“Do I tell everyone that?”: the rise of the celebrity shaman

Should I continue with my writing? “You should,” he replies. “You’re going to write nine books.” I mumble that he’d also told a friend of mine they’d write nine books.

By Jules Evans

Shamanic drums before an ayahuasca ceremony (Photo By Shutterstock)

I was recently out for dinner with two friends, who had both been to see a famous shaman, called Kestrel, in Glastonbury. “Our futures are quite intertwined”, one of them remarked. “Similar things are destined for us.” As they compared notes, we realised quite how similar their destinies were: Kestrel had told them both they were going to write nine books.

This rang a bell. Another friend of mine had visited a shaman two years earlier, and had also emerged with the exciting news that he was destined to write nine books. I texted to ask the name of the shaman. Sure enough, it was Kestrel. “Well,” said my friend, “it might still be true.”