People attribute to him great powers of prediction. They consider him a prophet who saw the fate of mankind a thousand years in advance. The only insignificant catch in his prophecies consists in the fact that the brilliant medium wrote his knowledge down in a coded form, and that he did it so artfully that people still can’t understand or fully decipher it. He has been given the right to foretell the future—yet he himself merely wanted to live a rich life. Everyone who studies Nostradamus’s prophecies repeats the same mistake: they forget the simplest logical axiom, which says that from truth only truth can be derived, but that from a false foundation anything can follow—both truth and falsehood.

Nostradamus found a sure way to win a reputation, fame, and riches at court. Contemporary writers have surpassed their teacher by using his works for the same purposes.

Born into a family of Jews who had recently converted to Christianity—not of their own free will, but in accordance with the rigid edict of the King of France, Louis XII—Michel de Nostredame grew up in an atmosphere of mystery, living a double life, which left an imprint on his entire childhood. His parents continued to practice Judaism in secret, and the precocious child could not fail to see how unconscionably the government had acted by unceremoniously telling its subjects what to believe in and which god to pray to.

(more…)