Nostradamus is well known for writing “prophecies” in the form of four line poems called “quatrains”. Many legends have grown about Nostradamus which aren’t true, including his being a physician (there’s no record of it), his being Jewish (he only had one Jewish grandfather, and was in fact asecond generation Roman Catholic) and discovering a cure for the plague from roses (it doesn’t actually work). Nostradmus made plenty of predications that haven’t panned out. He predicted a horrible fate for English Queen Elizabeth I in his almanacs, which never came to pass, and was probably written just to please the French nobility. A trick used by fortunetellers and psychics even today is to tell people what they want to hear. His reputation as an astrologer is exaggerated, and in fact, he could not actually cast horoscopes.

     Many of his so called “prophecies” were really political commentaries and critiques about the Roman Catholic Church, and notpredictions of the future. Fans of Nostradamus who don’t know this read anything they want into the quatrains, transforming them into “prophecies”.  The antiquated form of the French language that Nostradamus’ quatrains are written in allow for a lot of wiggle room, too. Quatrain 51, supposedly a prediction about the fire of London of 1666, was actually a veiled protest against English Queen Mary’s persecution of English Protestants in 1555. This event happened in Nostradamus’ lifetime, and Quatrain 51 was first published in May 1555, a few months after the incident happened occurred. (The Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural by James Randi, pgs 160-164) Critics have noted that Nostradamus is good at predicting the past...and they may be right in more ways than one!

     It’s a little known fact that Nostradmus’s son also tried his hand at predictionsas well after the death of his father. According to Ripely’s Believe It Or Not, unlike his famous dad, “Nostradamus Jr.” didn’t have the knack for cloaking hispredictions in poems without a specific date of fulfilment.  Jr. was said to have botched every single prediction he ever made in fact, which is why he isn’t as widely known! Once he predicted a certain French town would burn down on a certain date. When it didn’t, determined to have one of his predictions come true, he tried to burn it down himself! An angry mob caught him in the act of arson, put out the fire in time before it spread, and even this prediction failed to materialize. When asked “Do you think we’re going to allow you to live after what you’ve done?” the defiant Nostradamus offspring replied “Yes”! The mob then immediately killed him. Even this very last prediction of Junior’s was a failure!

     In the 20th Century, Nazi Propagandist Joseph Gobbels had booklets of Nostradamus’ “prophecies” printed up with interpretations that made the Nazis sound as though they would win WWII, and had them distributed all over Europe. Great Britain retaliated with it’s own Nostradamus predictions with the Allied Nations victorious, and distributed them over Europe as well. More than likely, neither set of fake predictions had any real impact on the war, one way or the other.

     And while he may have used “occult” methods to get his visions,  Nostradamus actually wrote that outside of the Christian Church there was no salvation! There’s no real evidence Nostradamus was a Rosicrucian or magician. Letters of Nostradamus turned up in the Bibliotheque Nationale in France that indicate Nostradamus was a secretly a Lutheran. While some of his practices may have been wrong,  he actually seemed to have had faith in Christianity.

 Michele Nostradamus: His legend doesn’t live up to reality, and he was secretly a Lutheran!