Nostradamus - Prophet Or Fraud?

[Jackass]

Two steel birds will fall from the sky
On the Metropolis. The sky will burn
At forty-five degrees latitude.
Fire approaches the great new city.

This is one of the many interpretations of what nostradamus said in the 1500's about world events....the forty five degrees latitude would be about 32 miles from New york City, two steel birds? how could he have a clue about that in 1500's? and the new city, being New York....Is this absolutely amasing physcic powers? Or is it a combination of Nostradamus being vague with his thousands of predictions, and the medi-evil French language he spoke being only understood by a handfull of people on the planet....so who can scrutenise their translations? (there seems to be many conflicting opinions of what he actually said.)

Here's another famous prediction:

Beasts wild with hunger will cross the rivers,
The greater part of the battle will be against Hister.
He will cause great men to be dragged in a cage of iron,
When the son of Germany obeys no law.

Again, this is open to interpretation, but almost naming the man Hitler, knowing he was German, concentration camps, and the lawlessness of Nazi Germany! Adolf Hitler himself funded the translations of nostradamus's work when he believed the man had preditced his coming and the great war.

Should make for an interesting discussion....What is your opinion? Is this evidence of physcic abilitys? The power of dreams, the human mind and the ability to predict the future? Or is Nostradamus the most over hyped, badly translated fraud in the history of this phenominom?

I would give you links, but all you have to do is google it to get a couple of weeks worth of reading

billy the squid

the first quatraine is a fake

http://www.nostradamuspredictionhoax.com/wtc.htm
http://www.cyberwalker.net/columns/sep01/200901.html

The second one is also wrong in that nostrodamus never wrote the word "hitler" more like "hister" which could be anything. some believe that it is the old name of the river Danube (Latin) on which Hitler is said to have been born.

[Jackass]

billy the squid wrote:

the first quatraine is a fake

http://www.nostradamuspredictionhoax.com/wtc.htm
http://www.cyberwalker.net/columns/sep01/200901.html

The second one is also wrong in that nostrodamus never wrote the word "hitler" more like "hister" which could be anything. some believe that it is the old name of the river Danube (Latin) on which Hitler is said to have been born.

Sorry about that, the first one i gave was the alterd vertion used in a chain letter, designed to provoke fears that it was the begining of WWIII.
From your first link (near the bottom), this the original prediction believed to about 9/11:
(good spot billy )

Version #2

The original, authentic passage is typically translated this way:

The sky will burn at forty-five degrees latitude,
Fire approaches the great new city
Immediately a huge, scattered flame leaps up
When they want to have verification from the Normans.

I have "hister" in the second not "hitler"
Although there is some debate over what that words meaing is.
Does this indicate it's just vaugness and loose translations? I mean if a number of predictions are vague enough, and translations are open to debate, can't we make some of them fit a number of world events?

solas

I agree with billy. Lots of nostradamus prophecies have been taken out for airing after 9/11 and squished to fit the scenario..and yes Hister was a reference to the danube.
Nostradamus was adept in astrology and astronomy, as well as studying medicine, he was very well educated in mathematics and philosophy and he studied with the best of them.
I think it's important to remember that he lived around the time of the inquisition and the black death, so he had plenty to chew on.

the verses are written in a crabbed, obscure style, with a polyglot of vocabulary of French, Provencal, Italian, Greek and Latin. In order to avoid being prosecuted as a magician, Nostradamus writes that he deliberately confused the time sequence of the Prophecies so that their secrets would not be revealed to the non-initiate.

many of the references are based on astrological calculations he had spent years studying, (derived from ancient texts) coupled with his own personal perception or world view at the time.

statements like "The sky will burn At forty-five degrees latitude.", which as it stands is not a direct translation, would be better interpretated as piece of astrological significance.

billy the squid

statements like "The sky will burn At forty-five degrees latitude.", which as it stands is not a direct translation, would be better interpretated as piece of astrological significance.

i would concur with this. It would be a different story had he said "the earth will bun at forty-five degrees latitude"

One could suggest that he is referring to some sort of arora borrealus event. I came accross this article a few weeks ago which claims that researchers iin the US bounced radio waves at the earths ionosphere to generate an artificial arora. What applications this might have in war time I dont know, maybe to disrupt radio communications I dont know. but could this be what the Nostrodamus had seen, or was he just referring to a nuclear bomb in that second quatraine.

cournioni

Coincidences do happen... Just look at these lyrics...

In Flames - Episode 666 wrote:

Welcome here, the squirrel-wheel begins
fasten the left hand belts
Remember not to think too much
and your trip will be numbingly pleasant

Non-caring is the easiest way
but to secure a passage to the 2nd plane
you have to complete level one
Their dead-smile lips turn on their TV
while urban gravestones scrape the skies
Rising over marionette cities and marionette skies

This is episode 666
destination chaos
Each and all an actor blind
This is episode 666
destination chaos
Each and all an actor blind
This is episode 666
destination chaos
This is episode 666
destination chaos
Each and all an actor blind
This is episode 666
destination chaos
Each and all an actor blind
This is episode 666
destination chaos

I'd hardly call them prophets, tbh.

solas

Paul Brady's The Island 1985

Now I know us plain folks don't see all the story
And I know this peace and love's just copping out
And I guess these young boys dying in the ditches
Is just what being free is all about
And how this twisted wreckage down on main street
Will bring us all together in the end
And we'll go marching down the road to freedom...
Freedom

think he was referring to NI, but the song was re released after 9/11 and had as much significance in that scenario too.

Oryx

You could make 'twinkle twinkle little star' refer to 9/11 if you really wanted to. I think the problem with nostradamus is that you are always dealing with another persons interpretation and translation, which will sway towards whatever point they want to make. I dont think any of us are sufficiently qualified to read and understand the original texts, should we obtain them , and it sounds as if they were couched in such vague or archaic terms that we may never know what he REALLY meant.

[Jackass]

Obviously there are once off coincidences....but nostradamus has had many predictions....i was trying to establish how this could happen?? Personally i tend to believe it's the vaugness....but i wouldn't say coinsidence....

TrickyDicky

I Know this is kinda off topic but hey it's funny.

http://www.tshirthell.com/store/product.php?productid=350

Stark

I don't think anyone can accurately predict more than a certain distance into the future as the future isn't set in stone. Nostradamus's early predictions may have been correct but it's natural to assume his predictions would get less accurate the later they are (I think this is consistent with what's being observed).

NDC777

www.nostradamus.org

[Jackass]

TrickyDicky wrote:

I Know this is kinda off topic but hey it's funny.

http://www.tshirthell.com/store/product.php?productid=350

Lol tricky, well he's obviously a fraud then :rolleyes:

Steven

Unless the man had some kind of tremendous supercomputer with "Chaos Theory V2.8" installed on a goddamned linux partition I wouldn't give the man the slightest bit of credit for prediction accuracy but, I'll say this for the man, he sure knew how to write a vague piece of literature. Slaps for all who even considered paying attention to him or any other attention grabbing fraud-monger, be he a prophet or working for minimum wage on the psychic hotline.

PeadarofAodh

Can anyone recommend any decent books on nostradamus that aren't written by annoying conspiracy theorists? I'd be interested in reading a realistic, well written book on him.

NDC777

Go here:

http://www.1ebooks.com/nostradamus

http://www.1ebooks.com/1566editionprinceps

Grizabella

Beasts wild with hunger will cross the rivers,
The greater part of the battle will be against Hister.
He will cause great men to be dragged in a cage of iron,
When the son of Germany obeys no law.

Hitler wasn't German, he was born in Austria.

[ Daithí ]

Yes, but one could argue that he was German, since many Austrians considered themselves German and this gave Hitler justification for the Anschluss (union of Austria and Germany). Also, he served in the German army and became Reich Chancellor (and then Führer) of Germany.

Saruman

Umm Arthur C Clarke wrote about satelites orbiting the earth long before they were concieved.. Prophet? Or modern day Sci Fi writer??? Apply same to nostradamus and you could have a Sci-Fi writer from that age!!

Gone West

hey he just writes very vague stuff that could mean anything.
He figured, that eventually some of the stuff, after a few translations should fit some situation in a few centuaries time. FRAUD

colin300

the way i see it is, it is down to whom ever translates it. Your world view. If you are a natural conspiracy theorist at heart then yes when you translate something it will have a spin of conspiracy, so the few people that can translate his works maybe the very people that are looking for a conspiracy or a prophecy whatever you want to call it.

Look at Drosnin who wrote the Bible Code a coincidence and he gets people to believe him. Fair enough predicting someone will die is a hell of a leap to take. But lets be honest in the times the israeli president was in it was inevitable that he would be assassinated. He just looked for what he needed in a massive text and used it too his advantage. The people that dont believe have shown that in any text that is big enough you will find what your looking for. One guy found a refernce to drosnins death in some old book cant think of it now. So its all probabilty.

Kernel

NDC777 wrote:

Go here:

http://www.1ebooks.com/nostradamus

http://www.1ebooks.com/1566editionprinceps

I think the request for for serious books, presumably from reputable and scholarly authors? :rolleyes:

colin300 wrote:

The people that dont believe have shown that in any text that is big enough you will find what your looking for. One guy found a refernce to drosnins death in some old book cant think of it now. So its all probabilty.

The book was Moby Dick, great book. You can find such 'predictions' in any novel apparently... maybe the Great Power is manipulating *all* earthly writers!

http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/moby.html

Bazz

colin300 wrote:

the way i see it is, it is down to whom ever translates it. Your world view. If you are a natural conspiracy theorist at heart then yes when you translate something it will have a spin of conspiracy, so the few people that can translate his works maybe the very people that are looking for a conspiracy or a prophecy whatever you want to call it.

But it’s more an interpretational thing as opposed to an educated conclusion of what his prophesies actually attains. Fair enough it does depend on one’s own view of it and whether that view dictates whether one accepts it or dismisses it. People use the bible code to predict the future, but so can anybody using any written piece. Moby Dick predicting future events, What do you reckon

Ba_barbaraAnne

PeadarofAodh wrote:

Can anyone recommend any decent books on nostradamus that aren't written by annoying conspiracy theorists? I'd be interested in reading a realistic, well written book on him.

tRY The Nostradamus Code by David Ovason, Arrow Books. I found it very interesting, even if it didn't convince me that you can interpret Nostradamus' prophecies before events.

It goes into great detail about the arcane practices of the Middle Ages, Astrology and the 'Green Language' - a way of codifying used by initiates.

It didn't tell us what to expect in the next hundred years or so though! For me, the jury's still out on Nostradamus.