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A GenePoool.com Essay
Nostradamus
As seers go, Nostradamus is hard to beat. Everybody's heard of him. From his vantage point in Sixteenth century Provence he managed to predict everything from the Great Fire of London to the rise of Hitler to the assassination of Kennedy. A pretty impressive resume. Unfortunately, they haven't done us much good, insofar as the London Fire still took place, Hitler still rose to power, and Kennedy still caught a bullet.
There's a reason for this.
A rational person seeking to defend the prophesies might suggest that the reason we've been unable to avoid these prognosticated events from taking place is that history is inevitable and immutable, and goodness knows, I wouldn't argue with that. But it isn't the first explanation that pops into my mind. The most obvious reason, to me, is that the quatrains of Nostradamus haven't been fitted to the events of history until AFTER those events have taken place. This is a very telling detail.
Let's back up a little bit.
Michel de Nostradame lived a very cushy existence for much of his life under the patronage of Catherine de Medicis, queen of France. Now, even in today's world, you're not going to find a lot of political figures who are willing to sponsor prophets who tell them what's going to happen long after they're dead. I don't think the Reagans consulted an astrologer to tell them if there's going to be a Democrat elected into the White House in the year 2092. Of much greater interest is the proverbial here-and-now, and that's just the sort of prophesies Catherine de Medicis got out of her favorite soothsayer.
Plainly put, the quatrains of Nostradamus are a combination of political commentary, predictions of doom for Catherine's enemies (especially, "Bloody" Mary I of England) and social critiques. What they have in common is the insights they bring to CONTEMPORARY events.
I know you don't believe me. Hang in there, I'm not done yet.
Nostradamus helped his own historical cause immensely by writing everything in classical French. This means someone has to translate the damn things for us. A LOT is gained in the translation. For example, in the quatrain that supposedly predicts the Great Fire of London the French word "fouldres" (thunderbolts) is substituted in most translations with the word "feu," or, fire. Why? Fire makes more sense. It's a shame Nostradamus didn't actually write it.
Here's the full quatrain, translated as accurately as possible, with a very large nod to James Randi, who provided this information:
"The blood of the just shall be wanting
in London,
Burnt by thunderbolts of three of the Six(es),
The ancient dame shall fall from her high place,
Of the same sect many shall be killed."
The folks who believe this to predict the Great Fire have somehow determined that "three of the sixes" refers to the number of houses burned (or, the year 1666, although I have to agree with Mr. Randi that this connection is even more tenuous.) The "ancient dame" is meant to refer to St. Paul's Cathedral, which was lost in the fire along with a great many other churches (ergo the "same sect" line.)
It's taken as a fact that St. Paul's Cathedral was contemporaneously referred to as the "old lady", although there appears to be no actual evidence that anybody ever really did call it the old lady. And while it was a tall cathedral, there was no high place from which it could have fallen. Likewise, those that claim there was a statue of the Virgin Mary atop St. Paul's (which would therefore have fallen) are mistaken; there was no statue.
Finally, as I mentioned before, there is no mention of fire in this quatrain.
However, the year before this quatrain was published, in 1555, Mary of England began burning "heretics" at the stake. The best heretics available happened to be Lutherans, and recent evidence indicates Nostradamus was also a Lutheran, albeit a closet one.
The trials and executions of the Lutherans took place in groups of six, and over 300 were killed in this manner. When they were burned at the stake, gunpowder was tied to their necks in what was considered an act of mercy; their deaths were therefore accompanied by a loud bang, like a thunderclap.
In the same year, Mary's consort left her for good, which pretty much pushed her over the edge-- she wasn't very sane to begin with-- and took to wandering about her palace half-naked and quite nuts. She had fallen from her high place.
Not quite as mysterious now, is it? The quatrain fits current events a lot better than it does something that happened 111 years in the future.
The real problem is that social commentary of any sort was very dangerous in the time of Michel de Nostradame. He is obscure, mysterious, and subtle, and deliberately so. Because of this, the quatrains can be made to say whatever we want them to, with only a little imagination and a liberal interpretation of the French language.
In Nazi Germany it was believed by the powers-that-were that Nostradamus predicted their success in World War II. And with little work they could subvert a few quatrains to say exactly that. To counter their translation, the Allies created their own version of the prophesies predicting Germany's fall, using the same generous interpretive technique. Both translations were equally correct.
We've gone through a lot of Anti-Christs lately, too. For a while there it was the Ayatollah Khomeni, then Mohammar Khadaffi, but neither of them worked out. Saddam Hussein is the current candidate, but he's been very disappointing lately.
Here's something fun to try. Let's say we've decided the Beatles were prophets. That's right. John, Paul, George and Ringo could see the future, probably thanks to all that acid. The proof?
"Here come old flat-top he come,
groovin' up slowly he got,
joo-joo eyeballs, he want
spinal cracker.."
Clearly, this predicts the future rise to stardom of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
"The fool on the hill sees the sun going
down,
and the eyes in his head sees the world spinning round."
Newt Gingrich?
"Happiness is a warm gun."
Charlton Heston!
And the most distubingly prescient of them all...
"Yes, I'm lonely. Wanna die.
If I ain't dead already, girl you know the reason why."
Could it be Lennon was predicting his own assassination? Ye gods!
And there's always the possibility that Helter Skelter wasn't the inspiration FOR Charles Manson, but the prediction OF Charles Manson. What say we pull out Abbey Road, maybe we can find out who's going to be the next U.S. President.
We could play this game with a lot of musicians. Pink Floyd's admonition to "tear down the wall" could be predicting the decimation of the Berlin Wall, and Warren Zevon's request for "Lawyers, guns and money" could be insight into Oliver North. It doesn't mean anything, but it's fun.
And that's my point. If we begin with the assumption that Nostradamus is predicting the future and then attempt to shoehorn the future into his quatrains, we're fooling ourselves.
It's fun, but it certainly doesn't validate
him as a prophet.
© 2000, Gene Doucette
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