Notradamus/Usama bin Ladin

[Tattila the Hun]

Originally posted by The Emperor Fabulous
Now here's an interesting one possibly about these days:

C6Q21
When those of the arctic pole are united together,
Great terror and fear in the East:
Newly elected, the great trembling supported,
Rhodes, Byzantium stained with Barbarian blood.

Eh, Evil Finns join up with Swedes and Norges?
Obvious Chechen thing there...
And don't vote for Kerry, or there will be an earthquake! (Sounds like "Dick" Cheney...)
Isn't that last one a good thing? Where is Byzantium, anyways?

[The Emperor Fabulous]

Artic Poles could mean US and Russia
And it could indicate united against terrorism
Byzantium is Turkey

[JohnT]

Excepting the facts that Pastuer is not celebrated as a God-like figure and that the moon goes through many cycles (note that which cycle is not mentioned) that passage was spot on!

[JohnT]

Oh, and despite academic mudflinging, Louis Pastuer was never dishonored and his theories never discredited, as the quatrain demands:

... but by other rumors he shall be dishonored.

[Winston]

All brontosauruses are thin at one end, much thicker in the middle and then thin again at the far end.

Isn't it obvious that's what he was trying to say?

[Lancer]

I heard somewhere that he predicted something like 'Hilter will rise' which everyone took to be 'Hitler' mispelled, except that the little river that ran past his house was the Hilter...

I don't know it it's true.

[JohnT]

"Hister". Commonly used to refer to the Danube.

Consider, for instance, the most famous of Nostradamus's predictions: The coming of Adolf Hitler. Well, maybe. This is pretty much the Holy Grail of Nostradamus prophecies (aside from the forged 9/11 passage, of which we will say more momentarily). Erika Cheetham, author of The Final Prophecies of Nostradamus, corrects the obvious misspelling of "Hister" to "Hitler" in her translation, as Nostradamus enthusiasts are wont:


Bêtes farouches de faim fleuves tranner;
Plus part du champ encore Hister sera,
En caige de fer le grand sera treisner,
Quand rien enfant de Germain observa.

Beasts wild with hunger will cross the rivers,
The greater part of the battle will be against Hitler.
He will cause great men to be dragged in a cage of iron,
When the son of Germany obeys no law.

Whoa!! That sure sounds like Hitler! Of course, when skeptic James Randi translated the verse, he got something a little different. Unlike Cheetham, Randi interprets Hister as a reference to the lower Danube river, a section of which is actually named Hister. The Randi version:

Beasts mad with hunger will swim across rivers,
Most of the army will be against the Lower Danube.
The great one shall be dragged in an iron cage
When the child brother will observe nothing.

Uhhhhh.. Yeah, that's, uh, well, uh... Not so much the Third Reich. A third translation, lifted from the nonpartisan Sacred-Texts.com, splits the difference:

Beasts ferocious from hunger will swim across rivers:
The greater part of the region will be against the Hister,
The great one will cause it to be dragged in an iron cage,
When the German child will observe nothing.

Not so clear. You can't really tell from this whether Nostradamus was really foretelling Hitler. In fact, it's damned hard to figure how the idea these verse actually applied to Hitler ever came about. Actually, it's not that hard to figure. Hitler himself decided that the verses were about him and disseminated the idea for one of the most dramatic successes in the history of propaganda.

Oops.

We could go on and on, but we predict... Nay, we prophesy that others have done it before, and will do it again, without changing the minds of those whose minds were made up before they read the first word of this article. Suffice to say, it's wise to take the Prophecies of Nostradamus with a grain of salt... or maybe a whole shaker.

http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/misc/nostradamus/

[Mercator]

Originally posted by The Emperor Fabulous
Also, the original text says "Pasteur", not "Le Pasteur". Nostradamus always includes "le" or "L' " when he means a noun.

Which I can easily counter with this quote:

In the French version, the word "pasteur" is in lower case, which suggests that it was not a reference to a person because all references to actual places with specific names where capitalized.

Originally posted by The Emperor Fabulous
Nostradamus was an astrologist. The date is from an astrological point of view. While "horoscopes" don't necessarily mean anything, the cycles of the moon, where it is in the sky, stuff like that, are all scientific.

Well, I'm sure, but I can hardly find anything about any great lunar cycles on Google. There's one page that says it's 354.6 years, while another says 18.6, and I can't find anything about when they begin or end. I tried various searches and I usually either end up with references to the Mayan calendar, or links to an "explanation" of this very passage of Nostradamus.

Besides, why use the date of the founding of the Pasteur Institute, when it's supposed to be about his discovery of the germ theory? In that case it would be more than ten years off at least (assuming that lunar cycle thing is actually correct)... The margin of error is getting bigger and bigger.

[alva]

Originally posted by Tattila the Hun


Eh, Evil Finns join up with Swedes and Norges?

Nah, he means the Danish and the swedes to kick the Italians back home by drawing 2-2.

[JohnT]

The Lunar year is 354 days (27 days for a lunar month X 12 = 354). Information on a 354 year lunar cycle can't be found on Google, despite my best efforts.

[Gangerolf]

I read a crazy theory about how Karl Rove as a Norwegian-American hates the Swede Hans Blix and that's why the Bush administration wouldn't listen to the weapon inspectors.

Not that this has anything to do with Nostradamus. Or has it?


Byzantium = Istanbul, so that could make sense. Rhodes? Maybe he ment Cyprus?

I think he was full of crap, actually

[Mercator]

@JohnT:
Here's the only reference I could find:

http://www.geocities.com/syzygywjp/Sidereal.html

[Winston]

27 x 12 is not 354.

And I agree with alva, this is all about football, obviously. Nostradamus was the first footie bookmaker, and he had damn good advertising skills.

[The Emperor Fabulous]

Originally posted by Mercator

Well, I'm sure, but I can hardly find anything about any great lunar cycles on Google. There's one page that says it's 354.6 years, while another says 18.6, and I can't find anything about when they begin or end. I tried various searches and I usually either end up with references to the Mayan calendar, or links to an "explanation" of this very passage of Nostradamus.

Besides, why use the date of the founding of the Pasteur Institute, when it's supposed to be about his discovery of the germ theory? In that case it would be more than ten years off at least (assuming that lunar cycle thing is actually correct)... The margin of error is getting bigger and bigger.

1st: I'd rather trust astrologers with dates of cycles than I would a guy with a search engine. The lunar cycle thing is a table by which astrologers follow the signs: thus, Nostradamus following the table is a perfect way to keep the time, as long as he follows the same cycles that all others do. Therefore, if astrologers agree that the cycle begins in 1535 and ends 1889, the end of the cycle is a specific date, not just a random beginning and ending. Therefore, he made an exact date.

2nd: 10 years off is still the end of a 300 year cycle. I'm sure you'd agree that 1990 is towards the end of the 20th Century.

3rd: I only put this out there for speculation. I don't expect you to become an instant follower of Nostradamus, or anything supernatural. I, personally, choose to follow this because a.) it brings in a non-literal perspective and b.) its fun to try to decipher what he was saying.

[The Emperor Fabulous]

Originally posted by JohnT
The Lunar year is 354 days (27 days for a lunar month X 12 = 354). Information on a 354 year lunar cycle can't be found on Google, despite my best efforts.

Again, I'd rather trust people who actually study it than someone with a search engine.