Time. It is eternal. It is never ending. It isa loop, a cycle. Time was, is, and ever will be. What was, is, and what is,will be. In an age, an age that is, that was, and that might be, in the city of Havlen, it began.
An inconsequential piece of writing, but true nevertheless. For time is certainly a cycle. Who has not heard the famous saying "What goes around comes around." People might say that this saying is nothing but a distorted version of reap what you sow. But perhaps a little deeper reflection would make one realise that its actually meaning is time that has passed shall come again. Perhaps not exactly in the way it was. Definitely in a different period, perhaps the circumstances would be different, the place different. Even the characters would have changed.. However one thing is for certain. There will come a time when what has justpassed-by will come about again. A concept known as Convergence. And those well versed shall be able to decipher thewritings, read the signs.. And it is this fundamental of Space and Time that was understood by perhaps the most celebrated and criticised seer of all times- Michel de Nostredame, more popularly known as Nostradamus.
Nostradamus and his works have been much debated, with him having attracted a following that, along with the popular press, credits him with predicting many major world events. He has had his fair share of criticism as well. It is said that a leading astrologer of his time, Laurens Videl ridiculed him, accusing him for incompetence and for assuming that "comparative horoscopy" (the comparison of future planetary configurations with those accompanying known past events) could actually predict what would happen in the future.
Academic sources may maintain that the associations made between world events and Nostradamus's quatrains are largely the result of misinterpretations or mistranslations (sometimes deliberate) or else are so tenuous as to render themuseless as evidence of any genuine predictive power, that none of the sources listed offers any evidence that anyone has ever interpreted any of Nostradamus's quatrains specifically enough to allow a clear identification ofany event in advance, but then so are the fabled Mayan prophecies.
And as JKR puts is, people may have different interpretations and understanding ofthe same prophecy. And sure enough, a prophecy can have numerousinterpretations, but in the end what matters are the actions of the person(s)for whom the particular prophecy is meant. The most famous example being Lord Voldemort himself (talking here about JKR's famous HARRY POTTER of course). As Dumbledore explains, Harry's parents were targeted, he got the scar, he becamethe boy who lived, he was the chosen one only because Voldemort considered that the boy the prophecy spoke of was him. Hecould have chosen Neville Longbottom, or more conveniently, could have chosennot to react, which would have meant that his destiny would have not entwined with Harry's, leading to his ultimate downfall. The point here being, prophecies only come true if, and only if the person(s) whom it concerns chose to react. This brings us back to the subject of Nostradamus.
Thosewho know something or the other about divination shall agree the Nostradamusmade use of what is called Judicial Astrology – the astrological 'judgment',or assessment, of the 'quality' (and thus potential) of events such as births,weddings, coronations etc. (not really difficult to understand. It implies thatby studying past events and understanding there inter-relationships, you canpredict events in future with varying degree of accuracy.) His prophecies maynot have necessarily come true had individuals not acted in certain comportment.What if Hitler had not set out to pursue his policy of laburnum, or more importantly, what if Hitler was killed in his failed coup attempt?
Certainly Most of the quatrains deal with disasters, such as plagues,earthquakes, wars, floods, invasions, murders, droughts, and battles – allundated and based on foreshadowings by the Mirabilis Liber. Some quatrains cover these disasters in overall terms; others concern a single person or small group of persons. Some cover a single town,others several towns in several countries. A major, underlying theme is an impendinginvasion of Europe by Muslim forces from further east and south headed by the expected Antichrist,directly reflecting the then-current Ottoman invasions and the earlier Saracen(that is, Arab) equivalents, as well as the prior expectations of the MirabilisLiber.All of this is presented in the context of the supposedly imminent end of theworld – even though this is not in fact mentioned – aconviction that sparked numerous collections of end-timeprophecies at the time.
Perhaps as a seer and an occult, Nostradamus shall remain shrouded in mystery forever. And perhaps he deserves it, for no individual, before him or after him has ever been able to predict events as accurately as he has..
