What do you think about Nostrodamos?

Question

I dont think I am spelling his name right. But Nostrodamos was brought up in my Theology class. I did some looking around online and it says that he predicted the 9/11 attacks and he also predicts that the world will come to an end in the year 2012. I am not one to loose sleep for that fact although it is a chilling thought, but I believe that if the world ends it ends and its going to come and nobody is going to expect it. What do u think about nostrodamos?

Answer 1

Judgement day is coming soon and I just hope that people who are not Christians now will wake up and realize that they need Jesus before it's too late.

Answer 2

Oh, 2012. Hooey. Go look in my profile and check my "best answers" listing - there is an answer I provided about 2012 (the Mayan calendar ending question).

Nostradamus did not predict 9/11. The supposed quatrain he wrote that seems to predict it was actually written by a college student in a famous thesis paper. The thesis paper was about how ANYBODY could make up a bunch of nonsense like Nostradamus did, and it could be applied to nearly any situation. Then the student writing the paper provided his own "quatrain," in Nostradamus's style, and it does seem to match the 9/11 events pretty well - which only PROVES the student's point that you can read just about anything into a few lines of poorly rhyming text that you want to read into it. Pretty funny that this thesis paper was anti-Nostradamus, yet now the "two brothers" and "great king of terror" quatrain contained therein are being attributed to Nostradamus. Lol.

How Nostradamus started getting credit for the spooooky Mayan end-date of 2012 is anybody's guess. I guess alarmists will latch on to any fad.

Nostradamus did not accurately predict a dang thing. If he had that power, why wouldn't he write his predictions in a straightforward manner, so that there could be no doubt at all about their meanings? He wrote in that muddled, crazy way because he KNEW his "predictions," when phrased in a confusing way, could be said to be accurate about an almost infinite number of world events.

This is no different from what psychics do - they give you a "prediction" in vague language that could be interpreted in a number of ways. This way they are assured that they will have an apparent "hit" far more often than they will have an obvious "miss."

Like psychics, Nostradamus was a big fat charlatan. And that's what I think about him.

Addition:

Mirage - the "Hister" (not "Histler") prophecies refer to the Danube river, which was called the Hister.

Answer 3

Did Nostradamus predict 9/11?

In the heightened days following September 11, 2001 there were a lot of reports that Nostradamus had predicted the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York!

You may have even read about the quatrain below:

In the City of God there will be a great thunder,
Two brothers torn apart by Chaos, while the fortress endures,
the great leader will succumb,
The third big war will begin when the big city is burning.

First off, let's say straight out that this was not written by Nostradamus at all. Yes it superficially resembles his style, but there is no such quatrain and he didn't write it. In fact, some sites that reference this verse state it was written in 1654 which would be an impressive feat for someone who died nearly 100 years before!

Before we look at who did write it, let us use it as an exercise in critical thinking. We will break down the key points it raises:

1. City of God. This could match anything you like - Mecca, or a city with a lot of churches (e.g. Rome), or a city with many religions (e.g. Jerusalem), or a city which is unusually impressive. You name it.
2. Two brothers torn apart by chaos. Again this could be anything. Allied countries, or political party coalitions, or two ajoining neighborhoods, or royalty where there have been numerous inter marriages. etc.
3. The third big war. Give me a break. How many big wars have there been since Nostradamus was alive? Even excluding WW I & II, you should immediately think of Vietnam, the Gulf War, the US Civil War, the Napoleonic wars, the Crimea, the Russian Civil War, the Russia-Japan war, the American War of Independence, the Spanish Civil War. And so on. Tens if not hundreds of thousands died in each these conflicts. Is that not big enough?
4. A big city burning.. Tends to happen in wars. Dozens alone in World War II - Dresden, London, Berlin, Stalingrad, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Tokyo.

When all is considered we are left with is a verse which is so ambiguous on every line that you could with little effort match it to many different possibilities.

So who wrote this quatrain and what was their point?

This quatrain was actually created by a student called Neil Marshall in an article called "A Critical Analysis of Nostradamus" [1]. His point in writing the above was to highlight that some Nostradamus quatrains are so vague as to be open to any interpretation after the fact.

In fact this is not the only phony verse to have been concocted after 9/11. The urban legends site Snopes.com [2] has plenty more.
So are there any genuine verses that have been attributed?

Yes, several have been cited which are listed below. The same form of critical analysis should be applied to each of them to find out how precise they actually are.

Here is Century X, Quatrain 72:

The year 1999, seventh month, From the sky will come a great King of Terror: To bring back to life the great King of the Mongols, Before and after Mars to reign by good luck.

One doesn't need a scholarship to realise that 1999, seventh month is not September 2001. Then is a "King of Terror" one airplane, the three (that struck), all four, the leader of the terrorists or even Osama bin Laden? How does the "King of the Mongols" relate to anything at all? Are we to believe that the Mongols, whether ancient or modern can even be tenuously compared with Islamic terrorists? Maybe it's Osama again, assuming you can jump enough hoops to turn a Saudi into a Mongol. This quatrain barely fits even with a liberal amount of massaging. In fact as you might expect, many quatrains including this one have been attributed to multiple events [3].

Here another oft quoted verse, Century VI, Quatrain 97:

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.

Well, let's say immediately that New York is 40 43' degrees north of the equator so that wouldn't match. Beyond that, 45 degrees could be anything related to a temperature, an angle of something approaching, falling or some other measurement. No doubt someone would try to claim it meant a flight number if one of them had contained 45. After that what are we left with? A flame, a burning sky? Again this could apply to anything, a bombed city, an oil refinery explosion, a plane exploding, a forest fire. Is New York a new city? Well it has "New" in its title, but so do a lot of cities (Newark, New Orleans, Newcastle etc.) [4]. Besides, one could argue that many cities are new by virtue of being bombed flat or destroyed by fire some time in their existence. Are the Normans meant to be the French, in which case what have they to do with 9/11? Again this quatrain may superficially appeal to those looking for a 9/11 "angle" (no pun intended!) but if so it doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

Answer 4

I first started studying Nostradamus THIRTY YEARS AGO. Amazing how absolutely nobody reading it then discovered that there would be a terrorist attack in 2001. They only figured that out AFTER it happened. That's the way it works for ALL his alleged "prophecies"-- they only make sense AFTER the fact. So they're useless as prophecies. And what's really happening is that people's understanding of his abstruse lines changes to fit the alleged event. So it's totally bogus.

Answer 5

Nostradamus wrote in a letter to his son Cesar (in which he claims God as the source of his prophecies and refers to a quote from Jesus Christ):

“…bear in mind that the events here described have not yet come to pass, and that all is ruled and governed by the power of Almighty God, inspiring us not by bacchic frenzy nor by enchantments but by astronomical assurances: predictions have been made through the inspiration of divine will alone and the spirit of prophecy in particular.” “Since governments, sects and countries will undergo such sweeping changes, diametrically opposed to what now obtains, that were I to relate events to come, those in power now – monarchs, leaders of sects and religions – would find these so different from their own imaginings that they would be led to condemn what later centuries will learn how to see and understand. Bear in mind also Our Saviour’s words: Do not give anything holy to the dogs, nor throw pearls in front of the pigs lest they trample them with their feet and turn on you and tear you apart.”

Answer 6

Muhammad(PBUH*) is the last and final slave and messenger of ALLAH(Subhanna wa ta'ala). Nostradomos is not a Prophet. Only ALLAH(Subhanna wa ta'ala) knows when the world will end. Not humans. I'm not losing any sleep over it. Nostradomos is weird in my opinion and could be nothing more then a witch and that is how he "predicted" all the "bad things" in the world like the rise of Adolf Hitler.

Answer 7

The "Histler" prophecies kind of creep me out... Maybe there was something to him. Who knows? I personally would never want to know the future. Reading Greek myths taught me that much!

Answer 8

people can twist his obscure writings to say whatever they want. If they truly predict the future, why didn't we know about 9/11 before it happened?

Answer 9

Edgar Casey is 100% better.

Answer 10

Nostradamus was exposed to mercury poisoning, which drove him bats.

The future has not happened yet. It cannot be predicted.

Answer 11

2012? not the only one?
Mayans,the bible,astrology&tarot
all point to 2012
At least were going to be better off that way