The story of Danielle Johnson, an astrology influencer, is a chilling tale of how alternative wellness, conspiracy theories, and mental health struggles can converge with devastating consequences. Johnson's life ended in a gruesome crime just before the April 2024 solar eclipse, leaving many to question the influence of astrology and the dangers of online conspiracy movements.
A solar eclipse, similar to the one preceding the tragic events involving Danielle Johnson.
From Self-Help Threads to Apocalyptic Warnings
Johnson was in the business of moons and stars. Johnson’s clients looked to her for more than horoscopes. In her early years, Johnson distinguished herself from older styles of astrology by posting detailed self-help threads. “She would do threads like, ‘Get your stuff together!’” Arias says.
“She would do threads like, ‘Get your stuff together!’” Arias says. “It was cute. The threads, and the moon rituals Johnson prescribed alongside them, began making headlines. In a 2016 interview with the Fader, she explained how the internet was making wellness more available for women. Even astrological anomalies like eclipses typically represented opportunity, not end times. Arias recently reviewed Johnson’s tweets about eclipses from the early days of their friendship.
But ten years later, in April 2024, just before a solar eclipse, Johnson announced to her more than 100,000 followers that “THE APOCALYPSE IS HERE.” Her final message, a repost from a QAnon account, is dated April 7. “ALERT,” reads the post. “THIS IS THE FINAL WARNING. TURN NOTIFICATIONS ON. DO NOT LOOK AT THE ECLIPSE.
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“From an astrological standpoint, we have eclipses four times a year. We’re not afraid of them,” Arias says. She searched Johnson’s tweets about past eclipses and found them to be “normal. They were like, ‘Get your money, we’re gonna manifest new things!’ Not like this eclipse.
The Gruesome Crime and Its Aftermath
In the hours between that post and the April 8 eclipse, Johnson stabbed her partner to death and pushed her 9-year-old and 8-month-old daughters from a moving car, killing the infant, before driving into a tree at more than 100 miles per hour. The gruesome crime, with its New Age overtones, has inspired investigative deep dives as well as social-media speculation that thrust Johnson’s industry in the spotlight.
On April 4, 2024, four days before killing her family, Johnson posted that “this eclipse is the epitome of spiritual warfare.
Conspiracy theories can have a dangerous impact on vulnerable individuals.
Mental Health Struggles and Industry Feuds
In revealing interviews with Rolling Stone, Johnson’s ex-husband, Cecil Rice, and her mother, Sharonda Cole, confirmed that Johnson had experienced postpartum depression following her first pregnancy, though it was unclear if she had ever been formally diagnosed. On social media, Johnson disclosed a history of mental-health struggles that both challenged her and guided her efforts as a healer.
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In another thread about a disastrous tarot reading, she described struggling after the birth of her first daughter. Johnson believed her Wiccan tarot reader disturbed the Hindu goddess Kali by doubting the deity’s existence. “It scared the piss out of my reader … but it was obviously the message I needed at that point of my life,” she wrote.
Although she often shared clients’ testimonies about her energy-“cleanse” treatments, which purportedly aided with anxiety and depression, she’d also note that astrology cannot replace clinical treatment for serious mental-health issues. “I can’t namaste someone away when they’re contemplating suicide or about to lose their job,” she wrote in 2016. She reiterated that advice in 2021 when another astrologer tweeted skepticism about postpartum depression.
“Women have literally harmed their children due to postpartum psychosis and depression this is an INCREDIBLY dangerous take,” Johnson responded. Still, clients kept coming to Johnson for help - and some weren’t happy with the kind of professional support she was able to provide.
Johnson could be an active participant in industry feuds, some of her fellow astrologers and former clients said. Astrologer Amy Tripp’s friendship with Johnson began in 2014. By 2015, however, Tripp says Johnson accused her of backstabbing.
“She said, ‘I’m really worried that you and these other two girls in our community are conspiring against or talking about me. I’m gonna have to block you,’” Tripp says. “I’m like, ‘Okay, but no one was talking about you.’ No one was talking about her. Others have come forward to allege even more dramatic changes in their friend.
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In an Instagram Story after Johnson’s death, beauty influencer Thomas Halbert said Johnson had been a “dear friend” for approximately five years. “We would talk every single day,” Halbert said. “I’m not joking. That friendship ended painfully in late 2019. Halbert, who did not return requests for comment, said he perceived an “increasing spiritual psychosis that I recognized her falling into.”
The Woo-to-Q Pipeline
In the American imagination, the stereotypical conspiracy theorist might look something like Infowars founder Alex Jones, a red-faced and middle-aged man ranting about government plots. They might look like a desert doomsday prepper or a Capitol rioter or a QAnon-pilled Orange County mother convinced that the furniture company Wayfair is trafficking children. But the woo-to-Q pipeline is flowing.
Johnson’s tweets had long contained a conspiratorial note. She appeared skeptical of vaccines, posting in 2015 that she would rather homeschool her new child than have the child go to a school with mandatory vaccinations. Johnson had good reasons to distrust doctors, suggesting that medical racism had led to her dismissive treatment and misdiagnosis postpartum. (Her ex-husband told Rolling Stone that she was diagnosed with preeclampsia after her first pregnancy.)
“Research suggests that people are attracted to conspiracy theories when one or more psychological needs are frustrated,” Douglas says. “The first of these needs are epistemic, related to the need to know the truth and have clarity and certainty. The other needs are existential, which are related to the need to feel safe and to have some control over things that are happening around us, and social, which are related to the need to maintain our self-esteem and feel positive about the groups that we belong to.
Seldom have those needs converged as suddenly as in 2020, when illness, economic precarity, and epistemological upheaval sent the world searching social media for new understandings of wellness and wealth. Other women who used the internet to discuss crunchy wellness found extreme outlets.
This synthesis of New Age and far-right conspiracy thinking is so common that in Germany adherents have come to describe their fusionary politics as “querdenken,” meaning “lateral thinking.” During the height of COVID-19, the movement “forged worrying alliances between New Age health obsessives, who are opposed to putting anything impure into their carefully tended bodies, and several neofascist parties, which took up the anti-vaccination battle cry as part of a Covid-era resistance to ‘hygiene dictatorship,’” Naomi Klein writes in her book Doppelganger: A Trip Into The Mirror World.
“The ominous creepy symbolism is too dense even to describe,” Wolf wrote in the post Johnson shared. “’Not everyone will make it to the future.
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Accusations of "Black Magic" and Curses
Shahem Mclaurin, a therapist and influencer who was once close with Johnson, said she could be aggressively controlling of people in her life. “I was scared at some points to leave,” they said. As Johnson’s standing in the astrology community grew embattled, competing astrologers and former friends offered mystical descriptions of her behavior.
Tré Melvin, a musician and internet personality, said he and his best friend, Katherya Pacheco-Mendoza, had been close with Johnson until 2019, when he came to believe Johnson was performing “black magic” on people in her life. “After she found out that Kathy and I cut her off, she cursed us,” he said.
Mclaurin also claimed that Johnson had boasted of attempting car-crash spells against a rival astrologer. Tripp, who survived three serious car wrecks from 2017 to 2021, said she was the target of the attempted cursing.
“Honestly, I didn’t really believe that kind of stuff,” she says. The reiki student who had fallen out with Johnson over the refund in 2020 also survived a frightening car wreck soon thereafter.
“She set up a group ritual on her top-tier Patreon coven around December 20, 2020, and my life went to shit shortly after that,” the former client says. It was a moment when the student needed support - a community, a healer - and found nothing, either in Johnson’s practice or in Johnson’s social circles, from which she had been exiled.
Here is a summary of key events:
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| April 2014 | Johnson tweets about eclipses, viewing them as opportunities. |
| 2015-2016 | Industry feuds and accusations of backstabbing arise. |
| Late 2019 | Friendships end due to perceived "spiritual psychosis." |
| December 20, 2020 | Alleged group ritual targeting a former client. |
| April 4, 2024 | Johnson posts about "spiritual warfare" related to the upcoming eclipse. |
| April 8, 2024 | Johnson commits the tragic crime. |
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