A French physician and astrologer, seen by his modern followers as a prophet whose warnings should be heeded today. He wrote quatrains in groups of 100, known as Centuries, which his followers take to be phophecies. Skeptics consider the poetry of Nostradamus to be mainly gibberish. I don't think the Great One could have predicted that he would become a one-man industry in the 20th century. Publishing houses will never go broke printing non-sense claiming to be the latest predictions culled from the manuscripts of Nostradamus.
True believers, such as Erika Cheetham, believe that Nostradamus foresaw the invention of bombs, rockets, submarines, and airplanes. He predicted the Great Fire of London (1666) and the rise of Adolph Hitler and many other wonders.
Skeptics, such as James Randi, cast doubt upon the interpretation of Nostradamus's quatrains.
Here is how Randi and Cheetham read one of the more famous quatrains, allegedly predicting the rise of Adolph Hitler to power in Germany:
Bestes farouches de faim fleuves tranner
Plus part du champ encore Hister sera
En caige de fer le grand sera traisner
Quand rien enfant de Germain observa.
Cheetham's version:
Beasts wild with hunger will cross the rivers,
The greater part of the battle will be against Hitler.
He will cause great men to be dragged in a cage of iron,
When the son of Germany obeys no law.
Randi's version:
Beasts mad with hunger will swim across rivers,
Most of the army will be against the Lower Danube.
The great one shall be dragged in an iron cage
When the child brother will observe nothing.
You can read their arguments for yourself, but I'd like to add one thing that neither mentions. `Germania' is a term which refers to an ancient region of Europe, north of the Danube and east of the Rhine. It may also refer to a part of the Roman Empire corresponding to present-day northeastern France and part of Belgium and the Netherlands. To me, both versions of this prophetic poem are gibberish. And why anyone would think Hister refers to Hitler rather than exclusively to an area of the Danube, which even Nostradamians recognize as the common usage of the term in their hero's day, is beyond me.
In conclusion, let me note that there is a video program out known as "Nostradamus: Prophet of Doom." It is a highly uncritical, unskeptical and misleading presentation of Cheetham's views and has been broadcast by A & E in their biography series: a lowlight in an otherwise fairly informative series. James Randi, who has written a critical and skeptical book on the Nostradamus phenomenon, was interviewed for the program, but he claims his views were twisted or ignored. Says Randi
I now know what validity I will assign to anything the "Biography" program presents to me in the future, and I hope that my readers will, too. The lack of respect for truth and for the education of the viewers that was demonstrated by the show's producers, Craig Haffner, Donna Lusitana, and Scott Paddor, will not in the least trouble them; the money is already in the bank, and they just don't care.
Reader comments
I've been browsing through your "skeptic's Dictionary" for a research paper I'm doing on Nostradamus. As I was looking through it, I noticed that, even though I think you're a closed-minded S.O.B, you're an interesting one.
reply: Well, I've only been open to studying and investigating this stuff for more than 30 years. I take it "closed-minded S.O.B" is your idea of an insult intended to indicate that you do not agree with me but have no reasonable arguments to make, which, you no doubt have already discovered are much more difficult to come by than hurling insults.
I'd love to hear your views on the (non)existence of
Vampires and/or Unicorns. FYI, there's a book of photos of
unicorns. I think it's called Unicorns I Have Seen. Check it out.
Angel
reply: I have no plans to write about vampires, but unicorns is on my list of topics to take up in the future. I take it that if you see a book with photos of unicorns in it, you believe you have seen pictures of unicorns. Very interesting, if modest, standard of evidence. If you see a book of photos of Catholics with Tails, would you accept it at face value? I hope not. I think you've seen too many movies and take your fiction too seriously if you think there are unicorns. (I hope you are not being disingenous and do not intend animals with one horn to count as unicorns. We are talking about the mythical horse with a long horn sticking out of the middle of the front of its head, aren't we?)
further reading
Randi, James. The Mask of Nostradamus : the prophecies of the world's most famous seer (Buffalo, N.Y. : Prometheus Books, 1993).