When Robert Louis Stevenson wrote the swashbuckling literary classic “Treasure Island,” it is said that he was inspired by childhood visits to the island of Fidra, one of three rocky islands in the Forth estuary off off the Scottish coast of North Berwick.
The young Stevenson was unaware of the myths, legends and mysteries that another island supposedly housed, located almost two kilometers to the east. Known as Lamb, it hardly attracts the attention of paddlers, casual bird watchers and wildlife lovers. But it could become a real treasure island on its own.
At least, that is the possibility that its colorful, charismatic and controversial owner is considering, the world’s most famous spoon bender and legendary “seer” Uri Geller.
Now, 13 years after buying it, Geller, a master of the grandiose gestures, has decided to upgrade Lamb’s status from a Scottish private island to a country, complete with flag, constitution and anthem.
While Scotland is busy debating its own path to possible independence, the emergence of the football pitch-sized “Republic of Lamb” means that its comparatively gigantic neighbor has just theoretically gotten a little smaller.
“Lamb is a place like no other,” says Geller, from his home in old Jaffa, Israel, “and it deserves its own identity. This is a fitting way to do it.”
The pyramids
Lamb is not the first micronation: dozens have been declared since the 19th century, some serious and some not.
Some have issued their own stamps, coins and citizenships (the short-lived Kingdom of Lovely, born out of a TV show and based in an East London flat, could claim the title of the largest number of citizens, with more than 58,000 claiming registered online).
Geller is also offering citizenship, with all proceeds going to Save a Child’s Heart, an Israeli charity that treats children with heart conditions around the world.
He says he wants Lamb to be an emblem of peace, and that the only criteria for membership is “a willingness to exist in harmony with Lamb’s countrymen.” Settlement is not allowed on the island, whose only inhabitants are puffins, guillemots and other seabirds, and until recently a solitary rat.
“I always wanted to have an island, to be like James Bond,” says Geller, 75, who learned of Lamb’s existence when she read it was for sale in The Times newspaper.
But it was the intriguing – some would say dubious – statement by an amateur history scholar that caught Geller’s imagination and convinced him he had to buy it. Because, according to the Scottish-born researcher Jeff Nisbet, Lamb has inexplicable similarities with the pyramids of Giza.
Nisbet pointed out the layout of Lamb and the two islands on either side, which he says exactly mirrors that of the three pyramids. The precise geometric design of the pyramids has long been a source of fascination for mathematicians and Egyptologists.
In fact, Nisbet was not the only person to raise the idea of Scottish links to ancient Egypt.
the egyptian princess
A 15th-century chronicle, described by the National Library of Scotland as “probably the most important medieval account of Scotland’s early history”, claims that Egypt gave rise to the Scottish nation.
He claims that Scotland was actually founded by Princess Scota, the exiled daughter of the pharaoh whose army – in the biblical account – drowned while pursuing Moses and the Israelites across the Red Sea.
One notable figure who attaches great importance to this story is the Egyptian-born tycoon Mohamed Al Fayed, who has lived in the UK since the mid-1960s. Al Fayed is an ardent supporter of Scottish independence and has offered to be the first president of a sovereign Scotland.
The former owner of the luxurious Harrods department store kept a copy of this chronicle in his office and told Geller about it when the two met in 2010. Al Fayed later sent him another copy as a gift.
Geller says that from what he remembers, Al Fayed told him the story about Scota anchoring his ship off Lamb and burying treasure there. Although there is no documentary evidence of this, Geller, who reportedly made a fortune prospecting for oil and mining companies through the ancient practice of dowsing, says he will use the same method to search for treasure.
The island is part of a special protection zone, which means excavations are off the table (although a team of battlefield archaeologists have offered to explore it).
The treasure is not the only thing that the island could contain. Geller, a self-described mystifier, believes that the bones of victims of the infamous North Berwick witch trials in the 1590s may have ended up there, too, transported from the mainland by superstitious authorities.
However, experts say that all known evidence points to the remains being buried close to where the victims were burned at the stake.
One of Geller’s favorite objects in his Jaffa museum is an ancient set of six fine glass spheres, green, silver and gold, known as witch balls. These types of objects were hung in homes in the British Isles in the 17th century to ward off evil spirits.
nation without a baron
The idea of turning Lamb into a micronation came to Geller after exploring the possibility of purchasing the barony title that came with the territory that had historically included the island.
However, Lamb lost the barony when Geller acquired it from the current Baron de Dirleton – a Luso-Brazilian Orthodox Jewish businessman – to whom the title had been bequeathed by the previous holder.
“I couldn’t get the barony, so I decided to go further and create my own little country,” says Geller, “but what makes it particularly special is that it has all these powerful, meaningful, spiritual connections. It’s not an ordinary place.” .
Some of these connections were identified by Nisbet, who claimed that Lamb is at a confluence of ley lines, putative energy pathways linking places of historical importance.
One of them runs through Lamb from the Isle of May, supposed burial place of the legendary King Arthur, to the Hill of Tara in Ireland, supposedly an ancient crowning site for monarchs and steeped in mythology.
The stone and the hymn
According to Irish tradition, the famous Stone of Destiny, or Stone of Scone, was brought from Jerusalem to Tara in the sixth century BC by the prophet Jeremiah and the daughter of the last king of Judah.
This story was recounted in a speech in the British House of Lords by Lord Brabazon of Tara in 1951. The stone is said to have been used as a pillow by James in the Biblical account and was later kept in King Solomon’s temple.
The stone is claimed to have been carried from Ireland to Scone by Scottish invaders, before being stolen and brought to England by order of the English King Edward I on 8 August 1296. This is the day chosen by Geller “in recognition of the proud history of Scotland” to declare Lamb’s statehood.
Geller also sees a sign in a curious find made by archaeologists under the Ottoman-era building that now houses his museum in old Jaffa.
A Scottish Forth brick made off the coast of Lamb Island has been unearthed among hundreds of artifacts, after he says he sensed something buried there using his divination skills. Geller calls the discovery of the brick “synchronicity.”
Timing arguably also played a role when Geller was trying to come up with an anthem for his semi-independent state (he says it’s not a political act and the laws of his land will still be the ones in force before).
Last year, Geller’s friend, Scottish mentalist and mind reader Drew McAdam, originally from East Lothian, Lamb’s county, made the first recording of a piece of music called Our Land. He had new lyrics put to a song that his great-grandfather, James Russell, composed in 1909.
“About two days later, Uri asked me if I knew of any songwriters, as he was looking for an anthem for his island…and it was there,” says McAdam, who offered it to Geller. “He made me happy just to hear the tune after all these years, and I love that it’s being used in such a close project.”
McAdam has since discovered that his great-grandfather, who died in 1928, is buried in Larkhall Cemetery, southeast of Glasgow, and, at Geller’s suggestion, plans to play the anthem (called “My Island”) from his iPhone on the Russell’s grave.
One night in Lamb
Geller spent a night on Lamb in 2010 with his brother-in-law Shipi Shtrang and Andy Strangeway (an adventurer originally from Yorkshire who has the honor of having slept on all 162 islands of Scotland).
Geller described his experience on this chunk of basalt rock as “hard, icy and uncomfortable, but it’s worth all the aches and pains.”
Ships are not allowed to dock at Lamb, which has earned it the macabre nickname “suicide island”, so that no one who ventures there ends up stranded. The trio were picked up the next day, and Geller left behind a crystal once owned by Einstein as a memento of his visit.
Geller’s is not the only privately owned island in the estuary. Fidra belongs to the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds), while Craigleith and Bass Rock have been owned by the aristocratic Dalrymple family for centuries.
“When I take people on excursions, the biggest reaction is the fact that Uri Geller owns Lamb,” says veteran local skipper Dougie Ferguson, who has spent decades touring the islands and plying the estuary waters on his ship, the Braveheart.
“I knew all the former owners and had never heard of the connection to the Giza pyramids. But these are important wildlife areas, and if it attracts people to see them, that can only be a good thing,” Ferguson concludes.
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BBC-NEWS-SRC: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-62455441, IMPORTING DATE: 2022-08-13 10:50:05
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