It might also be worth pointing out that someone writing in France in the early 1500’s was unlikely to have the concept of America, towers or planes and would therefore not be able to express such ideas even if they were prophesised…
It is?
Here it is in the original:
L’an mil neuf cens nonante neuf sept mois
Du ciel viendra un grand Roy deffraieur
Resusciter le grand Roy d’Angolmois.
Auant (avant?) apres Mars regner par bon heur.
In my translation:
The year 1999, seven months
From the sky will come a fearsome king
To restore the great King of Angolmois
Thus (or before) after March (or Mars) will reign by good fortune.
The first three lines are reasonably clear, the last line is a bit of a muddle. Apparently, to go by the good Wikipedia article, the typesetter would be setting type as the text was dictated to him, which adds another layer of confusion to Nostradamus’s purposeful mystifications. Plus there’s a confusion between the “v” and “u” character, with the typesetter apparently using them interchangeably in this instance.
So, as to 9/11, a couple of obvious problems: the date, the fearsome king, the as-yet unknown “Angolmois,” and then the senseless last line – or to put it another way, the whole thing is bosh.
This, by the way, is from this source.
[QUOTE=clairobscur]
The lion is associated with England as surely as the eagle is the US. I don’t see great difficulty in making that connection.
The translations are troublesome. I have tried in vain to find the original text, but even then translation from old French may not result in universal agreement. Most translations that you read call it “wounds” but indeed that may be incorrect.
I can see where a tournament could be construed as a battlefield. “on the field of battle in single combat” certainly doesn’t sound like a battle as we know it.
Whether there was gold in the helmet is anyone’s guess. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to gild one, but then again a vain king might do so.
The letter to Henry lavishing praise reads like someone sucking up for some reason. One could argue that he was trying to distance himself from his prophesy for self preservation.
Whether the eye was struck or the blow was an inch away might not be significant.
Whether the prediction immediately brought Nostradamus fame may not be known with certainty either. What accounts there are and how reliable they are, I don’t happen to know.
Continuing to play devil’s advocate, as noted 1999 is not 2001. Suppose he knew it was a year from 2000, but chose to subtract instead of add? If someone had predicted JFK’s assassination but wrote 1961 instead of 1963, would we quibble?
Actually, to follow up my previous post, the mysterious “Angolmois” is nicely indicative of what a blank canvas generally Nostradamus provides. Here are some explanations of Angolmois that a few minutes’ searching on the Internet reveals:
Angolmois means “the Jaquerie” (i.e., a medieval French peasants’ revolt), or “feudal land that became France’s crown lands,” or the Mongols, or the people of Angola. Or perhaps the word Angolmois is an anagram of “EN GAULE MOI” or “Sang Lion.” Meanwhile, the King of Angolmois is variously described as Genghis Khan, Dom Manuel I, or George Bush. Either that or he “may have a connection with the god beings of ancient Egypt, Atlantis and beyond” or alternatively is “a spiritual being now in the bottomless pit soon to be released for his divine calling to be an agent of God’s judgments on those who have turned away from salvation through Christ the great King redeemer.”
This is just a sample. There seem literally to be thousands of interpretations. So make up your own! There’s nothing you can invent that will be more implausible than what’s already out there. Here’s mine: “Is Go(d) a m(e)lon?”
May I point out to you that this Henry II was a french king?
Indeed. Especially with the nonsense written by Nostradamus. The text is
“Le lion jeune le vieux surmontera,
En champ bellique par singulier duelle,
Dans cage d’or les yeux lui crèvera,
Deux classes une puis mourir mort cruelle”
Yes, it can be interpreted this way. Or in some other way, to fit some other event. That’s how Nostradamus prophecies work. They’re so vague and so open to intepretation, that you’re pretty certain you can find at least one that you can interpret in some way to fit any historical event you want.
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Whether the eye was struck or the blow was an inch away might not be significant.
[/quote]
The problem is that the “quatrain” could refer to anyone wounded and killed by someone younger on some battlefied, or during some duel, or captured during a battle and later executed, etc… There would be hundreds of famous people meeting this definition. So, in order to “prove” that it refers to this specific event rather than to any other else, and in order to explain the rest of the verses, Nostradamusians just make up stuff like “maybe he had a golden helmet”.
I’m not sure what to answer to that…
[QUOTE=BobLibDem]
It is? Since when? I’m no England scholar, but if you asked me what the national animal of the UK is, I’d be hard pressed to give you any sort of answer at all, and would just as likely come up with a bear or a swan over a lion. It’s true, one of England’s kings was known as the Lionheart, but that’s more due to that king’s demeanor and character than the country he reigned. And even the Lionheart was more of a French ruler than an English one - he’s buried in France, after all.
Sorry about the coding, there - the quote is indeed from BobLibDem. clairobscur’s name must have snuck in when I wasn’t looking.
You will notice that defenders of Nostradamus are constantly claiming he is right by hooking up one of his vague verses to a specific event AFTER a given thing happens. I have yet to hear one of his supporters read one of his verses and successfully identify it as a future event that nobody else could have guessed at by ordinary means. And remember, only five of his hundreds and hundreds of verses gives a date (1999 was the last one. And all five were duds unless you want to twist the meaning all over the map to link it to some event.) So of what possible use are predictions that cannot possibly be used to warn people or prepare them, and that could refer to any year from 1555 to the end of the world?
Now, people do in fact make predictions every day. Investment counsellors and the weather service are two possible examples. But what would you say about an investment counseller who tells you:
“Great rivers overflow their banks
Behind the wall incorruptible
When all in terror fly from Angolmois
Priceless is wisdom when fear is germane”
Now then, you wonder what this means, and you find yourself a new investment counsellor, right?
But what would you say if seven years from now there is rapid inflation and people start buying gold as a hedge against it? And now your former investment counsellor sends you a bill with a note saying: “I was telling you to buy gold, which is an incorruptible (inert) element, and forms a hedge (wall) against inflation (rivers of greed overflowing their banks). Priceless is the wisdom of buying gold as a hedge against inflation. And people fleeing in terror refers to people selling short in the stock market. I don’t know what an Angolmois is, but you have to admit the rest is close. And oh yes, ‘germane’ did not mean ‘relevant’. It was a reference to Germany, a country that suffered the worst inflation of the 20th century in the 1920s. That was another clue that I was talking about inflation. I realize that there was no date attached to this prediction, so even if you had figured out what I was saying you would not have been able to know WHEN to buy gold. But hey, so what? My fee for counselling services is $500. Please remit immediately.”
I know what I would say to this guy, but I don’t think the moderator would allow such language on this site.
So, besides the fact that it was the wrong year, the wrong month, that there would be two (or three) fearsome kings, and no king got restored, Nostradamus hit it right on the nose.
During the Iranian hostage crisis I noticed a quatrain saying that the throne of Persia would be restored from Paris (or something like that) which was interesting since some Iranian exiles lived in France. Now if that had happened it would have been interesting. Too bad it didn’t.
And another welcome to Valteron and thanks for a good OP. Hearing a good analysis of the original is very useful.
Obviously, Nostradamus is predicting that Hulk Hogan is going to be buggered to death by a younger wrestler in a gold cage match! :eek:
OH SHIT! I better get my affairs in order! :eek:
One question: Am I wrong in believing that the verses (I share the OP’s view of the value of Nostradamus’ writings.) of Nostradamus weren’t released until after his death? And were they intentionally released, or did he make provisions to have them published post-humously, when he would be safe from charges of witchcraft?
My take on the little I’ve seen, or read, of his verses is that it reads a lot like schizophrenic conversations. With about as much coherence.
I’ve seen his supporters use his quatrains to predict lots of things before they happened. For instance, Ted Kennedy was going to be elected President in 1980 and the world would succumb to disasters in 2000. Oh, and there was going to be a gigantic earthquake in CA in the '90’s.
The man is money.
The Wikipedia article is pretty good, and represents the sum total of what I know about the man. His writings were generally not posthumus, and in fact were quite popular in his day. Apparently prophesying and astrology were not considered crimes by the Church, although magic was, and Nostradamus was careful to stay on the right side of that street.
I have been asked to apply my professional abilities as an English-French Translator to the quatrain by Nostradamus that allegedly predicts 9-11.
Okay, for starters, here is the original French:
L’an mil neuf cens nonante neuf sept mois
Du ciel viendra un grand Roy deffraieur
Resusciter le grand Roy d’Angolmois.
Auant (avant?) apres Mars regner par bon heur.
By the way, if you want to check out a specific quatrain, you look it up by “Century” (which does** not ** mean the date for the prediction, but rather a grouping of one hundred undated four-line quatrains. Please do not be fooled into believing that Nostradamus gave any dates whatever to his alleged predictions, except for five of them. The one quoted above is one of those five. The other several hundred could refer to any year between 1555 and the end of all time. Eventually, over hundreds and hundreds of years, there is bound to be some occurence that kind of resembles the vague four-line “predictions” you wrote, non?). If you want to see the actual French verses as they appeared in different editions of his book, as well as an English translation, you can do so at this site: http://www.propheties.it/no/nostradamus.html
Here is my direct translation, as direct and literal as I can possibly make it:
The year thousand nine hundred ninety-nine seven months
From the sky shall come a great king (of terror or possibly deterrorizer)
Resucitate the great King of Angolmois
Before after Mars (or March) to rein by good hour (or in a timely fashion, or early, or with happiness, or with luck, depending on how you read those last two words).
Incidentally, here is the English translation given for that verse in the above-mentioned web site:
When 1999 is seven months o’er,
Shall heaven’s great King – albeit a dread host, he…
Restore the King from Angoumois once more,
Ere – after March – he’ll reign propitiously.
Talk about a loose translation!
The word “deffraieur” in the second line could mean “d’effraieur” meaning King “of terror”. But there is no apostrophe in the word, and one could also take it to mean the opposite, “deffraieur”, one who takes away terror.
So there you have it.
Valteron, after reading a few more posts from you, I redouble my welcome. I don’t know what else you may be expert in, but I enjoy your writing and look forward to more.
I recall seeing a show about Nostradamus, back in the 80’s, and one thing that he predicted IIRC was ‘a new city will burn at 40 degrees and be destroyed’ around this time in history. The show speculated that the New City was most likely New York, 40 degrees being the latitude (longitude?), New being New York. After the attacks on 9-11 it seems like it would fit. The New City could very easily fit the WTC, basically cities onto themselves, with their own zip code, and certainly a city within a building was certainly new to Nostrodamus.
I seem to recall that multiple attacks on this new city would be made, the first would be unsuccessful (1st WTC attack in the 90’s), but the city would eventually fall.
Maybe I am mistaken, and this was really from the mother ship, Easter Bunny or the Ghost of Christmas past, but I’m pretty sure it was from Nostradamus.
BobLibDem, if you’re thinking of Henry II of England, you should bear in mind that Henry II of England (the Lion in Winter) died in 1189, while Nostradamus was born in 1503. So that wouldn’t be a very impressive prediction…
Oh, well, I agree with you *most * of the time.
And welcome, Valteron! You’re clearly going to be a great member!
Apropos of nothing (or perhaps perfectly apropos), Judas Priest is recording a concept album based on the life and predictions of Nostradamus.
I hoping against hope that the songs will be along the lines of “Predictor of Babel” or “Believer Deceiver”, but I fear the irony will either be lost or otherwise unacknowledged.