Italian peddlers of pricey occult courses and conferences, LaSocietà dello Zolfo (LSDZ) , are pushing an esoteric event titled L’Alba d’Occidente (“The Dawn of the West”) that gives a mystical makeover to one of Italy’s most toxic historical figures. The target of the incense-and-symbolism treatment is Gabriele d’Annunzio , a protofascist icon whose ideas and methods fed directly into Mussolini’s bloodstained regime. La Società dello Zolfo has spent years building international credibility by surrounding itself with well-known Italian and English-speaking occult figures. Names such as David Rankine, Stephen Skinner, and Christopher Warnock regularly appear in connection with the society’s activities, events, courses and social orbit. Their presence at other LSDZ gatherings gives the group street credibility and an aura of legitimacy. That international sheen now buffers an event that strips d’Annunzio of his political reality and repackages him as a poet, a Mason, a Martinist, and ...

A north London woman who posed as a faith healer to con victims out of £1m (€1.17m) to fund her extravagant lifestyle has been jailed for 10 years. Juliette D’Souza posed as a shaman for more than 12 years, tricking 11 people, telling them the money would be used as a spiritual offering to cure health problems, including terminal illnesses and infertility. The 59-year-old from Hampstead insisted the cash was a “sacrifice” and that it would be hung in the Amazon rainforest. She claimed two other shamans would perform rituals around the money before it was sent back, and their problems would be resolved. Instead, the cash went on designer handbags, luxury holidays and antique furniture. Many of D’Souza’s victims were financially ruined, with one man left “as poor as a church mouse”, the court heard. D’Souza also “remorselessly extracted” more than £200,000 (€234,000) from an elderly woman over several years. On Thursday, she was convicted at Blackfriars Crown Court of 23 counts of obtain...