The verses of the sixteenth century French seer Nostradamus have never been out of print since they were written. At the time printing was fairly new – the social media of the age – and nonsense or mischief was all the rage. In actual fact, Nostradamus never claimed to foretell the future beyond his own time and much of his output was designed to fascinate the queen mother, Catherine de Medici.
None the less, later commentators converted the non-specific verses into their own epochs. In late 1899 and 1999 Nostradamus’ phrase “harbinger of dire fate” was twisted into a threat of a heavenly body colliding with our planet at the start of a new century. The expression “through long war all the army exhausted” was made to fit several conflicts, including Britain’s loss of empire in Africa, Israel’s 1967 war or the Russian attack on Ukraine in 2023. Up to you.
Often, the seer’s terms have been forced into a fresh meaning. The river Hister, an old term for the Danube, somehow became Hitler conquering much of Europe. The forthcoming arrival of the Anti-Christ derives from the word Mabus (Malevolent One) which actually refers in the original text to the harmless sixteenth century Flemish painter Mabuse. The expression “disease of the Garden of the World” becomes the threatened Brazilian rain forests.
The 9/11 terrorist attack on New York’s Twin Towers was found in Nostradamus in the expression “fires around the new city”, conveniently forgetting that New York is in fact an old city. The quadrain “burnt through lightning of twenty threes the six” somehow became the Great Fire of London in 1666, except that the real even was started by a flame in a bakery. “People put out by steel” became the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
When the year 2025 dawned, the usual nonsense appeared as firm predictions. “A man of Africa with a thousand projects” turns out to be Elon Musk planning to colonize Mars. Also anticipated is the retirement or even death of Britain’s king Charles III in the phrase “from on high disaster will fall on a great man”. Nostradamus himself had a sense of humor which may tell us a lot. He was a good cook and when his wife asked him what was for dinner, he replied, “Don’t worry I’ll tell you in the morning.”
