When I was in 10th Grade, I discovered the key to the universe at B. Dalton Bookseller at the Great Northern Mall. The Prophecies of Nostradamus: The Man Who Saw Tomorrow, by Erika Cheetham, outlined mankind's future history with a dire albeit vague certainty further corroborated and cemented as fact by the Orson Wells' narrated "documentary" of the same name. As a kid hellbent on unraveling life's mysteries before the age of 16, I devoured and digested both book and film with the hunger of a newly-converted True Believer. Of course, once I'd had a taste of the Great Seer, I needed more. Cheetham's magnum opus only whetted my appetite. What I required was a veritable smorgasbord of Nostradamus, and I knew exactly where to find it.
My favorite place in the universe at that time was the Cleveland Public Library downtown. From the age of 13, I'd been taking the 75 Bus down Lorain Road in North Olmsted to the Library on Superior. Back in those days, kids did stuff like this without much concern from their parents. Yes, Evil was out there; it just wasn't part of the 24-7 news cycle, mostly because there was no 24-7 news cycle. Anyway, armed with Cheetham's bibliography at the end of her book, I entered my fortress of solitude and immediately attacked the Library's mammoth card catalog located in the basement "tombs".
Back in those days, there was no internet nor any kind of computerized cataloging of information. Diligent researchers needed to wade through thousands of tiny typewritten notecards filed meticulously in huge wooden drawers with only a knowledge of the Dewey Decimal and Library of Congress catalog systems to guide them. If you were looking for a particular author or title, the process was fairly easy. For those investigating a particular subject, however, such as the prophecies of Nostradamus, the searches became a little trickier. The catalog included "Subject Cards," but these leads could often turn a paper chase into a wild goose chase deep into an intellectual thicket. Thus, in my quest for volumes regarding Nostradamus' Quatrains, I found myself jotting down the names of at least forty books that may or may not provide me with the answers I was looking for.
Chief among these titles was a book bearing a fascinating and thoroughly compelling title, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, by Charles Mackay. I mean what 10th grader wouldn't want to check out a book by that name? Scouring the stacks looking for my prize, I eagerly anticipated a tome dedicated to unraveling the predictions of Nostradamus in relation to huge waves of angry mobs, riots and other social tumult soon to unfold. When I finally secured the book and started reading, however, I discovered a completely different work.
Mackay's book studied charlatans and frauds. Certainly he can't consider Nostradamus a fraud! Starting at the table of contents, I frantically paged through the book searching for a section or even a citation lionizing my revered seer. What I discovered, however, shook the very foundations of my new faith. And I quote:
... the chief astrologer of that day, beyond all doubt, was the celebrated Nostradamus, physician to her husband, King Henry II. He was born in 1503 at the town of St. Remi, in Provence, where his father was a notary. He did not acquire much fame till he was past his fiftieth year, when his famous Centuries, a collection of verses, written in obscure and almost unintelligible language, began to excite attention.
Of course the language is obscure. He was transcribing visions and had to encode his prophecies so as not to be accused of withccraft ... I read on:
They were so much spoken of in 1556, that Henry II. resolved to attach so skillful a man to his service,and appointed him his physician. In a biographical notice of him, prefixed to the edition of his Vraies Centuries, published at Amsterdam in 1668, we are informed that he often discoursed with his royal master on the secrets of futurity, and received many great presents as his reward, besides his usual allowance for medical attendance.
See? He was obviously no charlatan!
After the death of Henry he retired to his native place, where Charles IX. paid him a visit in 1564; and was so impressed with veneration for his wondrous knowledge of the things that were to be, not in France only, but in the whole world for hundreds of years to come, that he made him a counsellor of state and his own physician, besides treating him in other matters with a royal liberality.
So he was definitely the real deal ...
“In fine,” continues his biographer, “I should be too prolix were I to tell all the honors conferred upon him, and all the great nobles and learned men that arrived at his house from the very ends of the earth, to see and converse with him as if he had been an oracle. Many strangers, in fact, came to France for no other purpose than to consult him.”
After reading that sentence, I knew that Mackay's remaining words could only further venerate Michel de Nostradame as the real deal:
The prophecies of Nostradamus consist of upwards of a thousand stanzas, each of four lines, and are to the full as obscure as the oracles of old. They take so great a latitude, both as to time and space, that they are almost sure to be fulfilled somewhere or other in the course of a few centuries ... He is to this day extremely popular in France and the Walloon country of Belgium, where old farmer-wives consult him with great confidence and assiduity.
Whaaaat?! In three mere sentences, this pompous blowhard had glibly dispensed of my prophet as yet another charlatan to be derided and mocked. But how could this be? According to Cheetham and Orson Welles, Michel De Nostradame's powers of prognostication existed far beyond any kind of doubt - reasonable or unreasonable.
Furious, I decided to read Mackay's book and note every error and libel I could find. Turning back to the beginning, then, I slowly began meeting alchemists, fortune tellers, magnetizers and a whole host of madmen and mountebanks perpepetrating ill-advised and often illegal shenanigans: the Mississippi Scheme, the South Sea Bubble, Tulipmania. By the time I caught up to and reread Mackay's dismissal of Nostradamus, sober reflection had replaced fervent faith. Mackay had administered an intellectual bitch-slapping I still recall to this day.
Of course, I continued conducting further research into the prophecies of Nostradamus, just to see if there really was anything there. By time I read James Randi's The Mask of Nostradamus in the 90s, however, I'd pretty much come to the conclusion that Michel de Nostradame, like all other psychics and fortune tellers, are only as accurate as their proponents believe them to be. The "truth" of their powers is a matter of Faith, not Science. In the case of Nostradamus, "Hister" (or Ister) only means Hitler - and not the Latin name for the Danube River - if you choose to believe he foresaw Hitler. The same goes for Nay, Pau and Oloron, which is either an anagram for Napoleon or three French towns ( http://www.1st-for-french-property.co.uk/property/town/location.php?ss=Sud%20Barn%20:%20Pau,%20Oloron,%20Laruns,%20Pontacq,%20Nay®ion=Aquitaine&dept=Pyrenees-Atlantiques ).
No, my little post here isn't meant as an attack on psychics and the paranormal. Far from it. My fascination with prophecies and accounts of the supernatural persists to this day. But as Charles Mackay pointed out to me 35 years ago, we must always keep our eyes peeled for charlatans and mountebanks and never, never, never believe the first person you hear. For those of you interested in checking out Mackay's complete work, it can be found on Scribd: https://www.scribd.com/read/234160024/Extraordinary-Popular-Delusions-and-the-Madness-of-Crowds and also Google Books :: http://books.google.com/books?id=Ff7QH7bF3zgC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0
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