What is truly paradoxical is the massive rise in online demand for spiritual coaching. Instead of approaching a pastor, a priest, or a religious guide, people now search for spiritual support on the internet. Yet, in the Christian tradition, spiritual accompaniment has nothing to do with the dynamic of gurus or online “mentors”. As St. Teresa of Ávila explains in The Interior Castle, the spiritual guide is called to help the soul turn inward, toward the presence of Christ already dwelling within it—never to replace that presence or to create dependency. St. John of the Cross, in The Ascent of Mount Carmel, goes even further, reminding that the role of the guide is to purify the gaze, so that the person learns to rely more on God than on human reassurance.

In this tradition, the accompanist does not impose a path but listens, invites the person to speak, and helps them discern the interior movements where Christ is gently guiding them. As Ignatius of Loyola insisted in his Spiritual Exercises, the task of the guide is to “let the Creator deal directly with the creature,” never placing themselves between God and the soul. Modern writers like Henri Nouwen echo this same logic: true spiritual guidance creates space, not dependence; presence, not control.

And yet this ethical stance is often at odds with what people actually seek today. Many feel a profound need for support, structure, and mediation — a human presence that reassures, guides, offers routines, teachings, and a sense of belonging. They are not going to enroll in online theology courses: they lack time, resources, or simply cannot imagine that theological depth, lectio divina, or even simple fraternal sharing could give them the interior stability they are longing for. As Nouwen wrote, modern people “are hungry for communion long before they are hungry for explanations,” and it is precisely this hunger that drives them toward spiritual coaches rather than toward the classical paths of Christian spiritual formation.

A Growing Demand for Online Spiritual Guidance

Over the past decade—accelerating sharply since 2020—the English-speaking world has seen a remarkable rise in the demand for online spiritual accompaniment. This growth is not anecdotal; it is reflected in a series of converging indicators that reveal a profound and widespread search for support, meaning and interior stability. Although market studies rarely isolate “spiritual coaching” as a distinct category, the broader wellness economy, which includes mental well-being, holistic healing, energy work and spiritual self-development, already represented more than 4.5 trillion US dollars in 2018 according to the Global Wellness Institute. Within this immense landscape, online spiritual guidance has taken on a particular visibility: searches for terms such as “spiritual coach online”, “energy healing session”, “remote reiki”, “soul work guidance” or “spiritual awakening help” have risen steadily in the US, UK, Canada and Australia, with peaks of +50 to +70 % during periods of social anxiety or global uncertainty.

This rise is not merely the reflection of a temporary crisis. It reveals a deeper cultural movement: a growing number of individuals no longer identify with traditional religious structures yet still experience a desire for spiritual grounding, existential clarity and emotional reassurance. The church, synagogue or mosque is no longer the only perceived gateway to spiritual life; many prefer to explore their inner landscape through accessible digital paths, at their own pace, with guidance that feels personal rather than institutional. The internet has become the new locus for spiritual querying, where loneliness, longing and self-questioning find a discreet entry point.

The New Landscape of Online Spiritual Offerings

In response to this emerging demand, the English-language web has developed an ecosystem of spiritual services as varied as the needs it seeks to address. Online spiritual coaches offer one-to-one sessions through video calls, shaping their work around concepts such as soul alignment, inner purpose, life-path discernment or emotional grounding. Energy practitioners provide remote healing sessions, blending traditional techniques such as Reiki with modern forms of chakra balancing, aura cleansing or guided somatic meditation. Digital spiritual products—tarot or oracle readings, birth-chart analyses, downloadable rituals, meditative audio journeys—circulate widely, reaching audiences who may feel more at ease behind a screen than in a spiritual community.

Parallel to individual services, an entire ecosystem of courses, workshops and webinars has emerged, positioning itself between personal development and metaphysical teaching. These programs promise greater self-understanding, emotional resilience or spiritual awakening, often through affordable subscriptions or on-demand lessons. The English-speaking web is also populated by thousands of content creators whose YouTube channels, newsletters or podcasts offer daily meditations, metaphysical reflections, intuitive teachings or philosophical commentaries. Some attract tens of thousands of followers; others reach hundreds of thousands. Together, they form a digital constellation of modern spiritual guides, each reflecting a different aspect of the contemporary search for meaning.

Why Measuring This Market Remains Difficult

Despite its visibility, the online spiritual coaching sector remains difficult to quantify precisely. Its boundaries are porous, overlapping with therapy, holistic well-being, mindfulness, self-help and mental health support. Many practitioners operate independently, with no formal registry or professional accreditation, which makes statistical tracking nearly impossible. Large wellness reports aggregate so many sub-categories—yoga, fitness, supplements, mindfulness apps, alternative medicine—that spiritual coaching disappears into a much wider economic landscape. Moreover, search volumes fluctuate constantly: they rise dramatically during collective crises, moments of social uncertainty or cultural turning points, then settle into lower but stable baselines. These oscillations reflect the emotional pulse of society more than they reflect a clearly defined market segment.

Yet this lack of precision is itself revealing. It signals that spiritual accompaniment has migrated from institutions with fixed roles and measurable attendance into a diffuse digital environment shaped by personal needs, emotional rhythms and cultural shifts. The modern seeker does not subscribe to a single institution; they navigate between podcasts, healers, spiritual coaches, meditative apps and metaphysical content. The market is not structured, but it is undeniably alive.

What This Means for the Future of Spiritual Coaching

The convergence of rising demand, abundant online offerings and fragmented data suggests that online spiritual guidance is no longer a fringe practice but a genuine cultural phenomenon. People turn to these services because they are accessible, private, flexible and tailored to individual experience rather than institutional norms. The absence of traditional structures creates both an opportunity and a responsibility. Those who propose ethical, grounded, transparent forms of accompaniment stand out immediately from the noise. In a world saturated with quick fixes, promises of instant enlightenment and emotionally charged messaging, there is a growing space for a more thoughtful, respectful, rooted kind of spiritual presence.

Legal fault lines: why spiritual coaching lives in a “high-risk” ad category

From a legal point of view, spiritual coaching is not in itself illegal in the United States or other English-speaking countries. What becomes risky is the way it is sold. At federal level, Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act (FTC Act) is the cornerstone: it prohibits all “unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce”. In practice, the FTC treats as deceptive any representation or omission that is likely to mislead a reasonable consumer and that is “material” for their decision. This clause is deliberately broad. It has been used for decades to tackle scams in credit, health, investment – and also in the psychic and spiritual market, especially when services target people in distress, promise guaranteed results, or hide the real cost.

This legal framework explains why spiritual services are watched so closely. Regulators do not need to prove that “spirituality” is fake. They only need to show that the business practice is unfair: for example, when a coach or “seer” tells a vulnerable client that their child will die if they do not pay for a ritual, or when letters and emails pretend to be personalised while they are mass-produced. In that moment, the offer stops being a “belief” and becomes a commercial practice that can be sanctioned as fraud.

Psychic scams as a warning signal: hundreds of millions of dollars at stake

The caution of platforms like Google or Meta does not come out of nowhere. Over the last 20 years, the U.S. authorities have dismantled some of the biggest fraud schemes in history around psychic and clairvoyant services. The famous “Miss Cleo” case, for instance, ended in a settlement where the companies behind the psychic hotlines agreed to forgive about 500 million dollars in outstanding consumer charges and to pay an additional 5 million dollars to the FTC, after being accused of deceptive advertising and abusive billing.

In 2016, the U.S. Department of Justice obtained a consent decree against the network operating in the name of “psychics” Maria Duval and Patrick Guérin, accused of having scammed more than 1.3 million victims worldwide through letters promising luck and protection. The decree permanently banned the defendants from using the U.S. mail to promote psychics, clairvoyants or astrologers and estimated the fraud at more than 180 million dollars. More recently, journalistic investigations and court cases in North America and Europe have revealed industrial-scale online clairvoyance businesses, with companies like New Lotus Web earning over 80 million euros by sending scripted “spiritual coaching” messages to huge databases of vulnerable people.

Taken together, these cases show regulators that the sector is structurally exposed to abuse. When you have an industry where a single scheme can extract 180 to 200 million dollars from elderly and distressed people, the instinct of lawmakers and platforms is to treat any psychic or spiritual promise as potentially dangerous, even if many practitioners are honest.

Consumer-protection law and platform risk: why Meta and Google tighten the net

Platforms like Google and Meta are not only private companies. They operate under the shadow of the FTC Act and similar consumer-protection rules in other English-speaking countries. If regulators decide that their ad systems facilitate “unfair or deceptive” practices, they risk investigations, injunctions and civil penalties that can reach billions of dollars, as seen in the FTC’s actions against Facebook on privacy and deception.

Google Ads therefore leans on very strict internal policies on misrepresentation. Under these rules, the platform can refuse or suspend ads and even accounts that use unreliable claims, conceal the nature of the business, exploit people’s fears, or promise improbable results in areas like health, money or life changes. Spiritual coaching easily slides into these red zones when it claims to “heal trauma”, “attract wealth”, “break generational curses” or “guarantee transformation” without clinical or scientific backing. Even if a coach is sincere, Google’s algorithm only sees a combination of: vulnerable audience, unverifiable promise, and potential harm – exactly the pattern regulators describe as a high-risk “unfair or deceptive practice”.

Meta (Facebook and Instagram) is under similar pressure. Its advertising standards restrict content that could harm users’ physical or mental well-being, and recent investigations and lawsuits about the impact of social networks on youth mental health push the company to be even more cautious with content that targets people in emotional distress. When an ad for spiritual coaching speaks directly to anxiety, grief, heartbreak or depression and suggests that a paid session can “heal” or “remove blocks”, moderators can see it as exploiting personal hardship – a sensitive category where ads are often limited or rejected altogether.

Numbers that justify caution: a mass demand and a vulnerable audience

At the same time, demand for spiritual and psychic services is huge. A recent Pew Research Center survey suggests that around 30 % of U.S. adults consult astrology, tarot or fortune-tellers at least once a year, and that this engagement is even higher among younger women and LGBTQ+ adults. Industry estimates put the psychic-services market at around 2.3 billion dollars in 2024 in the United States alone, employing more than 100,000 people. This means that millions of users potentially arrive on platforms in a moment of fragility, seeking guidance about money, love, health or grief.

From a regulator’s point of view, this combination – very strong demand, high emotional vulnerability, and a record of massive frauds – is exactly the kind of environment where UDAP enforcement is necessary. From a platform’s point of view, it is the kind of category where one scandal can destroy trust with regulators and the public. It is therefore rational for Google, Meta and others to err on the side of over-blocking spiritual and metaphysical ads, even when they are honest, rather than risk being accused of enabling the next “Miss Cleo” or Maria Duval case.

The paradox for ethical spiritual coaching

For ethical spiritual coaches, pastors, chaplains or Christian spiritual directors who work online, this creates a deep paradox. The legal and platform ecosystem was largely built to catch industrial scams and manipulative promises. But the rules are written in such broad terms – “unfair or deceptive”, “unreliable claims”, “exploiting negative life events” – that they also make it very hard to promote genuine accompaniment, especially when that accompaniment touches grief, trauma, faith or emotional healing.

In other words, the more the need for online spiritual support grows, and the more regulators discover large-scale frauds in psychic and “coaching” formats, the tighter the ad ecosystem becomes. Spiritual coaching is not banned as such, but it is pushed, almost structurally, into the space of organic visibility, SEO, referrals and community-based trust – precisely because the paid ad space is now governed by laws, case-law and internal policies designed first of all to protect the most vulnerable.

Conclusion

The rise of spiritual coaching online reveals something profound about our time: a growing number of people no longer turn first to churches, clergy or traditional spiritual communities, but to the digital world, seeking presence, reassurance and meaning in moments of uncertainty. The paradox is striking. Demand has never been so high, yet the legal and advertising ecosystem has never been so restrictive. U.S. consumer-protection law, especially the FTC Act, was designed to prevent fraud, manipulation and exploitation of vulnerability. In practice, its broad definitions of “unfair or deceptive acts” place spiritual and metaphysical services among the most closely monitored categories, because they operate precisely where emotional fragility is greatest. Added to this, the memory of large-scale scams—cases involving hundreds of millions of dollars—pushes platforms like Google, Facebook and Instagram to over-apply their protective policies, blocking content that might in fact be ethical accompaniment.

This creates a structural tension. People are searching for help, but sincere guides cannot easily advertise. People long for connection, but the systems that should allow them to find trustworthy support are built to prevent harm. The result is a landscape where spiritual coaching must live outside paid visibility, relying on SEO, organic content, community reputation, pastoral ethics and the slow work of building trust.

For Christian spiritual accompaniment, this tension becomes even more revealing. The tradition has always refused manipulation and refused to impose itself; it invites the person to encounter Christ directly, without dependence on the guide. But contemporary seekers often want routines, mediations, symbolic gestures, embodied stability—needs that the Christian tradition also understands deeply, even if it expresses them differently. Spiritual direction in the style of Teresa of Ávila, John of the Cross or the desert fathers speaks the same human language: the heart seeks companionship, structure, discernment, and an Other who illumines the way.

In that sense, the restrictions of digital advertising force authentic spiritual accompaniment to return to its roots. It cannot rely on persuasion, emotional triggers or promises. It must shine quietly, through depth, clarity and truth. The paradox is therefore not an obstacle but a purification: in a world flooded with offers, only what is grounded, ethical and incarnated can survive. Online seekers may not know it, but what they are looking for—presence, meaning, a path—is ultimately closer to the Christian tradition of interiority than to the scripts of online gurus.

If platforms restrict access to advertising, then the path forward is not louder marketing but deeper presence. The future of spiritual accompaniment online will belong to those who cultivate authority through integrity, visibility through authenticity, and guidance through a genuine respect for the mystery of each soul.