Customer Reviews

The Prophecies of Nostradamus: The Man Who Saw Tomorrow

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I bought this book because it looked interesting, but have found in just the first few pages that it contained several typos that were wrong, i.e. stating Louis XVI was "The Sun King," when Louis XIV was instead. Otherwise, I find it a nice introduction to the work of Nostradamus. Just don't make it your only source about him.

Michel de Nostredame is perhaps indeed one of the most undisputed 'psychics' ever known to man. His reputation as a defied prophet, mainly in our modern times, is made much likely due to the many false interpretations of self-professed 'interpreters' to his prophecies - that when time shows their fallacies, it is Nostradamus' name who suffered in the result.
Although not to the full extent of taking some high acclaim about her abilities to interpret Nostradamus' prophecies like the number of the other so-called interpreters -- Erika Cheetham is not too far being different from the number of these "Nostradamus experts"; her quatrain interpretations of Nostradamus' prophecies either lack accuracy or they miss out on some overlooked detail to further identify the intended meaning from Nostradamus' writings. Her commentaries on some of the verses interpreted are even at times self-confessionary in admitting to this.

THE MAN WHO SAW TOMORROW however, may be good enough to fill in for other books in the study of Nostradamus' works; the author, along with a biographical chapter found in the introduction to this book on the life of Nostradamus, have provided commentaries on some of the Century Quatrains, and is quite impressive with her notes for the portions pertaining to Hitler, Queen Catherine, and Napoleon. (I don't buy much of the stuff about the over-rated Kennedys though).
This book (which is the basis and companion to the film of the same title hosted by Orson Welles) contains all of Nostradamus' ten Century text writings with the authors' personal translations for each verse.

But if you would like to save some of your time, watch the movie instead.

At a going market rate of one penny (plus postage of course) this book might be an investment you could consider. Anything significantly in excess of that - think twice. In fact there is a short preface by the editor, agreeably written and providing some basic background on the seer and his seeings. This is what has enabled me, after a brief struggle with my conscience, to award the second star. Apart from that, I could not get out of my mind an early address where Nostradamus practised what really does seem to have been effective social medicine during the plague in Toulouse. This address was the rue de la Triperie, and the image of tripe was one that I could not forget as I read on.

There are 400-odd pages of this stuff, and of course the interpretations do not originate with the editor Erika Cheetham. Michel de Nostredame gained an early reputation as a prophet, and let me say before I start on the hermeneutics that his utterances are subjected to that I do not rule out the possibility that there may have been some substance to that reputation. I always remember what Arthur C Clarke said when musing on Childhood's End many years later - his interest in the paranormal had declined, but not all the phenomena can be bogus. However I'm in no doubt either that most of them are. Seers, prophets, shamans, swamis and whatnot occur in eras and in cultures where that kind of belief is common and indeed orthodox. The tradition lives on to the extent that people remain superstitious, and from certain visionaries, e.g. Frau Magda Goebbels, it can gain a new vigour and currency among those who seem to find in it predictions of what they would like to predict.

There is even a special irony here. Nostradamus met, and for a time was friendly with the brilliant but quarrelsome Julius-Cesar Scaliger, father of the great classical scholar Joseph Justus Scaliger. The irony is that it was the younger Scaliger whose unaided brains first produced sense and intelligibility out of the corrupt MSS of the difficult astrological Latin epic the Astronomica of Manilius. To edit Manilius has since been seen as ascending the Mount Everest of textual criticism, something later achieved by first Bentley and then Housman, and it needs knowledge of astrology as well as knowledge of Latin. The towering intellects of Scaliger Bentley and Housman went about the matter in one way. Several centuries of human credulity have gone into explaining the texts of Nostradamus, and this is the tradition that Mrs Cheetham treats us to.

You don't need to go far to see the method, though that is no word for it. `La republique par gens nouveaux versee' is translated as ` The new republic will be troubled by its people.' The word for `new' goes with the noun for `people' in the French, not with the noun for `republic'. Where does `its' come from? The French does not say whether these are the republic's own people or foreigners. In the very next line `jugeront' means `will judge', not `will rule', and `a l'envers' more naturally means `in different ways' than `wrongly'. If I had read every page I would doubtless encounter more such examples, but I have found them on every page I have read. Why is `serpens' supposed to come from some Greek word serpos, apparently meaning a shroud but unknown to Liddell and Scott's Lexicon? Surely it is simple Latin for `serpent'? Again, why on earth should `Hadrie' be some variant of Henri? It is much more likely the French for Hadrian, possibly abbreviated. It also takes special insight to get NATO out of the author's Arton.

I shudder to think what Housman might have said. The whole process is the total negation of any sound scholarly method. It is just piling hypothesis on fantasy on wishful thinking. However the horrors I have been quoting are only details. We are simply not told by what process the various pronouncements are linked in the first place to the events and even the eras they supposedly refer to. I wonder why not, or rather I think I don't need to wonder. Nor should you expect any process of textual criticism and evaluation of the MSS readings. Scaliger, Gronovius, Heinsius, Bentley, Lachmann, Haupt, Madvig, Porson, Housman - you have not really lived and worked in vain, but you have as far as this kind of production is concerned. If, as seems likely, a lot of the interpretation is of a text that is or may be corrupt you would never know it here.

The fall of communism is apparently foreseen, but quite apart from the general issue of whether such a meaning could even possibly be extracted from the text, it took no Nostradamus to predict that, only a basic grasp of economics. This volume saw the light first in 1973, so doom and disaster was still a possible runner in the year-2000 stakes, but among disastrous years of several kinds I don't recall it being one of the worst, and at least the world has not ended yet, something apparently scripted for the millennium year.

I wonder what the real truth might have been regarding the alleged visionary insights of Nostradamus. In the Spirit of Arthur C Clarke I don't rule that out, but neither you nor I will get much help with that question here.

400 years ago the mysterious prophet Nostradamus foresaw tomorrow's headlines in the astonishing predicitons that still amaze and baffle readers today. Nostradamus not only foresaw Hitler's terror and the assassinations of the Kennedys-he named names with stunning accuracy. Basis for the movie-the man who saw tomorrow.

It's a great book! I have 2 13 year old's.I would like them to read this book . I was about 13 to when I read this book .I like history it will make you think . The 20th century was awesome!

I AM THE FAN OF NOSTRADAMOUS I READ ALL BOOKS OF NOSTRADAMOUS EXCEPT THIS AFTER I SAW THIS BOOK INTERNET I AM VERY HAPPY TO READ THIS THANK YOU