Can people in actuality perceive the upcoming? Can they receive messages from across time and space?
For centuries, seers and prophets have come forward, offering dramatic visions of mankind's providence. But what happens when the predictions turn lethal?
Paris, France, 1555. Astrologer and physician Michel de Nostradamus publishes a volume of four-line poems called quatrains. Readers at the time are bewildered by the author's use of manifold languages, word puzzles, and what was even then considered antediluvian syntax.
The book of 353 quatrains, foretold natural disasters, wars, conflagrations, plagues and other major problems far into the future.
But perhaps even more inexplicable is the volume's title, "Les Propheties," "The Prophecies."
He wrote down his visions in the form of “quatrains”, which are four-line poems. These can be difficult to decipher, and it is their very vague nature that skeptics say discount their meaningfulness.
Did he really see the future, or are we vainly trying to find meaning in someone’s puzzling ramblings?
Dig these:
1) 9/11:
“Earthshaking fire from the center of the Earth
Will cause tremors around the New City,
Two great rocks will war for a long time,
Then Arethusa will redden a new river.”
This is one we can all relate to, as many of the predictions happened a long time ago. Center of the Earth doesn’t make much sense except if you think 9/11 was an inside job, in that the detonations came from within the building. It might also mean that the USA is debatably the most commanding nation, the center of the Earth.
The New City, New York, experiencing tremors makes sense as does two great rocks, The Twin Towers. But they don’t war for a long time, so was he talking about Islamic terrorism and the USA?
Arethusa was a Greek nymph and we can’t relate that to the disaster but redden a new river could be a river of blood. In another quatrain he supposedly wrote: "Two steel birds will fall from the sky on the Metropolis / The sky will burn at forty-five degrees latitude.” We don’t need to explain steel birds, and New York lies at 40 degrees North. Although, there is proof to suggest that the first part was made up, and the quatrain actually went like this: “The sky will burn at forty-five degrees latitude, Fire approaches the great new city.”
2) The rise of Hitler:
“From the depths of the West of Europe
A young child will be born of poor people,
He who by his tongue will seduce a great troop
His fame will increase towards the realm of the East.”
Two lines from another quatrain read:
“Beasts ferocious with hunger will cross the rivers,
The greater part of the battlefield will be against Hister.”
By West Europe we can say Germany. Hitler wasn’t born underprivileged but experienced poverty in his early life and was destitute for a while. His populist policies were also meant to support the exploited. He was a great orator who got most of the country behind him and surely seduced a great troop. His reputation, or notoriety, did indeed amplify. In the other lines the beasts that cross rivers could be Germany invading countries and of course Hister could be Hitler, although it’s thought Nostradamus was using it as a name for the Danube River.
3) The French Revolution:
“From the enslaved populace, songs, chants and demands
While princes and lords are held captive in prisons,
These will in the future by headless idiots
Be received as divine prayers.”
One might look at the enslaved masses as what was known as the ‘Third Estate’, the common people of France who for the most part had been subjected to deficiency and inequities. They banded together with chants and demands and stormed the Bastille. Indeed, many of the noble people were imprisoned by the tides of the mob. As for headless, we have ‘the guillotine’.
4) Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing:
“Near the gates and within two cities
There will be scourges the like of which was never seen,
Famine within plague, people put out by steel,
Crying to the great immortal God for relief”
The two cities make sense, and a scourge never seen was the dropping of the first atomic bomb on a populace. Famine and plague could be radiation poisoning and those sufferers left howling for relief.
5) The Great Fire of London:
“The blood of the just will commit a fault at London
Burnt through lightning of twenty threes the six:
The ancient lady will fall from her high place
Several of the same sect will be killed.”
The ‘fault’ was perhaps a fire that started at a bakery owned by a man called Thomas Farriner. That was in London and the great fire happened in 1666. Three times 20 equals 60 and plus the 6 you have 66. London could be the ancient lady and indeed London was at that time in a very high place. The city didn’t fall, but the damage was vast. The city had to be practically rebuilt. As for the same sect, was he talking about religious people or the mostly poor that died?
6) The Moon Landings:
“He will come to travel to the corner of Luna
Where he will be captured and put in a strange land,
The unripe fruits to be subject of great scandal,
Great blame, to one, great praise.”
‘He’, the astronauts, will travel to Luna (Latin for moon or goddess of the moon). Captured could mean put on TV and of course space was a strange land. The unripe fruits some people think could be the beginnings of space travel and the cost, accidents, even moon-landing deniers, could all be scandal. Depending on where you stand on the space race, you might blame or praise it.
7) JFK and RFK being assassinated:
"The great man will be struck down in the day by a thunderbolt,
An evil deed foretold by the bearer of a petition.”
Another falls at night time
Conflict at Reims, London and a pestilence in Tuscany"
A great man in JFK is struck down not by thunderbolt but by gunshot. This deed was indeed forecasted as he had received many death threats (petitions). Another falls, could be RFK who at nighttime (he was killed at 12.15 am) was assassinated. And as for the last part it’s a long shot, but these murders reverberated around the world.
8) Napoleon:
"PAU, NAY, LORON will be more of fire than of the blood
To swim in praise,the great one to flee to the confluence
He will refuse entry to the Piuses,
The depraved ones and the Durance will keep them imprisoned.”
Nostradamus doesn’t mention France explicitly, but Pau, Nay, Loron are three towns in the southern part of the country. Rearrange these words and you get Napaulon Roy. In French, Roy (spelled Roi) means king, so you’ve Napoleon the King. He certainly swam in praise and perhaps by confluence it could mean how he battled all through Europe. Some people think the mention of Pius relates to Popes Pius VI and Pius VII, who were both imprisoned by Napoleon as is said in the last line.
9) Louis Pasteur:
"The lost thing is discovered, hidden for many centuries.
He will be celebrated almost as a God-like figure
This is when the moon completes her great cycle,
But by other rumors he shall be dishonored."
Pasteur was the great French biologist, microbiologist and chemist who was in fact pretty much the demigod due to how many lives he saved. It seems Nostradamus did mention Pasteur by name as the French reads “Sera Pasteur demi-Dieu honore.” The thing discovered may be the technique to obliterate bacteria by heating beverages and allowing them to cool, among other discoveries he made. But then it says after a while he will be desecrated, which Pasteur was, many years later in 1995. That was when Gerald Lynn Geison published his biography of Pasteur “The Private Science of Louis Pasteur” that leaves him in a less heroic light.
Nostradamus had become, initially, celebrated as an almanac writer.
One has got to actually understand that this is during the time of the printing revolution. And he was one of its first bestselling authors. And then he embarked on a history of the future, which would look at everything up to the year 3797 AD, nearly 1,800 years from now, and beyond.
The book received a mixed reaction when it was published. One critic charged that Nostradamus conspired to ‘wrappe hys prophesyes in such darke wryncles of obscuritye that no man could pyke out of them either sence or understandying certayn.’ But others accepted his prophesying. Catherine de Médicis, wife of the king of France, was one of his most prominent admirers.
"The Prophecies" was in the beginning met with out-and-out incredulity and contempt. Many believed Nostradamus to be either a swindle or mentally ill, perhaps both, probable due to the fact that one of his verses outrageously foretold of a predominantly violent death for Henry II, the king of France.
Nostradamus made a prophecy about Henry II dying in a jousting accident.
Quatrain 35 read that a young lion would face the old in conventional combat. He shall be pierced through a gilded cage, two wounds made one. The wrangle happened precisely as he foretold it.
Both men had lions on their shields. Large shards went through the gilded visor of the king. One penetrated his forehead into his brain, the other in between his eye and socket, destroying his eye. And he died of infection of the brain, ten days later-- an agonizing death.
After the king's death, Nostradamus' reputation as a seer of the future grew rapidly, which was, at the time, not necessarily a good thing.
It is well known that Nostradamus concealed the nature of his prophecies, which, at that time, was very politically incorrect and could have gotten him in a lot of trouble. He would come into great conflict with the church if he put himself on a pedestal and be like Noah or Moses or people like this.
Despite the controversy, "The Prophecies" eventually became one of the most widely-read books in the world. It both astounded and terrified readers with its predictions about dreadful events to come.
Is it possible Nostradamus received his prophetic visions because he was in touch with a higher power?
It's an interesting theory and could help explain how Nostradamus was able to see and know things that would not happen for centuries, things he was trying to warn us about.
Some readers later credited Nostradamus with foretelling the Great Fire of London, the rise of Napoléon and Hitler, and the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.
Michel de Nostredame was born on either 14 or 21 December 1503, and he passed away on 2 July 1566. He is almost certainly the world’s most illustrious seer of the future, sometimes called a soothsayer, or prophet, who from a young age so they say, had visions of future events.
Although there is much skepticism about the accuracy of Nostradamus’s predictions, the popularity of his published prophecies has not diminished.
The purposeful vagueness of his pronouncements continues to make them appear pertinent to past, present and future world events.