3 June 1962. Birth in Madagascar.

1964. His parents return to France and move to the country to raise their four children, born in Morocco and Madagascar.

1970-1979. He moves to Paris. An unruly student, he is particularly ill-disposed to doing schoolwork and is sent to three different lycées (Victor Duruy, Buffon, Camille Sée). As a teenager he reads Hesse and Dostoyevsky, kindling his interest in existential questions. At 15 he develops a passion for philosophy after reading Plato’s Dialogues, and in astrology from reading books by André Barbault.

1980-1985. The Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung has a profound effect on his intellectual direction, triggering a desire to study mankind’s great myths and religions. After an early fascination