.”

Says a last site (“Turin Epicurean Capital“), “Say the name, and most people straightaway think of the famous Shroud. Others think of Fiat. Still others think of Gianduia chocolate, or the city’s elegant Parisian-style boulevards. As I discovered during a long weekend there, however, there is far more to this city than these iconic images alone account for.”

Far more and far less.

The real Power is at the spot we started—the only one in this sullied city that really counts.

Ah, yes: the Cappella della Sacra Sindone.