How DID the SHAMAN showman cast a spell on a princess?
He’s Hollywood’s self-styled ‘global ambassador of love’ and ‘soul brother’ to Gwyneth Paltrow. Now this controversial school dropout is set to join the ranks of European royalty. So...
hE CALLS himself a sixthgeneration shaman, whose powers to communicate with the spirit world, ‘ emotionally download people’ and ‘ help’ victims of cancer have won him Hollywood fans, including Gwyneth Paltrow, Selma Blair and Rosario Dawson.
Paltrow, the founder of wellness and lifestyle brand Goop, has even described the bisexual, self-styled ‘global ambassador of love’ as her ‘soul brother’.
Others call Durek Verrett a deluded buffoon at best — a showman rather than shaman who is minting it from his ability to persuade film stars and in many cases desperately vulnerable people into believing that he has supernatural powers.
And then there are the Norwegians who, whatever their views on his abilities, may soon have to call Hollywood’s Shaman Durek a member of their royal family. The ‘ most heartfelt congratulations’ that King Harald and Queen Sonja have sent to their daughter, Princess Martha Louise, and Shaman Durek following their engagement announcement last week will hardly be echoed by all their subjects.
The level-headed Scandinavians take a dim view of Mr Verrett’s wacky claims, however much Tinseltown royalty rhapsodises about a man who charges up to $1,500 (£1,200) an hour and champions the power of the spirit world over conventional science and medicine.
Princess Martha Louise, the royal couple’s oldest child and a distant cousin of the Queen, remains fourth in line to the Norwegian throne after her younger brother Prince Haakon and his children. Apart from his claim to be of Norwegian descent, Mr Verrett may not appear to have much in common with the princess. In fact, they were made for each other: the divorced mother of three also claims to be very much in touch with the spirit world.
Always unconventional, she gave up her HRH title in 2002 when she married a commoner, a writer called Ari Behn.
He committed suicide on Christmas Day 2019, two years after their divorce came through.
She began claiming to be clairvoyant as long ago as 2007, describing herself as a ‘high sensitivity light fountain’.
She opened the Astarte Education Centre for communicating with angels, promising to teach students to ‘create miracles’ in their lives ‘ with angels and with your own force’. The school closed in 2018.
In 2019, she announced (on Instagram) that she had found love with Verrett, her American self-described ‘spirit hacker’, a Los Angeles- based one- time young offender who at 47 is three years her junior — and three months later renounced many of her royal duties.
The couple met on a blind date arranged by mutual friends in a vegan restaurant in 2018, although Verrett claims they have met several times before during past lives, including one in which — conveniently — he was a pharaoh and she his queen.
She described him as her ‘ twin flame’, adding: ‘ He has made me realise that unconditional love actually exists here on this planet.’
Within days of the announcement, the pair bore out the fears of sceptics that she would compromise her family, by holding a series of seminars across Norway titled The Princess And The Shaman. After an outcry over the way she was exploiting her royal title, she agreed not to use it for her work.
The couple have attributed much of the hostility he has encountered in Norway to racism. He has said that ‘people don’t want a black man in a European royal family’ and claimed that the couple have received death threats.
A Norwegian newspaper that attended those first seminars given by the couple was not impressed. ‘We were prepared for gibberish and cliches but it was still two hours of your life you’ll never get back,’ reported iTromso.
‘The problem was a lack of form followed by a lack of content.’
In an Instagram post, Verrett said he was ‘overjoyed’ that he would spend ‘ the rest of my life with the most pure-hearted, angelic, wise, powerhouse woman who represents all levels of a goddess in my eyes’.
No doubt anticipating a backlash to their engagement — they’re both clairvoyant, after all — the happy couple put out a statement challenging the cynics: ‘ Love does not judge where you come from or who you are as a human being. Love creates a bridge between people, cultures and religions.’
That sort of flannel no doubt goes down a treat in La La Land but it’s hardly likely to reassure those — particularly in Norway — who have denounced Verrett and have spent time debunking his many wild claims.
Verrett describes himself with all manner of impressive New Age titles including ‘evolutionary innovator’ and ‘ women’ s empowerment leader’.
He has claimed that, like other shamans, he can talk to spirit animals and human ghosts, having first discovered his shamanic powers at the age of two when his mother played drums and sent him into a trance in which he met his dead ancestors.
He was brought up in Sacramento, California, and it has been reported that he was raised in vast wealth as the son of a successful property developer who had a private jet.
At other times, he has said they were so poor he’d have to go fishing at night to feed his relatives.
He adds that he began his shamanic training aged 11 and got his powers through his mother.
He also claims he was sexually abused by a male babysitter, causing him to drink heavily and use drugs as a teenager.
He dropped out of school and got into trouble, breaking into a home so that he and some friends could throw a party. Then they burned it down — and he was sentenced to juvenile detention.
He says he has lived in Turkey, Israel, Belize and London, where he
Passengers’ spirit guides bother him on trains, he says
People who have met him say he is ‘mesmerising’
stayed with a hedge-fund manager client whose ‘life I turned around’.
He says he has dated both men and women, his longest relationship — with a masseur named Hank Greenberg — lasting eight years. They were engaged to be married but split up acrimoniously in 2014.
Mr Greenberg, his former business partner, has criticised Verrett’s chumminess with his rich and famous clients — including the princess — and questioned his ‘authenticity’.
Shamans supposedly provide a bridge between the physical and spiritual worlds, allowing the dead to give advice, and channel healing energy.
During his healing sessions, he kicks off with a ‘shamanic reading’, analysing a patient’s eyes, breathing and bones. In the technique he calls ‘spirit hacking’, he invokes the spirits of dead family members — including his father, his opera singer aunt and his grandmother — to help him ‘reboot’ his patients.
Verrett claims he can free clients of ‘blockages’ that prevent them from finding success or love, or alternatively overcoming addictions.
He also keeps a bucket on hand, having spoken in the past of getting patients to vomit out ‘ poisons’ in their body. Verrett limits the poisons in his own system by not eating meat, a diet which he says is particularly painful for him as he feels the memories of any animal he consumes.
(He also finds train travel a problem because of all the ‘spirit guides’ of fellow passengers trying to talk to him.)
Shaman Durek has reportedly
AN NHS trust is awarding companies vying for contracts higher marks if they are part of Stonewall’s equality index, a whistleblower has claimed.
It means a firm may win a tender despite offering an inferior service or demanding a higher price because they share the group’s views, the source said.
Leaked documents from Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust detail the questions firms are asked when applying to deliver stoma services at the London trust’s hospitals. A stoma is the opening made in the stomach during a colostomy or ileostomy operation, a vital procedure for some cancer patients.
The taxpayer contract, understood to run into millions of pounds, marks bidders on a scale of zero to four on their responses to 35 questions. Five of these titled ‘Stonewall UK Workplace Equality Index’ are about the ‘diversity and inclusion strategies’ supported by the lobby group.
The Department of Health and Social Care cut ties with Stonewall last year amid a storm of criticism from ministers.
Patient groups, clinicians and Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, have raised concern about the NHS’s ties with the charity given its support for self-identified gender on single-sex wards and its backing of disputed puberty blockers for young people.
The first Stonewall question on the NHS contract asks bidders: ‘Are you a member of the Stonewall UK Workplace Equality Index?’ Depending on their answer, bidders get a zero for ‘failure to understand’ through to the four for ‘ high degree of confidence that the potential provider’s proposal will meet the requirements’.
The questions are given an equal weighting to most of the vital health questions including risk assessments, training and patient satisfaction.
The contract falls under the Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS trust ( GST) procurement
‘Failure to understand’
group, leading the whistleblower to fear it is a standard template being used in other London trusts. The NHS could not confirm this either way.
Another Stonewall question ask bidders ‘Do you have a transitioning at work policy?’
Harry Miller, founder of Fair Cop, the campaign group calling for impartiality in public services that the whistleblower approached, told The Sunday Telegraph: ‘Service providers must be judged on the ability to provide a service not on their allegiance to a political lobby group.’
A spokesman for GST said: ‘ Under national guidance, NHS trusts are required to apply 10 per cent social value weighting for tenders. This includes environmental, economic and social issues.’