The prophecies of the 16th-century author Nostradamus have become a part of the popular culture of the 20th and 21st centuries. Nostradamus' life has been depicted in both fiction and non-fiction books as well as several films, and made-up prophecies that were said to be his were circulated online in several well-known hoaxes, where quatrains in the style of Nostradamus have been circulated by e-mail. The best-known hoax claims that he predicted the attack on New York City's World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

Supposed prophecies Nostradamus enthusiasts regularly make claims regarding each new world crisis as it comes along as there is a tendency to claim that "Nostradamus predicted whatever has just happened." These claims rely heavily on the role of interpretation. For example, they have often credited him with predicting numerous different events in world history, supposedly including the French Revolution, the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, the atomic bomb, the rise of Adolf Hitler, the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, and the last pope.

Great King out of the Sky

One well-known supposed prophecy is that "a great and terrifying leader would come out of the sky" in 1999 and 7 months "to resuscitate the great King from Angoumois." But the phrase d'effraieur (of terror) in fact occurs nowhere in the original printing, which merely uses the word deffraieur (defraying, hosting), and Nostradamus sometimes uses the word ciel simply to mean 'region', rather than 'sky'. On the basis of Nostradamus' by now well-known technique of projecting past events into the future, LemesurierLemesurier, Peter, Nostradamus: The Illustrated Prophecies, 2003, suggests that X.72 therefore refers to the restoration to health of the captive Francis I of France (who was Duke of Angoulême) following a surprise visit to his cell by his host, the then Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1525. No fewer than five of the planets were in the same signs on both occasions.For further information and for analysis of this and subsequent indications, see here.

Author and researcher Ove von Spaeth on his work Nostradamus, the New Millennium and the Basilisk notes that "numerous attempts of interpretation" of Nostradamus texts do not take into consideration that he was also an astrologer. Von Spaeth also denotes that the interpretation of deffraieur as "horror" is misleading, and suggests a new approach to interpret the text:

The Nostradamus words, roy de deffraieur is a special, old French spelling of 'the king of the horrible'. If the word is changed a tiny bit, e.g. def(f)rayer - meaning something financial, 'to lend money', 'to exempt from expenses', as well as something entirely different, i.e. 'to be the subject/matter/entertainment in a conversation', a new possibility appears. People who have tried to interpret his prophecies have had problems in fitting this in, unless they have suggested a financial world crisis.

September 11, 2001 The September 11, 2001, attacks on New York City's World Trade Center led to immediate speculation as to whether Nostradamus had predicted the event. Almost as soon as the event had happened, the relevant Internet sites were deluged with inquiries. In response, Nostradamus enthusiasts started searching for a Nostradamus quatrain that could be said to have done so, coming up with interpretations of Quatrains I.87, VI.97 and X.72. However, the various ways in which the enthusiasts chose to interpret the text were not supported by experts on the subject. In addition, Nostradamus himself in his dedicatory letter to King Henri II states that his prophecies were about Europe, North Africa, and part of Asia Minor only.

The nearest that the former could come up with was quatrain VI.97, which in the original 1557 edition ran:

Cinq & quarante degrés ciel bruslera, Feu approucher de la grand cité neufve, Instant grand flamme esparse saultera, Quant on voudra des Normans faire preuve :

With instant evidently a version of the Latin instanter ("violently, vehemently"), a reasonable English translation (after Lemesurier) would thus appear to be:

Five and forty degrees, the sky shall burn: To the great new city shall the fire draw nigh. With vehemence the flames shall spread and churn When with the Normans they conclusions try.

"Five and forty degrees" was said to be the latitude of New York City (New York's latitude is 40°47'), and was interpreted as "40.5 degrees" (even though the decimal point had not yet come into use in the Europe of Nostradamus' day). "New City", similarly, was claimed to be New York (even though Nostradamus refers in this way to various "New Cities" whose names, unlike "New York", literally mean "New City", and especially Naples – from Greek Neapolis, "new city"); and most of the attempts to fit in the "Normans" of line 4 seemed contrived at best. While it is true that New York State, which has the same name as New York City, crosses 45° latitude, it cannot, of course, be described as a "new city", and so doesn't fit line 2 of the verse.

Lemesurier suggests that the verse is merely an undated projection into the future of the capture of Naples by the Normans in 1139 during a year marked by a notably violent eruption of nearby Mount Vesuvius that is recorded in the contemporary Annales Cassini.But compare In this case, the first expression may simply be a version of Cinq[ante minutes] & quarante degrés – which is indeed the latitude of Naples.

Another quatrain which came under the scrutiny of enthusiasts was quatrain I.87, which in the original 1555 edition (Albi copy) ran:

Ennosigée feu du centre de terre Fera trembler au tour de cité neufve: Deux grands rochiers long temps feront la guerre Puis Arethusa rougira nouveau fleuve.

or, in a possible English translation:

Earth-shaking fires from the world's centre roar: Around "New City" is the earth a-quiver. Two nobles long shall wage a fruitless war, The nymph of springs pour forth a new, red river.

Here, once again, the cité neufve was claimed to be New York; au tour de had to refer to the Twin Towers (even though, in French, the word tour in the masculine – as it is here – has absolutely nothing to do with towers, but is part of a phrase meaning "around"); the Deux grands rochiers had to be the Twin Towers themselves; and Arethusa was said to be an anagram of "the USA". Once again, however, a rather more sober investigation by Brind'Amour had already revealed (bearing in mind that, in French, faire la guerre aux rochers, or "to make war on the rocks", simply means "to struggle fruitlessly") that the reference was probably to Naples and its nearby volcano. Subsequent investigation by Lemesurier and his colleague Gary SomaiSee suggested that it applied particularly to the Annales Cassinis report of its lava eruption of 1036, at a time when the Lombards of Capua and the Byzantine dukes of Naples were constantly at war over the city prior to the decisive intervention of the Normans. For 968, similarly, Leo Marsicanus had reported in the same annals that "Mount Vesuvius exploded into flames and sent out huge quantities of sticky, sulfurous matter that formed a river rushing down to the sea". Thus, given that Arethusa was the classical nymph of springs and rivers, with a well-known "spring of Arethusa" still visible today in the Sicilian port of Syracuse, the case for a "9/11" interpretation was evidently unfounded.

The Julian Calendar was indeed the calendar system used during Nostradamus' lifetime. In his Almanachs, Nostradamus published at least eleven Julian calendars of his own – but all of them in fact started on January 1, and in all of them the seventh month was consequently July. Lemesurier consequently suggests that X.72 does not predict the 9/11 attacks at all, but refers back to the allegedly "miraculous" restoration to health of the captive Francis I of France in August 1525 by his then Roy deffraieur ("host-king") Charles V, and then projects it forwards into the future as a prophecy.

As for the various interpretations of the line usually rendered as "To resuscitate the great king of the Mongols", the verse in fact contains no such line (the word mongolais which, since Leoni has often been proposed as an anagram for Angolmois, doesn't exist in French anymore), but merely refers to the well-known French region of Angoumois, of whose capital (Angoulême) Francis I was duke: he was thus, as the verse states, Le grand Roy d'Angolmois ("the great King from Angoumois") of Nostradamus's own day.

In these and other ways, Nostradamus's statement in his open letter to his son Cesar that his quatrains were "written in a nebulous rather than plainly prophetic form" is widely taken by enthusiasts as carte blanche for suggesting that they can mean almost anything that they want them to say.

Hoaxes

"Mabus" as Antichrist

Some have interpreted the writings as predicting a series of three antichrists. However, the name "Mabus" as a synonym for or embodiment of the third antichrist is allegedly not suggested by any of the Prophecies. In fact the verse in question (II.62) merely states that a character of a similar-sounding name (according to Lemesurier [op. cit.], an alleged reference to the Flemish painter Jan Mabuse, contemporary with Nostradamus) will die. Otherwise, the reference says nothing about what "Mabus" will do or what he will be like. However, parts of Nostradamus Quantrain 2.61-62 state that "Mars at the port of the arrow. Behind the river the ladder put to the fort, Points to fire great murder on the breach. Mabus then will soon die, there will come Of people and beasts a horrible rout."

More recently attempts have been made to link the name "Mabus" anagrammatically with "Obama", as previously with "Saddam", "Osama" and "Bush". This tendency to attempt to adapt quatrains to fit current events can be traced all the way back to Nostradamus' own time.See Brind'Amour, Pierre, Nostradamus astrophile, University of Ottawa Presses, 1993; Lemesurier, Peter, The Unknown Nostradamus, O Books, 2003. However, Mabus is also acknowledged to be the surname of longtime U.S. political figure Ray Mabus.

One variant is that Mabus is the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohamad bin Salman, who signs himself as MBS, which can be encrypted as the word Mabus.

Village idiot hoax Following the contentious 2000 U.S. presidential election wherein George W. Bush was elected president, this text was widely circulated:

Come the millennium, month 12 In the home of greatest power The village idiot will come forth To be acclaimed the leader.

As with other hoaxes, only the purported English translation was given. It is likely that this verse was written as a joke.Election hoax, downloaded March 23, 2006.

World Trade Center prophecy hoax Shortly after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, the following spoof text was circulated on the Internet, along with many more elaborate variants (one of them signed 'Nostradamus 1654' – when he would have been 150 years old):

In the City of God there will be a great thunder, Two brothers torn apart by Chaos, while the fortress endures, the great leader will succumb, The third big war will begin when the big city is burning.