I recall reading this chilling verse as a child and, in my naivete, thinking how strange the month of July 1999 would be. If everyone knew that the world was going to end, World War 3 was going to break out, or aliens were going to colonize our planet, what would they do? It is perhaps the most haunting and enchanting verse of this century. Why would a 16th century French physician and astrologer refer to our present date so explicitly, and associate with it such dark and pejorative doomsday imagery? But we’re still here! As always, there were a couple of objects that fell from the sky last month – notably a pea-sized meteor that collided with Napier, and was somehow granted news coverage. But did this meteor really resuscitate the great king of the Mongols? Unfortunately, events such as this one, despite their insignificance and very weak correlation to the original writings, are sufficient evidence to vindicate the faith of many Nostradamians. 

According to these Nostradamians, there hero was a lone prophet who supposedly sat in his study gazing into the future, recording his futuristic visions in the form of four-lined quatrains grouped into centuries of 100 quatrains. He composed literally thousands of these quatrains, which have recently been discovered, translated and credited with predicting numerous technological discoveries, wars, dictators and catastrophes of the 20th century. But their intrinsic and unavoidable catch 22 is that while they are apparently crystal clear after the predicted event, they are often muddled and obscure before the event. This characteristic suggests to skeptics that the quatrains may not be prophecies at all, and that their predicting ability may lie in their sheer quantity, vagueness, and freedom of interpretation, rather than in the “visions” of their author. 

Put bluntly, the problem is that the quatrains were written in another time, in another language, in obscure symbolism and in great quantity. Therefore, skeptics justly argue that with enough effort, by choosing generous translations, allowing multi-lingual puns, selectively interpreting various symbols and numbers as required, and by looking through enough quatrains, then the laws of statistics dictate that you are bound to find a quatrain relevant to any significant event in history. 

An interesting example illustrating this is seen in the interpretation of one of the more famous quatrains allegedly predicting World War 2 and the rise of Hitler to power in Germany: 

Bestes farouches de faim fleuves tranner  
Plus part du champ encore Hister sera  
En caige de fer le grand sera traisner  
Quand rien enfant de Germain observa. 

Erika Cheetham, a believer in Nostradamus’ prophecies, made the following translation: 

 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. 

The correlation to World War 2 is striking, but is also strongly dependent on the translation of “Hister” and 
“Germain”. In Nostradamus’ day Hister referred to an area of Danube (a city in ancient Europe), and Germain referred to another ancient region of Europe (which was north of Danube). Germain may also have referred to part of the Roman Empire corresponding to present-day northeastern France. These translations are more relevant to the day in which the quatrains were written, but lead to a much less convincing correlation to World War 2, and therefore have unfortunately not qualified as worthy of media coverage. The surprisingly widespread belief in Nostradamus’ prophecies can partly be attributed to the many biased documentaries and books which indicate little respect for the truth or education of the public, but are instead more concerned about entertaining and captivating the reader and thereby increasing sales. Admittedly, a program which systematically showed how each quatrain either made no sense or could be stretched and manipulated to fit events which had already occurred would be comparatively boring. 

However, it is a briefly entertaining idea to consider that perhaps Nostradamus didn’t intend any of his quatrains to be prophecies after all. Nostradamus was a Protestant living in a time and place when the Inquisition was torturing and burning heretics. Skeptics have thus hypothesized that maybe his quatrains are merely political letters to other Protestants encrypted in verse and obscure symbolism in order to avoid the attention of the Inquisition. These writings are now being reinterpreted as recent and forthcoming prophecies, despite alternative interpretations that link them to the time they were written. Ironically, one thing Nostradamus hasn’t been credited with predicting is his own rise to fame as a one-man industry in the 20th century. But I guess it’s only a matter of time before someone finds the relevant quatrain.