Nostradamus is said to have predicted the "French Revolution, the birth and rise to power of Hitler, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He also predicted other events, such as the Great Fire of London (1666) and the exile of Napoleon to Alba"(nostradamus101.com). Sounds crazy! Some people want to be skeptical of his predictions, but lets assume for a second that he truly knew all that history would happen before it did. And lets also say that his predictions for the future, like WWIII and the end of the world, are true. How did he get this awesome skill? Was he born with it? Did he read a whole bunch of books? I find his predictions more fascinating than anything, so I want to think he knew all of this. But now I want to know how to predict stuff too. So I am going to start making predictions for the future now, that I know will come true, in hopes that it will lead to other uncertain predictions that also come true. My first prophecy will be: "In one week, in a land of warm sun, south of the USA, many people will be smiling and drinking heavily." Granted, next week is spring break, so lets hope it comes true!
I think often we give the quatrains of Nostradamus too much leeway of interpretation and see in them what we actually wish to see. Did Nostradamus have certain abilities; most definitely. Are they as we have interpreted them; probably not. Most people that claim to have the ability to foresee the future claim that their powers of observation are limited to perhaps a few years at best. Nostradamus's predictions are vague and do not clearly provide a timeline to their actual occurrence, so why are we so insistent that they extended 500 years in to the future. Let's examine another scenario; accused as a Judaizer, opponent frequently to the Church, protected by the aristocracy so that excommunication papers could not be upheld, a donator of 1 Mark to the church that built him a fabulous tomb, of course Rome would want its payback, even after his death. In order to exact that revenge, they could inflict their punishment upon his son Caesar. But Nostradamus was aware they would do this, so he provided Caesar with all his predictions, especially the ones referring to the Redhats in order that his son had protection via blackmail. But fearing this was not enough, Michel de Nostradame made certain that he left behind enough quatrains to protect Caesar when certain events would lead to Pope Sixtus trying to take everything from his son. When examined in light of the events that Caesar had to face, the outcome that resulted, and the protection that Caesar achieved (he was even made magistrate of his town) the quatrains make perfect sense and you can be awed by Nostradamus’s ability to see very clearly at least thirty years into the future. These quatrains are explained in the book Shadows of Trinity available from Amazon or Barnes and Noble online. See http://www.eloquentbooks.com/ShadowsOfTrinity.html . The clarity of the quatrains is only evident when placed into their proper historical context. That's where we fail today and mislead ourselves into believing in far more than he was capable of.
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