Paul Seaburn January 9, 2022

As evidenced by the amount of money spent on their services, many people want to believe in the powers of psychics … and many psychics do provide a useful service to their clients. As evidenced by the amount of attention given to it and the number of searches for it, many people want to believe the Ark of the Covenant exists somewhere. So, it should come as no surprise that psychics claim they know where the Ark is parked. None have found it, which means the title is wide open for Uri Geller – who this week claims he was practicing his dowsing skills and figured out how to find it. Do you want to believe?

“I know where the Arc of the Covenant is I will find it mark my words. It will be an earth-shattering historical tsunami and an archeological and a theological earthquake. Dowsing ancient soap factory I located under my museum gave me the inspiration!”

For those few who don’t know of him, Uri Geller began as an illusionist, mentalist and spoon bender who turned his television acclaim into a new career as a self-proclaimed psychic with powers bestowed by extraterrestrials, leading him to be involved in the U.S. government parapsychology Stargate project … and to be called a fraud by many magicians. Nonetheless, he persists in both fame and claims – as seen with his latest involving the biblical Ark.

“Yes my dear friends the opposition will be huge but we are talking about an item that is holy and nothing will come in it’s way to be freed and shock the world into a biblical historical reality.”

The Uri Geller Museum is located in a thousand-year-old building in the 6000-year-old neighborhood of Old Jaffa in Tel Aviv. (Look for the world-record 11-ton, 16-meters-long bent spoon out front – really!) The soap factory dates back to the Ottoman era and was discovered not by dowsing but by conventional excavations during renovations.

The Ark of the Covenant dates back to the Book of Exodus where it was said the gold-covered wooden chest contained the Ten Commandments on stone tablets. The Ark was said to have ended up in Solomon’s temple, which was destroyed along with the rest of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 587 BCE. Since then, it has been rumored to exist in a church in Ethiopia, a cave in Africa’s cave in the Dumghe mountains, the Chartres Cathedral in France, the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome, and, according to Indiana Jones and Steven Spielberg, in a warehouse in Washington DC.

Does it really look like this?

It’s ironic that Uri Geller claims to have been inspired to find the commandment-carrying Ark of the Covenant while dowsing. The practice of finding things with divining rods seems to have arisen in 16th century Germany and was quickly condemned by Martin Luther, who claimed dowsing for metals broke the first commandment ban on false gods.

Will Uri Geller find the Ark of the Covenant by dowsing? Will there be an “historical tsunami and an archeological and a theological earthquake” proving once and for all that the Ark exists and Uri is more than a spoon-bender?

Or will Martin Luther be proven right when Geller and his divining rods melt like a Spielbergian Nazi?

This writer wants to believe in the last one.

MU*