Do you believe in these predictions by Nostradamus?

Nope

No more so than the Farmers Almanac and the hysterical liberal left who seem to know all the answers over what Trump will do the next 4 years.

Of course not. No more than I trust economists to predict anything with their pseudoscience.

What a crock.

With that sensational title, I wouldn’t believe you even if you say that H2O is water.
I can come up with equally “accurate” predictions, just give me some alcohol.

Of course not.

^^so you think Trump will do good in office..)

Quatrain 81 reads as follows…

“The great shameless, audacious bawler,
He will be elected governor of the army:
The boldness of his contention,
The bridge broken, the city faint from fear.”

Written 500 years ago. Need I say more.

0f course. Isn’t a shame that there are just SO many things for a body to believe in and trust?

Absolutely not.

Nostradamus is difficult to interpret. His predictions are cryptic and confusing. He has also been flat out wrong.
That said, I cannot dismiss him. He named Hitler and Napoleon. He has been amazingly right on occasion.
30 years ago or so, I interpreted one of his predictions, which had a firm date attached. The quatrain said that Iran would succeed the mountain. Because this was during the Iran/Iraq war, I thought it meant on that day they would win a major battle, enabling them to win the war.
Nope. Instead, on that day, the Ayatollah announced that his successor would be a man named Monte (which is pretty close to the french spelling of mountain). Still, impressive.
He also said that we were living in the time of two popes, which is amazingly accurate, since we have Francis, and Benedict still living.

Sure, with enough creative interpretation you can turn any statement into a prediction about anything.

@filmfann He was just lucky. What he did is no different than when you read your horoscope and find something in your day that will match it.

No.

Nostrodamus wrote his notes in Latin and Hebrew. They have been bent beyond recognition over time, probably for the purpose of selling books to a gullible public.

He was a very busy physician during the time of the plagues. As there was no effective therapy for the plagues of his time, he must have been a very frustrated doctor helplessly watching while his patients died. He was also unhappily married and rarely spent nights with his wife. So, there was no succor for him. In order to shut his mind down at night, he would write his thoughts. He had a lot of them. He was a very smart and well educated man. His thoughts were the products of fatigue and exhaustion, not genious or clairvoyance.

I think he would be very surprised at the attention his scribblings have received throughout these centuries.

@Dutchess_III Don’t dismiss his predictions if you haven’t really studied them. It’s more than luck when you name the three most dangerous men of the last 500 years as Napoleon, Hitler, and Mabus. By the way, the current Secretary of the Navy is named Ray Mabus.

No. If his predictions were vague and cryptic, than essentially one could interpret them as one wishes, and relate to these whatever associations work best. Mankind seems to have a nature and pattern it follows, so it’s not really hard making “predictions” if one bases them off historical patterns. I can say that in about thirty years from now, a new tyramt will be born somewhere and will rule with an iron fist. Somewhere, in 70 years from now, it’s “probably” going to happen. Nostradamus, if anything, right or wrong about his predictions, must have been a great sociologist, if, as @Espiritus_Corvus says, his writings were not merely the thoughts of a tired amd frustrated man.

Hell back then not everyone could read or write, was it not like a luxury to be literate? Maybe that’s the only reason he stands out. The laws of probability? Einstein wins again!

As yes, Nostradamus’ supposed prediction of Hitler, er, well, Hister. But “Hister” is close to “Hitler”, so obviously he was naming Hitler. Oh look! He even mentions Germany in the same line. Gotta be Hitler. Can’t be anything, anything at all, but Hitler.

Except that “Hister” is a somewhat archaic name for the Danube, a rather significant river that runs for nearly 1,800 miles, west to east, across Europe (beginning in Germany and flowing into the Black Sea along the Romania/Ukraine border).

No, he is known for vague verses in French and Latin that can mean nearly anything, and later frauds mistranslate and twist them to fit given recent events. I speak French and some Latin, so I can’t be deceived by mistranslations. Frauds claim one quatrain predicts the Great London Fire about a century after his verse was written, but the real translation indicates that he was discussing events of his time in an obscure manner. Frauds say he predicted Hitler, when he mentioned Hister in two verses, but Hister was an old name for the Danube River, and he plainly discusses two rivers, Rhine and Danube, in one verse.