Nostradamus The 21st Century and Beyond The present — which is still unfolding, is cloudy because we’re too close to that forest to see the trees as they emerge from the mists of time. But the thing all of us are most intrigued by is this: What does Nostradamus tell us about our own future —which, after all, is where we’ll be spending all our time? Is it to be all doom and gloom as some read into Nostradamus? Or were those frightening scenarios merely reflections of the prophet’s own gloomy character and the superstitious, medieval mind-set that produced him? Page 1 of 31 Nostradamus The 21st Century and Beyond Any discussion of Nostradamus’ predictions about our future has to deal to some extent with what appear to be doomsday forecasts and the coming of the third Antichrist. That is too much a part of the Nostradamus saga. But only a part. He also had a lot to say about the glorious, golden days that lie before us. However, the one prediction that preoccupies most Nostradamus scholars to the point of obsession — and chills some to the bone — is the one he recorded in CX Q72 which reads: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ “In the year 1999, and seven months from the sky will come the great King of Terror. He will bring to life the great King of the Mongols. Before and after war reigns happily.” ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Most experts have interpreted this famous quatrain as the prophet’s vision of an Antichrist. If Napoleon was the first and Hitler the second, the big questions obviously are: Who’s the third Antichrist? Is he/she/it among us today? Or still decades, even centuries, in the future? According to Christian legend, the Antichrist is a person or power that will come to corrupt the world but will then be conquered by Christ’s Second Coming. The key word here is power. To Nostradamus and his contemporaries, the Antichrist was definitely a real person who possessed extraordinarily evil powers. In the late 20th century, the concept of Antichrist and evil included people, political power or, more likely, terrorist movements. In other words, the Antichrist might be something intangible rather than a flesh-and-blood devil incarnate. Also, to the people of the Middle Ages, the Antichrist was more likely to be a non-Christian who opposed the power of the Church. The Turks of the time Page 2 of 31 Nostradamus The 21st Century and Beyond were prime candidates, for example. That’s why some experts conclude that Nostradamus was talking about a real person — probably a Middle Eastern warlord — when he foretold the coming of the final third Antichrist. One thing is certain, CX Q72 contains one of Nostradamus’ most precise dates. It is one of only 17 out of hundreds of his quatrains in which Nostradamus gives a specific year for an upcoming event. Since we’re still here, it’s easy to dispute those who argue that this quatrain was Nostradamus’ prediction that the world would end in 1999. He was talking more about the change of millennium, which to people of his day was a highly symbolic and superstitious event. And while he did predict war, what’s often overlooked is that Nostradamus says it will occur both before and after the coming of the king of the Mongols, so obviously he didn’t foresee this as the end of the world. Besides, there are all his other predictions in which Nostradamus foretells a future of peace and joy for humankind that lasts for thousands of years. Scholar Stephen Skinner contends that Nostradamus provided additional clues about the millennium in his epistle to Henry II in which he writes: ------------------------------------------------------------------------- "This will be preceded by an eclipse of the sun, more obscure and tenebrose (dark and gloomy) than has ever been since the creation of the world, except that (eclipse) after the death and passion of Jesus Christ.” ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Scientists say that the total eclipses of the sun after the one that occurred on August 11, 1999, will occur on September 23, 2090, and October 7, 2135. “One will mark the arrival of the Antichrist,” Skinner insists. Page 3 of 31 Nostradamus The 21st Century and Beyond Most experts favored 1999. But their reading of Nostradamus may have been flawed or their timing off. If 1999 did, in fact, signal the coming of another Antichrist, it must indicate the year of his or her birth. Nostradamus also suggests that this Antichrist will be around for 27 years. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ “The third Antichrist soon annihilates everything, twenty-seven years of blood his war will last. The unbelievers dead, captive, exiled with blood, human bodies, water and red hail covering the earth.” (CVIII Q72) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- But after his/her/its passing, the world will enter a new golden age or the true Age of Aquarius as measured by some astrologers who date its beginnings in the mid-2020s. To understand some of Nostradamus’ predictions dealing with the third Antichrist, the millennium or Armageddon, it helps to recall his own deeply held religious belief — even superstitions — that influenced the things he wrote about and predicted. For example, even though Nostradamus’ family converted to Christianity, they didn’t abandon their Jewish roots, especially Nostradamus’ two grandfathers who passed along the ancient creeds and teachings to the eager young clairvoyant. Page 4 of 31 Nostradamus The 21st Century and Beyond The Coming of Armageddon Among those traditions was the belief that seven major incidents, occurring around the same time, will foretell the coming of Armageddon — or, in Nostradamus’ view of things —the millennium. According to Cheetham, Nostradamus included the seven signs in his predictions as a sort of advanced early warning system. His hope was that if we pay attention to the omens, we can do something about them and, thus, change our future. 1.) For example, Nostradamus’ first sign is a decline in the strength of the three major religions of the world and a sharp rise in false beliefs and bizarre cults, and a reliance on the occult. 2.) The second of Nostradamus’ warnings involves revolutions and internal turmoil in nations around the world. This one is hard to overlook in our time. For instance, not only did the entire USSR collapse in ruins, but the ethnic states that once comprised the Soviet Union began demanding control of their own destinies, often to the point of bloodshed. And the insurrection through the former Yugoslavia among the Croats, Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Muslims — coupled with other Nostradamus predictions for this troubled area — may be one of the major red flags the prophet was waving in our faces. 3.) In addition to internal revolutions, the third sign Nostradamus says to look for is war and the rumor of war. Needless to say, every century in history has had its share of wars. The 20th century was really no different except perhaps in the astonishing scope of warfare at our disposal. These range from full-scale world wars to limited actions such as the Gulf War to the genocides one ethnic majority imposes on a minority — in Africa, in Bosnia, in Southeast Asia, the terrorist warfare in the Middle-East. Page 5 of 31 Nostradamus The 21st Century and Beyond 4.) Famine, in Nostradamus’ time, was seen as one of the seven deadly disasters mainly because there were few, if any, methods of easing it. That’s why Nostradamus included famine in his warning signs. Recently, famine has swept over many Third World countries, especially those occupying the Horn of Africa — Ethiopia, Sudan and Somalia. But unlike the limitations of Nostradamus’ time when famine was as big a threat as the plague, we have the means and the technology to relieve famine through massive international aid. Still, it’s one of the seven major signals which Nostradamus hoped we’d pay attention to. 5.) Sign number five, according to the experts, is the pollution of the earth. This may be the 20th century’s greatest sin and one with profound consequences that will help determine what quality of life we can expect in the 21st century. On the plus side, much of the world has already recognized this dire warning sign and is taking steps to correct it. And that response to cleaning up our own mess is exactly what Nostradamus hoped would happen when we became aware of his warnings. 6.) Nostradamus also spent a lot of time fussing over the possibility of widespread and devastating earthquakes. “In various places there will be great earthquakes,” he wrote. So it’s not surprising that he listed quakes among his seven warning signs. There have been numerous and destructive earthquakes around the globe in recent decades, which should be enough to get our attention. The fact that the long-awaited Big One did not level the West Coast of the United States in May 1988, as thousands of Nostradamus buffs anticipated, doesn’t mean it won’t happen sometime. In fact, the truly zealous Nostradamus fans merely chalk it up to faulty interpretation. 7.) To complete the list of seven warning signs, he warns of plagues and diseases around the world. Obviously, Nostradamus was deeply influenced by the terrible Black Death of the Middle Ages. Even his amazing ability to ease the Page 6 of 31 Nostradamus The 21st Century and Beyond suffering with his futuristic prescriptions was a drop in the bucket. And not even Nostradamus imagined the major medical breakthroughs that eliminated such horrors as plague, polio and smallpox as major health threats. On the other hand, we have our own appalling plagues to deal with as the 2lth century begins. Namely, AIDS, Ebola and the constantly mutating, mysterious and deadly variety of viruses that scientists. say will be the result of our own abuse of the environment. (See warning Number Five.) The Third Antichrist Some scholars believe that Nostradamus cleverly planted one of his tricky clues about the identity of the third and final Antichrist in CII Q62 that’s often referred to as the “Mabus” quatrain. It reads: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- "Mabus will soon die and there will happen a dreadful destruction of people and animals. Suddenly, vengeance will appear, a hundred hands, thirst and hunger, when the comet passes.” ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Most agree that “Mabus” appears to be an anagram masking the name of the third Antichrist, but critics are split in their interpretations of who or what that may be. Erika Cheetham thinks that it really stands for a forerunner and not the actual Antichrist. But John Hogue argues that “Mabus” really is the name of the Antichrist that for reasons of his own Nostradamus decided to cloak in mystery. The problem is that so far no on1 has broken the anagram’s code and come up with a specific name. Most likely, that’s because “Mabus” has not yet appeared on the world stage, so this is a future quatrain that awaits fulfillment. Page 7 of 31 Nostradamus The 21st Century and Beyond However, Nostradamus does narrow the time frame for the appearance of “Mabus” when he again mentions a comet, Halley’s Comet, which shows up in the earth’s sky every 75 years. The last time Halley’s comet paid us a visit was in 1986. It’s due for a return engagement in 2061. Does that mean that “Mabus” — the Antichrist — arrived in the mid 1980s, but is still unrecognized? Or will our descendants in 2060 experience this apparent terror? Only time will tell — but Nostradamus’ prophetic handwriting is already on the wall. A current view is that Nostradamus predicted that “Mabus” or Antichrist would come out of the Middle East or North Africa. That may be because the region today is our only source of “popular” villains. The Russians are now our buddies. The Chinese are slowly coming over. But with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and Arab nationalism, suddenly there’s a whole crop of would be Antichrists — Bin Laden of Saudi Arabia, Qaddafi of Libya, the ayatollahs of Iran and, of course, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Recently, several experts have focused on CX Q86 to support this Middle Eastern link: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "The King of Europe will come like a giffon, accompanied by those of the North. He will lead a great troop of red and white. They will march against the King of Babylon.” ----------------------------------------------------------------------- On the surface, at least, it seems clear that this relates to the Gulf War when a huge coalition from the North, lead by the red and white stripes of the American flag, set out to save Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and their rich oil fields. Present day Baghdad is only a stone’s throw from ancient Babylon and Saddam Hussein remains the undisputed King of Babylon. Page 8 of 31 Nostradamus The 21st Century and Beyond In his epistle to Henry II, Nostradamus also drops some other baffling hints about the third Antichrist and the signs that might accompany his coming: ----------------------------------------------------------------------- "... The Antichrist returns for the last time...All the Christians and infidel nations will tremble . . .for the space of twenty-five years. Wars and battles will be more grievous than ever. Towns, cities, citadels and all other structures will be destroyed... So many evils by Satan's prince will be committed that almost the entire world will find itself undone and desolated. Before these events, many rare birds will cry in the air, ‘Now! Now!' and sometime later will vanish.” ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- In Nostradamus’ time, the infidels were always the followers of Islam and he seems to be saying here that neither side in any religious conflict instigated by the Antichrist will come out a winner. All will suffer. What has puzzled the experts for more than 400 years, however, is Nostradamus’ curious reference to the “rare birds.” He often used animal riddles and animal symbols to refer to persons or events — for example, the swarm of bees and an eagle that depicted Napoleon’s coat of arms. Some experts believe that this passage means that some special visionaries (rare birds), either religious or secular, will take to the world stage to alert us to the dangers we face and perhaps help avert the disasters mentioned with their “Now!” warnings. Page 9 of 31 Nostradamus The 21st Century and Beyond This may be another example of Nostradamus telling us that “forewarned is forearmed” and that if we pay attention to the signs and take steps to short- Circuit them, the terrors predicted for the Antichrist can be avoided. According to Hogue: “The message may be antiprophetic in that the key to avert disaster may come from abandoning both the past and our obsession with tomorrow. Instead we should focus all our intelligence and energy on ‘NOW!” One of the benefits Nostradamus interpreters have today is that they have the tremendous advantage of hindsight over earlier decoders — even if it is only a matter of a few years. For example, Peter Lemesurier published Nostradamus: The Next 50 Years in 1993, only four years after Cheetham’s The Final Prophecies of Nostradamus - but in that short time span the Soviet Union collapsed. Suddenly, the threat of nuclear war between the superpowers vanished and that forced some translators to revise their interpretations of Nostradamus’ quatrains that seemed to foretell such a war between the United States and the USSR. Lemesurier himself observed: “For years, the would-be commentators have been using Nostradamus to predict nuclear Armageddon and a third world war involving the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact and West Germany, yet nothing of the kind has ever happened. “Moreover, there is virtually no chance now that it will. Not only has there been insufficient time for the predictions to exert their spell; the proposed participants no longer exist to fulfill the predictions in the first place. Where circumstances do not allow, in other words, the law of self-fulfillment simply cannot operate." As he did in the past, Nostradamus continues to be preoccupied with earthquakes in our future. Some of his quatrains are very specific. For example, in CX Q67, he writes: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Page 10 of 31