Nostradamus and the Financial Crisis

2011-04-12T02:48:00.001-07:00

Before the Nostradamaniacs try to kid you that Nostradamus predicted the world financial crises of 2007/8 and 2011-12 (as they will), on their usual principle that Nostradamus predicted whatever has just happened, please bear in mind that his book The Prophecies mentions such economic matters only four times, namely at II.75, III.5, V.32 and VIII.14.

Here are the verses in question. They are followed by my own published verse-translations of them, taken from my Nostradamus: The Illustrated Prophecies (O Books, 2003). For more literal, word-for-word translations, see my Nostradamus, Bibliomancer (Career Press, 2010 – see below). You can explore the originals for yourself either in high resolution on the CD supplied with this latter book or in low resolution online at http://www.propheties.it/bibliotheque/index.html.

II.75. Original 1555 text
La voix ouye de l’insolit oyseau,
Sur le canon du respiral estaige.
Si hault viendra du froment le boisseau,
Que l’homme d’homme sera Anthropophage.

        Heard is the unaccustomed bird that calls
        On the stern law-book and the winding stair!
        So dear the peck of wheat that man shall dare
        His fellow man to eat, like cannibals.

Source: For lines 1 and 2, Julius Obsequens’s On Omens (26) for 135 BC: ‘The voice of an owl was heard first in the Capitol, and then in the city around’ (Lycosthenes’ illustration of the birdlooks distinctly strange!); and (27a) for 133 BC: ‘In Rome an owl and other unknown birds were seen,’ with a covert dig at Henri II’s appointment in 1554 of sénéchaux (Lieutenants General) to preside over legal and administrative matters throughout southern France. The concomitant inflation was a perennial theme of the day, and had been posing major problems for the low-paid ever since the 1530s. The ‘winding stair’ reference is presumably to the still-famous spiral staircase that his father King Francois had had built at the royal castle of Blois.

III.5. Original 1555 text

Pres, loin defaut de deux grand luminaires

Qui surviendra entre l’Avril & Mars.

O quel cherté! mais deux grands debonaires

Par terre & mer secourront toutes pars.

Not long after both lights afar go out

(’Twixt March and April shall that time befall),

What prices! But two gentle lords, no doubt,

By land and sea shall succour bring to all.

Source: Possibly the Mirabilis liber’s references to Elias and Enoch in the context of its dramatic end-of-the-world scenario: ‘Then the Antichrist shall reveal himself publicly; he shall seat himself in the house of the Lord in Jerusalem. During his reign, there shall appear two illustrious men, Elias and Enoch, to announce the coming of the Lord. The Antichrist shall put them to death, and two days latter the Lord shall revive them’ (Prophecy of the Tiburtine Sibyl). Brind’Amour suggests a specific back-reference to consecutive lunar and solar eclipses that were visible over distant eastern Europe in the spring of 1540. François I’s new gabelle, or salt-tax, was imposed the following year, while freezing weather in 1541 and especially 1542 brought about steep rises in the price of food.

V.32 Original September 1557 text

Ou tout bon est, tout bien Soleil & lune,

Est abondant sa ruyne s’approche:

Du ciel s’advance vaner ta fortune,

En mesme estat que la septiesme roche.

Where bonds abound, and gold and silver are

Richly abundant, comes wealth’s ruin near.

To waste your fortune comes a distant star:

Like the seventh rock - like lead - it shall appear.

Source: Directly or indirectly (the explanatory phrase ‘like lead’, relating to contemporary alchemy, is in fact mine), Matthew 6:19: ‘Do not store up for yourselves treasure on earth . . . ,’ taken as a warning of economic disaster in the run-up to the supposedly imminent end of the world.

VIII. 14. Original text of 1568 edition

Le grand credit d’or, d’argent l’abondance

Fera aveugler par libide l’honneur

Sera cogneu d’adultere l’offence,

Qui parviendra à son grand deshonneur.

Of gold great credit, and of silver mounds,

Shall blind with greed the eyes of honour bright:

The crime of coin-debasing comes to light

Which to his great dishonour then redounds.

Source: The demise of Chancellor Antoine Duprat, Cardinal Archbishop of Sens and papal legate, suspected in 1530 of having debased and sold gold from the huge ransom collected for handing over to the Empire for the release of Francois I in 1526, and who is referred to again by name as le grand Antoine at IV.88, complete with the lice with which he is known to have been afflicted.

In his ‘financial’ quatrains, in fact, Nostradamus normally predicts only inflation, counterfeiting and deliberate debasement of the currency, which were the major concerns of his day. There is no hint whatever of any credit crunch or stock market crisis, let alone an international one. The Nostradamaniacs who would try to convince you to the contrary thus have a very serious question to answer. And it is this: if Nostradamus really predicted the world financial crises of 2007-8 or of 2011, why didn’t they warn us beforehand, as I did in my The Great Pyramid Decoded of 1977 (pp. 135, 160), The Great Pyramid: Your Personal Guide of 1987 (p. 177, specifically as ‘the Big Crunch’ and for 2007 – and thus 20 years in advance!) and Gods of the Dawn of 1997 (p.107) – albeit without any help from Nostradamus?