Saddam the Sorcerer

In Online Catholics (subscription only) Sophie Masson writes about Saddam and magic:

Tyrants create their own twisted reality, and force their people to live, as it were, inside the dictator's skull, and inside his own private drama, endlessly re-enacting it. So complete can this process be that it gives an occult impression: that of a spell cast over an entire country by a master sorcerer. When the tyrant is overthrown or dies, it is as if an entire population is liberated from the spell - there is much relief, but also much surprise, and shame - at being held in thrall for so long.

Of course, this image is the stock-in-trade of a great many fairy and folk tales, legends and in our time, fantasy fiction. It is stock-in-trade because it has a psychological resonance which cannot be denied. But it's more than just metaphor. Astonishingly, many tyrants have used 'real' magical powers and psychic tools not only to control their people, but to gauge and manipulate their own destinies.
.....
Saddam Hussein has always believed in magic. His mother, Sabha, was a peasant woman who sometimes worked as a fortune-teller. Saddam himself was supposed to have inherited some of his mother's psychic gifts, and was reputed to have had modest success in 'studying the sands' and summoning jinn to do his bidding. It was believed by many people in Iraq that he had seven jinn to protect him, and that he spoke daily with the king and queen of the jinn, who advised him. He ordered Baghdad University to set up a department of parapsychology, to investigate methods to use in the Iran-Iraq war, and later to 'mind-read' UN inspectors searching for WMDs in Iraq.

He also personally patronised magicians of all kinds, and had a rotating circle of favourite magicians-including not only Iraqis, but a French Arab, a Turk, a Chinese, a Japanese and an Indian magician, and - wait for it - a beautiful Jewish witch from Morocco! His personal magician, interviewed by a reporter from the Washington Post in Baghdad in 2003, before Saddam's capture, [said] that most of his work for the Hussein family involved 'mostly issues of love, faithfulness and sexual prowess.'

Saddam's son Uday - who was also a firm believer in magic - scouted very actively for magicians and other psychics to come and work for the Hussein family, and indeed advertised on his own TV station for such practitioners to come forward. It wasn't a comfortable post to be in, by all accounts; if Uday or other family members took exception to a prediction or a spell, you might well be imprisoned or even executed...

One or more of these sorcerers, it was said, had made Saddam a special talisman, a magic stone which he wore either around his neck, or had had implanted under the skin of his arm, depending on who you listened to. This stone made him invulnerable, and meant he could not be killed. The fact that the dictator survived several assassination attempts (including one by Mossad, which is regarded in almost supernatural terms by many people in the Middle East), countless plots, the Iran-Iraq war, the first Gulf War, and even the second Gulf War, could only add fuel to the image of Saddam the Sorcerer, arch-manipulator and master of all kinds of forces, historical and parapsychological, whose destiny was protected by dark and dangerous forces, and best not meddled with. Many believers in Saddam's magic powers were profoundly shocked by the TV images of the Master of Magicians being pulled, haggard and dirty, from his hiding place last year.