After her session, Lisa* felt a little lighter. She was one of those people who smiled at most reading the promises in the advertisements, browsing the little bits of paper thrown in the mailboxes or put in the hands of onlookers on the metro. How could the marabouts, these African mediums, popular figures often associated with the folklore of the continent, allow the sole force of their thought to allow the “return of the loved one”, to revive the “sexual potency”, or to facilitate “quitting smoking”?
Two years ago, the young woman, a graduate of a master’s degree in international cooperation in Nanterre, still let herself go to a session, out of curiosity. The experience vaccinated her, she never started again. In videoconference, because of the health crisis. Behind her webcam, she asks the wizard to improve his success at work. The marabout concentrates for a moment, then he recommends that he offer tubes of toothpaste to his jealous colleagues, to cut off their power of nuisance. The method made him cry with laughter. It was well worth losing 10 euros.
Urine, egg and a spell
After her first session, Anissa* never stopped. At 37, this hairdresser at home has already seen many marabouts: good ones, bad ones, dear ones, wacky ones, serious ones, benevolent ones, pernicious ones. In North Africa, where his family comes from, they are called talebs. True or false magic, but real power of nuisance: their practices are far from being insignificant for those who believe in them, warns the young woman, who now lives only from misfortune to misfortune because, she says, of the wizards that all the world frequents in his entourage and who have entered his life.
When her parents were still together, the young woman saw her father making more and more trips to Morocco. He would have met a taleb there, never to get rid of it again. Anissa suspects this clairvoyant of actually being in the pay of one of her cousins, jealous of the parental couple. The father would have been manipulated. Under the influence, he himself would have participated in rites to bewitch his whole family, before divorcing. “We found spells written in Arabic under the furniture; he admitted to us that it was him”.
Last year, Anissa also discovered incantatory artifacts in her home, like this bottle hidden behind the toilet, filled with urine and egg whites. “A powerful cocktail”, she assures. She also caught her ex-boyfriend soaping up with an unusual black liquid. An imam based near her home in the south of France – she does not want to give the name of the city to avoid the evil eye – told her that it was witchcraft. “Another blow from a marabout who sold his services to several people,” she suspects. Instead of helping her husband, the wizard would have used him to get to her.
After this discovery, the arguments with her husband intensified. She throws tantrums, he hits her and the couple ends up separating. Since then, Anissa has stopped working. She now takes care of their child alone and stays on the sofa the rest of her days. She feels “like in depression”, she says, but refuses to consult a psychiatrist, convinced that she is bewitched. “The shrink will think I’m crazy. And anyway, witchcraft is much stronger than psychology”.
Bleeding and seizures
If the talebs or other marabouts are often considered by a large part of Muslims as charlatans who hijack traditions and religions on their own, some preachers of Islam nevertheless offer rites aimed at putting an end to misfortunes. The Christian equivalent of exorcism. But the practice remains rare and controversial. During some sessions, Anissa scratches herself until she bleeds. During another, she begins to convulse. Isn’t this the proof that she is bewitched?
The young mother says he has spent no more than a few hundred euros for all these rituals, which have changed nothing in his family situation or his moods. But some ill-intentioned marabouts do not hesitate to extort fortunes from those whose stories of bad luck turn into obsession. Every year, Miviludes, the interministerial mission to combat sectarian aberrations, receives reports on this subject. Often, they come from relatives who denounce a sudden change in behavior.
The local press is full of scams or manipulations of the same kind. June 6, 2023: a Toulouse marabout is taken into police custody, suspected of having taken 44,000 euros from a pensioner by promising to unbewitch his daughter. In February of the same year, another wizard, based in Nice, was sentenced to six years in prison for having extorted more than 400,000 euros from his victims. In a different register, a 39-year-old marabout was sentenced last June by the criminal court of Senlis, in the Oise, to three years in prison for having used his influence to force sexual relations with his clients.
From his office in the 10th arrondissement of Paris, Youcef Sissaoui claims to have seen a multitude of abuse files of the same type. Himself a marabout, he created the National Institute of Divinatory Arts (Inad), in 1987, an association which tries to have the profession adopt a charter of ethics, to remedy the absence of specific regulations. “We believe in it, we don’t believe in it, but not everything can be allowed: to affirm that the person is going to die, that they are bewitched, it is not possible. You have to stick to advice and a psycho-spiritual accompaniment”, he pleads.
Although it is legal, the activity of marabout is not recognized. There is therefore no census. But for Youcef Sissaoui there is no doubt: the practice is exploding. You just have to count the number of stars who use it. In 2022, the Pogba affair, named after the French footballer, reminded us how much high-level athletes, especially those from the African diaspora, are fond of this kind of superstition. The ex-president of PSG Michel Denisot had himself used the services of a wizard to try to win his club in 1997.
In addition to athletes, reality TV stars and influencers have also succumbed to the charms of marabouts, as the celebrity press likes to echo. Carla Moreau, known for her participation in the program The people of Marseilles, would have spent more than 2 million euros for their services. “Today, any ill-intentioned sweeper puts on a djellaba and calls himself a marabout. Some promise mountains and wonders, others are blackmailers. After customers ask for a curse, they threaten to reveal everything” , creaks Youcef Sissaoui.
Murders and stagings
By rummaging through his files, the association manager remembers some stagings that some victims have reported to him. “Evil marabouts wake up their clients in the middle of the night, pretending to be the devil, and thus make their victims believe that they need them even more,” he adds. Something to upset the most sensitive people.
Sometimes the grip goes beyond understanding. Like this time when a young entrepreneur from Troyes, David V. offers himself the services of an African sorcerer, so that he can help him inherit the family business. “Mentally unstable, the man very quickly became addicted to the messages of his medium. Until he converted to Islam or even stole from the cash register to satisfy him,” says his lawyer, master David Parison.
Faced with this behavior, his parents fired him, putting an end to his ambitions. One day, after talking with his marabout, David V. took a hammer and destroyed his mother’s skull. According to justice, by his grip and the level of distress in which he placed David V, the wizard participated in the murder. He was sentenced to fifteen years in prison in the last instance. David will have to spend twenty years in his cell.
*Names have been changed