I had some miraculous wizard encounters too, with Jesus Mouse!

There was a nice bohemian coffee shop on Haight Street in San Francisco that I used to hang out at in the early 90's, and one of the regulars who called himself "Jesus Mouse" was an old freaky looking hippie dude in a costume of a Mickey Mouse hat, and long tail, and Jesus-like long beard and hair.

He also carried a wizardly walking stick topped with an ornate purple court jester's head with a curling tongue sticking out with a small key at the tip, and a thick worn spell book covered in fabric and sequins and runes that he'd sit and write in all the time.

(He made such an strong impression both visually and mentally, that I remember him in high definition!)

Occasionally tourists would walk in, look at him, do a double take, chat him up, and ask to take selfies with him, for which he would charge $5 a shot.

We talked occasionally, and over time he told me his backstory about how he represented the combination of the most prominent icons of American mythology, and he just happened to know how to pass the official test that the Vatican used to determine whether or not somebody who thought he was Jesus actually WAS the Second Coming of Jesus H Christ, Our Lord.

He never explicitly stated it, but it became evident that he wasn't a lunatic, he didn't actually BELIEVE he was Jesus, or believed IN Jesus, but he did believe the Catholic Church was totally full of shit, and he just somehow happened to know how to prove he was Jesus according to the Vatican's own rules.

(However he never told me the actual secret answer to prove you're Jesus, so don't ask, since I would have long since proven I was Jesus had I known.)

His lifelong mission was to prove to the Vatican on their own terms that he really was Jesus H Christ incarnate, and then once established, he would insist that they liquidate all of their hoards of precious artwork, and give away the money to the poor.

He told me about how in his past glory days he'd led parades of hippies down Haight Street to Golden Gate Park, where he publicly declared himself Jesus and demanded the Catholic Church liquidate and distribute all of their treasures to the poor.

And another story about how he had once ran into a sympathetic rich lady from a royal family in Europe who was intrigued by his story (by God, who wouldn't be???), and she had some connections who knew how to get him into the Vatican to meet the Pope and take the test.

So she arranged to fly him out to Europe, and he got into the Vatican, then he told them his story and gave them his proof, and they beat the shit out of him and dumped him outside onto the street, so he never got to meet the Pope.

He also related how he'd smuggled LSD into Europe by cutting blotter paper up into little colored pieces of paper and gluing them all over his scepter as decoration, and nobody in customs or airport security was remotely suspicious about it.

So apparently this guy really did get around, possibly by using an Infinite Improbability Drive:

The last time I saw him was when I was in Amsterdam for the InterCHI '93 conference, and a bunch of us went out to the Homegrown Fantasy Coffeeshop on Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, and we're all sitting inside doing what you do inside a coffeeshop, and I happened to glance up and look out the window, and there was Jesus Mouse, ambling down the sidewalk!!!

He's kind of hard not to miss, and easy to recognize, so I pointed and shouted "IT'S JESUS MOUSE!!!", ran outside, flagged him down, invited him in, and he joined us, introduced himself, hung out for a while, and told us his stories.

I don't know what I would have done if it hadn't really been him, since the other people I was with might have thought I was crazy! Instead, it was one of those magical moments, seared into my memory.

Later on I found out a lady friend of mine and he had been lovers, and she said he was a kind and interesting dude, he was pretty well known around the Haight/Ashbury scene, and did like to travel around the world, but that he'd since passed away.