Gandhi and the Non-Prophet Motive

Mahatma: dreamed of freedom for his people
SOURCE

Just ahead of the 59th anniversary of his death at the hands of an assassin, we look back at a troubling set of prohesies attributed to Mahatma Gandhi and glimpse the curious legacy of a little known relation. Today in Amazing Story Updates, from Korea, Reverend Moon explains his astrological reservations to Dr. Hosokawa and the regular feature, This Date in Amazing History, recalls the day San Franciscans gave up good grass.

Ten years ago, a US supermarket tabloid exclaimed that, according to a series of previously secret Edgar Cayce-style predictions, before the end of 1997 the AIDS virus would become as prevalent as "the common cold". The startling prophesies, were said to have been issued by (of all people) Mohandas Karamchand (aka Mahatma) Gandhi and said to have turned up in a weathered notebook discovered at a former ashram in Sevagram, India. They were also purported to have foretold a terrorist mass assassination that would end the lives of seven top world leaders in March 1998 and that three months later the planet would see the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Needless to say, each of these prognostications fell as flat as a soggy pappadam.

At the time, news of these "Mahatma Prophesies" came as something of a surprise to most Indians who had never heard of the Father of the Nation, a confirmed Hindu, making psychic predictions of any sort, least of all regarding Jesus Christ. He did forecast the end of the British Raj and predicted continued strife with Pakistan but these were deduced by prevailing political developments and not oracular intuition.

However, after a nine year investigation, author-researcher Rajiv Perlmutter Patel of Walnut Creek, CA is convinced the ashram writings may be partially authentic: they were penned by Gandhi, he says, but not Mohandas the Mahatma. Actually they were the work of his irascible little brother Ganesh aka "Garrett" Gandhi of East Ipswich, England. The younger Gandhi, said Patel, was not above contriving outrageous pseudo-psychic scams throughout much of his adult life in the United Kingdom. Ganesh first followed his older brother to London in March 1931 for a conference on India's future and remained in the UK until after the end of World War Two.

"Garrett" Gandhi: Soho hypnotist

Ganesh, who always sported a jaunty VanDyke beard and powder-blue turban, parlayed his brother's famous name into a notable nightclub and music hall act as a stage hypnotist known variously as the "Fakir of Finchley," the "Ipswich Swami" and during the most celebrated point in his cabaret career just prior to the Blitz, the "Picadilly Pandit." "It was an entertaining blend of sideshow fortune-telling, "telepathy" stunts and Eastern mystical mumbo-jumbo," says Patel "and war-jittery Brits ate it up. He even used a snake in a basket until the RSPCA stepped in."

Garrett married four times, dated Merle Oberon briefly after the war and eventually settled in East Anglia where he operated a Felixstowe vegetarian restaurant for many years and raised five of his eight children. He died there in 1976 at the age of 89. Garrett was said to have been profoundly shaken by his brother's murder and afterward steadfastly avoided the public spotlight.

Patel himself is no stranger to the psychic realm. He is the nephew of noted sensitive Rhoda Gold Perlmutter of Passaic NJ whose father knew Ganesh Gandhi and wrote an unpublished book about him. Rajiv thinks the so-called "predictions" were part of Garrett's fortune-telling act and may have been accidentally left behind during a 1946 visit to his elder brother's ashram. We may come to know much more about the last and more clandestine phase of Garrett's career, says Patel, when Mordechai Perlmutter's book is released sometime in the coming year. Gandhi reportedly granted the interviews that form the major source of the biography on the condition that nothing could be disclosed until 30 years after his passing. Moredechai himself died in 1994 but Rhoda Perlmutter has vowed to see the work published as her father intended.


AMAZING STORY UPDATES

From his office in Sapporo, Dr. Kenji Hosokawa informs us that Rev. Moon has written from Korea to dispel the notion that his church's weekly financial bulletin the Seoul Sellers Guide and Satanic Star Chart had deliberately misconstrued Hosokawa's Fire Pig Forecast. The clergyman is not, by the way, to be confused with the leader of the Unification Church, but presides over the the United Korean Reformed Four-Square Pentecostal Church based in Pusan. Rev. Moon Joon Song (Moon is quite a common name in Korea) says his organization takes no issue with Hosokawa at all since the church has its own unique system of stock market predictions based upon snake handling and interpretation of arcane Biblical prophesies to which only Rev. Moon and a few trusted associates are privy. Any other attempts to forecast market trends are, by his definition, "Satanic" and no better than the worthless conjectures of professional analysts on Wall Street where, he says, "the Devil reigns supreme." His followers, Rev. Moon added, "do not pay any attention whatsoever to the animals of the Oriental Zodiac unless it happens to be the Year of the Serpent."

The Chupacabra
SOURCE

The intrepid Herschel Gomez is back from a fresh foray into the West Everglades, south of Lake Okeechobee to investigate newly reported sightings of the notorious Chupacabra, a sort of bipedal vampire-bat more given to attacks on livestock than people. For the moment, Gomez says he's not certain whether the beast being described by Puerto Rican farmworkers is actually a chupacabra or the traditional "Skunk Ape" of the Everglades, thought to be a Southern cousin of Big Foot or the Susquatch. The "ape" is held in high regard by the local Skunkasookie Indian Tribe who revere the creature as an important Guardian Spirit that is NOT to be molested or disturbed in any manner. Herschel is asking his Orlando-based marital in-law Domingo Dombrowski, a noted authority on "chupas" to help him investigater further.

THIS DATE IN AMAZING HISTORY

Capt. Morgan: Yo ho ho and a bottle of him

27 JANUARY 1671 Welsh Pirate Henry Morgan (after whom a famous brand of Jamaican rum is named) lands at Panama City and after winning a furious battle with Spanish defenders promptly burns the place to the ground. The scene will be immortalized centuries later by subsequent hit movies and the "Pirates of the Caribbean" attraction at various Disney Theme Parks but with scant mention of Morgan himself. According to Dutch medium Hiero Thrypplewaart, the vainglorious captain still harangues Uncle Walt about it whenever the two cross paths on the Other Side.

29 JANUARY 1613 Galileo observes Neptune but fails to recognize what he sees. In frustration, he checks the Pisa Yellow Pages for an optometrist only to find there are none, nor any telephones either. Considerably annoyed, the astronomer chucks the volume over the balcony of the Leaning Tower despite its list of outstanding spaghetti and Pisa parlors easily reached by ox-cart.

30 JANUARY 1847 The sleepy bayside Californian village of Yerba Buena is formally renamed San Francisco leaving behind a charming original Spanish appellation of "Good Herb or Grass," a commodity that the new city won't again become associated with for another 120 years, mostly in the Haight-Ashbury section.

Debating the Pig Year Daikichi

Japanese Netsuke Boar

I have just been informed by our distinguished Japanese collaborator, Dr. Senji Hosokawa of Sapporo, that some of his astrological calculations regarding the forthcoming Year of the Pig (arriving February 18th in the Asian Lunar Calendar) have been regrettably misinterpreted by a number of financial publications in his country and in neighboring South Korea. Dr. Hosokawa’s extraordinary work in using traditional Oriental astrology and Zodiacal aspects to forecast economic trends in the major Eastern currency markets and commodities exchanges has earned him an unrivaled reputation in the boardrooms of Japan’s largest financial institutions and brokerage houses.

It was doubly surprising then to hear the “Sage of Sapporo” complaining about the “reverse spin” that seemed to be coloring reports of his generally auspicious Hokkaido Horoscopic Market Outlook for 2007.

In traditional lore, Hosokawa says, the Pig represents prosperity, abundance and fulfillment. It is the 12th and final sign of the Oriental Zodiac representing a culmination of the Heavenly Calendar. Each sign is also accented by a particular element which magnifies or sometimes dilutes the basic attributes. Those elements are Air, Wood, Earth, Water, Metal and Fire and it takes 60 years for an element to rotate across the Asian Zodiac. 2007 brings us the Year of the Fire Pig, last seen in 1947. It is also sometimes called the Year of the Red Pig since Fire is associated with that color. Hosokawa says the Fire element would normally intensify and energize the abundance and prosperity attributes of the Pig, but there is a catch. As the Sapporo Sage points out, the Pig has a Yin character and a Yin Fire is more prone to instability than a Yang Fire. Therefore the intensified prosperity of a Pig Year could be unpredictable and volatile.

Euro-boar in bronze

Kenji feels that the problems writers at other journals may be having seems to stem in part from a lack of understanding of the finer points of astrological interpretation and the complex interplay of elemental influences. The Korean-based weekly Seoul Sellers Guide and Satanic Star Chart (affiliated with the Rev. Moon movement) for instance mentioned a “Roasted Pig Forecast” while the usually respected Tokyo Traders Tout and Tipster Sheet spoke of a possible “Fire Sale” of tumbling Nikkei stocks as occurred in another Yin-Fire year, 1997.



Nikkei bored

Asian Markets ended 2006 (the Dog Year has one more month to play out) on a fairly upbeat note with the general expectation of even stronger economic gains in 2007, especially in China where it could really be a year for Red Pigs. Hosokawa says Japan’s outlook is good, too, particularly for machinery, computer and high tech industries along with property, hotel, mining, and insurance though not without the risk of a Yin-Fired third-quarter slowdown that could diminish the traditional Daikichi (good luck) associated with the Pig Year.


Pigs feeding at trough

Hillary: Happy as a pig in daichiki

Politically, the Sapporan says the year could likewise be excellent for some prominent Pigs in the US. Hillary Clinton is a Pig, indeed a Red Pig as some of her opponents no doubt will note. (Her husband is a “Hot Dog” as Fire Dogs are sometimes playfully termed.) Hosokawa says that historically the Democratic Party has been kind to Pig ambitions. Both party founders Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson were Pigs as was President James Buchanan and even Ronald Reagan who spent decades as a Democrat prior to changing parties.



Proving an Arctic Ark

The word that Canadian scientists have newly discovered a massive break in the artic ice shelf (matching the kind previously reported in the Antarctic) and news that the Polar Bear is in trouble due to Global Warming are unpleasant reminders of a climate change path humankind has been down at least once before.

My enterprising Dutch colleague (and onetime in-law) Viscount Wim Van Wynkoop of Utrecht has sent word from his latest expedition in Northeast Turkey that the most recent analysis of splinters from timbers located on the side of Mount Ararat has yielded the clearest evidence yet that he has found the fabled site of Noah’s Ark. The ice crystals found embedded in the timbers also contain ancient arctic plankton and therefore suggest confirmation of Van Wynkoop’s long-held theory of contact with an iceberg.

Aerial view of Ararat site

Possibly lending additional credence to this interpretation are the newly discovered Red Sea Scrolls, a set of cuneiform scriptural passages on sheepskin unearthed by Israeli construction workers near Elat in July 2003. The scrolls, now in the custody of specialists at Beersheba University, were found secreted in large terra cotta jars and are estimated to predate the Qumran scrolls from the Dead Sea by some 3,000 years. Several of the stories, crafted in an early Sumerian-type alphabet, parallel the Old Testament versions but with notable differences.

US version of Noah..note soaring American eagle

The tale of Noah (No-Hah) reveals the ark builder not as a pious patriarch but a sober-minded dealer in exotic animals captured to satisfy the extravagant tastes of Near East potentates and satraps. His noted brother was Hoo-Ha, an itinerant jester who entertained in various Mediterranean courts, often paired with their flamboyant sister Minnie-Ha-Ha, an exotic dancer. In this account, No-hah wasn’t trying to spare his family and the world’s wildlife from the wrath of God but attempting to find the quickest route for getting to India and back again ahead of Phoenician competitors. He was especially keen to secure a contract to supply animals to the new Hanging Gardens rumored to be in the planning stages at Babylon.

As a result of a just-concluded Ice Age and rising waters from retreating polar caps, Van Wynkoop says, this proved far more hazardous than in modern times. No-Hah’s floating menagerie was gashed by an iceberg before foundering on an Anatolian mountaintop. The dealer and his sons were able to recover a few of their precious cargo but both the East Sumatran Rhinoceros and the Himalayan Yeti specimens, in particular, got away. The Yeti also took No-hah’s youngest granddaughter, Shirley, with him. Local legends affirm that the couple and their hirsute heirs operated a popular Greek restaurant on Cyprus called “The Abominable Aegean” until it burned down during the Trojan War. Generations of their rowdier offspring were no doubt responsible for a subsequent spate of werewolf legends across the Balkans. Particularly those in which the lycanthropes seemed to be wearing yarmulkes since Shirley got the Yeti to convert shortly after their elopement in Asia Minor.