The 'satanic' spiral at the Milan-Cortina Winter Games was a Da Vinci knot

The 2026 Winter Games spiral: Da Vinci or satanism

A huge, illuminated rotating spiral took center stage at the opening ceremony of the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy, a gala presented under the concept of "Harmony." Hours later, the same image was circulating on social media with a very different story: inverted pentagrams, a "wheel of Baal," symbols of the Guasonic P2 lodge and Saturn worship. From there to the headline "satanic ceremony" was a one-paragraph leap.

There is no official confirmation of any such content. What does exist is a specific stage design, an author who explains it, and an inconvenient number for those who see cults everywhere. It is worth separating the show itself from the images some people choose to project onto it.

What was actually seen at the ceremony

The central scene was a moving spiral, with flame-like shapes and a geometry many viewers recognized as an ancient symbol. That was where the problem began. Because a spiral, out of context, says nothing; placed in a production with lights and rings, it admits as many readings as there are spectators.

Part of the audience identified a succession of occultist references in the whole: pentagrams, the eye some call "Sauron's," and a supposed "wheel of Baal." The accusation was repeated so often it ended up seeming like an established fact. It is not. The design comes with no statement confirming that intention, and symbolic readings are interpretations, not documents.

The designer's own explanation: Da Vinci's knots

Here is where things get interesting. According to the design team, as quoted on the official Games website, the spiral is neither a pentagram nor a ritual wheel: it is a recreation of Leonardo da Vinci's knots. And the origin has a historical twist. Da Vinci spent years in Milan at the service of Duke Ludovico Sforza, and from that period came the famous interlaced designs that today decorate everything from engravings to book bindings.

The less epic reading is also the best documented: a Renaissance motif, not an altar. Anyone who prefers to see a hidden message will have to explain why the organizers chose precisely a 15th-century artist to hide it in plain sight of the entire planet.

Why the satanic theory does not hold up

The story of a satanic elite has a scale problem. If the goal were to hide messages under everyone's nose, the result is rather a show broadcast on open television and watched by millions of people at the same time. That is not occultism: it is advertising.

And then there is the arithmetic. According to BBC figures cited in this matter, there are around six million Freemasons in the world. Six million people do not form a secret society: they form a mid-sized city. Any conspiracy that needs that many members to function stops being a conspiracy and becomes, quite simply, a very widespread hobby.