Nostradamus is by far the most famous fortune-teller ever. Whenever something big happens you can expect to see his verses predicting the event everywhere on the internet and in popular media. I have a couple of problems with mr. Michel de Nostredame however. Most importantly, he wrote so many predictions and they are so vague, that it is possible to apply them to about anything you like and as often as you like (the same verses have been used to explain multiple big and unrelated events). Anyone with a rich imagination could have done the same by using excessive symbolism and avoiding ever being specific.
Well, there was a case where he did seem to be specific, when he wrote:
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.
Did this happen? No. Well, people who want to believe (and are willing to stretch his symbolism to great lengths) say: This describes the attack on the World Trade Center. Although Nostradamus clearly seems to say this event happened in july 1999 and not in september 2001, they see no problem rationalizing it like this: From 1999 make 9111 by replacing every 1 with a 9 and every 9 with a 1, which can be split up as 9-11-1, representing the 11th day of the 9th month of 2001. Other popular manipulations are switching back and forth between the gregorian and the julian calendar, in this way also the great fire of London in 1666 is explained (yeah, go ahead, just turn some digits upside down as you see fit).
I do not see what justifies such a rationalization. Actually, I don't even see what the last two sentences have to do with it at all (and by the way, why was the information about the 7th month completely discarded in the WTC example), but anyway, how many different dates could one make by doing such blatant manipulations? Many, many, many. The more different operations you allow yourself to do, the more the realm of possible outcomes expands, and it expands quickly. Of course, we all want to see proof of the paranormal wherever we can, but when you are aware allowing such creative use of small manipulations can turn anything into about anything else, it is clearly a form of self deception.
No, it seems when Nostradamus gets specific, he is wrong.
It is reported Nostradamus wrote his predictions after nightly sessions of selfhypnosis. Although there are some who claim he mostly copy-pasted the work of some monk whose purpose was entirely different from predicting the future. The way I usually do my predictions is not anything like that. I try to get in touch with my inner self, the cosmos and try to open up for impressions from the space-time continuum around me. When doing predictions one does have to be careful not to mess with timelines (i.e. by making a prediction one could actually change the future and with that potentially a correct prediction can turn out false), but since this is a new blog and not many people will read this, I guess it wouldn't hurt to show off a bit and tell you the winner of the Tour de France (a sporting event which is currently going on) will be Alberto Contador. Also, please be careful this week if you fly from Teheran or if you are a writer in your late seventies.
Next week we'll evaluate this weeks predictions and see how I did.
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