So is this a reply I wrote on that same thread
And I would be able to point out posts where I discuss the other topics, except you locked them instantly
As I recall, I was the OP of this thread back in April. I have no intention of rehashing all the arguments about this old fraud. But I will be glad to offer my services. I am a professional French/English translator. There is a very interesting site at http://www.propheties.it/no/nostradamus.html where you can actually see each of the “predictions” as they appeared in six editions of his books, plus an English translation of each one. I do not always agree with the translation but it is usually pretty good.
One thing I can tell you is this. Every single one of his “predictions” is vague, meaningless gobbledegook that could be twisted to suit a wide range of events. I believe that only five of the hundreds of quatrains even has a date (I stand to be corrected but I read this somewhere). 1999 was the latest year mentioned among the five. Even in the five that actually give a date of some kind, the text is still full of vague references to things like a “great king of terror” and countries that have never existed like “Angolmois”. But 99% of his quatrains have no date at all. Quite handy, huh? Anything that happens between now and the end of the world that even vaguely resembles something he wrote maks him a genuine prophet.
But if you would like me to translate any of the prophecies or give you my opinion of them, I will be pleased to do so.
There is nothing strange or unbelievable about predictions and predicting. We all predict stuff every day. I predict that my partner will come home from getting his tooth pulled at the dentists and come home to rest somewhere in the next hour. I know that because he told m he had a 10:30 a.m. appointment to get it pulled and it is now 11:10 a.m.
I predict we will get snow in Canada sometime this winter.
But of what possible use is a prediction that nobody understands BEFORE the thing happens, and that is considered by some but not others to be the prophecy AFTER the fact because it is very open to question whether the quatrain refers to an event or not?
Take for example the alleged predictions of 9-11 by Nostradamus. A great “king of terror coming from the sky” is 9-11??? Come on! Now, I do not expect Nostradmus, who lived in the 1500s, to have known words like “airliner” and “hijack” or even United States of America.
But do you want to know what would make me believe in Nostradamus? If he had left quatrains like this:
Nouveau monde et millénaire, nouvelle ville de York
La rage du Prophète, des oiseaux de feu
Contre tours escrouleront, la mort au festin
Quand le buiusson sur l’aigle règnera
Now this would be still vague, but it does not contain a single word that Nostradamus would not have known in his time, and in English it says:
New world and millenium, new city of York
The rage of the Prophet, from birds of fire
Against towers shall crumble, death shall feast
When the bush rules over the eagle.
Now if such a quatrain existed, I would sit back, whistle in amazement, and believe there might be something to his ability to predict. After all, buisson means bush in French. The Eagle was not chosen as the American symbol until the late 1700s. The New World was known to exist by every European who was not completely ignorant. But the Duke of York had not yet captured New Amsterdam and renamed it New York. But the English name “York” would be wll known to Nostradamus.
I would find it astounding that everthing would line up so perfectly to predict the attack on the WTC on September 11, in what was in reality the first year of the new millenium, 2001 (2000 was the last year of the previous millenium).
If you can find me something like that in Nostradamus, I will examine him in a new light. I have an open mind. But it is open to hear good evidence. It is not on open sewer that will accept any crap you want to pour into it.
But nowehere in Nostradmus is there anything like that.
By the way, I have no doubt that the quatrain that I just composed will be picked up and circulated on the internet as if Nostradamus has written it. Just watch!
But Henri II was killed by Gabriel Montgomery, an officer of his own Scottish guard – in the days when Scotland was decidedly independent of England, and allied with France to try to keep it that way. The heraldic emblem of Scotland is a unicorn-supporter (there are also three lions in the shield, but it’s the unicorn Scotland is known for, as in, “The Lion and the Unicorn”).
(bolding mine)
I’m picturing an equine jockstrap. Or maybe something that exceptionally well-endowed unicorns wear to keep their horn from wobbling a la Tim Curry in Legend?
Scottish royal arms as they appeared at the time of the death of Henry II. The unicorns overshadow the lions, IMO.
Actually, most interpretation of Nostro. is more like shooting the wall 100 times, then drawing targets around each bullet hole ex post facto and showing the wall to gullible rubes to prove what a great shot you were.
Because I saw it too, or at least one built on the same theory. It also involved an Arab (the 3rd antiChrist) in a blue turban firing the missiles that destroy New York City.
I was just thinking that! It’s happened before, you know. 
Anyway, I have nothing to contribute, but wanted to thank you for a very interesting and informative thread. As much as other people like to look at old Nostradamus and find meaning in his quatrains, that’s how much I love to hear him debunked.
DOUBLE ZOMBIE!
Can I kill it, now?
Nooooooooooo! Think of the zombie children.
I KNEW this thread was going to be resurrected.
I saw the prediction on a TV show some years back. Something about “The 4 year old discussion will be born anew”
No, *that *quatrain was about an argument I had with a friend over mercury in sushi. We butted heads over this again last Tuesday. The verse concerning this topic reads “In the city of eels amidst the rape wars, stars shine on old embers ; buy three the fourth is free.”
It’ll see you coming.
I have the History Channel. I know for a fact. Nostradamus predicted everything. He predicted the same end of the world the Mayas did. All ancient prophecies meet on Dec. 12, 2012., or June 12, 2012, or Dec. 31st, 2012. How can you argue with absolute facts like that?
Well, you could wait until 2013.
That obviously is not an option.
Only if you can find a quatrain that predicts you killing it.
But not necessarily all people who hear it. If the oracle at Delphi had made some very specific predictions regarding the actions of the Bush Administration, nobody in ancient Greece would have understood them.
Why not? ‘About 2500 years from now, a man named after shrubbery will rule a great country across the ocean yet to be discovered, and, after an attack on an important national landmark, he will lead his country to war in Persia’ would be perfectly intelligible, and every other statement can be made so with enough elaboration and clarity.
Mesopotamia (or Babylon), and it would have been closer to “If the shrubbery should attack Babylon, it will bring down a great empire.” The Oracle (at Delphi or elsewhere), or at least her interpreter, couched her predictions in obscure riddles.