WHAT’S IN STORE?
Asparamancer reveals all plus more Baba Vanga prophecies
SPEARS OF DESTINY
A fortune-teller who allegedly predicted Brexit has revealed her top tips for 2017. Jemima Packington, 61, from Bath, chucks asparagus spears in the air and makes forecasts based on how they land. The self-styled ‘asparamancer’ says the US will become a pariah state under Trump, several other countries will withdraw from the EU, while Britain’s economy will boom. There may be “troubling times” for the royal family and our bizarre weather will worsen with summer downpours. A showbiz couple considered national treasures will split (usefully vague, that one). Ms Packington claims to have “a very good success rate”. Last year she said that “the British public will rebel about the Nanny State” (interpreted as the Leave vote in the EU Referendum); but she also said that Boris Johnson would become leader of the Conservative Party and Jeremy Corbin would be ousted as Labour leader. On well, you win some, you lose some.
She was inspired to start “reading the spears” aged eight, after seeing her grandmother practise with tealeaves. Plenty of people use slightly offbeat ‘tools’, she says, but she came to use asparagus because “it’s so accurate”. She’s tried other vegetables, like broccoli, but they don’t seem to work. She uses only English asparagus, and believes harvests from theVale of Evesham, Worcestershire, are the finest: “Nothing can beat ‘Vale gras’.” Asparagus growing in the Vale of Evesham dates back at least to 1768. There’s no call for the intrigue of purple asparagus, apparently, or the nutty subtlety of the white variant. D.Telegraph, 19 Jan; Sun, 31 Dec 2016.
BABA VANGA’S PROPHECIES
Another fortune-teller who features in the news every New Year (at the very least), even though she died in 1996, is the blind Bulgarian mystic, clairvoyant and herbalist Baba (‘Grandmother’ or ‘Auntie’) Vanga, known as the “Nostradamus of the Balkans” thanks to a purported 85 per cent success rate. Long revered in Russia and Europe, she was said to have foreseen WWII, the coming to power of the Communists in Bulgaria in 1944, the death of Stalin, the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, an earthquake in northern Bulgaria in 1985, the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, the Fukushima nuclear spill and the birth of Daesh.
Of the hundreds of predictions Vanga made over 50 years, a large number alluded to natural and climate change-related disasters. Back in the 1950s she said: “Cold regions will become warm… and volcanoes will awaken. Everything will melt, just like ice… A huge wave will cover a big coast covered with people and towns, and everything will disappear beneath the water.” Though conveniently non-specific, this was seen as a reference to the 2004 tsunami and earthquake.
She had a more specific hit in 1980 – though some who were close to her claim it is fiction. She is supposed to have said: “Kursk will be underwater, and the whole world will be weeping over it... it can happen in 1999 or in 2000. But it would happen for sure in the month of August.” At the time the citizens of Kursk, safely inland, had no reason to be alarmed. In 1999Vanga’s predictions were broadcast on Russian television, again causing no particular concern; but then the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk sank in August 2000, the crew dying over several days while international rescue crews tried in vain to retrieve the vessel from the depths [ FT140:7].
BabaVanga – orVangeliya Pandeva Dimitrova, known after her marriage asVangeliya Gushterova – was born in 1911 in what is now Macedonia, but spent most of her life in the Rupite area in Bulgaria’s Kozhuh mountains. She claimed that she lost her eyesight at the age of 12 during a freak tornado, when she was flung into the air and dashed to the ground. She was found in a terrible state after a long search, her injured eyes sealed shut and encrusted with a thick layer of sand and dust. Too poor to afford specialist care, she was relegated to a life of blindness. She later said that she had experienced her first vision during the days she was missing and believed she had been instilled with the ability to heal people and predict the future.
During the 1940s she developed a cult following and was considered something of a national treasure [ FT93:8]. It’s thought that she helped over a million people in her lifetime. The Bulgarian King Boris III visited her in 1942, and she later served as an adviser to Todor Zhikov and other Bulgarian Communist Party leaders. Leonid Brezhnev and Mikhail Gorbachev allegedly consulted her before making key decisions. Politicians, scientists and historians would come from all over the world for a few minutes in her company. She was kept under surveillance by the Bulgarian secret service and her home bugged.
Vanga purportedly predicted another ‘realm of being’, claiming that entire cultures would begin to spread through a ‘false world’. She claimed that in 2003, any person would be able to think in synchronicity with others, allowing for a form of secondary existence. 2003 marked the year of release of the game Second Life, in which an account holder can make an avatar and engage in social interaction with others.
In 1989Vanga seems to have predicted 9/11: “Horror, horror! The American brethren (Twin
She tried other vegetables, but they don’t seem to work
Towers?) will fall after being attacked by the steel birds (hijacked planes?). The wolves will be howling in a bush (George Bush?) and innocent blood will gush.” At some point she said: “Crimea will detach from one shore to be attached to another”, apparently foretelling Putin’s annexation of the peninsula in 2014. She correctly predicted that the 44th president of the United States would be African American. However, she also stated that he would be “the last US president”. She said that by 2016 “Muslims” would invade Europe, which would “cease to exist” as we know it (that was a dud prediction). The ensuing campaign of destruction will last years, she said, driving out populations and leaving the entire continent “almost empty” by 2025.
There follows a selection of BabaVanga’s prophecies. 2023: the Earth’s orbit will change. 2028: mankind will fly toVenus in hope of finding new sources of energy. 2033: world water levels will rise as the polar ice caps melt. 2043: Europe will be an Islamic caliphate with Rome as its capital; the world’s economy will thrive under Muslim rule. 2066: America will use a new climate change weapon for the first time in a bid to retake Rome and bring back Christianity. 2076: Communism will return to Europe and the rest of the world. 2100: man-made sun illuminates the dark side of the planet. 2130: with the help of aliens, civilisations will live underwater. 2170: major global drought. 2187: two large volcanic eruptions will be successfully stopped. 2201: temperatures drop as the Sun’s thermonuclear processes slow down. 2354: an accident on the artificial sun will result in more drought. 2480: two artificial suns will collide and leave the Earth in the dark. 3005: a war on Mars will change the trajectory of the planet. 3010: a comet will hit the Moon. The Earth will be surrounded by a ring of rock and ash. By 3797, everything on Earth will be dead. However, human civilisation will be advanced enough to move to a new star system. Pravda.ru, 5 June 2014; news.com.au, 8 Dec; D.Mail, 10 Dec 2015.