Nostradamus stories continue to haunt

Following the renewed interest in Nostradamus and his prophecies, we bring you an article about the history of his life, and the background to his "prophecies" in double and multiple quotation marks * "Nostradamus' prophecies must be attributed to his imagination, and his success - to his charisma."

Time travel with the man who saw tomorrow

Once upon a time there was a man who could not be born in his time. Michael de Nostradamus, better known as "Nostradamus", travels in time, from the French Renaissance to the future, on the wings of his prophetic vision. Although he died in 1566, more than 400 years ago, the long arms of his prophecies return and twist among us, in our time and generation. Nostradamus, according to his believers, at the time predicted future events, for example, the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, the appearance of AIDS, a deadly earthquake that would hit the USA in the next decade (actually the earthquake was supposed to occur in 1988 according to Nostradamus' vision, but continuing Through him it is claimed that his words were poorly interpreted).

According to Orson Welles' 1981 film, "The Man Who Saw Tomorrow", Nostradamus was a man of a rare breed, a prophet who was highly regarded by his people and by his queen (Queen of France), thanks to at least two famous events. The first happened when his first book of prophecies was distributed throughout the kingdom, in 1566, and the second, when he was commissioned in 1559 by Queen Catherine, who was recently widowed by her husband, King Henry II, and was asked to predict the future of the royal house. And these are in addition to letters and documents sent to him by businessmen, which are evidence of the many requests they made to him in their desire to receive his advice, before they start a new initiative.

Nostradamus attracted fans and sympathizers who spread his prophecies even long after his death. In 1781, more than two hundred years after his death, his popular writings were the subject of negotiations with the Church, which included them in the list of motor letters from circulation.

Today, when we are already at the beginning of the third millennium, Nostradamus leaps from his grave into the heart of public opinion. In 1991, the Japanese author, Ben Giotto, reached the top of the best-seller list in his country with his book that dealt with the predictions of Nostradamus, mainly because of the chapter dealing with the Middle East, in which Nostradamus predicted the rise of Saddam Hussein and the war between Iraq and Kuwait. Other books published in France, England and the USA tried to check how his prophecies regarding modern history were fulfilled.
His successors predict and prophesy through his writings a series of apocalyptic events, in which his name is associated.

For the benefit of the skeptics among us, it should be noted that the incessant emigration in Nostradamus' musings must be anchored in the current space-time fabric. If it were possible, through wormholes crossing the universe, to travel in time from one period to another, and back again, Nostradamus would be the first time traveler. But if the future is impenetrable, and is protected like the black holes in the universe are protected by the threshold of the event, and it is indeed a journey in one direction only, then the prophecies of Nostradamus must be attributed to his imagination and his success to his charisma.

I asked the libraries and archives for material about Nostradamus.
"You?" the librarian asked me when I was looking in the catalog for his prophecy books.
"he?" asked a salesman at a used book store when I went looking for his old and rare volumes.
"Oh that?" Zevan wondered at another bookstore, when he sent me to a small, forgotten shelf, in a remote corner of the back of the store.
Although I expected the prophecies of Nostradamus to be like reading a horoscope, or reading tarot cards, I was curious to find out the reason why Hinain didn't stop after all these many years.

Of all that history has left about his private life, we find very little. It is known that Michael de Nostradamus was born in 1503, in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, the son of a Jewish family called "Gansonnet". The family converted shortly before he was born, and being Catholic from now on and according to the commandments of the law changed their name to "Nostradam". If they had not changed their name, the family members would have had to leave Provence and abandon their property.

Michael was a brilliant student at the school in Avignon and at the University of Montpellier. When he was about to finish his studies, at the age of 22, he adopted the custom that was common at the time, and gave his name the Latin sound, "Nostradamus". Four years later, he completed his medical studies and qualified as a doctor. Wearing the square hat that represented all junior doctors, he was painted, and this is the only one that has survived. His open eyes look into the distance, and perhaps into the distances of time. His long and full beard does not hide his rosy cheeks and smiling lips.

The painting places Nostradamus outside, between two buildings, with the space between them peeking behind his left shoulder, and a tree serving as a background behind his right shoulder. His right hand rests on a globe and his left holds a pair of compasses and a telescope. A doctor, it was thought then, should connect what he learned with an appreciation for the natural world.

Despite the image created around him and despite the fact that he was interested in astrology, so history tells us, actual observation of the stars was not at the top of Nostradamus' mind. The world had to wait for Galileo, about 40 years after the death of Nostradamus, for a telescope to point towards the sky.

Nostradamus came out there as a doctor with extraordinary skills who helped the poor generously, following in the footsteps of his grandfather, Pierre, also a doctor. (Medicine was one of the few professions that were open to Jews at that time.) According to what is said, Nostradamus especially helped in the recovery of patients affected by the disease. Some modern commentators claim that he had more information about the proper treatment of infections than his colleagues of his time, and he only pretended to use herbal remedies, because he wanted to avoid complications with the authorities, and risk her being put on the stake for witchcraft. In any case, it was this disease that killed his wife and two young children in 1537, when he was on his way to a patient in a distant rural district. A few years later, Nostradamus married a second time, and gave birth to three sons and three daughters.

His colleagues reported that he worked a lot and slept little, that he enjoyed good health until a relatively advanced age, when he suffered from an attack of the common cold. Nostradamus died of a heart attack in his sleep, aged 63, about a year before the date he predicted his death.

Due to being famous during his lifetime, everything we know about him today is a collection of legends. According to one of the stories, Nostradamus met on his way a simple-minded and young Franciscan monk, Brother Felix Peretti. He knelt before him, kissed the young monk's robe, and indicated that he was thereby expressing his appreciation to the Pope. The commentators of his biography claim that this was not a misidentification, but an expression of his prophetic skills: in 1585, 19 years after the death of Nostradamus, a private (the simple monk since then) was crowned Pope Sixtus V.
Another legend tells the story of Nostradamus' journey to Paris, at the request of Queen Catherine. Then... Nostradamus woke up in the night to a knock on his door. In front of him stood a young and frightened slave, because of his master's beloved hunting dog that had been lost. The slave hoped that the famous contract could help him. Nostradamus did not get up from his bed, answered a question that had not yet been asked, and ordered the young man to go to the road leading to Orleans, where he would find the dog being led on a leash. Indeed, so the story continues, an hour later the lost dog was found.

In 1550, at the end of two decades of work in the medical field, Nostradamus published the first of his annual edicts. This one almanac, as well as the 15 that followed, contained readable prophetic information, such as the dates of the lunar phases, with references to expected events that expanded the horizon of astrological knowledge.

At the beginning of his new career, as a writer and publisher, Nostradamus wrote a practical book for home remedies and cosmetics, and later translated Galen's classic book on astronomy. But Nostradamus is etched in the memory of history, precisely because of books of prophetic poems called "CENTURIES", published in the years 1555-1558. A thousand short passages, each containing a quartium (four lines), which reads like a cross between a liturgy and a riddle:

"When the snake comes to circle in the air the French blood will be attacked in Haron by Spain. Or then many people will be lost, the leader will flee and hide in the marshes." - Mea, 1 quartin no. 19.

"The fire will take hold at night in two houses. Many people will suffocate and burn in it, almost two rivers will certainly occur. The Sun, the Rainbow, the CAPER will be eclipsed. - Maa, 2 quartin 35.

These quartets, like all the others, lost their rhyme during the translation from Old French. The first and third lines rhyme with the second and fourth.

Whatever it is, Quarantine 19 is supposed to predict events in the Second World War: France will be attacked from the air by Germany, and on the ground by Spain, on the common border. The French president will flee Paris into exile. As for Quarantine 35, the believers of Nostradamus have no explanation that can associate it with any event. Until they learn, there is no astrological meaning to the song. For example, the Sagittarius and the CAPER can refer to the star systems Sagittarius (the person who shoots the bow) and Capricorn, and also, to the sea goat that resides near these two signs in the zodiac. The prophecy has so far not matched any event involving catastrophic decisions that would take place in a city close to two rivers.

The tendency of these predictions to jump back in time, often touching on events that have not yet happened, gives logic to those who defend Nostradamus's writing as predicted truth. The first dozen quanta in the first century alone, according to Nostradamus researcher Henry Roberts, predict events that took place over hundreds of years and several countries, in the period that began with the Terror in the 18th century through the French Revolution, the Communist Revolution of 1917 in Russia, and until Mussolini's rise to power in Italy, Before World War II. In this way, the "hundreds" act like a capsule that must be released at the right time, filled with tiny caverns that are delay mechanisms that will open in different periods of time.

The word "hundreds", as Nostradamus used it in the title, referred to his 12 books, each containing one hundred quatrains. But, if we accept this as a given, another way of thinking about hundreds thinks of them as time - rolling through the centuries towards the future. By any definition, his hundreds are few as in the stories of the Bible, and do not give an exact number of years or hours. For example, the date Nostradamus mentioned as the date when the end of the world will occur can be interpreted in several ways, depending on where one takes the starting point, and so the end can come in the year 2000, or later, in the year 3797. However, the hypnotic rhythms and rich imagination of the "hundreds" seem As instilling a new meaning in the eyes of each newly embarrassed person - like the ink stains in a Rorschach test, when each letter's interpretation is free to be read, according to the specific vision with which the examinee sees the written words.

According to the researchers, the written words themselves can be treated like letter inversions, apparently designed by Nostradamus in order to hide the meanings of each event until the moment of its occurrence. The writer W.G. Hewitt, who believed she was correctly interpreting Nostradamus' predictions, would come one day, and take pathos to extremes. Hewitt bequeathed a system of actual letters in the letters of each quanerin to harvest actual dates for specific events that happened up to the year 2001. From her experience in methodologies and finding repeated letters. She claims that Nostradamus predicted many events and personalities in the twentieth century. Including the stories surrounding Saddam Hussein, Nelson Mandela, Margaret Thatcher, Boris Yeltsin, Richard Gere, Jane Fonda and Ted Turner.

Quartine 35 of "Maa", 1 for example is a famous prophecy that is supposed to predict the death of King Henry II of France in 1559 in a just accident:

"The young lion will overcome the old man in the material field with the help of a single sock, in a golden cage he will put his eye, two wounds from one, or then he will die a cruel death"

Applying her technique, Hewitt airs this quatrain in successful steps, unfolding the answer like a Freudian dream analysis. By reversing letters, a little at a time, she credits Nostradamus with predicting a long series of events across geographic areas and hundreds of years. To see how Hewitt's cryptography changed the original version, read the list of predictions she "decoded" from that quartet:

Earthquake in California:
"After the earthquake, the US will be violently cracked from coast to coast. Everything will evaporate under a strong sun. The crops will burn, flocks and herds will die and wheat will be scarce.”

The political revolutions in Africa:
"The President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela in his day, Adam Goss, succeeds in obtaining rights for the black majority. The heat and dryness will increase, a deadly virus will disappear from the pages of history."

Victory over aging:
"Medical treatment of old age diseases; The old will become young with smooth skin. The senile will lose their confusion; Robotic luxuries. A new rhythm will strike in life.

Of course, smart critics can quickly interpret who will benefit from these changes. Even when followed verbatim, the quatrains, with all their accompanying ambiguity, can cause prophecy to fall apart.

But despite modern physics and the disappearance of miracles and mystical spells from everyday life, the 12 "centuries" persist. After all, there is something comforting in the thought that someone outside of history can accurately predict events occurring in the present. Whether Nostradamus actually predicted the future or not is a matter of guesswork. But the human need to believe that he did it is a fact.

As for me, I do not accept the explanation that Nostradamus saw true visions. Not due to my lack of faith in him, but because I do not see time as a river that can be entered from any "point" along its banks. According to my opinion, if we know things about the future we will try to change them, and if we succeed, we will live in a future different from the one we predicted. If it is impossible to change the future, if the universe operates according to a plan that was outlined at the beginning of time, then free will is nothing but an illusion, and we have something to fear, worse than wars and earthquakes. We stand before the despair that comes from the knowledge that we do not shape the world, but are shaped by it, whether into a gold mine or a sand dune, without any action on its part.

Although I deny Nostradamus the gift of foresight, I believe he believed what he said. As a Renaissance man he dealt with the art of his time. Witchcraft was banned by the Church and the Inquisition made sure to punish those who practiced it. However, astrology was accepted.

He combined astrology and astronomy as part of the curriculum at the school in Avignon, and was the favorite astrologer of Catherine de' Medici - Queen of France. By serving her, he learned to be a politician and in matters of life and death he used to avoid unambiguous prophecies, which could be proven wrong.

For example, at a meeting held in July 1556, the queen asked him which of her four sons would be the king. He "predicted" that they would all be. In the end, three of them were kings. In the circumstances of those days, he didn't mention that they were going to inherit his older brother (after his death), and let the queen think that they would rule in several countries at the same time. For his services he was protected by the queen. After that meeting, he returned to his home to renew his work on the "hundreds" series, having already published one book, and probably also to his wife and his young son Caesar, who was born in 1555.

As evidence of its popularity, many publishers continued to print the "hundreds" for over 400 years. I had no problem finding a copy of the book at the neighborhood bookstore, when normally, I have to order the books I want to read. No other prophet since the time of the Bible has won a permanent place in the hearts and minds of people like Nostradamus. Either by the fact that the future was indeed known to him, or by imaginary dreams that arose in his mind, he defeated time.

The "conquest" of his teachings began a few decades after his death in 1566. His successors declared him a prophet. Jean Imme de Chabingry wrote a detailed biography of Nostradamus, and in 1594 he wrote the first interpretation of the "hundreds". In almost every century that has passed, Nostradamus' words have been reexamined by scholars, who have reinterpreted the quartins in the spirit of the times and refounded the bad feeling of nobility. After Cavingi came Goyand in 1693, Barest in 1840 and Payko in 1929, to mention a few names. Although lacking the spiritual aspect of the Bible or the poetic power of Shakespeare, Nostradamus' writings won admirers everywhere and at all times. People feared the future, even those who mocked and tried to reject the ideas in his books, seemed bound to suffer. For Nostradamus, his need was simple. In the original dedication of the first volume of "Hundreds", Nostradamus hints at why he undertook to write the work in the first place. The dedication begins with the words: "Wishes and happiness to Caesar Nostradamus, my youngest son." The prophet was already 52 years old when he started his new family, an extreme age relative to those times. He was then subject to what today we would call a "mid-life crisis". There is no doubt that he had a long life, which allowed him to think about the end of his days, but at the same time, here he is holding a small baby in his arms. And as much as Nostradamus could see in his nocturnal trance, it was also clear to him that he would not get to see his son grow up and mature. By writing the "hundreds" Nostradamus weaves a connection with Caesar's future, in his attempt to describe the expected world for his child. During the centuries that passed Nostradamus went from "a man of his time" to "a man of all time". He did so much for others in his life, whether he was reading horoscopes for his clients by finding confirmation in the position of the heavenly bodies, or holding the hands of patients dealing with pre-death fears and weaknesses. This is exactly the bridge to the future that each of us can hope to build.

* Based on an article by Daba Sobel, Omni, December 1993. Translated by Avi Blizovsky

To the article: Nostradamus' alleged prophecies were written as a thought exercise that got out of control

Drafting and editing: H. J. Glykasm, translations and technical writing