Many celebrities believe in ghosts, magic, or the power of crystal healing. You might think this
is something they would like to keep secret, but some of them have been completely open about it.
So with that in mind, let's take a close look at some celebs who have been involved in the occult.
David Bowie was known for filling his cocaine-induced sleepless nights
poring through books on the occult. The musician's "Thin White Duke" persona
was even taken from a line in Aleister Crowley's book of poetry White Stains.
Bowie was also influenced by Kabbalah, a philosophy rooted in Judaism, while
simultaneously fascinated by the magical symbology of the Nazis,
which almost derailed his career. His friend Glenn Hughes of the band Deep Purple once said,
"Bowie felt inclined to go on very bizarre tangents about Aleister Crowley or the
Nazis or numerals a lot [...] [He] travelled straight into the heart of psychic darkness,
lost in his own world."
Bowie even once saw his pool bubble and was so certain that it was possessed
that he had it exorcised. And after a fight with Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page,
he became so terrified that Page would summon demons that he kept
anything that might be used against him, including urine and nail clippings.
Dan Aykroyd grew up in a family of Spiritualists. His great-grandfather held seances and his father
Peter wrote a book titled A History of Ghosts, which was based on journals passed down from his
own father. In a 2010 interview on Q TV, Peter Aykroyd explained that Spiritualism is not a
religion. Rather, it's the confidence that one can contact the dead, something Dan witnessed when he
visited his grandfather's farmhouse, where he saw a spirit speaking through a levitating trumpet.
Furthermore, Dan Aykroyd's childhood home was filled with magazines from the British Society
for Psychical Research and American Society for Psychical Research. As he told Yahoo! in 2020,
"I just grew up with it [...] There was no way out of it."
For Aykroyd, Spiritualism is a matter of looking for meaning beyond the corporeal.
"I consider that my spirit is linked to the, the universal, uh, everything."
Aykryod has had his share of paranormal experiences that bolster his beliefs,
such as his wife's jewelry dancing next to their bed
and something getting into bed with him when he thought he was alone.
Sully Erna, lead singer of heavy metal band Godsmack,
has a history of practicing Wicca. But as he told Rolling Stone in 2000,
"I never really wanted to be the poster child for witchcraft."
He's open to discussing it, but as he noted,
"As soon as the sarcasm turns on, I shut down the conversation."
Erna embraced Wicca because it worked for him, and unlike Christianity, it didn't require him
to unquestioningly follow one book or go to Hell. He understands that being in a band and being a
witch is, as he puts it, "two weirdo things in one." But it isn't a matter of marketing for him.
Kids write to him about his religion, but once they learn that it's a path
and not simply a matter of casting spells and Hollywood special effects, they lose interest.
Erna incorporated a Wiccan ceremony into the music video for the Godsmack song "Voodoo,"
where his pentacle could not be less hidden away on his bare chest. As he explained to MTV News,
"There's no demons or devils that exist in Wicca,
so therefore, you can't worship something that doesn't exist."
Singer and Rat Packer Sammy Davis Jr. briefly flirted with the Church of Satan,
which was founded by occultist Anton LaVey. Davis had been invited to a party by a group of actors,
each sporting a red fingernail. According to Davis, the theme of the party was "dungeons
and dragons and debauchery." In the center of the room was an unclothed woman on an altar,
though Davis wasn't concerned for her welfare. He knew that the night was more about consensual
sex than violence. Davis' interest in the Church might've had something to do with
his appetite for indulging himself. As he wrote in his memoir Why Me?,
"I wanted to have every human experience."
During that era, the Church of Satan was a perfect fit for Davis, as it was full of free
drugs and freer orgies. The singer did take his involvement with the Church somewhat seriously.
He made a comedic TV pilot called Poor Devil that involved pentagrams and mentioned the Church.
One of Anton LaVey's associates even referred to it as a, quote,
"magnificent commercial for the church." The Church offered Davis
honorary second-degree membership, and he was only too happy to receive it.
"Would you mind shoveling a little faster?"
"What difference does it make? I'm gonna be doing this for the next 700 years!"
Davis ultimately left the Church of Satan. As he recalled in his memoir,
"One morning after a 'coven' that wasn't all fun and games [...] I
got some nail polish remover and I took off the red fingernail."
Davis then resumed his Judaism until his death in 1990.
The infamous Aleister Crowley also got into musician Daryl Hall's mind, as did Druidic
scriptures. Hall was drawn in by the idea that one could succeed through finding one's true will,
though he didn't adopt Crowley's religion of Thelema. He actually converted from Methodism
to Judaism when he married his first wife in 1969, though he wasn't active in the religion.
Nevertheless, he did weave Thelema into his music.
Hall's reading habits typically lean more toward historical fiction, mystical fantasy,
and 50s detective stories, but he's also fascinated by suppressed mystical doctrines
in the Gnostic Gospels. He later dismissed some of these ideas, but as he explained to Spin in 1988,
"What I got from it was a sense of my own ability to make things happen,
to literally rely on my own soul for strength. Call them mental exercises."
Considering that Hall had already managed to turn meeting John Oates during a knife fight into a
musical partnership and distinguished career that's lasted half a century,
his will must've already been pretty powerful.
In the early 70s, Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page purchased Boleskine House,
Aleister Crowley's former home, on the shores of Loch Ness.
Crowley had owned Boleskine in the early 1900s, as he conducted his rituals there.
Page, however, didn't spend very much time in the house. As he said in a 1975 interview,
"Strange things have happened in that house which
have nothing to do with Crowley. The bad vibes were already there."
Page instead let his childhood friend live in Boleskine for 20 years before selling it.
Regarding his interest in the occult,
the musician didn't go on the record very much, as he's been quoted as saying,
"I don't really want to go on about my personal beliefs or my involvement in magic."
However, during a 2017 appearance at the Oxford Union, a student in attendance
asked Page about his interest in this subject, and he responded,
"I was very interested in Eastern and Western mysticism. I spent time reading and researching
when I was younger. I guess that’s it. There were some very eminent characters in The Golden Dawn,
and I found it very interesting to see the history of those who had been in it and this
esoteric movement. Also, sort of what went on and the off-shoots of it of that sort
of love of all things mystical and magical and all things bright and beautiful really."
Page was also asked about a common urban legend that he must have some
affiliation with the Devil because playing the Zeppelin classic "Stairway to Heaven"
backward supposedly produces messages about "sweet Satan." But as Page assured the crowd,
"Gosh, it's hard enough writing music one way round."
As model Gisele Bündchen once told her husband Tom Brady,
"You're lucky you married a witch — I'm just a good witch."
This alarmed radio host and conspiracy theorist Rick Wiles, who said,
"He's sleeping with a witch. There's deep spiritual ramifications for that."
But Brady doesn't sound too worried. As he noted in 2019,
"You know I’ve learned a lot from my wife over the years. She’s so about the power
of intention and believing things that are really going to happen."
According to Brady, Bündchen maintains an altar for him, gives him healing stones,
anoints him with protective oils, and gives him mantras to repeat.
He's stopped questioning it, especially when her directions have resulted in him winning.
"I just shut up and listen."
The couple's home is reportedly an amalgam of various religious representations.
As Brady revealed to a New York Times reporter in 2015,
"I think we're into everything [...] I don't know
what I believe. I think there's a belief system, I'm just not sure what it is."
When you look at gloomy, bearded comics writer Alan Moore,
it seems obvious that he's a wizard who's into some weird stuff. His occultism is not
a secret in his genre -defining comics like Watchmen, From Hell, and V for Vendetta.
For instance, this Aleister Crowley edict is quoted in full in V for Vendetta:
"Do what thou wilt... that shall be the whole of the law"
Moore's occultism appeared most concretely in his comic series Promethea, which takes
the reader through the Tree of Life, where one encounters Aleister Crowley dressed as a woman.
It's also worth mentioning that Moore was once in a magickal battle with fellow comics writer
Grant Morrison. Moore felt that he'd helped an ungrateful Morrison's career, and since Moore
had made his occult devotion better known earlier, he felt that Morrison was riding on his coattails.
Moore is a traditionalist when it comes to magick, which further irritates him regarding Morrison.
He believes magick is meant to be a transcendent art, not just a matter of getting things done.
Grant Morrison came out of the magic closet a few years after his colleague Alan Moore did. But the
occult themes were evident in his comic books well before he admitted his personal leanings.
Morrison practices chaos magick, as he's more interested in making things
happen than in how they're done. He's not one for elaborate and ossified rituals.
This pop-cultural mishmash is on display in his comic series The Invisibles.
Morrison throws the whole of the magickal canon into a blender to form his occult protagonists
who are trying to wake the world from the grips of evil. As he put it in Pop Magic!,
"The use of ritual para­phernalia functions as an aid to the imagination only."
Unlike Alan Moore, Morrison doesn't see a reason to get too attached to what's been done before.
He considers The Invisibles his hypersigil, a term that refers to, in Morrison's words,
"an immensely pow­erful and sometimes dangerous method
for actually altering reality in accordance with intent."
He even introduced himself into it in the fictional suit of King Mob,
which was a problem because King Mob's illnesses and misfortunes then fell on Morrison himself,
almost killing him. It seems fitting, considering that Morrison got the idea after supposedly being
abducted by aliens. To Morrison, it doesn't matter if one is skeptical. As he wrote in Pop Magic!,
"The point is not to BELIEVE in magic, the point is to DO it and see how it works."
Gabrielle Anwar is probably best known for dancing the tango with Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman. But
she's had a long career beyond that, with roles on such TV shows as Burn Notice and Once Upon a Time.
Anwar discussed her religion in a 2007 interview with The Orange County Register. She noted that
she didn't wish to marry again because her husband, no matter how wonderful he might be,
wasn't pulling the same weight when it came to raising their children. As she put it,
"I'm doing all this stuff, and I'm feeling this incredible inequality [...] And I'm a pagan.
I'm a [...] pagan and this isn't for me. This institution that was
invented to control women and I'm not willing to be controlled any longer."
For Anwar, her feminism and paganism are inextricably linked. Perhaps her thoughts
on this subject have something to do with her own mixed theological background.
Her paternal grandmother was an Austrian Jew, and her paternal grandfather was an Indian Muslim.
It's no wonder then that she's felt comfortable exploring different forms of religious expression.
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