Cheiro

(1866–1936)



British clairvoyant, originally William John Warner. He adopted the surname of his French mother, who instructed him as a boy in palmistry and astrology, and became Louis Hamon, presently adding the title “Count,” to which he had no right.
After travels in India and Egypt, he settled in London as a fortuneteller, mainly though not exclusively by palmistry, on which he became the leading authority. His professional name, Cheiro, was derived from the Greek for “hand.” Socially popular, he is reputed to have read more than 6,000 palms. He made accurate predictions for well-known people and visited the United States with success.
He warned Oscar Wilde that he was risking disgrace; assured the politician Arthur James Balfour that he would become prime minister; promised Mark Twain, then in financial difficulties, that he could expect an upturn at a designated time; and told the famous

dancer and spy Mata Hari that she must expect a crisis in 1917, the year in which she was convicted of espionage and shot. Royal personages consulted him, and he had pleasant messages for King Edward VII but not for Czar Nicholas II, whose dethronement he foresaw.
Some of Cheiro’s predictions need not imply anything more than inside information and keen perception. Some, perhaps, do more. In June 1911, he wrote to the distinguished editor W. T. Stead, advising him not to travel by water in April of the following year. Stead ignored the advice, sailed aboard the Titanic, and was drowned. Cheiro told Lord Kitchener, who became the principal architect of the British war effort in 1914, that he would be in danger of death in his sixty-sixth year, not as a soldier but at sea. In 1916, Kitchener set out on a mission to Russia and perished when the ship carrying him struck a mine and sank.
Speaking as a professed psychic, Cheiro made correct forecasts of several public events, including the Russian Revolution, the Jewish resettlement of Palestine, and the independence of India. These, however, might have been made by a well-informed observer without any paranormal insight. It may be significant that when he made predictions that were not simply inferences from current trends, he was wrong, as when he said that a large part of New York City would be destroyed by an earthquake and that Russian aircraft would obliterate London. One very far-fetched prophecy, about Armageddon being fought in Palestine when it was invaded by Russia, Persia, Ethiopia, and Libya, was almost certainly not suggested either by rational anticipation or by any psychic gift. Cheiro got it from Ezekiel 38 where Gog in verse 2 has been explained (notably by proponents of the British-Israel theory) as the ruler of Russia, and verse 5 in the King James Version names Persia, Ethiopia, and Libya as his allies.
A flamboyant figure noted for sexual escapades, Cheiro is supposed to have seduced women by hypnosis like the “black magician,” Aleister Crowley. He worked briefly as a war correspondent and also, allegedly, in the British Secret Service, this being the explanation of his acquaintance with Mata Hari. In 1930, he emigrated to Hollywood, where he experimented with screenwriting and went on reading palms. His clients included Erich von Stroheim, Lillian Gish, and Mary Pickford, who also cultivated the astrologer Evangeline Adams.