Who was Nostradamus
and was he a
genuine "prophet"?
Nostradamus was a sixteenth-century astrologer,
Kabbalist,
and medical doctor having something of a celebrity status in twentieth-century America.
Whatever Nostradamus was, he was not a genuine prophet. First, it is an undeniable fact
that Nostradamus gave numerous false prophecies. Second, his prophecies are so vague and
unclear that they have no single "correct" interpretation. This is proven by the
fact that all his modern "interpreters" contradict one another. Nostradamus
himself confessed that the vague manner in which he wrote his "prophecies" was
so that "they could not possibly be understood until they were interpreted after the
event and by it."(1) Further, not a single genuine prophecy of Nostradamus has ever
been proved. His deliberately obscure style of writing has caused critics to allege that
he was little more than a con man. Even the occult encyclopedia Man, Myth and Magic
observes the possibility "that Nostradamus composed them (the 'prophecies') with
tongue in cheek, as he was well aware that there is an enduring market for prophecies and
particularly for veiled ones."(2) Consider the following characteristic prophecy by
Nostradamus:
Scythe by the Pond, in conjunction with Sagittarius at the
high point of its ascendant--disease, famine, death by soldiery--the century/age draws
near its renewal (Century I, verse 16).(3)
The possible "interpretations" of this passage
are endless. The point is that deliberately enigmatic "prophecies" have no
proper interpretation, and therefore no proper fulfillment. People merely read into these
prophecies many different "revelations," none of which are correct. All this is
why one critic observes,
The marvelous prophecies of Michel de
Nostredame, upon
sober examination, turn out to be a tiresome collection of vague, punning, seemingly badly
constructed verses written by a man who, in his other work, showed that he was quite
capable of writing correct, concise French. The printers served him poorly, committing
errors that make his centuries (prophecies composed of four line verses arranged in groups
of 100) even more delightful to those who find obscurity profound.... From a distance of
more than 400 years, I fancy I can hear a bearded Frenchman laughing at the naivety of his
20th century dupes.(4)
Footnotes
1. James
Randi, "Nostradamus: The Prophet for All
Seasons," The Skeptical Inquirer, Fall 1982, p. 31.
2. "Nostradamus," in Cavendish, ed., Man,
Myth and Magic, Vol. 15 (Freeport, NY: Marshall Cavendish, 1983), p. 2017.
3.
Randi, "Nostradamus, The Prophet," p. 32.
4. Ibid., p. 36.
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