Camilla Sacre-Dallerup recommends the spiritual and philosophical novel, The Celestine Prophesy

I don’t know what drew me to it but as soon as I started reading it spoke to me, Camilla Sacre-Dallerup tells Christine Manby

(Illustration by Tom Ford)

Camilla Sacre-Dallerup believes in talking to strangers. “Nothing in life is a coincidence,” she says. “Every stranger you meet may have information to exchange with you. Every time I sit on a plane, I don’t think about how I wish I didn’t have to sit next to this or that person, I ask myself what information we will share.” It’s a belief that has shaped her life.

Sacre-Dallerup, who grew up in Denmark, is best known to viewers in the UK as one of the professional dancers on the first six series of Strictly Come Dancing, partnering perma-tanned antiques expert David Dickinson and Olympian Roger Black before she won the show with Holby City actor Tom Chambers in 2008. A year later, she braved the jungle in I’m a Celebrity. She’s been a judge on Dancing with The Stars New Zealand. Since then, she’s pivoted away from dancing to become a life coach, hypnotherapist, meditation teacher and author with three well-received self-help manuals under her belt (zenme.tv). She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Hollyoaks star Kevin Sacre.

As a dancer, Sacre-Dallerup made every step look effortless, but it wasn’t always easy. There were moments when, deep in debt and living on baked beans due to the cost of training and competing, Sacre-Dallerup came close to giving up on her dream. One such moment came in the early noughties when Sacre-Dallerup travelled to Hong Kong with her then dance- and life-partner Brendan Cole to compete in a top-level amateur competition.

“I’d come to a crossroads with my dancing. It was time to turn from amateur to professional or give up altogether. I couldn’t afford to keep dancing as an amateur. But at the same time, Brendan and I weren’t at the top of the amateur rankings, which is where dancers usually are when they decide to make the leap. We were only at number 24. It seemed hopeless. Sitting in our Hong Kong hotel room I asked myself, ‘Do I walk away? Should I give up?’”

It might have seemed like the universe was saying “give up” when a couple of days later Cole was struck down with a bout of food poisoning so severe it landed him in hospital. Alone at his bedside, Sacre-Dallerup buried herself in a book to take her mind off the seriousness of the situation. That book was The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield.

“I don’t know what drew me to it but as soon as I started reading it spoke to me,” Sacre-Dallerup says.

The Celestine Prophecy: An Adventure, to give it its full title, was first published in 1993.

(Bantam)

It is written in the style of a parable, weaving together ideas from New Age spirituality and Eastern philosophy as we follow the main character on a quest to uncover the knowledge contained in an ancient Peruvian manuscript. Publishers Weekly described it as “a fast-paced adventure in New Age territory that plays like a cross between Raiders of the Lost Ark and Moses’ trek up Mt Sinai.”

The story begins when our hero meets an old friend who alerts him to the existence of the ancient manuscript found in the Mayans’ Celestine Temple. Intrigued, our hero decides he must go to Peru. On the aeroplane, he sits next to a historian who fills in the next piece of the puzzle, explaining that humanity is about to undergo a huge shift in consciousness, abandoning materialism for the chance to create a better world.

Naturally, there are vested interests that oppose this Age of Aquarius stuff and the historian is a marked man. Our hero’s association with him means he is forced to go on the run and rely upon the kindness of strangers as he seeks to learn more about the manuscript’s message. His encounters along the way give lessons that reflect the manuscript’s first nine “insights”. Redfield saved the tenth insight, which offers the reader the chance of reaching the kind of self-actualisation that apparently allowed the Mayans to leave the Earth, for a sequel.

It is written in the style of a parable, weaving together ideas from New Age spirituality and Eastern philosophy as we follow the main character on a quest

The Celestine Prophecy was a huge hit. It stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for three years and for two of those years, it was the world’s number one bestselling work of fiction. It was the book found left in every hotel room before The Da Vinci Code and Fifty Shades of Grey. The blurb bills it as “a book that comes along just once in a lifetime to change lives forever.”

It certainly changed things for Sacre-Dallerup. As she writes in her own book, Dream, Believe, Succeed,  “[The Celestine Prophecy] had a section on synchronicity – and how our paths cross with other people’s for a reason. For example, if missing your train and taking a later one leads to you meeting someone on the second train who comes to be important in your life, then that delay was meant to be … fate controls our lives as closely as that … This led me to think that it could be no coincidence that we’d [she and Brendan] been invited to Hong Kong at a time when we were fighting a losing battle trying to make ends meet. It was no mere coincidence that I’d picked up that book and read about noticing signs around us.”

Cole’s bout of food poisoning notwithstanding, Sacre-Dallerup decided that the signs in Hong Kong pointed towards continuing to pursue her dancing dream. “As soon as I finished reading The Celestine Prophecy, someone told me, ‘Your style is much more suited to professional dancing’. Then we were offered our first professional job. Brendan didn’t read the book but after I explained the basis of it to him, he started to see the signs as well. We felt the energy. We used it in our dancing. When two people are dancing there is a transfer of energy that is like magic.”

Sacre-Dallerup and Cole went on to win the amateur competition that had taken them to Hong Kong in the first place, affording them the perfect opportunity to announce they were leaving the amateur ranks. Shortly after they turned professional, Strictly came along.

Since that fateful stay in Hong Kong when The Celestine Prophecy fell into her hands, Sacre-Dallerup has remained open to the possibility of synchronicity. A chance meeting with an editor at a photoshoot set in motion the events that led Sacre-Dallerup to become a writer.

“The same editor commissioned me to write about a meditation studio when I first arrived in LA. As soon as I walked in, I knew it was where I wanted to be. I had a feeling, ‘Oh, I’m home,’ and I told the owner, ‘I need to be here.’  She told me to come in and audition and gave me her own teaching slot.”

Crediting Redfield in the back of her second book, Reinvent Me, Sacre-Dallerup summed up The Celestine Prophecy’s influence thus, “This book was vital in my career.  It has taught me to stay open-minded when I meet new people, and not be afraid to ask, talk and share information.”

Just before Los Angeles went into lockdown, Sacre-Dallerup heard James Redfield speak at an event where she too was an invited speaker and was able to tell him what his book has meant to her. “I was so happy to meet him. The Celestine Prophecy has made me trust my own instincts when it comes to life’s journey.”

The Celestine Prophecy is enjoying something of a revival as it finds new readers in an audience of millennials hoping to make sense of these strange times. A quarter of a century after the book, which was his first, changed his life, Redfield is still optimistic about its potential to change the world. He writes in his blog: “All the anger and corruption we see around us is merely showing itself so it can be resolved… The Celestine Prophecy describes the rise of a higher spiritual consciousness that can replace the fear and hatred. The book depicts another future, one born of a loving honesty that can shine light on the darkness, and replace it with an authentic spirituality …  It is a wave that is building. We’re all in this together.”

“We’re all in this together,” is a platitude that has seemed rather overused of late. But the day after I spoke to Sacre-Dallerup about The Celestine Prophecy, a gigantic 2,200-year-old geoglyph of a cat was discovered near the Nazca Lines in Peru. The purpose and significance of the Nazca Lines remains a mystery but some believe them to have had ritual astronomical functions. They’re best viewed from the air. This particular ancient cat has the look of a Looney Tunes cartoon recreated by someone who drank too much mezcal then found the keys to Dad’s ride-on mower but it is definitely smiling. I’m not sure what that’s a sign of but I like to think it’s a positive one. Time for “The Sylvestine Prophecy”, perhaps?