Shameless

 

The great shameless audacious bawler will make Byzantium change its laws, blah blah. Why are there no obvious Nostradamus quatrains predicting Donald Trump? I mean, it´s almost as if Nostradamus (or at least his interpreters) don´t really know what´s going to happen. Or something.

Oh, shut up

 

Basic bitch prophecies (attributed to Nostradamus and one Baba Vanga) about climate change, AI, terrorism, the return of Donald Trump and increased tensions with China are spiced with less believable stuff about Prince Harry becoming King of England after some kind of coup in the UK. Or is it AI taking over the globe? Yeah, whatever. Note also that there are no prophecies about Russia and Ukraine?!

Still, quite funny that this particular peddler of bad news sounds *quite* realistic, LOL.     

Savior of the World

 

Weapons found by Indian police in 2014 at
Rampal´s ashram
(Credit: Times of India)

"Savior of the World" is a very, very bizarre YouTube video introducing a certain Sant Rampal Ji Maharaj, who styles himself the leader of Kabir Panth within the Sant Mat tradition. (I´m sure there are a myriad of factions within this heterodox Sikh movement.) Rampal claims to be "the only true satguru in the entire universe" (!). Unfortunately, he is currently serving a lifetime sentence for murder after violent clashes between his supporters and those of another religious group, Arya Samaj, ended with the death of one samaj supporter. How the infidel powers-that-be (Kal Niranjan?) managed to arrest and jail an incarnation of God is, alas, less clear. 

The video promoting Rampal is so bad that I almost suspect he is trolling us. Or maybe somebody trolled his supporters with egregiously wrong information? The video claims that there are innumerable prophecies and astrological predictions that point to Rampal being the Great Man (Mahapurusha) and Great Power (Mahashakti). The prophecies are obviously bogus and frequently make no sense whatsoever. Thus, a certain "Florence" from New Jersey supposedly published a book in 1960 called "The New Golden Era of Light: COMPLETION NOW!" in which she predicted Rampal. The pictures of "Florence" clearly show Florence Nightingale, the famous British nurse who died in 1910, while the book wrongly attributed to her was published in 2014 by Lisa Manfrede Smith, an otherwise unknown New Age channeler! And so it goes on. 

Jules Verne, the French novelist, is called a "French astrologer". Nostradamus supposedly predicted that the Great Man would come from Punjab in India. Which he didn´t (his quatrains are clearly Christian in nature). The most original character mentioned is Sri Ananda Acharya of Norway, apparently a real Indian mystic who lived for decades in that country (he was wrongly assumed to be a Buddhist by the bewildered natives). If he really predicted the coming of the chosen one is, alas, less clear. 

After all this fakery, the second half of the video turns out to be untranslated. Since my Hindi (or is it Punjabi) is a little bit rusty (not to mention my Sanskrit), I couldn´t really follow the splendid teachings of the Jagatguru, as Rampal also calls himself. I did notice a curious detail, though. The video mentions the old joker Osho several times, pretending to wonder whether all the prophecies could perhaps point to *him*, only to discard the possibility. I always assumed Osho mostly had Western followers. Perhaps there is a flock of Indian faithful which Rampal´s faction of the Kabir Panth wants to recruit into their fold? Not sure if I would want to have unruly oshoites as part of my Great Man cult, but there you go... 

The man was kreizi

An Osho classic. Apart from attacking Nostradamus, the crazy wisdom guru explains how the Hindu clerics hoax the people of India with their phony divination techniques. Absolute must see!

Interviewer: But you do have some faith in the prophecies of Nostradamus, though? Is that correct?

Osho: I don´t have any faith in him, the fact is, that the man was kreizi…

Prophecy: The Last 15 Years

Can you market and sell failed prophecies, about 15 years too late? It seems that you can. "Prophecy: The next 1000 years" was apparently released on DVD in 2004, but judging by its contents, it was produced already during the 1990's. Sure, whoever is behind this "documentary" managed to predict climate change, overpopulation, peak oil and massive environmental destruction, but that wasn't hard, was it?

The other predictions are laughable: World War III starts in 2004, with Iran, Libya and "The Red Army" (sic) invading Europe. The decisive battle will be fought at Megiddo in Israel - where else? Or perhaps the polar axis will tilt, leading to gigantic earthquakes, with New York City and LA submerged by the ocean? Or maybe we'll be hit by a rogue asteroid, destroying us all? The millennium bug makes a very brief guest appearance. The whole thing is (supposedly) based on the prophecies of the Egyptians, the Maya, John of Patmos, Nostradamus and Edgar Cayce. Did I forget somebody? Ah, Zarathustra!

Whoever made "Prophecy" seems to have stitched together two different documentaries - there are two narrators. The producers have a very strange worldview, claiming that the world was essentially at peace from the fall of Communism to the Kosovo War. Geezus, what about the *rest* of the Balkan Wars, all the wars in the former Soviet Union, the ever-present war in Afghanistan or the genocide in Rwanda?

But don't worry, ye faint of heart, there is still hope. The male narrator (who is oblivious to peak oil) believes that science and technology might still save us, perhaps with the aid of aliens (the luminous guys in UFOs). He also claims that another "turning of the wheel of Dharma" will take place in 2012. The Age of Aquarius might still dawn on us!

On *one* point, "Prophecy" comes eerily close to a real prediction. The Egyptian calendar is said to end in 2001. Nostradamus is said to have foretold the destruction of "the towers surrounding the new city". The documentary illustrates this with a nuclear explosion wiping out New York City. In 2001, Al-Qaeda attacked NYC and destroyed the World Trade Center...

But, of course, this proves nothing. The prophecies of Nostradamus have been reinterpreted post factum for centuries. In senior high school, I read "predictions" based on Nostradamus about France becoming an absolute monarchy during the late 1990's. Massive Muslim invasions of Europe would follow, until Sweden (!) saves the day and drives the wily Saracen back to where he belongs. Naturally, the whole thing was based on a Swedish interpreter of Nostradamus, who apparently also believed that *he* was mentioned in the oracular pronouncements of the Renaissance sage. To the best of my knowledge, nobody *really* predicted post-Cold War history based on Michel de Nostredame.

What surprises me the most is that this warmed-over, eclectic stew of failed prophecies á la Hal Lindsey, Paul Ehrlich, Steven Greer and Pseudo-Nostradamus can still be marketed in AD 2013, shortly after the spectacular failure of another doomsday scenario.

"The guard is tired". Really.

The meme is strong with this one

A prime example of the apocalyptic meme in action. The author of this book, David Montaigne (who I'm sure is a nice guy) claimed that the world would end in 2002. It didn't. He therefore published a new book, this time predicting the end of the world in 2019. I don't really blame him. One of the positive reviews of “Nostradamus World War III 2002” was posted in…2003. Sometimes, I suspect that the apocalypse meme might actually survive the apocalypse!

The riddle of Dumézil

This is a curious book with an even more curious foreword. Georges Dumézil was an important French scholar of comparative religion and mythology, for a while based in Sweden. He is most known for his analysis of the similarities between Norse mythology and Vedic religion. Dumézil, a self-described "Man of the Right", was also intensely controversial due to his past as a member of the fascist group Action Francaise.

"The Riddle of Nostradamus" contains "A Nostradamian Farce" (sic), written in the form of a dialogue between a youthful Dumézil, Monsieur Espopondie, Monsieur Lesculas and some other interlocutors. Apparently, all characters in the dialogue are based on real people. Thus, Espopondie is Dumézil's erstwhile scholarly mentor, Claude-Eugène Maitre, the Orientalist who "discovered" the ruins of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Lesculas is actually Pierre Gaxotte, a former secretary of Charles Maurras, the leader of Action Francaise. The Nostradamian dialogue has an appendix dealing with a very different subject matter, the last words of Socrates.

In the dialogue, Espopondie reaches the conclusion that the famed French seer Nostradamus really could predict the future. For instance, he predicted the arrest and execution of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette during the French revolution, the Northern war between Peter the Great and Swedish king Charles XII, and a few other events. The participants in the dialogue then discuss how prophecy is at all possible in a supposedly naturalist universe. One interlocutor reaches the conclusion that God actually exists, while other speculate about telepathy and other paranormal phenomena. It's not clear whether Dumézil is merely reporting the speculations of Maitre, or whether Maitre's alter ego Espopondie is really the mouth piece of Dumézil himself.

Nor is the foreword, written by one Gregory Nagy, very helpful. Quite the contrary. Nagy claims, without giving any examples, that the dialogue is really about far right politics, Freemasonry and homosexuality! He also quotes Michel Foucault, who likewise claimed that "The Riddle of Nostradamus" was about homosexuality. If so, both I and the two other reviewers missed it. Apparently, it's all "coded"...

Yeah, maybe. However, here's another plausible explanation: Dumézil's admirers simply can't stomach that the great scholar believed in the paranormal and researched the quatrains of Nostradamus (hardly a respectable academic subject). Indeed, maybe this hostility explains why Dumézil wrote about his Nostradamian studies in the form of a "farce"! It's easier to pretend that this revolutionary text is really about Action Francaise or homosexual subcultures. Note also that Foucault, that old postmodernist huckster, is quoted as an authority. These reactions to Dumézil's thesis might be the real "riddle". Or farce.

Despite being somewhat heavy at times, I recommend this work to all truth-seekers, since it seems to be one of the few non-sensationalist works on Nostradamus out there...

What is oil? Oil is a substance

“Taboo: The Questions You Aren´t Supposed To Ask” is a short Kindle book, written from a relatively mainline Protestant perspective. It discusses a number of “taboo” subjects, such as the apocryphal gospels, evolution or the prophecies of Nostradamus. First, I wonder whether these questions really *are* taboo in mainline denominations? Second, the booklet is badly written, contains colloquial language and doesn't feel very convincing.

Its criticism of Nostradamus is a case in point. Yes, most of the quatrains are indeed “murky”, but what about Revelation or the Book of Daniel? Keep it short and simple…not! Indeed, the author then retreats and admits that perhaps Revelation doesn't contain true prophecies either (at least not detailed ones), and should be read as a poetic-symbolic narrative relevant to the situation of all believers at all times…

The author strikes an (admittedly sympathetic) irenic pose towards Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, and also to modern science and the theory of evolution. My main objection to “Taboo” is mostly the bad style of writing, since it's obviously difficult to fault a mainline guy for being mainline!

Of course, in a sequel, I suppose he could wrestle with some *really* taboo subjects, such as same-sex marriage, Joshua's conquest of the Canaan or eternal damnation…

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 by 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…

Beyond this world

Sorry, no Pennington art available for download!

A review of "Ultraterranium: The Paintings of Bruce Pennington" 

Ever wondered who made those fascinating and weird-looking illustrations that adorn many a cover of SF and fantasy novels?

Answer: many of them were painted by one Bruce Pennington. A representative collection of his art can be found in this intriguing book, which I bought (I think!) at the local SF bookstore here in Stockholm.

Since much of Pennington's art features ruined cities, demons, bizarre aliens or Lovecraft's seminal monstrosity Cthulhu (misspelled “Cthulu” in the book), the author is at pains to point out that the artist is really a pacifist, an optimist and a spiritual-Buddhistic kind of guy. “It's only a painting”. Yet, Pennington's private works show, well, even more cityscapes in ruins… One private work is titled “Shiva and Shakti”. Sounds familiar?

Pennington also believes in astrology and his (public) magnum opus “Eschatus” is an illustrated version of the prophecies of Nostradamus, featuring the pre-2000 interpretation, where France becomes a monarchy during the 1990's and Europe is subsequently invaded by Muslims.

Good, if you are a science fiction, Gothic horror and/or fantasy buff (or freak).

Worth watching, but perhaps out of fashion

It's been a while since I saw this one.

"First Wave" is a Canadian science fiction series. The pilot is one of the better sci fi productions I've seen. The main character, Cade Foster, gets his life destroyed by a series of mysterious events, which turn out to be orchestrated by a group of aliens preparing an invasion of our planet. Unfortunately for the aliens (known as the Gua), Foster is a security expert and former thief, and he therefore manages to escape from the mental asylum where they have locked up a number of human subjects.

In the rest of the series, Foster roams North America, hoping to somehow stop the alien invasion. He develops a complicated relationship with Joshua, a dissident Gua posing as an African-American. The prophecies of Nostradamus and a conspiracy theorist named Crazy Eddie also play important roles in this series. I don't remember exactly how the show developed, but I think it has an inconclusive ending. Apparently, the network cancelled the show due to bad ratings.

"First Wave" is heavily dependent on the conspiracy subculture that thrived during the 1990's. It's all in there: Nostradamus, a paranoid guy living in a trailer, alien beings posing as humans, repressed memories... 

For this reason, the series might give a dated impression. After all, conspiracism doesn't feel very fashionable anymore. We have other fads. Still, I think the series is worth watching. My favourite episode is "Speaking in tongues", where Foster deprograms an entire religious cult centred on worship of one of the Gua. The cultists respond by turning Foster into their new saviour! An unfortunate insight into human psychology.

Three seasons of "First Wave" were produced. Some episodes have been uploaded on Youtube by fans, for those who want a sneaky preview.

Elizabeth Clare Prophet on all and everything

Elizabeth Clare Prophet was the leader of The Summit Lighthouse until her death a few years ago. I don't deny that she was very charismatic and strangely fascinating. Unfortunately, her group was probably a cult. As for her message, it seems to have been an eclectic potpourri of almost everything...except Islam! Her writings have the same eclectic quality. This book is no exception.

The main message of "Saint Germain's prophecy for the new millennium" is that prophecy isn't set in stone, and that even the gloomiest forecasts can be changed. The Biblical story of Jonah is used as evidence for this. Indeed, the book contains very few concrete prophecies. Published in 1999, it claims that the period until 2025 will contain both positive and negative aspects, and it's up to humanity to choose which path it will tread. One of Prophet's co-authors, the astrologer Murray Steinman, discusses various planetary transits and comes to the conclusion that we are entering a period of wars and clashes between civilizations...or democratic revolutions and spiritual transformations.

Otherwise, what struck me about this book was Prophet's attempt to cover as much ground as possible. She and her co-authors Steinman and Spadaro discusses Nostradamus, Edgar Cayce, the Marian apparitions at Fatima and Medjugorje, the life of Saint Germain, the power of the violet flame, and (briefly) the movie "Ghostbusters II" (!). It should be noted that The Summit Lighthouse considers the Statue of Liberty to be literally divine, so they must have loved the closing scenes of that motion picture...

The book also contains channelled messages from Mary, Saint Germain and elemental spirits, including The Hierarchs of the Water Element, who call upon us to save the majestic whales. Well, Elizabeth, since your group has a techno-fix, I really don't see your point! More disturbing is a prophecy by a female spirit (Mary again?) supposedly given to George Washington, foretelling the foreign occupation of the United States. The book, published two years before 9/11, also contain a quatrain by Nostradamus about an attack on New York.

More as a sideshow, "Saint Germain's prophecy for the new millennium" reveals that Dannion Brinkley is a Summit Lighthouse fellow traveller. Aha! Gotcha, Dannyboy! Apparently, Brinkley (author of "Saved by the Light") saw the violet flame during one of his near-death experiences.

I'm not sure how to rate a work I don't really agree with, but since it might be of interest to spiritual seekers and I feel generous, I give it four.