The Prophecies of Nostradamus

branie · 27-07-2009 9:39pm #1

anyone here ever read this famous (or infamous) book of predictions from the 16th century?

Nerin · 27-07-2009 9:41pm

yes, its sitting on my shellf with all my other odd books

why do you ask?

branie · 27-07-2009 9:43pm

just wondering

junkyard · 27-07-2009 9:44pm

They're so vague you can make what you want of them.

Genghiz Cohen · 28-07-2009 12:53pm

And that one about the fall of the twins (9/11 refrence) had a date on it after the man himself died.

bigeasyeah · 28-07-2009 1:02pm

Yeah read some of his writings.My verdict-complete balderdash

faceman · 28-07-2009 2:03pm

After his massive FAIL in july 1999 (his only quatrain that actually specified a date, I dont give any credibility to any of Nostradamus ramblings.

Riamfada · 28-07-2009 2:31pm

I have it hear. I have read the sections that relate to past events and I cant even see how people get predictions out of it.

smithcity · 28-07-2009 4:58pm

His quatrains are so ambiguous, and many of the translations have been found to be severely flawed.
It's easy to look back and make certain ones fit in somehow with past events, but there are no serious predictions of any definite events in the future.

It's always the case that after something happens, somebody picks up the book and interprets something so that it fits, but does anyone ever pick it up and see what a quatrain actually suggests about the future?

Not that I've heard.

ben bedlam · 28-07-2009 5:07pm

It has always, and will always be, completely impossible for any human being to accurately predict the future in any way. End of.

smithcity · 28-07-2009 5:15pm

Well, I wouldn't make such a sweeping and all encompassing comment as that.

However I would hold that if someone had that ability, and decided to write down the predictions so that they would be recorded for posterity, why would they encode them so that they couldn't be understood?

What would be the point of ever writing them down at all?

There are far better ways of keeping secrets than writing them in a book for all to see.

Ave Sodalis · 28-07-2009 11:19pm

His 'predictions' seem to be based on hindsight and the human brain's inability to see random things. Our brain almost always sees a pattern or shape were none exists.. such as when we see shapes in clouds when we are younger. The same princable, it looks like, applies here.

I, however, don't like giving opinions based on prejudice and content in merely saying that he may or may not have had some way of seeing certain patterns in history that many would not have seen, and believed them to repeat themselves.

Based on this, giving an accurate 'prediction' would be difficult, therefore not to be expected as exact.

Then again it could be all a load of nonsense and coincidence.

A_Fitz · 01-08-2009 4:00am

I'm pretty sceptical about him and his theories - they've been misinterpreted numerous times to 'fit' what has happened since he made them, so who knows like?