"To assure priority of this prophecy, I state that the following novella has been written in 1903. Gustav Meyrink".

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The novella tells the story of Dr. Jessegrim who has made a fortune in the mescaline business.

He decides to go into oil.

All of Mexico was standing on caves which were partly at least filled with petroleum, and connected with each other. Jessegrim resolves to blast away the separations between the caves. After the last detonation, the oil was to flow from the underground deposit in Mexico into the ocean and form a glass surface, which continues to grow, taken by the gulf stream, soon covering the entire Atlantic surface. The coasts were barren and the population retreated into the interior of the land.

Instead of being arrested, in Meyrink's story, Jessegrim is hired as a consultant. He says: "If the oil continues to spill as it does, it will have covered the oceans of the world in 27 to 29 weeks and there will be no more rains, ever, as water can not evaporate anymore. At best, it will rain petroleum."

First widely criticized, this prophecy (of Dr. Jessegrim) becomes increasingly plausible as the hidden flow does not stop, and when it increases dramatically, panic grips humanity.

Cable from USA to EU: "Oil leaks increase constantly. Situation extremely dangerous. Advise immediately whether stink there is also unbearable".

In Meyrink's occult circles, they were fantasizing about oil reserves gushing into the ocean, from the Gulf of Mexico, covering the oceans.

They postulated that an oil reservoir released into the oceans would be an apocalypse and possibly destroy the entire earth. It would start with a huge explosion. The culprit (a Dr. No figure, "Dr. Jessegrim") is motivated by blind hate of humanity. He destroys humanity via a "wrath of god" - the oil catastrophe.

Unlike dystopian stories like "1984" by George Orwell or "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley, who made no such claims, Mayrink called his story a "Prophecy". At the beginning of the story, he states quasi in notary fashion:

"To assure priority of this prophecy, I state that the following novella has been written in 1903. Gustav Meyrink".

With the discovery of his prophecy concerning the oil catastrophe in the Mexican Gulf, Meyrink could become posthumously famous in 2010. The best-known story of Meyrink is "The Golem" (1915), one of the Cabalistic treatments of the golem-saga where rabbis breathe life into a clay monster who vanquishes their enemies.

Meyrink ran a banking house between 1889 and 1902 and circulated his entire life in the occult world of Christian and Jewish mysticism, theosophy and alchemy.