Nostradamus (Michel de Nostradame)

France, 1513-1566

Sources:

Biographical: The Final Prophecies of Nostradamus, by Erika Cheetham

General: Resources for Nostradamus Research and related web sites, especially Thomas Germine's Apokalypso site

Summary

A well-known figure in sixteenth-century France, Nostradamus was a humanitarian physician who spent many years working among plague victims. He lost his own wife and two children to the plague in the mid-1530s.

His prophetic powers began to be recognized in the 1540s. From 1550 forward he published a yearly Almanac, which in 1554 became the Prognostications. It was with these works that Nostradamus cut his eye teeth as a prophet and gained a following (if you think this line of work is easy, talk to Gordon-Michael Scallion). In 1555 the first (incomplete) edition of the Prophecies appeared. It quickly became popular across Europe, and earned him an invitation to the French court in 1556.

The Prophecies are comprised of 942 quatrains, organized into ten "centuries," each (except the seventh) consisting of 100 quatrains. Nostradamus wrote them in a mix of French, Provencal, Italian, Greek and Latin, and purposely jumbled their chronological order and disguised their meanings, not only because he feared the Inquisition (by which he had already been directly threatened) but also because, as he remarked in a 1555 letter to his infant son Cesar, "Were I to relate events to come, those in power now — monarchs, leaders of sects and religions — would find these so different from their own imaginings that they would be led to condemn what later centuries will learn how to see and understand."

Nostradamus also knew he would have many interpreters, particularly in the last days of the millennium:

Men of letters shall make grand and usually boastful claims about the way I interpreted the world, before the worldwide conflagration which is to bring so many catastrophes and such revolutions that scarcely any lands will not be covered by water. . . This will be after the visible judgement of heaven, before we reach the millennium which shall complete all.

And, he was well aware of the consequences of being an effective prophet:

And it can happen that the prophet bringing about the perfect light of prophecy may make manifest things both human and divine, because this cannot be done otherwise, given that the effects of predicting the future extend far off into time.

Yet, because all prophecy derived "from God Almighty, then from chance and nature," and because the portents were "produced impartially," he believed his activities were justifiable.

But what a staggering body of evidence concerning the future! His prophecies extend from his own time — in 1555 he predicted the untimely death of the then-current king of France and his successor (who did die in 1559 and 1560, respectively), but disguised these prophecies well enough to avoid the king's wrath — forward to the year 3797 (according to Nostradamus himself, though it is unclear which of the prophecies applies to that year).

Commentary

Since most of what Nostradamus predicted has come to pass (or not), we can, from our lofty perch in history, assess his record — at least for the prophecies that are now obvious (many, perhaps most, are still not).

We can also compare his interpreters.

In Apokalypso, Thomas Germine performs wonders of Nostradamian and biblical exegesis, and they are launched from a deep, broad platform of research. He knows his European geographical history, and he fully comprehends sidereal and tropical astrology — key elements in the Prophecies. His interpretations of particular quatrains are exacting, and his secure knowledge of French allows him to comment on alternative meanings of words and phrases. His ability to interconnect the quatrains, to turn the Prophecies into a veritable hypertext, is impressive.

That's not to say he is always right. In fact, he has been flamboyantly wrong. In the original version of "The End of Time, chapter 1, "The Fall of the Papacy" — since extensively rewritten — Germine pretty conclusively established that the Pope would be assassinated in New York City on or about Oct. 24, 1995. After that little miss, I didn't think he could make a believer of me again, particularly when he came up with an alternative date for the Pope's demise (while neglecting to explain what went wrong the first time). But the guy was just very convincing. Here's what he came up with in 1996:

• The current Pope, John Paul II, will be dead by March 1997.

• The next pope, who will be falsely appointed by the corrupt, right-wing Opus Dei faction in the Vatican, will be Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger, the Archbishop of Paris (and a converted Polish Jew who is the protege of John Paul).

• This Pope will fall in with the Antichrist, who will rise out of the Middle East (a former Soviet republic, perhaps) and convince the world he is the Saviour reborn (as he must, to qualify as the true Antichrist).

• The Antichrist will, by autumn 1997 lead the European nations in a cataclysmic war against Russia that will last until the Millennium, when he will be cast down.

• Then there will be a hecka party.

Update: April, 1998: Well, wrong again. But at least he's flamboyant, not to mention scholarly as hell.

Update: April, 2005: Lustiger was in the running, but the German edged him out. Good thing, I guess.


Dolores Cannon would have us believe that she and her people are channelling the living, 16th-century Nostradamus, and that he has no end of things to say about events leading up to Apocalypse. Here's a sample, one of hundreds of such prophecies, each connected (by Nosty himself, she says!) to an original quatrain.

Aliens shot by paranoid nation, bacteriological agents released

(Century II, Quatrain 91)

Aliens tried to contact us in the Siberia Tunguska explosion in the
1900s. Similarly they will again visit the earth. The Soviets are
doing secret weapons research and have energy fields guarding
northern approach corridors. Another spaceship will arrive,
paralleling this incident. When the aliens' spaceship enters the
atmosphere the fields will cause it to malfunction and many of the
crew are killed.

When they crash, soldiers will be on hand to capture or kill them. The
ship will harbor microrganisms that will react in bizarre ways to the
earth climate and cause plagues of unknown origin, that cannot be
understood because of the alien causative organism. The country will
be at war or fixing to go to war and will have a paranoid mindset.
Thinking the crash is a result of enemy weapons, the soldiers will
shoot anything that moves.

Now it's a pretty good stretch from the original quatrain —

At sunrise one will see a great fire,
Noise and light extending towards "Aquilon:"
Within the circle death and one will hear cries,
Through steel, fire, famine, death awaiting them.

— to the Tunguska explosion and alien causative organisms; but I guess that's the beauty of Cannon's approach: if Nosty says this is what CII-Q91 is really all about, then that's what it's all about.

Pardon me, but I don't buy it. I think that, like most "channeled" information, this is 1% inspired and 99% just plain invented. The work of such people may be honest, in the sense that they've convinced themselves that it's real; but that doesn't make it responsible.

Next: Gordon-Michael Scallion

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