Nostra damus cum falsa damus, nam fallere nostrum est; Et cum falsa damus, nil nisi nostra

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1 Nostradamus: False Prophet Du Jour By Gary DeMar Nostra damus cum falsa damus, nam fallere nostrum est; Et cum falsa damus, nil nisi nostra damus. 1 Rush Limbaugh will become a liberal Democrat after a heart-to-heart talk with Barbra Streisand, and Fidel Castro will be overthrown and move to Beverly Hills. So say two prominent psychics. As with most predictions, people forget what the prognosticators said at the beginning of the new year. If one of their predictions does come to pass (a certain percentage always do), the highly exalted title of prophet will be affixed to their name. Of course, failed predictions never seem to come up in polite psychic conversation. The late Jeane Dixon continually reminded people that she had predicted the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in The prophecy was repeated to investigative reporter Jack Anderson, who published it in Parade magazine in Well, not quite. In reality, she merely employed the well-known 20-year cycle that every president elected in an even decade year since 1840 died in office. 3 A chart showing the 20-year-interval deaths of the presidents appeared in a Ripley s Believe it or Not book first published in Franklin Roosevelt, while elected in 1932, died of natural causes in 1945 during his fourth term. Ronald Reagan (1980) officially broke the 1 We give our own when we give false things, for it is our nature to deceive; And when we give false things, we only give our own things. (Quoted in James Randi, The Mask of Nostradamus [New York: Charles Scribner s Sons, 1990], 20). 2 David Wellechinsky, Amy Wallace, and Irving Wallace, The People s Almanac Presents the Book of Predictions (New York: William Morrow, 1980), Bill Hendrick, Believe it... or not, The Atlanta Constitution (January 5, 1998), D1. Dixon did predict that a Democrat would be elected, a chance.

2 2 cycle after serving two complete terms. Overall, how good of a prophet was Dixon? Among her failed predictions: a world war started by Red China in 1958; Russia to be the first to put a man on the moon and a stunning wave of suicides in the U.S. She also stated repeatedly that President Nixon had excellent vibes and would be remembered as one of the great modern presidents. 4 She also failed to predict her own 1997 death. What everyone failed to predict was the death of Princess Diana, even the celebrated sixteenth-century prophet Nostradamus. More about this in a moment. Michel de Notredame As we near the end of the second millennium after the birth of Christ, 5 deliberately obscure prophecies of Michel de Notredame, better known as Nostradamus (the Latin form of his French name), are being reworked and modernized to fit contemporary events. As we ll see, this has been done repeatedly to suit prophetic opportunists. Michel de Notredame ( ) was born in the Provincial city of St. Remy, France, into a Jewish family that had converted to Catholicism. He was well educated, studying the humanities, which in that day were grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. The last consisted of a mixture of what we now know as the science of astronomy and the art of astrology. All of these subjects were taught in Latin. 6 Prior to his university training, Michel learned Greek, Latin, and Hebrew from his grandfather. He continued his education by pursuing medical training at the prestigious University of Montpelier in His medical skills 4 Wellechinsky, Wallace, and Wallace, The Book of Predictions, Actually, the second millennium passed five years earlier since Jesus was born around 5 B.C. 6 Randi, Mask of Nostradamus, 12.

3 3 distinguished him as a plague doctor. 7 Following his medical studies, Nostradamus cultivated his early interest in astrology which he had picked up during his university training, a required subject at Montpelier. His attempts at publishing annual almanacs that contained considerable amount of astrological prophetic speculation were an immediate success. Like modern-day prophets, Nostradamus s enigmatic quatrains (four-line prophecies) were taken as accurate predictions of future events. The accidental death of King Henry II of France in 1559 in a jousting tournament solidified Nostradamus s reputation as a true prophet among the nobility. It s a curious thing that if the prophecy was designed to predict the death of Henry II, why didn t Nostradamus use the king=s name? In addition, if the quatrain was so clear, then why didn t the king refrain from participating in a dangerous jousting contest? And why didn t Nostradamus warn the king? 8 He had corresponded with Henry on March 14, 1557, in which he had predicted great things for the young king. The quatrain best fits a past event, the imprisonment and execution of Sir Thomas More by Henry VIII of England. Even so, Nostradamus s fame as a seer spread throughout Europe among the gullible. The supposed Henry II prophecy and other predictive quatrains have solidified Nostradamus s reputation as a Atrue prophet@ among today=s spiritual intelligentsia looking for any hint of the divine without requiring moral obligation. Because Nostradamians believe the French seer envisioned the Great Fire of London (1666), the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, the cunning brutality of Adolf Hitler, the life of Princess Diana, the coming Athird antichrist,@ and events related 7 Randi, Mask of Nostradamus, For a critical analysis of the supposed predictive death of Henry II, see Randi, The Mask of Nostradamus,

4 4 to the year 2000 and beyond, Nostradamus is considered be in a prophetic league of his own. Prophecies in the Eye of the Beholder When Croesus, the Lydian king famous for his wealth, asked the Oracle at Delphi whether he should go to war against Cyrus of Persia, in 550 B.C., the oracle told him, AAfter crossing the Halys River, Croesus will destroy a great empire.@ True to the Oracle=s word, Croesus did destroy a great empire. His own. At first hearing, Croesus assumed that it would be Cyrus= empire that would fall. Did Nostradamus really make such accurate predictions? The prophecies are at best vague. Supposedly the designed ambiguity comes from a fear of being accused of witchcraft by the Inquisition. We are told that ANostradamus confused the dating of his predictions and wrote in a bewildering mixture of anagrams, symbols, Old French, Latin, and other languages.@ 9 Like most psychics and fortunetellers, his prophecies, in hindsight, can be made to say anything. Translation has a lot to do with the identification of the historical personages in the Nostradamus quatrains. With Aa bewildering mixture of anagrams, symbols, Old French, and other languages,@ a translator would almost have his pick of what he wanted the Aprophecies@ to say. In addition, should they be interpreted literally or figuratively? Here is an example: A great swarm of bees will arise but no one will know from whence they come: They ambush by night, the sentinel under the vines, the city handed over to five bribed babblers. 170B76. 9 "Europe=s Greatest Prophet: The Uncanny Words of Nostradamus," in Strange Stories, Amazing Facts

5 5 Are the bees literal bees? What about the vines? One believer in the Nostradamus= prophecies interprets the above quatrain this way: Nostradamus foresaw that soon the empty Hall of Mars like countless other halls throughout France would be decorated with the bees of Napoleon=s coat of arms as a symbol of his coming Empire. The coup d=etat was planned the night before. The Afive babblers@ are the Directory=s executive counselors. Two of them conspired with Napoleon, the other three were bribed to look the other way. 10 It=s obvious that the people did know Afrom whence@ Napoleon came. Bees must be interpreted figuratively. ABabblers@ must mean Aconspirators.@ What is the Asentinel under the vine@? Taking a literal reading, my guess is that Nostradamus foresaw the arrival of African Killer Bees. It=s Nostradamus=s visions of the distant future that interest his end-time devotees. The year 2000 plays a significant role, especially when astrology is called upon to confirm the process. In astrological reckoning the term AThe Great Year@ signifies an astrological monthcsome two thousand years long. Each of these Amonths@ forms a human epoch and is guided by the positive and negative potentials of the sign by which it is governed. There is an overlap period between the old and the new ages. Supposedly we are in the change-over period from Pisces to Aquarius. The (Pleasantville, NY: The Reader=s Digest Association, 1976), John Hogue, Nostradamus and the Millennium: Predictions of the Future (New York: A Dolphin Books, 1987), 69.

6 6 Piscean age, the era of the fish, heralded the Christian age. We are, looking through the eyes of the astrologers, about to embark upon a new age dominated by science, technology, and humanity, the Age of Aquarius. The year 2000 marks the point in time when both Pisces and Aquarius have equality. AIn his Epistle to Henry II Nostradamus predicts that the Aquarian age will dominate human consciousness around the end of the current lunar cycle at approximately 2250 A.D.@ 11 Like every self-styled prophet, Nostradamus presents two future scenarios that cannot coexist. The first is total nuclear war by 1999 and the second is a golden age of enlightened peace by the end of this millennium.... Nostradamus states clearly that if we survive our next generation we may look forward to thousands of years of Earth-related history. 12 Is it any wonder that the prophecies of Nostradamus have elicited excitement among the spiritually sensitive? You can take your pick and always be right. Nostradamus=s Apredictions@ are questionable, to say the least. 13 Unfortunately, few people seem to have learned any lessons from the failures of previous prophetic speculators. Why should we expect to see any difference when people encounter AThe Man Who Saw Tomorrow,@ as Nostradamus is often called? How many more will be lured into believing that the end is near as they read Nostradamus=s prediction of the rise of Aa great King of Terror@ (the antichrist?) in July of 1999? Where=s Hal Lindsey when you need him? We don=t have to wait until the next millennium to test Nostradamus as a prophet. Here=s what one Nostradamian wrote in 1994: 11 Hogue, Nostradamus and the Millennium, Hogue, Nostradamus and the Millennium, See Randi, Mask of Nostradamus, 144B48.

7 7 [I]n 1991, a rift between Princess Diana and Prince Charles became public knowledge. Several newspapers carried reports of an alleged telephone conversation between the Princess and a close friend, James Gilbey. A book detailing the Princess=s miserable marriage and rejection by Prince Charles stoked the fires of speculation still further. These events may well be reflected in quatrain VI:74: AShe who was cast out will return to reign; her enemies found among conspirators; more than ever will her reign be triumphant. At three and seventy death is very rare.@ 14 The author gives the following as his interpretation of the uncanny prophetic ability of Nostradamus. AThis suggests that in the end the popularity of the Princess will guarantee her a welcome return to the centre of monarchy, with her perhaps living until the age of 73.@ 15 Now that Diana is dead, Nostradamus followers will claim that only the interpretation is wrong. The prophecy must refer to someone else. It=s unfortunate that so many Christian prophecy writers have followed the path of the Nostradamians. When a prophecy of theirs fails, they go back to the drawing board without an apology and crank out another prophecy book with the same assurances that are right. 14 Stephen Skinner, Millennium Prophecies: Predictions for the Year 2000 and Beyond from the World=s Greatest Seers and Mystics (New York: Barnes and Noble, [1994] 1997), 86B Skinner, Millennium Prophecies, 87.

1. Do you know anything about Nostradamus? What? 2. List students answers on the board.

1. Do you know anything about Nostradamus? What? 2. List students answers on the board. NOSTRADAMUS People & Entertainment Nostradamus ; biography; prophecies Functional II Narrating a life story Passive voice Internet (http://www.nostradamususa.com/html/biography.html) Luis de Azambuja Color: