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NOSTRADAMUS
Are His Predictions Accurate?
by
Michael A. Snyder
Did this 16th century
psychic map out the future of this century?
T
HE SUMMER
of 1981
witnessed a strange
sequence of events in
Europe. Earlier that spring,
against a Western tide of
political conservatism, a so–
cialist swept into power in
France. Then carne the near
assassination of a Pope. And
to the surprise of many, riots
erupted in England.
Unrelated events? At first
glance, it would seem so.
But a new translation of a medie–
val book of prophecy
rocked
Europe when it appeared to predict
the above three events near ly four
centuries in advance.
"Roman Pope do not approach
the city in which the two rivers
bathe," reads an English transla–
tion of the obscure French writings
of the 16th-century medica! doctor
Michel de Nostredame-better
known as Nostradamus. " Your
blood and that of your followers
will flow near this place when the
rose wi
JI
flower."
Mysteríous Poetry
This verse is from Nostradamus'
16th-century book
The True Cen–
turies- a
book divided into 10 sec–
tions of abou
t
100 verses or qua–
trains. This particular verse is num–
ber 97 from book
ll.
At first, these words would
appear to be a meaningless jumble.
But M. Jean-Charles de Fontbrune
(a pseudonym), a French pharma–
ceuticaJ executive, claims to have
interpreted the "rose" in the latter
part of the verse. He shocked
Europe by claiming it as the party
Aprll 1983 ·
symbol of French President Fran–
cois Mitterrand. During the 1980-
81 French campaign, President
Mitterrand would often hold aloft a
freshly cut rose as the symbol of
forthcoming prosperity.
But so, too, did West German
Chancellor Helmut Schmidt earlier
hold up a rose at his party's last vic–
tory!
The flowering of the French polit–
ical rose occurred less than a year
before Pope John Paul JI was shot
while greeting well-wishers in a pub–
líe square in Vatican City near the
two mouths of the Tiber river. A
number of Catholics who strained to
glimpse tbeir religious leader also
fell under the sharp gunfire from the
assassin. The "blood ... of your fol–
lowers," it is said, was fuJfilled in
this deed.
Elsewhere in Nostradamus' ob–
scure, crabbed writings runs the
theme of violence in England.
When riots unexpectedly erupted
in Liverpool in the summer of
1981, sorne added these verses to
the prediction.
Mere coincidence?
Not so, thought thousands as they
gobbled up more than 700,000
copies of the new computer–
enhanced trans lation and interpreta–
tion of Nost radamus'
True Centu–
ries.
To achieve this impact on bis
readers, Mr. de Fontbrune had taken
severa! of the quatrains once
ascribed to other Popes and political
leaders and reassigned them. Even
the verse (II, 97) that supposedly
now predicted John Paul's gun
wound was earlier thought to
describe the death of Pope Pius VI at
Valence, France, in 1799.
But the new translation,
Nos-
tradamus: Historien et Prophete
(in English,
Nostradamus: Histo–
rian and Prophet),
spawned wide–
spread anxiety, to the point where
Mr. de Fontbrune later publicly
Jamented, ' ' 1 am frightened by the
panic that my book on Nostrada–
mus has unleashed on France."
National Anxíety
Why such panic? Because the 565-
page translation- of material writ–
ten in a curious mixture of Latín,
Italian, Greek, a southeastern
French dialect and classical
French, which must be
translated
even in to modern French- indi–
cates that more than two thirds of
Nostradamus' 1,050 quatrains re–
flect grisly events scheduled to
come in
this
century.
As interpreted by various indi–
viduals, Nostradamus is thought to
predict that before this century
ends, a blazing meteor will fall into
the Indian Ocean, spawning awe–
some tidal waves that will engulf
most of southern Asia and Austra–
lia (I , 69); the United States and
Soviet Union will unite in an awe–
some economic and military al–
liance (VI, 21); a dark Arabic
prince will arise and plunge the
world into nuclear , chemical and
bioJogical warfare, beginning in the
Middle East (V, 25, 78; VI, 80) ;
and Europe will collapse under the
ensuing onslaught, with few to sur–
vive past A.D. 1999.
The result of Nostradamus '
book?
A Jeading French newsweekly
declared editorially: "Fear is be–
coming a market. One hundred days
after having brought Mitterrand
to power, our citizens are paying
$20 a copy [for Mr. de Fontbrune's
33