The Antinous Prophecies: A Nostradamoid Project

The prophecies of Nostradamus are said to foretell events centuries in his future. Are the prophecies merely verbal ink blots to which humans "fit" events? Here's a test using random simulations.

Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.

Wolfgang von Goethe

Michel Nostredame, better known as Nostradamus (1503-1566), was a French astrologer and physician, the most widely read seer of the Renaissance. Nostradamus began making prophecies around the year 1547, which he published in 1555 in a book titled Centuries. The work consisted of rhymed quatrains grouped in hundreds, each set of 100 called a "century." Some of his prophecies appeared to be fulfilled, and his fame became so widespread that he was invited to the court of Catherine de Medicis, queen consort of Henry II of France, where he cast the horoscopes of her children.

I call the attribution of meaning to imprecise, poetic phrases "the Nostradamus effect," and I have long been curious to determine if the Nostradamus effect could be simulated with random quatrains. For example, could it be that Nostradamus's quatrains were like ink blots--not really foretelling anything but permitting people to fit future history to rather nebulous poems? To test this theory, I composed the following quatrains of gibberish just by letting my mind wander and writing the first images that came to my mind. As far as I was concerned, they had no particular meaning or significance. Nostradamus looked into a glass flask of steaming liquid to inspire his visions. I looked into the shiny glass of my computer's CRT. He may have sought to predict the future. I sought to write random phrases with absolutely no correspondence to historical events.

After composing the quatrains, I asked people to match my quatrains with actual historical happenings. I called the quatrains the "quatrains of Antinous," which sounded and looked suitably exotic, especially with the umlaut u symbol. The randomized quatrains are listed in the following table. Judge for yourself. Did I actually channel a man named Antinous? Could I be the next Nostradamus, "the Nostradamus from New York"? If my prophecies actually do predict future events, I hope a hundred years from now people will remember me....

Some of the people I surveyed considered the idea that these nine prophecies of Antinous may have been actual ancient prophecies. For some reason, quatrain 8 generated a lot of interest. Marsha S., a respondent from California, suggested quatrain 8 prophesied

the Loma Prieta earthquake back in 1989 when the Bay Bridge broke and everyone had to drive around to get into the city. The doggone thing began in the Santa Cruz mountains... "silica" refers to Silicon Valley.

Mike V., from Colorado State University, writes to me:

Quatrain 8 describes the asteroid impact 65 million years ago that is thought to have killed off the dinosaurs. Here is my logic. 1) Lightning comes near the peninsula, and one will swim: An observer near the impact site might see the streaking meteor as it ablated in the atmosphere as lightning. The impact crater is in the Yucatan peninsula. The Chicxulub impact would create massive ocean waves that would wash inland, thus the "one will swim." 2) There is ruin, Lester, but all is not lost: The comet caused a huge crater, tidal waves, firestorms, and airborne ash that blocked the Sun for years. The dinosaurs went extinct, as did over 80 percent of life on Earth. (Not all is lost.) Life went on, and the small furry mammals that survived led eventually to ourselves. 3) From the steel and silica brim / Blood, and water, but not at cost: The impact fused the silicates and sand into a crust around the edge of the crater. If the impact object was a stony carbonaceous chondrite there would be silicates all over the impact site. If it was nickel iron, the site would be ridden with nickel, and iron, which is a component of steel. Blood and water refers further to the death and destruction caused by the impact. I cannot think of any reason for "but not at cost" except to fill out the rhyme.

Another respondent, computer scientist David G. from Lexington, Kentucky, said, "All of these seem to be very prophetic!" This respondent suggested that quatrain 1 foretells the demise of IBM. The first line "After the skirmish, one is wounded the other dies," refers to the fight between IBM and Microsoft. The respondent wrote to me:

IBM's operating system, OS/2, was killed by the fight, and, although Microsoft's Windows was wounded, it survived. Microsoft, being the great white hope, at least initially, sings the praises of their Windows operating system in a world darkened by IBM. Microsoft, whose president is of European heritage, flies into market domination from their location in Redmond, Washington (near the water), and takes over the world. I'm a little confused by the "cross and knight" reference. Could it refer to a chess board?

One respondent suggested that quatrain 8 referred to the Cherynobyl nuclear disaster. Denise W. wrote to me suggesting that the first quatrain refers to the wreck of the Titanic: