Nostradamus Debunkable?

There are probably many more than a hundred threads posted about Nostradamus, but I would like to gather the opinions of ATS.

I know not whether to believe in Nostradamus' ability to predict things, because his predictions seem to be so generally stated they could apply to a broad spectrum of scenarios.

An interesting example:

At the war's end:
The Feeble Kept One will strike down the Night
And his Imbecile Queen will rise from the snow
Bedecked in finery and the pelt of a wolf.

www.propeller.com...

^ I believe this was posted on ATS as well.

It intrigues me. It hit right on the money, save for McCain not winning the election and what not. The war's end could be representing the campaign. Feeble definitely describes McCain. Night could represent Obama, and I don't mean in a racist way. I agree that Palin isn't the brightest, and Alaska is pretty snowy. There was also a lot of talk about her spending money on fancy clothes. I don't know what to say about the wolf pelt.

I don't know if anyone else finds this interesting but I do. I don't necessarily believe it, which is why I have come up with a sort of challenge. I will be participating as well, or trying.

I want to see if someone can come up with an alternate event, or something that this quatrain can relate to. In fact, any quatrain of Nostradamus' will do.

I want to debunk these, by relating them to other events that have transpired, which would obviously throw off the 'prediction' of a certain event if it already happened.



I apologize if this thread's premise is trite. I am hoping for interesting replies.


I also have found nothing pertaining to the aforementioned quatrain! XD

The ambiguous nature of his quatrains make the predictions undebunkable, especially because they are often translated wrongly from old-time French into modern time English and mistakes are made or the translations cannot be made accurately. It makes them undebunkable and at the same time pretty much useless. Fun, interesting maybe but useless all the same. Like Tarotcards, same story only there you are the source of the 'info' and you can use intuition to make sense of the whole thing and it will be helpfull in the way that you are encouraged to think about the given answers in relation to your personal life/question.

Interesting reply. I figured they were pretty close to impossible to debunk. I guess it would be more extraordinary for Nostradamus to have said, "At the end of the campaign: McCain will strike down Obama. Sarah Palin will rise from the snow. She wears fancy clothes."

I guess it is sort of like when you randomly predict an event before it happens, out of random probability (i.e: guessing a number from 1-10) but on a much larger scale.

Anyway, if someone still wishes to add, feel free. I would like to receive a few more opinions on the topic.

reply to post by panda319


See, I thought it referred to my wife catching me having an affair with her sister last winter.

reply to post by DarthChrisious


Maybe she read the Quatrain herself? XD

Read the prediction thus - about the Feeble Kept-One & the Imbicile Queen.

1.
the feeble kept-one = (feeble) = slim/weak (Obama's body) + kept-one = as Nostradamus saw him in visions as a black slave or a 'KEPT ONE'.

The imbicile queen is as I see it Hilary Clinton - she will be an increasing part of Obama's inside team. This will be to appease the Clinton supporters so as to unite the Democratic Party.

The prediction ends in war with the Bear with poison arrows ie Russia & nukes!!

The problem with the Nostradamus stuff is that it's always interpreted after-the-fact, so the symbolism can be fudged to fit a particular event. There is one, however, that I always felt predicted a future event. That's 4:8, which is:

The great city by prompt and sudden assault
Surprised at night, guards interrupted:
The guards and watches of Saint-Quentin
Slaughtered, guards and the portals broken.

The old-world village of St. Quentin didn't have huge walls or guards, so attributing this verse that that town is a mistake. However, the modern San Quentin penitentiary in California remarkably matches the description, and would be a likely place for the actions in the verse to take place. But unless Nostradamus is referring to the 1982 riot, the specific event hasn't happened yet.

So here is a chance to use at least one of the verses to predict a future event, not retroactively fit a verse to something that happened in the past.

Unfortunately, there's no clue in the verse about the time frame, so there's no way to pinpoint when the events in verse are supposedly going to happen. And it's not a good prediction without a time mentioned.

I thought I read somewhere that there is a hidden key or cipher in Nostradamus's verses or the way they're arranged that allow for accurate calculation of exact dates chronology, even for verses with no obvious astrological or historical references. I'm bored, so maybe I'll look that up.

Anyway, I tend to think that, like all fortune-telling systems, whether it's Tarot or I-Ching or tea leaves, the verses use symbolism to expand the scryer's imagination, allowing for conscious creation (or at least an increase in probabilities) of future reality from virtual potentialities. Maybe.

Nostradamus...."dunkable".

Why was he not seen as a witch?

Maybe he was more of an entertainer in his day and it is us in this modern age that have read far too much into his scribblings and search for connections that only apply now as predictions.

Yeah I agree with that point. We tend to make things out to be more than they are. Latch on to things we want to be true. Entertain silly ideas, etc.

I always stood on the skeptical side of the 'Nostradamus trend' if you could call it that...

He sort of reminds me of those spirit readers.




"Does someone in the Audience no anyone with a name that starts with a C? Oh, you sir? A cha cha--- (Guy: "Chad...") Chad! That's what I was feeling...Chad...Did he have some sort of injury in his lifetime? etc etc etc etc"

Nostradamus puts all of these in one nice little cryptic quatrain but I feel it is the same concept, somewhat.

www.snopes.com...

www.snopes.com...

www.snopes.com...

www.snopes.com...

Wow great find XD

I guess that sort of closes this thread!

If you still have comments go ahead and add them but I think we've achieved our goal.

Well, Nostradamus had to write in such a way because of persecution. It is hard to say whether his predictions are debunkable are not. Much of what he wrote seems on the surface to be quite a matter of interpretation.

Originally posted by nerbot
Why was he not seen as a witch?

He was. That is why he wrote his quatrains in the manner that he did. He avoded persecution by doing this.