Mary Magdalene, Back in the News

London - A renegade former British spy who was jailed after blowing the whistle on alleged wrongdoing in the intelligence services has claimed to have new-found powers as a mystic.

David Shayler told British cable channel More4 News that he had visited a psychic who he believes channelled the spirit of Mary Magdalene and anointed him as the Messiah.

"Suddenly my whole life made sense," the 41-year-old former officer with Britain's domestic intelligence service MI5 said in an interview broadcast Thursday evening.

"I felt a sense of peace, I suddenly realised why it had been how it had, why I seem to get such a strange deal from the universe, when I seem to be trying to tell the truth about everything."

Shayler told the programme his new powers included the ability to change the weather and that he had helped prevent the attempted car bombings in London and Glasgow in June through meditation.

He also claimed that his favourite football team, English Premiership side Middlesbrough, won a place in the 2006 Uefa cup final against Spanish side Seville because he had "channelled the light". Boro lost.

Shayler was released from prison in in 2002 after serving seven weeks for breaching Britain's Official Secrets Act.

He left MI5 in 1996 and subsequently made a number of allegations, including that Britain's overseas intelligence service, MI6, plotted to assassinate the Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi.

He has since tried his hand as a novelist and a conspiracy theorist about the September 11, 2001, attacks and planned to run against then prime minister Tony Blair in the 2005 general election on an anti-Iraq war ticket.

More4 News said his latest claims would provide ammunition for his critics within the security service that he was a loose cannon, comparing his comments to those of former BBC sports presenter David Icke in 1991.

Wearing a lilac-coloured tracksuit, Icke was publicly derided after proclaiming himself the "son of God" during a television chat show. He believes the world is run by giant shapeshifting reptiles.

But Shayler denied the reporter's suggestion that he had "lost it".

"Do I look mentally ill? Do I sound mentally ill?... I'm absolutely convinced, as convinced as I can be, that the universe is changing shape, that humanity has to change, that I'm here to help teach people," he said. -