On and off with Nostradamus

Peter Lemesurier is a British “Nostradamus expert” whose book “Nostradamus: The Next 50 Years” has that elusive quality we've come to expect of cheap European paperbacks on the sensational: “it probably can't be true…but what if it is…it must be true…but what if it really isn't”. An American writer would presumably have declared, with a straight face, that of course Nostradamus was an alien who predicted Gamergate (or, if he's a skeptic, of course Nostradamus is a clear and present danger to liberal democracy and the Great Society). Apparently, Lemesurier comes out of his British closet as an all-out skeptic in his latest book on Michel de Notre Dame, a book I haven't read.

Lemesurier's translations of Nostradamus' quatrains aren't literal, so the book is of little use to those who want to know what the Provencal seer actually said. The interpretations seem fairly traditional, and are to a great extent based on Nostradamus' own explicit statements about a future Muslim invasion of Europe, statements made not in the prophecies themselves, but in a letter to the French king Henry II.

Nostradamus' prophecies are so convoluted (and deliberately not published in chronological order) that it's almost impossible for the reader to know what the future has in store before it actually happens. With some ingenuity, many prophecies can be applied to very different characters or periods. Thus, Lemesurier suggests that the Anti-Christ who struggles for 27 years before being made low (Quatrain VIII.77) is a reference to Stalin, but Hitler or even the French Revolution are other possibilities. Stalin dominated the Soviet Union for (almost) 27 years, Hitler's entire “career” spanned (almost) 27 years, and the French revolution, alas, lasted for (almost) 27 years (I came up with that one myself). Quatrain II.89 is traditionally taken as a prophecy of the Hitler-Stalin pact, but Lemesurier proposes the détente between Reagan and Gorbachev instead. “The New World” mentioned in the quatrain could be both Hitler's New Order, the United States, or the New World Order proposed by Bush Senior! Several verses describing the bad guys as “reds” are applied to Lemesurier to the future Muslim invasion, although Communists or Russians are surely more likely candidates (who knows, maybe the “reds” will stage a come-back in the future). A Swedish faux interpreter of Nostradamus, Åke Ohlmarks, even amused himself by translating some of the prophet's convoluted verses in several alternative ways, thereby getting different “predictions”.

Reading old books on Nostradamus and comparing their predictions to what actually happened is always an interesting exercise. Ohlmarks' Swedish compilation of Nostradamus-based prophecies (the paperback from 1983) claims that France will become an absolutist monarchy during the 1990's, but says nothing about the Balkan Wars, Iraq or 9/11. But yes, the future Muslim invasions are there, too, with the Saracen eventually being defeated by…Swedish troops!

So did Lemesurier manage to predict the future any better in this book from 1993? Hardly, since he assumes that the Muslim invasions will start already before the new millennium, Pope John Paul II will be overthrown by force, and the now famous quatrains I.87 and VI.97 (supposedly about 9/11) are really about European events. In Lemesurier's version, the liberation of Europe from Muslim terror comes from his native Britain, not Sweden.

The author at several junctions implies that Nostradamus was cheating, either because he was really describing events in his past, or believed in a cyclical view of history, which made it possible to predict the future without recourse to supernatural means, simply by projecting past or present events into the future. The Muslim invasions of Europe during the 21st century (or later) are simply a more frightening version of the Arab and Ottoman conquests. The fact that the future papacy is removed to France is reminiscent of its “Babylonian captivity” at 14th century Avignon, etc.

Still, even Nostradamus sometimes said things which make you wonder. Georges Dumézil, tongue-in-cheek or otherwise, devoted an entire essay to a study of IX.20, which does indeed sound like a prediction of the capture of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette at Varennes during the French revolution. Another old favorite is I.35, about the death of Henry II.

As for the end of the world, that ever-contentious subject, Ohlmarks placed it at AD 2777 while Lemesurier opts for AD 2827. Only time will tell whose right. One thing's for sure: there will be plenty of time for humanity to screw up again, and plenty of time to reinterpret the prophecies of Nostradamus…