Baba Venga and the attack on the Twin Towers

Baba Venga predicted the 9/11 attacks, rise of IS & establishment of a caliphate by 2043 with Rome as its epicentre

Mention the words famous astrologer and soothsayer and people will most probably come up with the name of Nostradamus, even though Claudius Ptolemy is universally regarded as the greatest astrologer of all time. The world is, however, full of mystics who believe they can predict the future with a high percentage of accuracy. I have been told that in India, Bejan Daruwalla and Aji Bhamji are highly rated and in Pakistan, Pandit SK Tantric and Humayun Mehboob also have a number of devotees.

Earlier this week, however, I discovered through sheer serendipity that there was a blind female, Bulgarian seer, named Vangelia Pandeva Dimitrova, or Baba Venga for short, who had an enviable record of successes. Though she died in 1996 at the age of 85, according to local legend and some of her followers, she made a number of chilling and startling predictions in a 50-year career — the vast majority of which turned out to be correct. Here are some of her astonishing forecasts: the 9/11 terror attacks on the Twin Towers in New York; the devastating tsunami of 2004; global warming; the rise of the Islamic State; the invasion of Europe by Muslim extremists and the establishment of a caliphate by 2043 with Rome as its epicentre. She ended the warning by doing an updated Oswald Spengler by predicting the end of Europe as we know it.



That’s not all. In 1980, she apparently knew that in August 1999, the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk would sink and kill all aboard. She was off by a whole year, as the craft sank in the Barents Sea on August 12, 2000. It was, however, still a remarkable prediction. There was also a whole raft of other prophecies like the rise of China as a world power in 2018, something that was achieved in 2015; the melting of the ice caps resulting in the rise of sea level; the discovery of a new energy source which will eradicate global hunger between 2025 and 2028; the curing of diseases through cloning; and a launching of an attack by the US on Muslim Rome using a climate-based instant freezing weapon. Science fiction also crept into many of her forecasts, like cracking time travel between 2262 and 2304 and that the end of the Earth will start from 2341 when a series of natural and man-made disasters will render our planet uninhabitable and survivors will escape to another solar system. Of course, there were some glaring contradictions, particularly in the time frame, but they were swamped by the sheer sweep and variety of her prophecies.

Depressing, isn’t it? I’ve always preferred those non-serious female pseudo-gypsy astrologers who could be found in travelling circuses and country fairs all over England. They were gaudily dressed, head covered by a turban, a string of Egyptian beads around their necks. They sat in a dimly lit tent, had an exotic Hungarian, Romanian or Russian name, spoke in a Pola Negri accent, would read palms, gaze into a crystal bowl and always tell you what you wanted to hear.

For a lark, I once happened to enter the tent of the celebrated Madame Zoltan from which a sallow-faced girl had just emerged. “Zis schtupid babushka. Only vanting to marry a Coldstream Guard.” After a pause, I said, “Zo vat did you tell her Madame Agneska Zoltan?” There was a pause. The Hungarian accent disappeared and was replaced by the English they spoke in Chelsea. “I told her it won’t be a bloody Coldstream Guard but an Austrian Baron who wears a monocle. And you know what she said in reply? She said, “Well I suppose you must be content with small mercies. You can’t always have everything you want.”

Published in The Express Tribune, January 10^th, 2016.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.