Étienne describes himself, "I have always wanted to write—all my life. I had to find the woman a voice had promised me at the age of eleven so that writing could finally open up within me... Through my narratives, I invite the reader to go beyond the surface of things and to browse my pages as a symbolic, initiatory, and inner experience—not to flee reality, but to unveil its depths."

Norm: Writing a book that exposes your deepest vulnerabilities, spiritual epiphanies, and unconventional beliefs takes enormous courage. How has sharing such an intimate piece of your soul changed your relationship with the world around you?

Étienne: Time will tell. The book has only just been published, so I cannot yet say that writing and sharing it has profoundly changed my relationship with the world around me. I have always tried to be authentic in the way I express myself and in my relationships with others. 

I understand that this authenticity may be perceived as a form of vulnerability, but I have never really experienced it that way. For me, it is more about trying not to conceal too much of what I think, what I feel, or what I go through.

What is different with EXODUS is that these words are now leaving the private sphere. People I have never met will be entering not only part of my personal story, but also my questions, my experiences, and the way I see the world. 

That is probably where the real unknown lies for me today: not in what the book has already changed within me, but in what this encounter with readers may eventually change in the future.

Norm: You describe traveling through a modern world that feels deeply fractured, almost like a dystopian landscape of lost human connection. When you look around at our current society, what do you think people have accidentally unplugged from within themselves?

Étienne: I have to admit that for more than forty years, I have no longer truly felt at home in this world. I have the sense that our society is undergoing a form of regression, and that something essential is gradually being eroded: that sense of fraternal love that should naturally bind us to one another.

I have come to perceive something like the existence of two humanities that are finding it increasingly difficult to coexist. By this, I mean two profoundly different ways of being in the world, of relating to others, and of giving meaning to existence.

I also have the feeling that many people live as though immersed in a kind of deep sleep, absorbed by what is placed before them without always trying to look beyond appearances. 

Perhaps we have gradually disconnected from faculties that were once essential: intuition, discernment, and that inner ability to sense when something rings true—or, conversely, when something feels profoundly wrong.

It is probably this loss of inner connection that strikes me most when I look at our time.

Norm: Throughout the book, you write very candidly about moving through different types of relationships—from conventional partnerships to intense, turbulent bonds that almost break you. 

Looking back, what was the most vital lesson those difficult chapters taught you about true love versus illusion?

Étienne: The first thing I had to understand was that I, too, was living in illusion. The deeply intimate experiences I share in EXODUS are not there to assign blame.

I see them rather as mirrors of certain relational patterns, particularly that triangle in which we can, in turn, become victim, persecutor, or rescuer.

I am convinced that the same scenario can play itself out across different incarnations, sometimes with the roles reversed, as though the school of life places us successively on different sides of the same experience so that we may eventually understand its meaning. 

Reaching that understanding was a very long journey, during which I went through several of what are sometimes called "dark nights of the soul."

Looking back, I believe one of the great illusions is precisely to confuse love with the roles we project onto one another, with attachment, need, or the story we tell ourselves about a relationship.

True love, as I perceive it today, has more to do with an ontological recognition than with a romantic relationship in the conventional sense: something within us recognizes something essential in the other, beyond roles, expectations, and appearances. 

That is probably the distinction I would most like to convey.

Norm: The way history, myth, and personal memory intertwine—especially regarding figures like Joan of Arc—is fascinating. How did those ancient connections first surface in your consciousness during your travels to Chartres and Domrémy?

Étienne: Those connections did not suddenly appear during those journeys. In a sense, they had already been present within me for a very long time.

Another couple, who had gone through an initiatory journey before us that bore certain similarities to our own, played an important role in bringing my partner and me back together. 

For my part, I had been searching since childhood for the woman whom an inner voice had, in a way, promised me when I was eleven years old.

I have the feeling that, from the age of six, life had already begun placing little white stones along my path. For a long time, they seemed unrelated. Then came the moment when I had to start putting the pieces of the puzzle together.

Certain encounters, journeys, and books then acted like doors. But perhaps the most important element was the inner work required to re-establish a connection with what I would call the Self: a kind of other me, existing on a different plane of consciousness, with whom we sometimes seem to lose contact.

I am convinced that other people can experience a similar process, as though certain awakenings gradually begin to resonate with something already present within others.

Norm: You weave an incredible amount of symbolism into your descriptions of sacred sites like Göbekli Tepe, Chartres Cathedral, and the forests of Brocéliande. 

Do you feel these ancient places are actively trying to communicate with us, or are they just mirrors of what we bring to them?

Étienne: I am convinced that the thread connecting our different incarnations is inscribed, in ways we still largely fail to understand, within our DNA. 

I perceive it as a kind of memory antenna, capable of receiving and transmitting information that is not necessarily confined to our linear perception of time.

Whenever I have reconnected with certain memories of this kind, my body has reacted before my mind has even had time to analyse them, through emotions that were sometimes overwhelming.

For me, symbolism is one of the languages of the unconscious. So the question is not so much whether these places are actively trying to communicate with us, but rather what they awaken within us.

If they are themselves only fragments of a much greater whole, then I do indeed perceive them as mirrors—or, more precisely, as points of resonance with what we are, independently of our usual conception of past, present, and future.

Norm: Your book presents a very specific, alternative Gnostic perspective on ancient figures like Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and the concept of the "Serpent of Light."

How did you navigate researching and integrating such controversial spiritual revisions without losing your own sense of inner grounding?

Étienne: As it happens, destiny placed these figures on my path in a very particular way. What I mean is that I am convinced I have encountered some of them incarnated in the present day, and that they belong to what my partner and I call our soul family. 

In a sense, I had been searching for them all my life.

The notion of grounding is actually a complex one for me. If it means fully consenting to the world as it is presented to me, then I do not recognise myself in that idea. How could I ground myself in a reality that, for a very long time, has felt profoundly foreign to me?

My true point of grounding lies instead in this inner search. I do not believe in coincidence, and when many pieces of the puzzle began to come together, I tried to examine them with as much discernment as possible. Above all, I see myself as a seeker of truth. 

I believe that, at its core, truth is one, even if our perceptions and interpretations of it may be many.

As for what you call "controversial spiritual revisions," I simply hope that one day some of them may be approached with greater openness. What appears marginal or unsettling in one era can sometimes become a far more natural way of understanding things in another.

Norm: You write about the deep importance of the "Inner Child" throughout your spiritual awakening. In our hyper-busy, digital adult lives, how can everyday people realistically reconnect with that forgotten part of themselves?

Étienne: That is THE question. I have to admit that I am not particularly optimistic about it, because the way we live constantly pulls us away from that part of ourselves.

At one point in my journey, I was brought to a place where I was stripped of almost everything materially. In a way, it reminded me of the path of detachment found in Buddhism: when certain layers fall away, something more essential can re-emerge.

The Inner Child has never disappeared. It is still there. But the adult we become has often taught it, deep within us, to remain silent.

As I often like to say, what we call growing up is sometimes nothing more than a long process of forgetting.

To reconnect with that part of ourselves, I believe we first need to create enough silence to hear it again: to step back, at least a little, from the noise, the demands, the screens, and everything others expect us to be. 

And sometimes, all it takes is one truly living memory for the child within us to awaken again.

Norm: You don't sugarcoat the resistance, negative energies, and psychological battles you and your partner faced after committing to your path. For readers who experience sudden, inexplicable chaos when trying to make a positive change, what advice do you have for holding their ground?

Étienne: It is a difficult question, because there can be many different factors to take into account.

Astrological influences certainly form part of the answer for me: "as above, so below."

Chaos can be internal or external, and the real difficulty lies precisely in discerning where it comes from. I also believe there are subtler influences, sometimes difficult to identify, that can interfere with us or insinuate themselves into our thoughts.

My real strength has always been never to give up. Resilience is a complex process, but I believe we have to keep moving forward, even when we do not yet understand what is happening to us.

And, as far as possible, we need to preserve a degree of balance in every dimension of our lives: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. It is often this balance that allows us to regain enough clarity to move through chaos without losing ourselves in it.

Norm: Exodus touches heavily on the idea that many of our modern societal systems—from corporate structures to mass media—operate like a simulation or a prison. Recognizing this can empower you to seek change and feel more in control of your spiritual journey, which is essential for your sense of agency.

Étienne: Your reading seems quite accurate to me, but I would differ from it on one essential point: I do not really believe in free will as we usually understand it. In my view, it may even be one of the deepest illusions we face.

I perceive our existence as a kind of karmic laboratory—or, to use a more contemporary image, as an immense Truman Show in which we can see only part of the set. We move through structures, conditioning, and scenarios that extend far beyond us, all the while believing ourselves to be completely free.

The paradox is that beginning to perceive these mechanisms does not necessarily make life easier. It can actually bring a certain degree of suffering, because we become more sensitive to the contradictions of the world and to the forces that tend to keep individuals within certain boundaries.

I also believe that true light is not merely a spiritual idea: above all, it is knowledge. And those who seek to transmit knowledge capable of overturning established representations often encounter resistance.

For me, then, the issue is not so much about "taking back control" of one's path as becoming more conscious of what conditions us. Perhaps that is where genuine freedom begins: not in the belief that we choose everything, but in the lucidity with which we look at what acts upon us.

Norm: Where can our readers find out more about you and Exodus: The Paths of Memory?

Étienne: Readers can find out more about me and EXODUS – The Paths of Memory through my website, and more specifically through the English-language version of My Blog

I will gradually be publishing reflections, interpretations, and deeper explorations of the book there.

EXODUS is a work that, in my view, requires more than one reading to fully grasp its scope, its correspondences, and the many interconnections running throughout the narrative.

Norm: As we wind up our interview, you challenge many conventional narratives, from mainstream calendars and astrology to traditional historical timelines. If readers take away just one new perspective from your deconstruction of time and history, what would you most want it to be?

Étienne: If there were only one perspective to take away, it would be this: since what I call the Fall of Man, our perception of the world has been inverted, and much of what we have been taught about our history, our origins, and our relationship with time has been falsified.

The purpose of EXODUS is precisely to help certain readers awaken a memory buried within them, enabling them to look beyond these appearances.

For me, recovering memory also means gradually trying to turn the world right side up again.

I would also like to thank you, Norm, for the quality of your questions. I found them particularly thoughtful and insightful, and I greatly appreciated the depth with which you approached the book, which allowed me to go far beyond a simple presentation of it.

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