Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Nostradamus

Episode Date: October 12, 2021

In 1555, a French physician and astrologer named Michel de Nostredame published a book of poems titled Les Prophéties. Ever since people have been trying to interpret world events through his writings. Was Nostradamus a prophet? Was he a fraud? Or are people just reading way too much into a bunch of vague, random statements? Learn more about Nostradamus and how his writings have been interpreted, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1555, a French physician and astrologer named Michelle de Nostradam published a book of poems titled Le Prophecy. Ever since, people have been trying to interpret world events through his writings. Was Nostradamus a prophet? Was he a fraud? Or are people just reading way too much into a bunch of vague random statements? Learn more about Nostradamus and how his writings have been interpreted on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Do you ever climb into bed ready to sleep, only to have your mind start racing the moment your head hits the pillow? Thoughts bouncing around, replaying the day, or jumping ahead to tomorrow? That is exactly why Catherine Nicolai created Nothing Much Happens. Each episode is a gentle, cozy bedtime story where, well, nothing much happens. No drama,

no tension, nothing you need to follow closely. Just soft narration, calming repetition, and soothing sensory details designed to help your mind slow down and your body relax. It's not about entertainment, it's about rest. And millions of listeners around the world use it every night to quiet their thoughts and finally fall asleep. If you've ever struggled to shut your brain off at night, this might be exactly what you've been missing. You can listen to Nothing Much Happens wherever you get your podcasts. Episodes are every Monday and Thursday. This episode is sponsored by the tourist office of Spain. The global pandemic has obviously had a huge impact on travel over the last year and a half.

Even though things are now opening up, every country has different rules and regulations for every other country, which can make traveling really confusing. That's why Spain has created a portal to help you know what you need to do in order to visit Spain. Just go to travelsafe.spain.info and get all the information you need to plan your trip to Spain safely and securely, with information tailored for your country of origin. It'll tell you the latest up-to-date information for traveling from your particular country to Spain, as well as answering all of your common questions about when you're there and when you return home. many of you, like myself, are thinking of heading to Spain as soon as possible, so you owe it to yourself

to check out the website before you go. Once again, that's travelsafe.spain. info, or just click on the link in the show notes. The man we know as Nostradamus is just the Latinized name for Michelle de Nostradam. He was born in 1503 in Provence, France, to a family which had converted from Judaism to Catholicism a generation earlier. The family name was changed from Gassonet to Nostradam, which means, Our Lady, in what was believed to be an attempt to avoid the Inquisition. His father was a grain dealer, and his family was rather well off. He was academically inclined. He was educated as well as anyone probably could be in the 16th century, having been instructed in mathematics, classical Greek and Latin, as well as astrology. He attended the University

at Avignon for a year, but had to leave after an outbreak of the plague closed the school. He then attended the University of Montpellier before being expelled when it was found out he was making money as an apothecary. In 1531, he was married and had two children. However, both his children and his wife were killed in a plague outbreak in 1534. He spent several years in Provence fighting the plague and developed techniques that would seem far more modern than what was being done by most physicians at the time. For starters, he didn't bleed his patients, and he encouraged the removal of corpses from city streets. He also developed a treatment he called a rose pill, which was basically a lozenge with vitamin C.

He remarried in 1547. His second wife was a wealthy widow by the name of Anne Ponsard, and together they had six children. Up until this point in his life, there was nothing about him that would have been worth doing a podcast episode about. By this time, he had developed a fascination with the occult, however. And in 1550, he wrote and published an almanac. The book was a surprising success. His almanacs contained astrological information for the upcoming year, as well as prophecies which he made. The success of his almanac resulted in it being an annual publication.

He also published an annual calendar, which had January 1st as the start of the year. And I'll refer you to my episode on why January 1st is the start of the year, because many people back then still celebrated the new year in March. His almanacs developed him a following and resulted in people asking him for personal astrology readings. Soon after the publication of his almanacs, he began to work on the thing that would make him a household name. It was a series of poems all written in the form of quatrains. And a quatrain is simply a poem that has four lines. The quatrains were cryptically written prophecies.

The annual prophecies in his almanac, Roy's is the most popular feature, so he figured you might as well go all in. The quatrains would often use wordplay and would mix words from other languages. The first collection of 353 quatrain's was published in 1555 under the title Le Prophecy. It was around this time that he captured the attention of one Catherine D'Medici, of the Florence D'Medici family, which was one of the wealthiest and most powerful families in Renaissance Europe. However, most people in France at the time knew her by a different name, the Queen of France, wife to King of France, Henry II.

She took a liking in Ostromis due to prediction he made in his almanac about the royal court. She brought him up to Paris, where he eventually got a position at court as the physician to her son, who would be King Charles the 9th of France. He eventually succumbed a gout from which he suffered for years, and he passed away in 1566 at the age of 63. The interest in Nostradamus, however, isn't in his biography. It's in his prophecies. He published another edition of Le Prophecy in 1558,

which had more quatrains, and then a final version was published in 1568 after his death. In total, he wrote 1,000 quatrains. the quatrains were placed in groups of 100 called centuries. Of the 1,000 quatrains he wrote, 942 have survived. 58 quattrains from the century number seven have been lost. So let's get to the juicy bits. What's the deal with these prophecies and just how accurate were they?

Most of the quatrains were not at all original and were taken from other sources. They weren't necessarily plagiarized word for word, but many of the general themes and stories came from other texts. Many of his sources came from classical literature. He took bits from the stories of of Romans, such as Neroa or Sulla, and he lifted portions from texts of Livy, Soutonius, and Plutarch. In the mid-16th century, most people had never read these authors, and would have had no clue that they came from there. Likewise, he also may have plagiarized some astrologers who were his contemporaries. And he might have also gotten some of his prophecies from the Mirabalus Liber, which was a book of prophecies from early Christian sources in the Middle East. The book was published in

Europe in 1522, but only published in Latin. So he could have read it, but most people couldn't. Some have suggested he practiced bibliomancy, which is where you randomly open a book and work from whatever you happen to find on the page. Noosterdamas' use of many of these ancient sources didn't come to light until almost 100 years after his death. It should also be noted that the additions of Le Prophecy were all different from each other. Given the state of printing at the time, there were differences in how the words were laid out on the page and how they were spelled. The differences in spelling causes huge problems for people who try to interpret the quatrains and find meaning where there is often a single character difference

between some words. Most of the quatrains deal with disasters, wars, or other calamities. However, they do so in a very vague and general sense. Over time, most Nostradamus enthusiasts have been able to find support for almost every major event that had ever happened. They found, Quattrain's which they claim predicted the rise of Hitler, the French Revolution, landing on the moon, the September 11th attacks, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. In fact, some quatrains have been interpreted to have prophesized multiple different events. Given how vaguely they're worded, this is not surprising. Yet, some people claim that his prophecies have been uncannily accurate, at least some of them. Perhaps the most famous quatrain is where he supposedly names Hitler by name. There are almost 4,000 lines of quatrain, so I'm not going to go through most of them. But I will read the passage with the supposed Hitler prediction.

It comes from Century 2, Quatrain 24. Quote, Beasts ferocious with hunger will cross the rivers. The greater part of the battlefield will be against Hister. Into a cage of iron will the great one be drawn when the child of Germany observes nothing. End quote. What people go nuts about with this quatrain is the word Hister, because it's one letter away from the word Hitler. Well, what most people don't realize is that Hister is one of the Latin names for the Danube River. We know that Nostradamus used quite a bit of Latin, so the use of a Latin term shouldn't be surprising. The big thing is that beyond the close spelling of one word to Hitler, the rest of the quatrain really doesn't mean much of anything.

The word Germany's in there, which I suppose really cements the association in the mind of some people, but there isn't a whole lot else. When you move beyond the individual words, it doesn't make much sense. Beasts ferocious with hunger will cross the rivers. Okay, what does that mean? Some think that this is referring to the United States, having to cross the oceans to fight in World War II. If Hister is referring to the Danube, a place,

then the inclusion of the word river makes more sense. In fact, the entire meaning of the quatrain is completely different. In fact, there are several other mentions of history in the quatrains, most of which are ignored by Nostradamus fans because they clearly aren't talking about a person, let alone Hitler. And this is precisely the problem. All of the interpretations of Nostradamus are backward-looking. They're engaging in what some have called retroactive clairvoyance. There hasn't been a single forward-looking prediction that has been proven correct based on Nostradamus.

Most of the popularity of Nostradamus has come since the end of the Second World War, when translations became widely available. Most of the translations of Le Prophecy are translations that are considered poor at best, and none of the English translations were based on the original 16th century books. As with English, 16th century French is very different than it is today, and most of the translations lack the subtlety which would be necessary to do a translation properly. and this is on top of the problems of the spelling found in the original printed volumes.

Some of you might be thinking that you've read uncanny predictions that Nostradamus made about 9-11 or about COVID. Well, those quatrains that were making the rounds on Facebook were all fake. They aren't real quatrains and sort of hammers home the point about how vague his writing was. Some of you might also remember a 1981 movie titled The Man Who Saw Tomorrow, which was narrated by Orson Wells. I remember watching it at the time and being fascinated by the predictions that Nostradamus made.

However, when you take a step back and actually look at what Nostradamus actually wrote, it doesn't really hold water. Moreover, the now 40-year-old predictions of what would come in the future from the movie have not held up at all. The idea of a prophet who predicted the future certainly sounds compelling. However, when you scratch the surface, the prophecies of Nostradamus aren't much more than ambiguous plagiarism. It turns out if you write a thousand vague prophecies, over 500 years, a few of them are bound to bear a vague resemblance to actual events. The associate producers of Everything Everywhere Daily are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. Today's prophecy comes from Michael in France back in 1555. He wrote, From the land of cheese, Garty will rise, and throughout the world the pod shall be cast.

He shall enthrall many with his words, and five stars will rise in the world. House of Apple. Thanks, Michael. Please keep me in mind when Mobb us, the third Antichrist, rises in the East and destroys civilization. Remember, if you left me a vaguely worded five-star prophecy in the past, you two can have it interpreted on the show.