Nostradamus was a French physician and seer who published his predictions in an annual series titled Almanacs (beginning in 1550) and a collection titled The Prophecies (1555). Enthusiasts claim that Nostradamus predicted a number of important events in world history, including the French Revolution, the rise of Adolf Hitler, the atom bomb, and the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City. Detractors, however, claim that his prophecies are so vague and obscure that they could be applied to any number of historical events. Nostradamus feared persecution and couched his predictions in cryptic and metaphorical verses. Skeptics describe the verses as examples of vaticinium ex eventu, or retroactive clairvoyance, which finds nonexistent patterns in completely ambiguous statements.
Biography
Michel de Nostredame was born in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in the south of France in 1503. Little is known of his childhood, but he entered the University of Avignon at the age of fifteen to earn his baccalaureate. After a year, the university was forced to close its doors due to an outbreak of the plague. Nostradame traveled the countryside, researching herbal remedies and working as an apothecary. In 1529, he entered the University of Montpelier to earn a doctorate in medicine. It is said that he was expelled when it was discovered that he worked as an apothecary, a manual trade banned by university statutes, but other accounts say he did earn his degree and received his license to practice medicine in 1525. It was at this time that he chose to Latinize his name as many medieval academics did, calling himself Nostradamus.
Over the ensuing years, Nostradamus developed very progressive methods for dealing with the plague. He developed a rose pill that provided some protection against the plague and kept his patients clean, supplying low-fat diets and clean air, which was contrary to most treatments at the time. His impressive cure rates made him a local celebrity. He settled in Agen in southwestern France, married, and had two children. His family died, presumably of the plague, while he was traveling on a medical mission. Nostradamus continued to travel, visiting ancient schools of mystery in Italy, Greece, and Turkey. On this voyage, Nostradamus experienced a psychic awakening. He returned to France in 1547 and settled in Salon-de-Provence, marrying a rich widow and having six children with her. He had published two medical texts by this time. One was a translation of Galen, the Roman Physician, and the other was a medical book on treating the plague and mixing cosmetics, but after he was established in Salon-de-Provence, Nostradamus began moving away from medicine and toward the occult.
The sixteenth-century French mystical prophet Nostradamus (1503–1566) has found new currency in an America eager to find supernatural predictions for major historical events. Skeptics argue that the words of Nostradamus are read through the lens of the events, offering self-fulfilling prophecies. (Rainer Binder/ullstein bild via Getty Images)
In 1550, Nostradamus published his first almanac of astrological information and predictions for the coming year. His almanacs made him so popular that even royalty and prominent citizens began contacting him for readings and advice. Combined, his almanacs contained at least 6,300 predictions and were published up to three times per year.
Prophecies
Nostradamus’s major work, Les Propheties de M. Michel Nostradamus (or The Prophecies), was a collection of 1,000 quatrains, or four-line rhyming verses in which the first and third lines rhyme, as do the second and fourth. The verses were grouped together in units called Centuries with 100 quatrains per volume. The predictions were written in Middle French, which was used in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but were mixed with Latin, Greek, Italian, and Provençal to obscure their meanings. To further protect himself from possible persecution, Nostradamus used codes, abbreviations, and other word games to hide his exact meaning. He also made anagrams of proper names and place names, making translation a challenge in later centuries.
The Prophecies received a mixed reaction when they were published. Some people thought Nostradamus was a charlatan or perhaps insane. A few thought his predictions were signs of evil. Others, including many of the elite, thought he was a gifted prognosticator. Catherine de Medici (1519–1589), the queen consort to King Henry II of France, was an admirer. As a patron of astrologers and sorcerers, she made Nostradamus Counselor and Physician in Ordinary to the king.
The bulk of the quatrains deal with disasters, including fires, wars, floods, plagues, murders, earthquakes, and invasions by despots. Some quatrains mention very specific individuals or towns; others are more general to regions. Nostradamus, in addition to changing names to protect himself, shuffled the verses so they were not in chronological order within the Centuries. The first installment of 353 quatrains was published in 1555. The second, with 289 verses, was printed in 1557. The third edition of 300 quatrains was supposedly printed in 1558, but no longer exists in print. Fifty-eight verses from the seventh Century were never published. The contents of the third printing only survive in an omnibus edition published after his death in 1568. The omnibus of all his prophetic verses contains one unrhymed and 941 rhymed quatrains, grouped into nine sets of 100 and one of forty two (Leoni 2000).
Methodology
Nostradamus appears to have based his predictions on historical precedent. Much of his work paraphrases historical sources available in his day. Passages have been identified from the Bible and the works of Livy, Suetonius, Plutarch, and other classical historians. He also used the writings of medieval authors Froissart and Villehardouin. One of his primary sources of predictions, however, was the Mirabilis liber of 1522, which contained a collection of prophecies from a number of authors. Given that his methodology was primarily literary, it is unlikely that he entered a trance-like state or did anything other than read and meditate.
Nostradamus in the United States
Despite the fact that North America was a barely recognized land during the Renaissance in Europe, Nostradamus’s followers claim that a number of prophecies pertain to American events. The terrorist attacks of September 11, the moon landing, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy are a few examples of events supposedly predicted by Nostradamus. The following quatrains are offered as examples of the prophetic power of Nostradamus, according to the Nostradamus Society of America:
Century 4, verse 14
The sudden death of the first personage will have caused change
And put another into sovereignty.
Soon, but late come to so high a position, of young age,
Such as by land and sea it will be necessary to fear him.
Followers claim that this verse refers to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, president at a young age. Another put in his place means Lyndon B. Johnson succeeding him, and the reference to fearing him by land and sea means the Cuban missile crisis.
Century 10, verse 72
In the year 1999, in the seventh month,
From the sky will come the great King of Terror,
Bringing back to life the great King of the Mongols.
Before and after, Mars to reign by good fortune.
We currently use the Gregorian calendar. In the 1500s, the Julian calendar was used, and the seventh month was September. The date 1999 is sometimes translated as an anagram. If you reverse the numbers, 9-11-1 is the date September 11, 2001, the date of the terrorist attacks. The King of the Mongols implies an Asian military leader attacking from the sky.
Century 9, verse 85
He will come to travel to the corner of Luna,
Where he will be captured and put in a strange land,
The unripe fruits to be subject of great scandal,
Great blame, to one, great praise.
This verse is translated as meaning that a man will travel to the moon where he will be filmed (captured) and put in a strange place (outer space?). “Unripe fruits” take time to develop (the space race); subject of great scandal is a reference to the Apollo One tragedy, the Challenger disaster, or other accidents. Great blame (to unnamed parties), and great praise to one refers to the United States of America.
Skeptics argue that the verses are so vague and loosely translated that each could refer to any number of historical events.
Misquotes and Hoaxes
Nostradamus’s writings have often been misquoted, mistranslated, and deliberately altered by people with agendas who wish to prove that he predicted specific events. The development of the Internet has made it even easier to create and distribute false prophecies, enhancing the mystique surrounding his name. One of the most famous hoaxes followed the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York City. The following verse, and many more elaborate variations, circulated widely:
At forty-five degrees the sky will burn,
Fire to approach the great new city,
In an instant a great scattered flame will leap up,
When one will want to demand proof of the Normans.
While September 11 is vivid in the minds of people today, the words “fire” and “great city” bring that tragedy to mind, despite the fact that New York is at 40 degrees north latitude. Those who lived through the London Blitz during World War II could apply it equally well to that terrible event or any other where fires raged through a city (Yafeh and Heath 2003).
The verse above was easily shown to be a hoax. To verify the authenticity of any verse linked to Nostradamus, simply compare the identification number against an authoritative collection of his works. For example, the reference number C1, Q10 or I.10, refers to Century 1, Quatrain 10. A verse lacking the reference number should be suspect.
Death and Legacy
After enjoying good health for most of his life, Nostradamus suffered increasingly worse bouts of gout and arthritis in his later years. Movement became difficult, and his condition turned into edema or dropsy, where abnormal amounts of fluid accumulate beneath the skin and within body cavities. Untreated, the condition resulted in congestive heart failure. It is said that he summoned his lawyer in late June 1566 to draw up his will. On the evening of July 1, he reportedly told his secretary, “You will not find me alive by sunrise.” The next morning, he was found dead next to his bed, one year before the end he had predicted (Smoley 2006).
Most of the quatrains composed by Nostradamus focused on disasters, death, war, and other traumatic events. Enthusiasts have credited him with predicting the French Revolution, the rise of Napoleon and Hitler, the development of the atomic bomb, and many other significant developments in history. Nostradamus’s popularity seems to be partially due to the vagueness of his prophecies, making it possible to selectively quote them and retrospectively determine them to be true. Whatever his intentions, Nostradamus’s timeless predictions continue to make him popular to those seeking solace when an “unexplainable” event occurs.
Jill M. Church
See also Internet Hoaxes; Ouija; September 11 (2001) Conspiracy Theories; Superstitions
Further Reading
“Excerpts.” 2015. Nostradamus Society of America website. http://nostradamususa.com/index.html. Accessed June 12, 2015.
Leoni, Edgar. 2000. Nostradamus and His Prophecies. Mineola, NY: Dover.
Nickell, Joe. 2010. “Nostradamus: A New Look at an Old Seer.” Skeptical Inquirer 34 (5): 12–16.
Smoley, Richard. 2006. The Essential Nostradamus: Literal Translation, Historical Commentary, and Biography. New York: Penguin Group.
Yafeh, Maziar, and Chip Heath. 2003. “Nostradamus’s Clever ‘Clairvoyance’: The Power of Ambiguous Specificity.” Skeptical Inquirer 27 (5): 36–40.
Nostradamus, Predictions of—Primary Document
Nostradamus, “Preface” to The Prophecies (1555)
A recurring theme in American folklore and mythology is the notion of “fulfilled prophecy,” particularly the prophecies of Nostradamus, a sixteenth-century Frenchman who studied herbal medicine, astrology, and classical Latin texts. In The Prophecies, Nostradamus predicted end-of-the-world natural disasters like massive earthquakes and floods, as well as human tragedies like wars and invasions. Living in the wake of the Black Death and aware of the impending Muslim advance into Europe, Nostradamus believed he was living in the biblical end of days. This selection is from the preface, a letter to his son, which explains his method of interpreting the future.
God’s mysteries are incomprehensible and the power to influence events is bound up with the great expanse of natural knowledge, having its nearest most immediate origin in free will and describing future events which cannot be understood simply through being revealed. Neither can they be grasped through men’s interpretations nor through another mode of cognizance or occult power under the firmament, neither in the present nor in the total eternity to come. But bringing about such an indivisible eternity through Herculean efforts, things are revealed by the planetary movements.
I am not saying, my son—mark me well, here—that knowledge of such things cannot be implanted in your deficient mind, or that events in the distant future may not be within the understanding of any reasoning being. Nevertheless, if these things current or distant are brought to the awareness of this reasoning and intelligent being they will be neither too obscure nor too clearly revealed.
Perfect knowledge of such things cannot be acquired without divine inspiration, given that all prophetic inspiration derives its initial origin from God Almighty, then from chance and nature. Since all these portents are produced impartially, prophecy comes to pass partly as predicted. For understanding created by the intellect cannot be acquired by means of the occult, only by the aid of the zodiac, bringing forth that small flame by whose light part of the future may be discerned.
Also, my son, I beseech you not to exercise your mind upon such reveries and vanities as drain the body and incur the soul’s perdition, and which trouble our feeble frames. Above all avoid the vanity of that most execrable magic formerly reproved by the Holy Scriptures—only excepting the use of official astrology.
For by the latter, with the help of inspiration and divine revelation, and continual calculations, I have set down my prophecies in writing. Fearing lest this occult philosophy be condemned, I did not therefore wish to make known its dire import; also fearful that several books which had lain hidden for long centuries might be discovered, and of what might become of them, after reading them I presented them to Vulcan. And while he devoured them, the flame licking the air gave out such an unexpected light, clearer than that of an ordinary flame and resembling fire from some flashing cataclysm, and suddenly illumined the house as if it were caught in a furnace. Which is why I reduced them to ashes then, so that none might be tempted to use occult labours in searching for the perfect transmutation, whether lunar or solar, of incorruptible metals.
But as to that discernment which can be achieved by the aid of planetary scrutiny, I should like to tell you this. Eschewing any fantastic imaginings, you may through good judgement have insight into the future if you keep to the specific names of places that accord with planetary configurations, and with inspiration places and aspects yield up hidden properties, namely that power in whose presence the three times are understood as Eternity whose unfolding contains them all: for all things are naked and open.
That is why, my son, you can easily, despite your young brain, understand that events can be foretold naturally by the heavenly bodies and by the spirit of prophecy: I do not wish to ascribe to myself the title and role of prophet, but emphasize inspiration revealed to a mortal man whose perception is no further from heaven than the feet are from the earth. I cannot fail, err or be deceived, although I may be as great a sinner as anyone else upon this earth and subject to all human afflictions.
But after being surprised sometimes by day while in a trance, and having long fallen into the habit of agreeable nocturnal studies, I have composed books of prophecies, each containing one hundred astronomical quatrains, which I want to condense somewhat obscurely. The work comprises prophecies from today to the year 3797.
This may perturb some, when they see such a long timespan, and this will occur and be understood in all the fullness of the Republic; these things will be universally understood upon earth, my son. If you live the normal lifetime of man you will know upon your own soil, under your native sky, how future events are to turn out.
For only Eternal God knows the eternity of His light which proceeds from Him, and I speak frankly to those to whom His immeasurable, immense and incomprehensible greatness has been disposed to grant revelations through long, melancholy inspiration, that with the aid of this hidden element manifested by God, there are two principal factors which make up the prophet’s intelligence.
The first is when the supernatural light fills and illuminates the person who predicts by astral science, while the second allows him to prophesy through inspired revelation, which is only a part of the divine eternity, whereby the prophet comes to assess what his divinatory power has given him through the grace of God and by a natural gift, namely, that what is foretold is true and ethereal in origin.
And such a light and small flame is of great efficacy and scope, and nothing less than the clarity of nature itself. The light of human nature makes the philosophers so sure of themselves that with the principles of the first cause they reach the loftiest doctrines and the deepest abysses.
But my son, lest I venture too far for your future perception, be aware that men of letters shall make grand and usually boastful claims about the way I interpreted the world, before the worldwide conflagration which is to bring so many catastrophes and such revolutions that scarcely any lands will not be covered by water, and this will last until all has perished save history and geography themselves. This is why, before and after these revolutions in various countries, the rains will be so diminished and such abundance of fire and fiery missiles shall fall from the heavens that nothing shall escape the holocaust. And this will occur before the last conflagration.
For before war ends the century and in its final stages it will hold the century under its sway. Some countries will be in the grip of revolution for several years, and others ruined for a still longer period. And now that we are in a republican era, with Almighty God’s aid, and before completing its full cycle, the monarchy will return, then the Golden Age. For according to the celestial signs, the Golden Age shall return, and after all calculations, with the world near to an all-encompassing revolution—from the time of writing 177 years 3 months 11 days—plague, long famine and wars, and still more floods from now until the stated time. Before and after these, humanity shall several times be so severely diminished that scarcely anyone shall be found who wishes to take over the fields, which shall become free where they had previously been tied.
Source: Nostradamus, Michel de. The Prophecies. 1555. Available online at Internet Sacred Text Archive. http://www.sacred-texts.com/nos/preface.htm.