Nostrodamus 'he was very predictable'
Good old Nostrodamus turned 503 yesterday (hasn't aged a bit in around 450 years has he!. To celebrate and enlighten the masses to his predictions a brief resume of the man himself.
Michel de Nostredame was born on December 14th, 1503 in St.-Remy-de-Provence, France; the first son of a large and educated Jewish family. During this era, Jews were persecuted and often practiced their beliefs in shadows. His family converted to Christianity.By the time he was 16, Michel was ready to enter the university in Avignon.
His beginning studies were in classical grammar, rhetoric and logic along with basic sciences, but these were interrupted by the plague of 1520 and Michel took his place as physician among many other educated healers of the day. But Michel became known, even in this early time, as a miracle worker. It wasn't until after he spent many years of traveling around Europe that Michel actually enrolled into medical school at the famous Montpelier medical facility in October 1529.
His medical education was not without trouble however. His vast experience during the plague and through his travels boosted Michel's knowledge, in many cases, above those of the scholars doing the teaching. Michel was often at odds with his instructors over the causes or affects of illness in patients. He studied medicine in Montpellier and started a practice about 1525. Soon after, he began to treat victims of the plague in communities of southern France. Nostradamus used innovative methods of treatment, and his success in curing extremely ill patients earned him a reputation as an especially gifted healer. Unfortunatly, he lost his first wife and daughter to a plague, and was devestated.
Even WITHOUT all of his 'visions' and 'prophecies,' Nostradamus would still have been a noteworthy for his medical acheivements.After this loss, he focused more on Astrology and began to see his first visions.
Why are the Nostradamus prophecies so obscure?
Nostradamus explains that this was done to avoid persecution from the Inquisition. He also gives this as the reasoning why the quatrains are not in chronological order. Nostradamus left his predictions in the form of several letters, almost 1000 4-line verses called quatrains (the Centuries), and a collection of 6-line verses called sixains.
The prophesies are not sequential by date. Some interesting coincidences have been observed between the quatrain number (in the Centuries) and the last two digits of the year of the corresponding event, but this is not uniformly true. Nostradamus almost always concealed his meanings in anagrams, symbolism, and mythological allusions, and to top it all off Nostradamus wrote primarily in "early Modern French," with a mixture of archaic words mostly derived from Latin and Greek. Confusing huh? He also incorporates words from the "Languedoc" or Provencal dialect of southern France. That is why so many of his prophecies are left wide open to interpretation. To put it in simple terms, he combined 3 languages, mixed it all together with symbolism and cryptic messages, and then put them into 4-line "verses" or "quatrains." Sort of like prophectic poetry I guess.
Another possible explanation for the obscurity of the quatrains has to do with the dynamics of Nostradamus' visions. His visions seem to span thousands of years. It was proabably difficult for him to interpret 20th and 21st century technology using 16th century French. He simply lacked the vocabulary. Also, it is possible that a single quatrain could refer to several events. The incorporation of 'links' to several different events would further increase the obscurity of a quatrain.
I would also like to point out from my studies:-use of language that was, even when written, archaic and chaotic-use of anagrams and unknown names (symbolism) locations and objects-use of astrological or mythological references (references to planetary alignments and other phenomena).-nonstandard word order, and sentence structure that seemingly doesn't flow
