From The Cut:
The term “angel numbers” has only been around since 2004, when Doreen Virtue, a former New Age spiritual teacher, came up with the idea while sitting on her bathroom floor. In 2015, Virtue was driving home and listening to the radio when she heard a preacher talk about the dangers of false teachers. “I felt my consciousness pricked,” she says. “I thought, He’s describing me. That was the first time I thought, Maybe I’m not helping people.” In September 2017, Virtue announced she had converted to Christianity and renounced her published work—iincluding angel numbers, due to the teaching in Deuteronomy that interpreting omens is “detestable to the Lord.”
The backlash was immediate. She and her husband were forced to sell their home, leaving the Hawaii ranch for a smaller place in Washington state to care for their ailing parents; any residuals from her old books, she says, go directly to the IRS. “I’m not rich and famous from all this stuff. It was a mistake. And I’m still dealing with it.”