THE ATLANTA JOURNAL

MARCH 26, 1995 $2.00

The Atlanta Journal / The Atlanta Constitution WORLD Sunday, March 26, 1995

Turning spoons into plowshares?

Uri Geller planning Peace tour of Mideast

By Louis J. Salome
STAFF CORRESPONDENT

Sonning on Thames, England–Uri Geller has bent silverware, stopped clocks and repaired watches. He got rich pin-pointing gold and oil deposits and bombarding Soviet nuclear negotiators with “peace signals.” He says he did it all with the power of his mind.

By June, if Geller can make the diplomatic arrangements, he plans to embark on his biggest mind- bending challenge so far: A cutlery- and Cadillac-driven five-week trip from Jerusalem to Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran in search of a wider Middle East peace.

Geller’s career has seen plenty, of controversy. Critics say he is an illusionist whose feats can be duplicated by others.

However real his mental powers may be, there’s often an element of show business related to their display. But, he says, “I am not a magician. I can’t change my act.”

Still, it’s no surprise that a movie called “Mindbender” has been made about his life.

Geller said he frightened his parents when at age four he used his mind to bend his first spoon. Since the 1970s, when he first aroused U.S. television audiences with his telepathic feats, the 48-year-old Israeli-born distant relative of Sigmund Freud has baffled the general public, scientists, magicians and diplomats with powers he says he can’t explain.

He takes a standard metal spoon, rubs its handle for a few seconds and watches the spoon slowly and eerily bend to a 90-degree angle. A witness stands next to him holding a set of keys, from which Geller presumably draws energy.

Geller’s planned peace trip seems as farfetched as its special prop is unusual– a cutlery-covered black 1976 Cadillac that Geller bought when he lived in New York.

Riveted to the Caddy are 5,000 pieces of silverware, Buddhist, Christian, Islamic and Judaic religious symbols, and peace messages spoon-spelled in Arabic, French, Hebrew, Japanese, Russian and Spanish. V

On the tip of the car’s hood is a large rock crystal sphere. Geller says the late surrealist painter Salvador Dali gave him the crystal after Dali finally emerged from a room where he took refuge after one of Geller’s fork-bending sessions.

Geller says he bent, with his mind, about 20 percent of the silverware on the car.

Geller, who lives in this village 90 minutes west of London, hopes the car will put a smile on the face of the Middle East.

“If something this tacky and show-businessy can happen, then maybe peace can happen, too. I hope people smile and look bewildered. For them it should be a happening, a treat,” he said.