As she dealt with her marital troubles and tensions within the Royal Family, Princess Diana relied on a “revolving door” of psychics, natural healers and other new-age practitioners. Like her sister-in-law, Sarah Ferguson, Diana turned to astrologers and tarot card readers to help make sense of a life she had little control over. But the late royal’s sister, Lady Sarah McCorquodale, made it known that she didn’t support the practice.
In his book Dianaworld: An Obsession, author Edward White notes that “both Diana’s birth family and her in-laws” had “expressed discomfort with Diana’s coterie of healers and spiritual advisors.”
“My sister was aware that I didn’t agree with her seeing that much of soothsayers,” Lady Sarah said, per White. McCorquodale went as far as to destroy evidence of Princess Diana’s correspondence with mystical healers, with White writing that Diana’s sister admitted doing so during the coroner’s inquiry into the princess’s death.
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Princess Diana is seen with her sister, Lady Sarah McCorquodale, in 1991.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Princess Diana’s reliance on “soothsayers” worried her sister, White wrote.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
McCorquodale confessed that she got rid of any “publications from the aforementioned soothsayers with accompanying letters,” explaining that she didn’t want Prince William or Prince Harry to hear “anything sensitive or that would be distressing.”
Although the Royal Family and the Spencers might not have agreed with Diana’s reliance on psychics, White pointed out that mysticism is something the royals have been fascinated by for centuries. “It could be that Diana’s reliance on ‘soothsayers’ is one area in which the impression of her as being more royal than the royals is accurate,” he wrote.
Explaining that “mysticism and magic” has always been “closely tied to” the monarchy, White penned that Princess Diana had something in common with Queen Victoria, who “attended seances.” But like Diana, it’s been said that some of Victoria’s correspondences were also “destroyed” as not to “embarrass the rest of the family.”