Until a few decades ago, believing in esotericism remained mainly taboo, even mocked. Today, these practices have spread widely in society, to the point of becoming really popular, even commonplace. Few practitioners hide from it, and if some still approach the subject with a polite or amused distance, others, on the contrary, claim their beliefs with force. The phenomenon does not spare the stars.
Actors, writers, singers or sportsmen, whether they have recently converted or they finally dare to speak about it freely, many are those who use their notoriety to spread and highlight their attraction for the occult and the magic, in order to to adorn themselves with a mystical aura or to make a sometimes very profitable business out of it.
Gwyneth Paltrow, the popess of well-being
From an Oscar-winning actress, she has become a formidable businesswoman of “the art of living and well-being”. For more than fifteen years, Gwyneth Paltrow has been providing, with her Goop brand, “health advice” aimed in particular at inserting various objects into the anus or vagina. Although professionals tirelessly criticize the inefficiency and dangerousness of these methods, Goop is a hit. For Paltrow’s genius lies in enriching his pseudo-therapeutic advice with portals of information about sexuality, mind and soul. The whole is inspired by many forms of esotericism recombined around what American researchers call “a new religion”, at least a way of life centered on the quest for “a better version of oneself”.
To achieve this, Paltrow offers expensive detox programs, anti-aging programs, shamanic sessions or even MDMA-boosted spiritual quests. [NDLR : drogue de synthèse de la classe des amphétamines] or psychedelic mushrooms.
Bernard Werber, the follower of regressive hypnosis
His imaginative pen has made him one of the most widely read and known French writers. His writings, a mixture of science fiction, fantasy and spirituality, have allowed millions of readers to escape. But Bernard Werber’s attraction for the strange is not only fictional, since he is a fervent supporter of regressive hypnosis, which would make it possible to “join one’s past lives”. The author thus claims to have lived in Atlantis. He also claims to “feel energies and entities”, believes in the existence of an “invisible world” populated by good and bad people to whom one can connect and prides himself on having “talents of mediumship”.
Her Encyclopedia of relative and absolute knowledge, where “every information is astonishing, but true”, accumulates scientific errors in favor of wacky metaphysical theories. It is therefore no surprise that we discover that he considers that the Covid-19 crisis would be the embodiment of the Earth’s will to defend itself against human destruction.
Novak Djokovic, the mystical tennis player
“Djoko” is not only one of the best tennis players in the history of this sport. He is also a great champion of polemical postures – convinced antivax, close to the Serbian ultranationalists who participated in massacres, such as the Wolves of the Drina – and of esotericism. Witness the wearing of a patch, this year during the Roland-Garros tournament, made up of “fantastic nanotechnology”, but which turns out to be a useless and expensive gadget (from 200 to 1,800 euros).
In 2020, he claimed to know “people who, through energy transformation, the power of prayer and gratitude, manage to transform the most polluted water into purifying water”. He also promotes the gurus Chervin Jafarieh and Masaru Emoto, convinced that thought modifies the “micromechanisms of water”. He also did not hesitate to declare that he was able to “regenerate” after his visit to the hill of a Bosnian village which would be “the pyramid of a hidden civilization, older than that of the Egyptians and at the level technologically far superior to ours”.
Virginie Despentes, the sacred oracle
Virginie Despentes – surname she takes from her years spent on the slopes of the Croix Rousse, in Lyon – is a writer and director as brilliant as she is subversive, committed and militant. One of her lesser known facets is her passion for oracles and divination cards, which she has been drawing for over thirty years. Her Oracle rock, published by Guy Trédaniel – specializing in esotericism, but which also publishes defenders of pseudo-medicine and conspiracies like Louis Fouché or Christine Cotton – revisits cartomancy in a rock & punk version. We learn that she shares her love of cartomancy with her former companion Philippe Manoeuvre, who has “an extraordinary esoteric library”, and that, if she does not consider this “art” as “a supreme guide”, she draws from it a powerful source of inspiration, but also a way to reassure herself, to express her feelings and even to make personal and professional decisions.
Liane Foly, lunar singer
From memory, Liane Foly has always been steeped in esotericism. Already small, she accompanied her mother who consulted psychics, she says in an episode of ABC talk, “the first well-being and personal development channel”, last May. But the real click happened upside down, as the Porsche she was in was thrown through the air at 100 miles per hour. The accident, forty years ago already, earned the interpreter It comes and goes (1988) tough back problems. In search of solutions to calm her pain, she embarked on Egyptian yoga. His teacher becomes his first spiritual guide and marks his “active entry” into the world of esotericism.
Since then, and throughout her thirty-five-year career in music, television and one-woman shows, the star has continued to promote the occult worlds that she frequents assiduously, such as during this live on his YouTube channel in June 2021during which she says that “angels are all around us”.