Mystic Meg: 5 amazing facts about the late TV psychic
Mystic Meg, who came to define the image of the psychic for British audiences, has passed away aged 80.
Meg has passed away after a short illness, following a career which peaked in popularity during the wave of interest in psychics in the 1980s, and she continued to make her predictions until this month, publishing a regular article in The Sun.
Here are seven facts about Mystic Meg you may not have known before.
1) She lived with seven cats she says ‘found’ her
In a private enclave of Notting Hill, Meg lived with seven cats who she says “found her.” We love that the cats felt their calling, like Meg was some Egyptian God, laying in wait for the cats. To be fair, that iconic black bob is pretty Egyptian.
We can just picture the image now. What we’d pay to see pictures of Meg’s house, filled with cats and crystal balls… Meg was a big animal lover and also owned racehorses with celestial names, like Astrodonna, Astroangel and Astronova.
2) She was vegan
Meg told The Lancashire Telegraph: “I try to stay with a vegan style of eating and… try to avoid all animal products. I think about nutrition. I’ve noticed that when I visit vegetarian shops, none of the customers are overweight.”
She was also on a daily routine with supplements. “I take a multi-vitamin, vitamin E, wild yam capsules and co-enzyme Q10. I also take herbal drops, echinacea to boost the immune system and gingko biloba to protect the memory,” she said.
3) She was teetotal
Meg was incredibly health-conscious. She didn’t drink or smoke, so her celestial predictions were from a place of sobriety. She needed all that focus, she used to reach millions of people nightly during the years she appeared live on The National Lottery from 1994 to 2000, where she would attempt to predict who the lottery winner would be during a 45-second live reading.
4) She came from a Romany background
Meg was born with the name Margaret Anne Lake, and grew up in the rural Lancashire town of Accrington. She spent time with her grandmother, who was from a Romany background, who taught her astrology. So Meg’s passion for fortune telling and astrology was with her from a very young age.
Speaking to The Sun, Meg explained how her family were tied to mysticism and astrology and the strong love she had for her grandmother.
“I can still remember being taken to the coast to see how the phases of the moon affected the tide and realising they affected people, too,” she said of an early family experience.
“Like all children I had special friends no one else could see but while most kids are talked out of theirs I kept mine. My great-grandmother who had the gift made sure I kept mine.
“The gift often skips a couple of generations so my mother – who was an engineer – was annoyed, rather than impressed when I used to tell her who was going to knock on the door half an hour before they did
5) Meg used many different types of practice
She used runes, letters from an ancient Germanic alphabet, as well as crystal balls, tarot and numerology to make her predictions.
Announcing the news of her death to The Sun where Meg wrote her column for over two decades, her agent Dave Shapland said: “Without any question, she was Britain’s most famous astrologer by a million miles.
“Nobody came close to Meg in that respect. She was followed by millions in this country and also around the world.
“She even became part of the English language – if a politician, somebody from showbiz or ordinary people in the street are asked a tricky question they will say ‘Who do you think I am, Mystic Meg? It shows what an impact she made.”
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